In a valedictory letter to
President Truman on 18 Novem-
[217]
ber 1952 Secretary of Defense
Robert A. Lovett commented on the difficulties he had had in asserting
effective control over supply matters because "certain ardent
separatists occasionally pop up with the suggestion that the Secretary
of Defense play in his own back yard and not trespass on their
separately administered preserves."
There are seven technical
services in the Army . . . . Of these seven technical services, all are
in one degree or another in the business of design, procurement,
production, supply, distribution, warehousing and issue. Their functions
overlap in a number of items, thus adding substantial complication to
the difficult problem of administration and control.
It has always amazed me that the
system worked at all, and the fact that it works rather well is a
tribute to the inborn capacity of team-work in the average American...
A reorganization of the
technical services would be no more painful than backing into a buzz
saw, but I believe that it is long overdue.1
Explaining the lack of progress
in carrying out the financial reforms called for in the National
Security Act amendments of 1949, Lovett told a Congressional
investigating committee that it was very difficult to obtain accurate
statistics from the Army's technical services. Adequate supply control
was impossible at that level, he said, because a single depot might
receive its funds from fifty or a hundred sources. The basic problem, he
said, was the resistance of the technical services and the Army's
General Staff to change combined with a natural dislike of outsiders
trespassing on their preserves of authority. All this had led to a
"mental block," he maintained, in some of the services against
financial reforms.2
Karl R. Bendetsen, an attorney
and former Under Secretary of the Army, submitted a proposal to
Secretary Lovett in October 1952 for reorganizing the Army and the
technical services along functional lines. The weakness of previous
reorganizations, he said, had been that they treated symptoms instead
of attacking the basic issue, the Army's fragmented field organization
where seven major commands were each involved in buying, mechandizing,
warehousing, distributing, and even
[218]
research and development. They
were "virtually self-contained" autonomous commands, each with
its own personnel and training systems, no matter what its designation
might be as part of the Army staff. He could not identify any consistent
functional pattern in their arrangement. They were organized rather on
a professional basis with civil engineers, electrical engineers, and
mechanical engineers in separate commands. There was fragmentation and
duplication of effort in research and development and no effective means
of bringing the user, the combat soldier, into the picture. Disagreement
among the technical services forced the General Staff, particularly G-4,
to intervene in matters for which it lacked both the staff and authority
to act. The continental Army commands followed different personnel
policies and procedures, forcing G-1 into personnel operations of the
Army although it lacked the necessary staff. There was the
administrative chaos and friction created by housekeeping functions,
especially repairs and utilities, performed for technical service
installations by local Army commanders. Here again disagreement forced
administrative details "which have no business in the
Pentagon" to the top.
To provide more effective
management Mr. Bendetsen proposed to reorganize the Army from the bottom
up, replacing the continental armies with seven nationwide functional
commands, using the Secretary's new authority to distribute nonmilitary
functions within the Army as he saw fit. (Chart 19)
A Personnel Command would be
responsible for all personnel operations in the Army, including
manpower procurement, induction of draftees, replacement training
centers, prisoner of war camps, and disciplinary barracks. It would
provide
basic training for individuals. A Combat Command would take up where the
Personnel Command left off, concentrating on organizational training and
mobilization. It would have four subordinate commands: an Eastern
Defense and a Western Defense Command, an Antiaircraft Command, and the
"Army University," a school command including all training
schools, Reserve training, ROTC, and the U.S. Military Academy. A
Development Command would be responsible for both research and
development and for combat development functions, including operations
research, war gaming, and human resources research. A Service Command
would include most of the
[219]
THE BENDETSEN PLAN, 22 OCTOBER 1952
DEPARTMENT OF THE ARMY STAFF
Source: OCM Files.
[220]
Quartermaster Corps functions,
Army hospitals, finance centers, transportation, maintenance facilities,
and surplus disposal facilities. A Procurement Command would combine the
procurement and production functions of the Ordnance Department with
the construction activities, both military and civilian, of the Corps of
Engineers. It would be, like them, organized geographically into
regional divisions or districts.
Bendetsen thought there might be
a continued need for a separate Army headquarters command like the
Military District of Washington. Turning to the organization of the
General Staff and the Department of the Army, Bendetsen criticized the
Pershing tradition of attempting to run the department as if it were a
field command. The organization of a field army, he said, was
inappropriate for the department because the latter's mission was not to
direct military operations but to supply materiél and trained manpower
for such operations. He would relieve the General Staff of all
operational responsibilities, leaving five staff divisions: Manpower,
Intelligence, Operations, which he would separate from Force
Development (Training), and Procurement, Supply, and Services. The
technical
services would become staff agencies with no field commands or
installations under them. At the special staff level he would assign
Military History and Troop Information to the Adjutant General's Office.
There would be a vice chief and
two deputy chiefs, Bendetsen went on, to assist the Chief of Staff, one
for Plans and Research who would link long-range strategic planning with
research and development and a deputy for Operations and Administration.
Like others, he insisted that combining plans and operations in one
agency did not make sense. He would also appoint special assistants for
political-military affairs and for Reserve Components.
The Secretary of the Army would
have three assistant secretaries, one for Personnel, another for
Procurement, Supply, and Services, and a third, the Comptroller, because
the latter should parallel the role of the Comptroller of the Department
of Defense who was a civilian.3
While nothing
came of Mr. Bendetsen's plan at the time, it
[221]
was representative of the
continuing criticism of the Army's organization and management outside
the department. Some of its criticisms and recommendations were also
reflected in the reports of various committees that were appointed by or
under General Eisenhower when he became President in 1953.
President Eisenhower appointed
Charles E. Wilson as Secretary of Defense. One of Wilson's first acts
was to designate Nelson A. Rockefeller on 19 February 1953 as chairman
of an ad hoc committee on the organization of the Department of
Defense. It was a blue-ribbon jury, consisting of General of the Army
Omar N. Bradley, chairman of the joint Chiefs of Staff, and Dr. Vannevar
Bush, both of whom had publicly criticized the national defense
organization; Dr. Milton Eisenhower; former Secretary of Defense Robert
A. Lovett; Arthur S. Flemming, Director of the Office of Defense
Mobilization; and Brig. Gen. David A. Sarnoff, U.S. Army Reserve, of
RCA. Other senior military consultants were General of the Army George
C. Marshall, Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, and General Carl Spaatz,
U.S. Air Force.
The Rockefeller Committee
examined the entire spectrum of defense organization and procedures. It
sought a Department of Defense so organized and managed that it could
"provide the Nation with maximum security at minimum cost and
without danger to our free institutions." This required a flexible
military establishment "suitable not only for the present period of
localized war, but also in time of transition to either full war or
relatively secure peace."
The committee severely
criticized the various boards created under the National Security Act of
1947 which had been hamstrung, as Mr. Lovett pointed out, by
interservice rivalry. It recommended replacing them with seven Assistant
Secretaries of Defense with power to act for the Secretary. For the
Research and Development Board, the committee recommended one
Assistant Secretary for Research and Development and another for
"Applications Engineering," who would act in the area of
development engineering, thus linking research and production. To
replace the Munitions Board it recommended an Assistant Secretary for
Supply and Logistics. Other assistant secretaries would be responsible
for Properties and Installations, for Legislative Affairs, and for
Health and Medi-
[222]
cal Services. It also
recommended adding a General Counsel for the department.4
President Eisenhower accepted
many of the recommendations of the Rockefeller Committee in forwarding
his Reorganization Plan No. 6 of 1953 to Congress. The new
organization strengthened the authority of the chairman of the joint
Chiefs of Staff over his colleagues and over the joint staff. Following
the Rockefeller Committee's recommendations Reorganization Plan No. 6
abolished the several defense boards, assigning their functions to the
Secretary of Defense, and provided him with six new assistant
secretaries and a General Counsels.5
Finally it made the service
secretaries "executive agents" for carrying out decisions of
the JCS. The chain of command now ran from the JCS through service
secretaries to the various overseas commands.
The three service secretaries,
at Secretary Wilson's request, were also studying ways of improving the
effectiveness of their own organizations. The new Secretary of the Army,
Robert T. Stevens, on 18 September 1953 appointed an Advisory Committee
on Army Organization which looked like a gathering of Ordnance alumni.
The chairman was Paul L. Davies, vice president of the Food Machinery
and Chemical Corporation and a director of the American Ordnance
Association. Other members were Harold Boeschenstein, president of OwensCorning
Fiberglas; C. Jared Ingersoll, director of the Philadelphia Ordnance
District during World War II and president of the Midland Valley
Railroad; Irving A. Duffy, a retired Army colonel who was a vice
president of the Ford Motor Company; and Lt. Gen. Lyman L. Lemnitzer,
Deputy Chief of Staff for Plans and Research.
Secretary Stevens had requested
the committee to consider all elements of the Army, field commands as
well as the departmental organization in Washington. Areas of
particular interest
[223]
were the organization of the
Army's top management in the light of President Eisenhower's
Reorganization Plan No. 6; the organizational changes required to carry
out the Secretary's new assignment as the JCS's executive agent for
certain overseas commands; organizational changes necessary in
supervising and co-ordinating the technical services effectively;
changes required for proper direction of the Army's research and
development
program; the proper locations within the department of its legal and
legislative liaison functions; and, finally, the organization and
functions of the Office, Chief of Army Field Forces.6
The committee hired McKinsey and
Company, a Chicago management consulting firm, as its full-time civilian
staff with John J. Corson as its head, and interviewed 129 witnesses
over a three-month period, including the heads of every major
organizational unit in the Army. The committee submitted its report to
Secretary Stevens on 18 December 1953.
The committee proposed four
major changes in the organization of the Army. Among other things it
would strengthen the Secretary's fiscal control by adding an Assistant
Secretary for Financial Management and increase the authority of the
newly appointed Chief of Research and Development-within the Office of
the Deputy Chief of Staff for Plans and Research by transferring
responsibility for research planning to his office from the Assistant
Chief of Staff, G-4. The most important recommendation would remove the
Army staff entirely from "operations" by creating two new
field commands, a Continental Army Command which would be responsible
for supervising Army training instead of G-3, and a Supply Command
which would relieve the Assistant Chief of Staff, G-4, of the
responsibility for "directing and controlling" the technical
services.7
The Davies Committee recommended
that the Secretary of the Army "participate actively in the
formulation" of basic national policies and strategies affecting
the Army by, among other things, attending National Security Council
meetings as
[224]
an "observer." The
Under Secretary would be replaced by a deputy secretary who would act
for the Secretary in administering the department. Adding a third
assistant secretary would permit each to specialize in one functional
area, that is, manpower, materiél, and financial management.
The Chief of Staff, the
committee asserted, should be the "operating manager" of the
Army. "The view is often expressed in the Army that the Chief of
Staff commands no one and is merely chief of the Secretary's staff. In
practice this is not the case. He is the operating manager of the Army
Establishment . . . ." It recognized his role as a member of the
joint Chiefs of Staff and suggested reducing the number of agencies
reporting directly to him.8
Other organizational changes
proposed were to strengthen the Army's Reserve program; to place the
Secretary's Office of Civilian Personnel under the control of the Chief
of Staff because he was ultimately responsible for the work done by Army
civilians; to place greater emphasis on Civil Affairs and Military
Government; and to make the judge Advocate General the responsible
legal adviser in the department with supervision over all legal staffs
throughout the Army.9
The committee rejected the
concept of a separate Operations Division such as proposed by Mr.
Bendetsen because, it said, strategic planning was now largely a
function of the joint staff and much of the responsibility for training
would now be delegated to a new Continental Army Command. It also
rejected
the idea of a separate "intelligence corps" because this would
create additional operating responsibilities for G-2. It recommended
that the Corps of Engineers retain its civil works functions rather than
'transferring them to another department of the government.10
The committee's proposal for a
training command was a return to the wartime concept of Army Ground
Forces. The Continental Army Command, operating under the supervision of
G-3, would be responsible for all "combat arms" training in
the Army, individual as well as unit, basic and combined, Regular and
Reserve.
A training command was necessary,
the Davies Committee
[225]
said, because the six
continental armies and MDW were attempting to serve too many masters.
The General Staff divisions each supervised a part of their activities.
Under a single Continental Army Command there would be snore effective
control and direction over their activities.11
The Davies Committee proposals
concerning the Army's supply system represented a partial return to the
concept of General Somervell's wartime ASF. Its members suggested three
major changes in this area: creation of a Vice Chief of Staff for
Supply; creation of a Supply Command; and elimination of the division of
responsibility between the ZI armies and the technical services for
operating Class II installations. A Vice Chief of Staff for Supply and
another for Operations were necessary, it said, because direction of the
Army's supply system required the full-time services of "a highly
experienced and qualified individual" familiar with all aspects of
supply management and planning.12
A Supply Command was necessary
for the effective control over the technical services. Under the
existing organization G-4, although responsible for directing and
controlling the activities of the technical services, shared authority
over them with other staff divisions, principally the Army Comptroller
and G-1. A Supply Command would have greater control over the technical
services in these areas and over training, while G-4 would remain
responsible for logistical planning and policies.
The committee did not think it
would be necessary or desirable to reorganize the technical services
along "functional" lines. "The controlling
consideration," it said, "is whether the advantages of greater
specialization, coordination, and uniformity with respect to a function
. . . are more important than the need for coordinating and
resolving all differences among functions with respect to an item . . .
. Coordination of the development, procurement and distribution of an
item is a more meaningful basis for organization . . . than
specialization in each function." This view accorded with that of
the Ordnance Department.13
For research
and development as mentioned above the
[226]
Davies Committee proposed to
strengthen the existing authority of the Chief of Research and
Development in the Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Plans and
Research by transferring to his office the planning functions in this
area then assigned to G-4. Research and development operating
responsibilities it would transfer to the Supply Command.
The existing organization of the
Army staff, it admitted, diffused responsibility for research and
development, and it acknowledged that many people felt that research,
essentially a planning function, had been subordinated to current
production
and procurement operations.
The committee, on the other
hand, believed a separate research and development division on the
General Staff or the creation of a separate "Development"
Command would cause more difficulties than it would overcome. It did not
believe that a special staff division would improve the co-ordination
and management of research and development in the Army. A separate
"functional" command would "separate research and
development from closely related procurement and distribution
activities." The Army would then have to find a new means of
integrating these "essentially integral activities." Removing
"development" from the influence of those concerned with
production and procurement would "insulate" research personnel
from the views of the user of weapons and other materiél. This, too,
was the view of the Ordnance Department.
A more effective research and
development program it believed would come from employing qualified
civilian scientists and "project managers" and from
contracting directly with civilian institutions "for special
research undertakings."14
Eliminating the existing
division of responsibility between the technical services and the
continental armies for operating Class II installations was also
necessary. Commanders of such installations were responsible to the
technical service chiefs for the performance of their missions. At the
same time they depended on the continental Army commanders for
housekeeping funds. This violated the principle of unity of command and
made it impossible to determine the costs of operating such
installations. The committee recommended that housekeeping funds and
personnel be allotted directly to the technical services
[227]
who would then have complete
financial responsibility over the operations of their field
installations.15
Another area the committee
investigated was financial management. The addition of another
assistant secretary with responsibility for such matters it hoped
would strengthen the program. But further improvement required aligning
fiscal responsibility with the department's organizational structure.
The new budget and program system had not yet produced satisfactory
results, partly because it did not conform to the Army's organization
pattern and partly because it did not extend all the way down to the
installation level.16
Like earlier civilian
reorganization proposals the Davies Committee report insisted the Army
staff should get out of operations, while military officers like those
on the PatchSimpson Board had asserted that this simply could not be
done. The proposal that met the strongest opposition within the Army;
creating a Supply Command, involved this principle. The basic military
argument against it was simply that it was impossible to divorce the
General Staff from its responsibility for supply operations. The Army
staff's reaction was to turn the Davies proposal upside down. Instead of
a Supply Command the Army staff proposed making the G-4 a Deputy Chief
of Staff for Logistics with greater "command" over the
technical services.
The principal protagonist of
this view was Lt. Gen. Williston B. Palmer, the new G-4. General
Palmer, unlike his predecessors, Generals Somervell, Lutes, and Larkin,
who were primarily logisticians, was a combat veteran. Most recently he
had served in Korea as commanding general of the X Corps. As a combat
commander General Palmer insisted on unity of command and felt that he
should have all the authority and resources needed to carry out his
command responsibilities. In his view it was necessary either "to
give G-4 substantial command over the Technical Services" or to
resurrect Army Service Forces, which would cause considerable confusion.
If the first alternative were chosen, the G-4 should be given authority
over personnel, organization, and review and analysis. While he had
[228]
GENERAL PALMER (Photograph taken in 1955.)
no wish to interfere with the
responsibilities of his colleagues, General Palmer said, "I must
have within my own hands the management tools and the primary control
over personnel and organization questions within the logistic
area." In these arguments General Palmer reiterated General
Aurand's position in 1948 concerning greater substantive control over
the technical services.17
In briefing the new Chief of
Staff, General Matthew B. Ridgway, on 19 August 1953 General Palmer
resorted to the Constitutional doctrine of "implied powers,"
quoting Chief Justice John Marshall's decision in McCulloch versus
Maryland to support his point. His authority under Special
Regulation 10-15-1 included not only logistic staff functions but also
direction and control of the technical staffs and services. "All
the responsibility is given me, and all powers necessary to discharge
the responsibilities must be inferred as granted.
The Chiefs of Technical Services
are commanders, and their commands are huge. I would judge it to be true
that real control over them lapsed when ASF was disbanded." For
this reason he requested greater authority over personnel, including
general officers in the technical services, and over Class II
[229]
industrial installations. He
also wanted better qualified "management" personnel because
"the civilian secretaries are challenging us to show that the Army
staff is capable of running the Army supply system."18
While the Davies Committee
deliberated, there were rumors within the Army staff that creating a
Supply Command would be one of its major recommendations. A General
Staff committee requested the G-4's formal position on the Army's
"Logistic Structure at the Departmental Level." Speaking for
General Palmer, Maj. Gen. Carter B. Magruder, his deputy, said that
G-4's existing authority, based on applying the theory of implied
powers, was adequate for managing the Army's supply system.
"Creation of a Logistics Command," he said, "would
require a large headquarters and would interpose a ponderous additional
step in doing business, with no obvious improvement in management."
The experience of both world wars demonstrated that the supply
organization finally evolved combined both logistical staff planning
with command over the supply services. General Somervell himself,
General Magruder asserted, "favored an ASF commander who would
also be the Chief of Staff's advisor on logistics." The
organization of the technical services themselves was
"fundamentally sound." Simple directives could reassign
functions among them whenever necessary. What they needed was
"vigorous direction, control, and coordination by a single
authority."
General Magruder's principal
complaint was that civilian officials in the Secretary's Office and
above were becoming increasingly involved in administrative details.
"Many decisions have to pass three [sic] Army secretaries
and then go to more than one secretary in Defense." 19
General Palmer encountered
opposition from Maj. Gen. Robert N. Young, the Assistant Chief of Staff,
G-1, on control over technical service personnel. The latter said that,
according to "the General Staff concept," G-4 should not
exercise authority over personnel. General Palmer's spirited rebuttal
was that every effort on his part to obtain authority matching his
[230]
responsibility met objections based on the "General Staff concept."
". . . Experience since 1917 in three [sic] national
emergencies shows that we always come to the same solution, of
placing on one man the dual function of principal logistic adviser
and logistic commander. That is where the facts of life push us
every time. The General Staff concept needs to be rewritten if it
doesn't conform."20
He objected on the same basis to a
statement by another colleague that "The Assistant Chiefs of
Staff do not command, and it is not consistent with Army doctrine to
show the administrative services under G-1 and the Technical
services under G-4." 21
General Palmer's reaction to the Davies Committee report was
mixed. He seemed to accept the general outlines of the report in
principle, including a Vice Chief of Staff for Supply, because he
thought it would improve the conduct of the Army's "business
affairs." But he firmly objected to interposing a Supply
Command between the technical services and the Chief of Staff.
"The Chiefs of the Technical Services must remain at as high an
echelon as now. In a thousand cases a day, they must be spokesmen
for the Department. Displacement from their departmental functions
would hopelessly snarl Congressional, executive, and inter-service
relations, and could only end in creating a whole new set of
technical staffs which would, inevitably, include the Chiefs of
Services personally." As an alternative he proposed placing a
"Director of Logistics Services" directly under the Vice
Chief of Staff for Supply and so avoid "futile argument"
over creating a field "Command" within the department.22
General Palmer continued his argument with General Young over
personnel functions. General Young proposed removing responsibility
for career management from the technical services and placing it
along with responsibility for career management for combat arms
officers in G-1. General Palmer and the chiefs of the technical
services all strongly disagreed with this proposal. Among other
things it was contrary to the Davies Committee's recommendation that
responsibility for
[231]
- technical service career
management be placed under the new Supply Command.23
-
- The Department of the Army
publicly announced "the Secretary of the Army's Plan for Army
Organization," known as "the Slezak Plan" after the new
Under Secretary of the Army, John Slezak, on 14 June 1954, and the
Secretary of Defense approved it on 17 June 1954. In general the plan
followed the recommendations of the Davies report except in the field of
logistics. There it reflected the views of General Palmer in rejecting
the concept of a Supply Command and giving a new Deputy Chief of Staff
for Logistics "command" over the technical services.24
(Chart 20)
-
- The plan agreed with the Davies
Committee that G-4 lacked the authority needed to control and direct the
technical services. "The major weaknesses in the Army's structure
and operations," it said, "do not lie in the field of military
operations, but are traceable to a lack of recognition of, and
preparation
for, changes in the character, size, and complexity of the Army
Establishment necessary to produce and support the combat forces."
But the Slezak plan in disagreeing with the Davies Committee's remedy
said:
-
- If an integrated Army logistics
system is to be achieved, the appointment of a Deputy Chief of Staff
for Logistics is a vital first step. The Deputy Chief of Staff for
Logistics must be given full authority for the provision,
administration, and control of military personnel, civilian personnel,
and funds for, and the direction and control of, the seven Technical
Services.
-
- He "should have a command
relationship to the Technical Services" and exercise staff
supervision over "wholesale-level logistics activities
overseas."
-
- The Army should first transfer
from other Army staff agencies to the Deputy Chief of Staff for
Logistics all functions involving the technical services,
"including, but not limited to, career management, personnel
administration, and manpower control; budgeting, apportionment, and
allocation, of all funds among the Technical Services, and other
financial management functions and activities; materiél research and
development;
- [232]
- SECRETARY OF THE ARMY'S (THE SLEZAK) PLAN, 14 JUNE 1954
-
-
- 1 General Management, Analysis and Review
- 2 Panama, Alaska, Civil Functions, Politico-Military- Economic
Affairs
- 3 Direct working relationships with civilian and military personnel
elements of Army staff
- 4 Additional direct responsibilities to Assistant Secretary (Civil
Military Affairs)
-
- Source: Secretary of the Army's (the Slezak) Plan, 14 June 1954.
- [233]
- requirements, procurement,
supply, services, and programing and control functions in the logistics
field; and legal functions of the Technical Services." It would
also transfer responsibility for technical service training to the new
deputy chief. For the time being at least responsibility for logistics
planning would remain with a vestigial Assistant Chief of Staff, G-4.
The General Staff was thus removed from logistics operations entirely.25
-
- An ad hoc Committee to Implement
the Reorganization of the Army composed of the Comptroller, the G-4, and
other General Staff divisions under the chairmanship of George H.
Roderick, Assistant Secretary of the Army for Financial Management,
met repeatedly during the summer of 1954 to work out the details of the
reorganization.26
-
- Mr. Slezak, in a memorandum for
General Ridgway on 8 September 1954 approving the detailed
reorganization plan, called his attention principally to the Charter for
the new Deputy Chief of Staff for Logistics.
-
- a. The purpose is to combine the
seven technical services into an integrated logistical system,
subordinating the Chiefs of Technical Services to the head of this
system and giving him authority to modify the respective Technical
Service missions in order to achieve one integrated system in place of
seven autonomies.
-
- b. Accordingly, it is intended
that wherever the authority granted the Deputy Chief of Staff for
Logistics involves transfer to him of authority heretofore exercised by
other parts of the Army staff, the extent of the transfer shall be
interpreted so as to insure that the Deputy Chief of Staff for Logistics
can carry out the objectives set forth in paragraph a. above.
-
- Specifically this meant that he
would have authority over "the career management of all Technical
Service personnel, whether serving under their Chiefs or not." 27
-
- The Charter to which Mr. Slezak
referred was published as Change 4 to Special Regulation 10-5-1 of 8
September 1954. As revised-later in Change 6 of 17 January 1955, the
Deputy Chief of Staff for Logistics had "Department of the Army
Staff responsibility" for "development and supervision of an
integrated Army logistics organization and system, including all
controls over policies, procedures, standards, funds, manpower,
- [234]
- and personnel which are
essential to the discharge of this responsibility." He would be
responsible for the development of logistics doctrine and manuals, for
supervising logistics training and education where more than a single
technical service was involved, for logistics planning, for development
of logistics programs and budgets, for development and supervision
of financial management, including stock and industrial funds within the
technical services, and for development of the Army's logistics
requirements. Acting on the basis of this authority he was to prescribe
the missions, organization, and procedures of the technical services, to
supervise their training, develop and supervise "a single,
integrated career system" for technical service personnel, to
exercise manpower controls over both their civilian and military
personnel, to administer their civilian personnel programs, including
industrial and labor relations, and to supervise all aspects of
financial management within the technical services, including budgets,
funding, allocation of personnel ceilings, review and analysis, and
statistical reporting controls under the authority of the Comptroller
of the Army. The Surgeon General was allowed direct access to the
Secretary and the Chief of Staff on matters involving the health and
medical care of troops and utilization of medically trained military
personnel. Responsibility for the civil functions of the Chief of
Engineers was not included. Change 6 also removed from the Deputy Chief
of Staff for Logistics responsibility for directing the research and
development activities of the technical services. The organization of
the Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Logistics to carry out these
new duties is outlined in Chart 21.
-
- The Secretary of the Army
reappointed McKinsey and Company on 8 February 1955 to conduct an
"Evaluation of Organizational Responsibilities" within the
Department of the Army. This review concentrated on the Army's civilian
secretariat, the Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Logistics,
and the new Continental Army Command.28
-
- The only major recommendation made
concerning the Sec-
- [235]
- OFFICE OF THE DEPUTY CHIEF OF STAFF FOR LOGISTICS, 9 SEPTEMBER 1954
-
-
- Source SR 10-5-1 Change 4,8 Sep 54, and Internal Deplog Organization
Chart of 9 Sep 54.
- [236]
- retary's Office was that an
Office of Director of Research and Development be created separate from
the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Logistics and Research and
Development. This change was adopted and announced in General Order 64
of 3 November 1955. The remainder of McKinsey and Company's comments in
this area concerned redistributing the work load among the various
assistant secretaries and preventing them from becoming involved in
minor administrative operations.29
-
- McKinsey and Company thought
that the responsibilities of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Logistics
under Changes 4 and 6 to Special Regulation 10-5-1 were not clear,
particularly in the areas of overseas supply activities, doctrine,
training, and logistics planning. The report warned that this office
might become so involved in operations that it could not give sufficient
attention to logistics planning which might better be assigned to a new
G-4 division. Greater responsibility for operations ought to be given to
the chiefs of the technical services as "operating Vice
Presidents." The Deputy Chief of Staff for Logistics should instead
concentrate his efforts on developing policies and programs common to
more than one technical service and follow the principle of
"management by exception," or troubleshooting, in dealing
only with critical problems. He should limit reports to those providing
information needed to develop and review policies and programs. Other
minor suggestions concerned personnel management, program review and
analysis, and financial management. 30
-
- The Comptroller of the Army
asked Karl R. Bendetsen, then a Reserve colonel on active duty, to
prepare a special study on "A Plan for Army Organization in Peace
and War," which he submitted on 1 June 1955. While he repeated the
recommendations he had made to Secretary Lovett in 1952 for a series of
functional field commands, he also reviewed recent developments in
departmental organization. He thought the only real advantage of the new
Deputy Chief of Staff for Logistics was his increased authority over
career management in the technical services. He still was not a
"commander," no
- [237]
- matter how that term was
defined, but a General Staff officer acting for the Secretary of the
Army.
-
- Mr. Bendetsen thought the Army
had been following a "circular course" since World War II of
first rejecting the idea of ASF and then working back toward it
gradually. There were still seven independent technical services.
General Somervell had tried hard to get rid of them, but he had failed.
Since then the deficiencies which General Somervell had tried to correct
had repeatedly come to the department's attention. It had tried to solve
them, but so far without success. The one major weakness, the
independence of the technical services with their duplication of each
other's functions, had not been rectified. "Every proposal which
has advanced the concept of bringing like functions under effective
management has met the same fate-it has been rejected." So far as
the new organization of the Army's supply system was concerned, he saw
no reason why it should succeed where its predecessors had failed, since
it did not deal effectively with this critical issue.31
-
- The new organization had other
critics besides Mr. Bendetsen. Civilian scientists had repeatedly
complained about the continued subordination of research and development
to procurement and production. When General Williston B. Palmer had
been promoted to Vice Chief of Staff, he warned that research and
development needed "rank and prestige which would place the Army on
equal terms with the other services before the innumerable outside
scientists and advisory groups get into the act." The result was
Change 11 to Special Regulation 10-5-1 of 22 September 1955 creating
the Office of Chief of Research and Development at the Deputy Chief of
Staff level. The designation chief was necessary because Congress had
specifically limited the Army to three Deputy Chiefs of Staff in the
Army Organization Act of 1950.32
-
- This organization left a General
Staff of five Deputy Chiefs of Staff co-ordinating operations with three
Assistant Chiefs of Staff below them, presumably divorced from
operations. General Palmer's view was that "The General
Staff has always
- [238]
- operated." If it was
responsible only for plans and policies, "what agency would
supervise their execution?" On this basis the Army staff was
reorganized as of 3 January 1956 under Change 13 to Special Regulation
10-5-1 of 27 December 1955 into three Deputy Chiefs of Staff, one for
Personnel, another for Military Operations, and the third for Logistics,
a Chief of Research and Development, the Army Comptroller, and an
Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence. (Chart 22) The Deputy Chief
of Staff for Personnel absorbed the functions of the former Deputy Chief
of Staff for Operations and Administration plus G-1. He was also
assigned direct supervision and control over The Adjutant General's
Office, the Chief of Chaplains, the Provost Marshal General, and the
Chief of Information and Education. The Deputy Chief of Staff for
Military Operations absorbed the functions of the former Deputy Chief of
Staff for Plans plus G-3. He was also assigned General Staff supervision
and control over the Chief of Civil Affairs and Military Government, the
Chief of Psychological Warfare, and the Chief of Military History.33
-
- Thus was abandoned the
three-deputy concept for coordinating and supervising the operations
of the Army staff. The Deputy Chiefs of Staff for Plans (Research) and
for Operations and Administration as well as the Comptroller, which
had performed these functions since 1949, were now demoted to the status
of coequal General Staff agencies. To fill the vacuum left at the top
the Chief of Staff created two new agencies within the secretariat of
the General Staff, a Coordinating Group and a Programs and Analysis
Group (initially called the Progress Analysis Group). The secretariat
thus began to develop into a super co-ordinating and planning staff
between the General Staff and the Chief of Staff. 34
-
- The Coordination Group's formal
mission was to assist the Chief of Staff in the development and
evaluation of long-range strategic plans. It acted as liaison also with
other Army and defense committees, including the joint Chiefs. In
practice
- [239]
- DEPARTMENT OF THE ARMY CHIEFS AND EXECUTIVES, 3 JANUARY 1956
-
-
- 1 Not an Official Organization Chart.
- 2 For Practical Purposes Those Agencies Listed as Technically
Subordinate to DCSOPS, DCSPER, and DCSLOG, Actually Reported Direct to
the Chief of Staff. Source: DA, DO No 70, 27 Dec 1955. CSR 10-1, 3 Jan
56.
-
- Prepared by TAGO
- [240]
- this meant the Coordination
Group assisted General Maxwell D. Taylor, the new Chief of Staff, in
developing an integrated Army philosophy which would serve to
revitalize the Army's missions and roles. Some such conscious, explicit
philosophy, General Taylor believed, was necessary, spelling out the
role of the Army in the national defense establishment, if the Army were
to obtain the support of the administration, Congress, and the public.
General Taylor first presented his ideas in "A National Military
Program" to the JCS in the fall of 1956. The Coordination Group,
meanwhile, prepared a Department of the Army Pamphlet, A Guide to Army
Philosophy, which was widely distributed within the Army in 1958.
Later in The Uncertain Trumpet General Taylor published the
substance of this program, which became the basis of the Army's program
in the 1960s. 35
-
- Co-ordinating the Army's program
system was the responsibility of the new Programs and Analysis Group.
This meant the proper balancing of Army programs with resources in men, materiél, and money. The planning, execution, and review and analysis of
the Army's programs at the Army staff level were now under one small
agency in the Chief of Staff's Office.
-
- Under the new dispensation the
Management Office within the secretariat became, in effect, the
Comptroller of the Army staff but the relationship between this agency
and the Office of the Comptroller of the Army was not clear. In theory
the Management Office's responsibilities for management functions
within the Army staff included the Comptroller's Office, while the
Comptroller of the Army was responsible for such functions throughout
the Army. Theoretically the Comptroller's Office would review the Army
staff's budget and manpower ceilings, including those of its own
headquarters, prepared by the Management Office. In practice, the
Comptroller had been reduced to the level of a Deputy Chief of Staff
coequal
with but not superior to his colleagues as he had been before 1956.
-
- No major change took place in
the organization of the Army staff or the Chief of Staff's Office from
1956 until John F.
- [241]
- Kennedy became President and
appointed Robert S. McNamara as Secretary of Defense in January 1961.
The size of the Army staff and of the secretariat both remained fairly
constant during this period. 36
-
-
- The emergence of the Office of
Chief of Research and Development on 10 October 1955 as an independent
General Staff agency ended a strenuous five-year campaign for
recognition by civilian scientists both within and outside the Army. It
was also part of the continuing struggle for control over the technical
services because they performed most of the research and development
within the Army.37
-
- Under the Eisenhower
reorganization of 1946 recognition of research and development within
the Army as an activity separate from logistics seemed assured with the
creation of a separate Directorate for Research and Development. The War
Department Equipment Board, known as the Stilwell Board, in its report
of 29 May 1946 reiterated General Eisenhower's statement of Army policy
on research and development.
-
- Scientific research is a paramount
factor in National Defense. It is mandatory that some
procedure be adopted whereby scientific research is accorded a major
role in the post war development of military equipment. The scientific
talent available within the military establishment is not adequate for
this task and must be augmented . . . . In general the scientific
laboratories of the Technical Services should be devoted to those
problems so peculiarly military as to have no counterpart among
civilian research facilities, meanwhile utilizing, on a contract basis
the civilian educational institutions and industrial laboratories for
the solution of problems within their scope.
-
- The board recommended a separate
Directorate of Research and Development as the best means for
supervising the program. The director should be a senior general officer
of the Army, it said, and key personnel should include knowledgeable
- [242]
- officers from each technical
service, a nationally known scientist as senior assistant to the
director, and an outstanding scientist in each major field of science
assigned on rotation from the major scientific colleges and industrial
laboratories. General officers from the field commands and officers from
each arm and service should represent the using arms in the development
of new or improved weapons.
-
- The mission of the Directorate
of Research and Development was to supervise all Army research
activities and to coordinate the research and development activities
of the arms and services. It would establish priorities, make certain
that the technical services and arms maintained contact with civilian
research programs, supervise and review the Army's long-range research
and development program, confirm the need for new and improved
equipment, and advise the Budget Division on the funds required for its
work.
-
- To increase the Army's
scientific talent, the Stilwell Board report recommended commissioning
outstanding civilian scientists in the Army Reserve or National Guard,
sending Army officers as students to leading scientific colleges and
industrial laboratories, granting commissions annually to graduates of
scientific colleges, and providing salaries that would attract qualified
civilian scientists to work for the Army.38
-
- The department neglected most of
the Stilwell Board's recommendations because of reduced budgets
following World War II. Dr. Cloyd H. Marvin, the first "Scientific
Director," complained in late 1947 that the Army lacked a vigorous,
modern research and development program. He recommended a reorganization
with an Assistant Secretary of the Army for Research and Development and
conversion of the General Staff to a purely planning agency supporting
functionally organized field commands. One of the commands would
consolidate the Army's research laboratories, and another would
determine the development of tactical doctrine and military requirements
for new material. It would be responsible for testing new weapons and
equipment and for operating the Army's advanced schools. For an
effective program the Army
- [243]
- ought also to have a separate
research and development budget.39
-
- Abolishing the Research and
Development Directorate and subordinating the function to Logistics in
December 1947 was a step backwards. Severe budget limitations, a factor
beyond the Army's control, forced the Army to get along with surplus
weapons and equipment left over from World War II. New weapons, except
for missiles, were out of the question. General Aurand, the first
Director of Research and Development, also complained he had found it
extremely difficult to obtain agreement from the Logistics Directorate
on research and development projects.40
-
- None of the reorganization
studies of the Army by the Management Division, Cresap, McCormick and
Paget, and the Hoover Commission Defense Task Force dealt with research
and development. In recommending a functional Army staff and functional
field commands, their proposals contained no provisions for research and
development as a separate activity at any level. The only important
advance in this otherwise sterile period for Army research and
development was the signing of a contract with the Johns Hopkins
University in July 1948 setting up a General Research Office, later
known as the Operations Research Office (ORO), to perform research for
the Army. As the title indicated, ORO's principal activities were
limited to employing scientific methods, specifically operations
research techniques, in improving current tactical doctrine rather than
developing new weapons or equipment.41
-
- Distinguished civilian
scientists like Dr. Vannevar Bush complained about the way the services
were handling research. A major irritant was the relationship between
scientists and their military superiors in the development of new
weapons. Writing in 1949 Dr. Bush, the first chairman of the Research
and Development Board, asserted:
-
- The days are gone when military
men could sit on a pedestal, receive the advice of professional groups
in neighboring fields who were maintained in a subordinate or tributary
position, accept or reject
- [244]
- such advice at will, discount
its importance as they saw fit, and speak with omniscience on the
overall conduct of war . . . . If military men attempt to absorb or
dominate the outstanding exponents in these fields, they will simply be
left with second-raters and the mediocre . . . . The professional men
of the country will work cordially and seriously in professional
partnership with the military; they will not become subservient to them;
and the military can not do their full present job without them.42
-
- As a member of the Army Policy
Council, Dr. Bush also expressed his dissatisfaction with the progress
of the Army's research program to Secretary of the Army Gordon Gray in
the spring of 1950. Gray in turn sent a memorandum to the Chief of Staff
complaining that the Army was placing too much emphasis and spending too
many dollars on maintaining its current arsenal at the expense of the
future. Given the pace of scientific advance, the next war was not
likely to be the same kind of "total war" as World War II.43
-
- Secretary Gray's memorandum led
to a formal staff study of the entire Army research and development
organization. The Kilgo report, so designated because Mr. Marvin M.
Kilgo of the Comptroller's Office reportedly collected most of the
information, was sent to the Secretary on 12 January 1951. In substance
it argued that the Army's research and development program lacked
effective leadership from the Defense Department and inside the Army.
It recommended a separate Assistant Chief of Staff for Research and
Development with control over funds for such activities and a Deputy
Chief of Staff for Development. There should be a direct link, it said,
between these programs and the Army's strategic planning, and greater
use should be made of "operations research" techniques by
setting up organizations for this purpose in all major commands.44
-
- General Larkin, the G-4, spoke
for the Army staff in rejecting the major proposals of the Kilgo
report. He and all the technical service chiefs were opposed to a
separate Research and Development Division on the General Staff. It had
been tried and found wanting, they said. The Army could perform this
mission just as well under the supervision of G-4, and it was
- [245]
- important to retain the link
between research and procurement. Besides, the technical services
ought to report through only one direct command channel.
-
- The Chief of Staff, General
Collins, repeated General Larkin's comments in his recommendations to
the new Secretary of the Army, Frank Pace, Jr. Staff responsibility
for research and development should remain, he said, with G-4. It was
also essential to integrate this program with production because at the
technical service level they were combined. Further, he did not see
how "pure" research could be separated from development.45
-
- Secretary Pace accepted these
recommendations but left the issue of a separate Research and
Development Division open. Some Army staff officials believed that the
main current problem was the lack of firm strategic planning on which
to base projections of future research and development requirements. The
Chief of Research and Development in G-4 believed a change was desirable
in the technical services, which would make the head of research and
development in each service responsible directly rather than indirectly
to the chief of the service. Civilian personnel shortages were also
hindering progress.46
-
- In the fall of 1951 Maj. Gen.
Maxwell D. Taylor, then Deputy Chief of Staff for Organization and
Training, sought to reopen the question of a separate Research and
Development Division because "its increased importance and extended
scope make increasingly, apparent the lack of logic in assigning
Research
and Development to G-4." Secretary Pace agreed that "the
departmental research and development functions must be removed from
G-4." By this time opinion within the General Staff had shifted.
Most favored a separate General Staff division in some form, but the G-2
and G-3 suggested placing this function under the Deputy Chief of Staff
for Plans. General Larkin and General Collins still opposed a separate
staff agency.
-
- At this point General Taylor
canvassed senior officers of the Army including the chiefs of the
technical services on the subject. The G-1, Lt. Gen. Anthony C.
McAuliffe, strongly
- [246]
- SECRETARY PACE
-
- urged removing the function from
G-4. Placing it under the Deputy Chief of Staff for Plans with
additional research and development elements in each major staff agency
he thought "a screwy idea" that would further fragment
responsibility for the program. General Taylor himself favored such a
plan because he thought it would force all General Staff agencies to
focus attention on the subject. No one at this time proposed changes at
the technical service level where the greater part of the Army's
research and development work was done. 47
-
- After considerable debate the
Army staff reached a compromise acceptable to Secretary Pace. As a
result, on 15 January 1952 the Deputy Chief of Staff for Plans became
the Deputy Chief of Staff for Plans and Research. He was responsible for
co-ordinating the Army's research and development activities with JCS
assigned missions, war plans, and with the latest tactical doctrines. A
Chief of Research and Development under him was directly responsible for
supervising this activity as Program Director for Army Primary Program
7, "Research and Development," including responsibility for
allocating its appropriations within the Army. He would also be the
Army's spokesman on such matters in dealing with the Office of the
Secretary of Defense and other government agencies.48
- [247]
- Severe personnel limitations
forced the new Chief of Research and Development to delegate much of
his authority to the General Staff, particularly G-4. G-3's new
responsibilities included supervising the Operations Research Office,
while G-1 became responsible for supervising the activities of the Human
Resources Research Office (HumRRO) established at George Washington
University in 1951 under contract to the Army for research involving
"human factors," the individual soldier, his training, and
combat environment. What remained of the old Research and Development
Division in G-4 was responsible for supervising these activities in the
technical services.49
-
- Secretary Pace thought the
"new organization had elevated the research and development
function from its former position subordinate to the logistics function
in the Army," and there the matter rested until the Army staff
reorganization proposals of 1954.50
-
- Civilian scientists continued
their efforts to separate research and development completely from
logistics at the General Staff level. In November 1951 Secretary Pace
appointed twelve "outstanding scientists and industrialists"
as members of an "Army Scientific Advisory Panel" to assist
him and the Chief of Staff in creating a fighting force "as
effective, economical, and progressive, as our scientific,
technological, and industrial resources permit." Dr. James Killian
was the first chairman of this group and a leader in the effort to
remove research and development from G-4.51
-
- Scientists now had more direct
influence within the Army itself as part of the establishment. They
played a direct role also in the Korean War when representatives of ORO
went there to apply operations research techniques. These scientists
returned
certain that "something had to be done to improve our capability to
conduct land warfare." 52
Out of this developed
- [248]
- Project VISTA, conducted by the
California Institute of Technology under the joint auspices of the
Army, Navy, and Air Force and designed "to bring the battle back to
the battle field." One major recommendation was to create a Combat
Developments Center for testing new tactical concepts on troops in the
field. The Combat Developments Group set up in 1952 under Army Field
Forces was a direct consequence of this recommendation.53
-
- President Eisenhower's
Reorganization Plan No. 6 of 1953 reopened the question of the
relationship of research and development to logistics within the Army.
The new Defense Department organization had strengthened control over
research
and development by replacing the unwieldy Research and Development Board
with two assistant secretaries, one for Research and Development and
another for Applications Engineering, both separate from the Assistant
Secretary for Supply and Logistics. The Davies Committee on Army
organization considered separation of research from supply in its own
deliberations.
-
- General Palmer, the new G-4,
opposed any change, asserting the main issue was control over the
technical services. Another General Staff division for research and
development to whom the technical services would have to report would
make matters worse.54
-
- Dr. Killian told the Davies
Committee he was unhappy with the Army's research program. There was
still little coordination between strategic planning and research and
development. He had welcomed the appointment of Maj. Gen. Kenneth D.
Nichols as the Chief of Research and Development, but the latter's
emergency assignment to the Army's guided missiles program obviously
interfered with his main job. Dr. Killian still wanted a separate
General Staff division for research and development with direct access
to the Chief of Staff and the Secretary of the Army together with a
separate Assistant Secretary for Research and Development. He did not
think creation of a separate research and development command, such as
Mr. Bendetsen had suggested, would be practical because of
- [249]
- the necessarily close relationship between the
researcher and "the user" who developed and produced the
finished product.55
-
- The recommendations of the
Davies Committee regarding the Army's research program were a
compromise. While the committee did not advocate removing this function
entirely from G-4, it suggested transferring research and development
planning from G-4 to the Chief of Research and Development. Operating
functions should be transferred from G-4 to the new Supply Command. In
the Secretary's Office it recommended transferring responsibility for
this program from the Under Secretary to the Assistant Secretary for Materiél. It also recommended making the Army Scientific Advisory Panel
permanent 56
-
- The final Slezak plan on Army
organization irritated Dr. Killian. Writing to Secretary Stevens he
complained that the proposed organization "would serve seriously to
handicap the management and further development of the Army in Research
and Development activities . . . ." It had two serious defects.
"It brings Research and Development under the domination of
logistics and procurement philosophy, and this has repeatedly been
demonstrated to be the wrong environment for the top direction of
research in military services." Second, it actually reduced the
status of the Chief of Research and Development by making his role
ambiguous.57
General Lemnitzer, the Deputy Chief of Staff for Plans
and Research, endorsed Dr. Killian's views. Stressing the
incompatibility of research and logistics, he wrote George H. Roderick,
chairman of the ad hoc Committee for Implementation of the
Reorganization of the Army, that the only solution was to consolidate
under the Chief of Research and Development all of the existing G-4
research and development work as well as those portions of the program
scattered among other General Staff agencies.58
Maj. Gen. John F.
Uncles, Chief of the Research and Development Division, wrote Lemnitzer,
his superior, that "we are paying too high a price for rigid
adherence to the prin-
- [250]
- ciple that only a Deputy Chief
of Staff for Logistics can issue instruction to the Technical
Services." He favored centralizing all Army staff research and
development functions under General Lemnitzer's office rather than the
"present dispersed and inadequate staff organization." 59
-
- James Davis, special assistant
for research and development to Under Secretary Slezak, warned that
G-4's Research and Development Division was currently too involved in
administrative details. What was needed was an agency devoted to
original studies and analyses which would bring together problems of
new weapons or equipment needed in combat with new technical ideas. This
would give concrete direction to the research and development program.
For years relating weapons and technology had been swept under the rug
as a secondary mission of the Army schools, which were also so isolated
from technology and science that they could not perform the function
properly.60
-
- The Palmer Reorganization and
the new Deputy Chief of Staff for Logistics represented another defeat
for those who demanded separation of research and development from
logistics.
The deputy chief now supposedly had greater control over the operations
of the technical services, including research and development, than
before. The scientists, led by Dr. Killian, refused to surrender. A
Congressional investigation of the Defense Department's research and
development programs under Congressman R. Walter Riehlman, Republican of
New York, supported their efforts. General Uncles, Dr. Killian, and Dr.
Bush in testimony before this group publicly ventilated the arguments
they had been urging within the Army staff.61
-
- The Riehlman Committee's report
warned that "unless the military departments, and our military
leaders in particular, choose to correct these problems caused largely
by military administrative characteristics, the forces of logic and
civilian scientific dissatisfaction could well dictate that research and
- [251]
- development be rightly
considered incompatible with military organization.62
-
- The report also discussed the
Davies Committee recommendations, concluding that the Secretary of the
Army's plan had treated the problem too superficially. It agreed with
Dr. Killian and other scientists that research and development were
incompatible with logistics and that the Army Scientific Advisory
Panel should be strengthened in numbers and authority. It urged creation
of an additional Assistant Secretary for Research and Development and
criticized the Department of the Army for failing to "attract
adequate support and interest from civilian scientists" largely
because of massive red tape and an apparent lack of interest in the
subject.63
-
- The struggle entered a new phase
when the now permanent and expanded Army Scientific Advisory Panel
(ASAP) held its first formal meeting on 16 November 1954. It discussed
the continued conflict between the Deputy Chief of Staff for Plans and
Research and the new Deputy Chief of Staff for Logistics over the
research and development program. The new Assistant Secretary for
Logistics and Research and Development, Frank Higgins, a former
president of the Minneapolis Grain Exchange, concluded that "the
Army Research and Development Program, especially at the top, should be
reorganized without delay." 64
-
- Dr. Killian, as chairman of the
Army Scientific Advisory Panel, then personally urged Secretary Stevens
to separate research and development from logistics and raise the status
of the Chief of Research and Development to the Deputy Chief of Staff
level. Secretary Stevens finally agreed, and on 28 December 1954 all
research and development functions and responsibilities assigned to
the Deputy Chief of Staff for Logistics were transferred to the Deputy
Chief of Staff for Plans and Research. A new General Staff division
under a Chief of Research and Development would be responsible for
"planning, supervising, coordinating, arid directing" all Army
research and development.65
- [252]
- The new organization was not
satisfactory because both the Assistant Secretary for Logistics and Research and Development and the Deputy Chief of Staff
for Plans and Research were overburdened with work. The McKinsey and
Company report of March 1955 said that the Army should create a new
Research and Development Directorate, relieving the existing Assistant
Secretary for Logistics of this burden. The Second Hoover Commission of
1955 recommended assigning to the Assistant Secretary for Logistics
responsibility for almost all Army logistical functions, including
research and development and supervision of the technical services,
removing these functions entirely from the General Staff.
-
- Brig. Gen. Andrew P. O'Meara,
the new Chief of Research and Development, on 3 August 1955 formally
proposed creating a new deputy chief of staff for Research and
Development. The Army staff agreed, including Lt. Gen. James M. Gavin
and General Palmer, who had become Vice Chief of Staff. The new
Secretary of the Army, Wilber M. Brucker approved, and the new office
began operations on 10 October 1955 with General Gavin appointed as the
Army's first Chief of Research and Development. A new civilian post, the
Director of Research and Development, was created on 3 November 1955
at the assistant secretary level. Dr. William H. Martin, then Deputy
Assistant Secretary of Defense for Applications Engineering, became
the first director.66
-
- Despite these changes the Deputy
Chief of Staff for Logistics still controlled the technical services,
including their budgets and personnel. As the historian of OCRD noted:
-
- The Chief of Research and
Development had little or no say in the placement of personnel . . . in
responsible research and development positions within the Technical
Services. And even if he were consulted there was no means by which he
might reward outstanding effort or penalize unsatisfactory performance.
-
- A management subcommittee of the
Army Scientific Advisory Panel in the fall of 1958 concluded it was
unrealistic "to expect the Chief of Research and Development to
assume responsibility for success in this field without having direct
control
- [253]
- over funds, personnel, and
facilities to accomplish his mission." 67
The full ASAP urged
that the Chief of Research and Development have sole responsibility for
all policy decisions in his area and sole control of funds required to
carry out his missions, including the construction, evaluation, and
testing of prototypes.
-
- Another development came with
the announcement by the Department of Defense in November 1958 that
beginning with fiscal year 1960 all research and development
appropriations as well as identifiable research and development
activities under other budget programs would be included in one new
research,
development, test, and evaluation budget category.68
-
- During this same period the ASAP
conducted a series of studies and held conferences aimed at reducing the
lead time between the point when a new weapon is conceived and the time
it reaches the soldier on the battlefield. The ASAP believed that much
time was wasted simply in unproductive red tape and that more authority
for the Chief of Research and Development would reduce it.
-
- As an example it took ten years,
from 1950 to 1960, for the Army to produce a replacement for the World
War II amphibian veteran known as the DUKW. Research was not involved,
just development engineering. The Ordnance Corps received the assignment
in late 1950. Six years later in 1956 only an unsatisfactory prototype
had been produced. The Transportation Corps in the meantime had produced
a larger amphibian, the BARC, for testing in less than two years.
Disagreement
between the Transportation Corps and Ordnance Department over the type
of smaller amphibian required stalled progress for more than two years.
In late 1958 a contract for developing a prototype of a new small
amphibian, the LARC, was finally negotiated by the Transportation Corps.
Two more years passed, again partly because of continued opposition by
the Ordnance Corps, before the LARC was finally accepted or "type
classified" as standard equipment for
- [254]
- the Army on 20 July 1960. As
this case demonstrated, a major reason for delay in developing new
equipment was disagreement among the technical services.69
-
- ASAP pressure also resulted in
establishing the Army Research Office (ARO) on 24 March 1958 under the
Office of the Chief of Research and Development (OCRD) "to plan and
direct the research program of the Army," to make maximum use of
the nation's scientific talent, to provide the nation's scientific
community with a single contact in the Army, and ensure that the Army's
research and development program emphasized the Army's future needs. ARO
would also coordinate the Army's program with similar programs in the
Navy, Air Force, and other government agencies. Within the Army it would
co-ordinate the research and development programs of the technical
services.70
-
- The next official to grapple
with the issue of control over the technical services' research and
development programs was the Army's new Director for Research and
Development, Richard S. Morse, formerly president of the National
Research Corporation and vice chairman of the Army Scientific Advisory
Panel. The 1958 reorganization of the Department of Defense had created
a Director of Defense Research and Engineering. President Eisenhower
had also established a special White House Assistant for Science and
Technology, appointing Dr. Killian, former chairman of ASAP, to that
post. These events led Mr. Morse to suggest a complete reevaluation of
the Army's research and development organization. Lt. Gen. Arthur G.
Trudeau, General Gavin's successor as Chief of Research and Development,
agreed. Following recommendations from the Chief of Staff, General
Lyman L. Lemnitzer, Secretary Brucker appointed a seven-man board under
the Assistant Secretary for Financial Management, George H. Roderick.
The Roderick Board, which included Mr. Morse, General Trudeau, and Lt.
Gen. Robert W. Colglazier, the new Deputy Chief of Staff for Logistics,
was to study the problem and make recommendations "without
disturbing the existing organization of the Department." Mr. Morse
tried to resurrect
- [255]
- the idea of a separate research
and development command, but the chiefs of the technical services
remained unanimously opposed.71
-
- The Roderick Board report,
submitted in March 1959, suggested only a few minor changes, most of
them aimed at improving the management of the Army's research and
development
programs. The Chief of Research and Development should improve
long-range planning review and analysis, and change the Army's
procedures for advising industry and the scientific community of its
research objectives and requirements. His office should improve its
performance in making scheduled reports on time. Greater emphasis on
combat developments was also necessary.72
-
- A year later, on 23 March 1960,
Mr. Morse once more submitted his own proposal for a separate research
and development command. His chief targets were the technical services
which did not, he believed, enjoy "an unqualified reputation in the
scientific community." The Army would have a satisfactory research
and development program only if it were to increase its prestige and
"overcome tradition." The command, he proposed, would serve
under a Chief of Research and Development with full Deputy Chief of
Staff status and an Assistant Secretary for Research and Development.
-
- Such a field command would mean
at least partially dismantling the technical service organization. The
technical service chiefs naturally considered it as another attempt to
functionalize them out of existence.73
-
- The Army Scientific Advisory
Panel approved Mr. Morse's proposal, but Secretary Brucker turned the
matter back to the Roderick Board. General Trudeau opposed the Morse
plan because it would involve "drastic changes in the basic
structure and operating procedures of the Army." What was essential
for a workable program was control over the men and money required to
do the job. To achieve this goal he thought the Chief of Research and
Development should be given "operational control" over
technical service funds and personnel for research and development. He
should be given a voice in assigning key research and development
personnel throughout the Army and
- [256]
- should rate the performance of
technical service research and development chiefs. This would require
giving research and development officials in the technical services
greater authority over funds and personnel also.74
-
- The senior officials of the
department and the Army staff met on 15 June 1960 to consider the
Roderick Board report, the Morse plan, and General Trudeau's proposal.
Secretary Brucker requested that General Trudeau submit specific
examples
of difficulties he claimed he had been having with the technical
services. General Trudeau came back with twelve instances, nearly all of
them involving the Ordnance Corps, which accounted for over two-thirds
of the Army's research development, testing, and evaluation funds. In
one case the Deputy Chief of Staff for Logistics had told the technical
services chiefs to ignore instructions from the Chief of Research and
Development if they thought they conflicted with instructions from his
office or were "not otherwise in the best interest of the
service." Other complaints involved shifting research and
development funds without the approval of the Chief of Research and
Development, failure to consult with him on key personnel assignments,
and failure to notify him of major development problems.75
-
- After additional prodding from
the Secretary of Defense, the Roderick Board recommended changes on 6
July along the lines suggested by General Trudeau. On 30 July 1960,
Secretary Brucker repeated that no changes would be made in the
existing structure of the Army. The Deputy Chief of Staff for Logistics
would still remain the principal channel of command between the Army
staff and the technical services. The Chief of Research and Development
would have a "parallel" line of authority to the technical
services on matters in his area. He would control research and
development personnel within the technical services through the bulk
allotment of civilian personnel spaces to his office for further
allocation to the technical services. He would contribute to the
efficiency reports of research and development personnel in the
technical services and be consulted on the assignment of key personnel
throughout the Army's research and development organization. He would
- [257]
- control allocation of such funds among the technical
services. Finally, in line with the recommendations of the Roderick
Board, he was instructed to improve the Army's long-range research and
development planning, including forecasts of future requirements and
technological developments, and to improve the Army's relations with
industry and the scientific community.76
-
- In summary, after World War II
the Army's research and development program went through three distinct
phases. Before the Korean War declining appropriations and the
department's
constant preoccupation with current daily crises led to the
disappearance of "Research and Development" as a major effort.
The Korean War renewed interest in the subject, and a struggle began
between scientists, who wished a separate General Staff division, and
elements of the Army staff, who insisted on its continued subordination
to logistics. Between 1955 and 1961, as Chiefs of Research and
Development, General Gavin and General Trudeau fought to remove
controls from the Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Logistics over
the men, money, and materiél required for their programs. Except for the
civilian scientists, the Army staff continued to oppose creating an
independent research and development command because it involved the
independence and integrity of the technical services.
-
-
- In the fall of 1950 General
Gavin, then Director of the Defense Department's Weapons Systems
Evaluation Group, accompanied a group of scientists, including Dr.
Edward Bowles, to Korea to investigate tactical air support problems.
They came away convinced that "something had to be done to improve
our capability to conduct land warfare." 77
-
- The Army, Navy, and Air Force
jointly requested the California Institute of Technology to investigate
the problems of tactical air support and of generally how to improve
weapons, techniques, and tactics. In addition to specific
recommendations
for developing new weapons, Project VISTA advocated
- [258]
- creation of a "Combat
Developments" organization within the Army to include a Combat
Developments Center for testing new tactical doctrine of troops in the
field.78
-
- Following these recommendations
the Chief of Staff in June 1952 ordered the Chief of Army Field Forces
to establish a combat developments organization within his office. This
was done with the creation on 1 October 1952 of the Office of the Deputy
Chief of Staff for Combat Developments. The Chief of Army Field Forces
in turn ordered that combat developments departments be established at
the Command and General Staff College and the four combat arms schools.
An Office of Special Weapons Developments was set up at Fort Bliss,
Texas, in December 1952 as the first combat developments field agency
of the Army to assist in developing and testing "the military
application of atomic energy as it affects the doctrine, organization,
equipment, and training of the Army in the field." At the same time
Army Field Forces contracted with the Operations Research Office of
Johns Hopkins University to set up an operations research office within
the headquarters of the Chief of Army Field Forces.79
-
- As Army Field Forces defined the
concept in 1953, combat developments was "The research,
development, testing, and early integration into units in the field, of
new doctrines, new organization, and new materiél to obtain the greatest
combat effectiveness using the minimum of men, money, and materials."
There were thus three distinct areas, the development of doctrine, the
development of organization, both former functions of G-3, and also the
development of weapons and mat6riel, a function of the Research and
Development Section in Headquarters, Army Field Forces.80
Under Change
3 to Special Regulation 10-51 of 16 July 1953 Army Field Forces
responsibilities for developing new tactics and techniques included
determining the effect of new weapons, materiél, and
- [259]
- techniques on tactics and
doctrine, formulating new doctrines and procedures for their employment,
and supervising the various boards and agencies which tested them. In
the development of materiél Army Field Forces responsibilities were
limited to determining military requirements for new weapons and
equipment normally used by field armies. The technical services remained
responsible for materiél not normally used in field armies.
-
- This regulation indicated the
complex organizational relationships that were involved in combat
developments. Coordinating the efforts of Army Field Forces with those
of individual Army staff agencies, with the technical services, and with
the Air Force and Navy in joint projects involved an enormous amount of
administrative delay.
-
- Within Army Field Forces one of
the earliest problems arose out of the difficulties the Combat
Developments Division within G-3 experienced in developing long-range
programs. Understandably, it had become too involved in current
operations.
The solution was to form a special study group of military officers,
who were to work closely with the Johns Hopkins University civilian
analysts as a combat operations research group, known as CORG.
-
- At approximately the same time
the Combat Developments Division itself was abolished and reorganized as
the Combat Developments Group. While the G-3 division remained
responsible
for short-range developments in doctrine, the new group would project
requirements for and develop necessary changes in organization,
doctrine, tactics, and requirement for new materiél "at least ten
years in the future."81
-
- Dissatisfaction with the
progress of combat development led Secretary of the Army Stevens in
February 1954 to appoint Dr. Leland J. Haworth, Director of the
Brookhaven National Laboratory, chairman of a small group of civilian
scientist known as the Ad Hoc Committee on Combat Developments to
investigate the problem. The committee's report recommended
strengthening the Army's combat developments program through greater
centralized control. The Davies Committee and Slezak reports agreed, and
on 1 February 1955 the formal controls of the U.S. Continental Army
Command, successor of
- [260]
- the Office of the Chief of Army
Field Forces, over the Army's combat developments program were
strengthened. Supervised by the General Staff divisions most directly
concerned (Deputy Chief of Staff for Military Operations, Deputy Chief
of Staff for Logistics, and later the Chief of Research and
Development),
CONARC was henceforth responsible for the general direction of this
program throughout the Army, including the technical services. The
department made this clear by directing the seven technical and three
administrative services to create their own combat developments
agencies to work with CONARC's combat developments organization. This
forced the technical services to concentrate their previously scattered
combat developments functions into a single agency.82
-
- The Combat Developments Section
became a CONARC general staff division in September 1956. The U.S. Army
Combat Developments Experimentation Center at Fort Ord, California, was
established on 1 November 1956 to conduct tests and experiments with new
concepts, organizations, doctrine, and tactics for future combat
operations armies in the field. At about the same time a scientific
research office, the Research Office Test and Experimentation Center
(ROTEC) , was set up in Monterey, California (later moved to Fort Ord),
to work with this new agency.83
-
- CONARC's responsibilities for
the development of materiel also increased. The Development and Test
(later called the Materiél Development) Section became a fifth general
staff section of CONARC, reflecting similar changes in the Army General
Staff. This agency was to supervise development of materiél for use in
combat, advise CONARC and the Department of the Army on materiél requirements; co-ordinate
preparation of the military characteristics
of new weapons and equipment, supervise materiél testing by CONARC
boards, maintain contact with development agencies like the technical
services and outside contractors, evaluate CONARC materiél service
tests, and, finally, to recommend adoption, or type classification, of materiél
by the Army for combat deployment.84
-
- The Armour Research Foundation (ARF)
of the Illinois
- [261]
- Institute of Technology, under
contract to CONARC, submitted a "Management Engineering Study of
the Combat Developments System" on 31 March 1959. This study
suggested among other things that the combat developments activities of
the technical and administrative services be placed under the direct
command of the Deputy Commanding General for Development, CONARC, and
that the combat developments groups at the CONARC schools report
directly to the Commanding General, CONARC, rather than through the
school commandants. CONARC rejected these recommendations on two
grounds. It said that current procedures for dealing with the technical
and administrative services were satisfactory and that the change
proposed would conflict "with established command channels within
the overall Army organization." As a practical matter the suggested
change in the relations between the combat developments groups in the
schools and CONARC, the latter asserted, would require establishment of
"an autonomous command which included at one site the.staff,
facilities, and troops necessary to execute all aspects of combat
developments." The Haworth Committee had recommended this, but
CONARC was not prepared to go this far. 85
-
- CONARC's organization indicating
the status of its combat and materiél development agencies in January
1959 is outlined on Chart 23. After ten years the Army's
program for combat developments was still a loose-jointed arrangement
among CONARC, the General Staff (where three agencies were involved),
and the technical and administrative services. Coordination and
concurrences required to reach decisions on new weapons and equipment
among so many agencies still required an enormous amount of time. This
was equally true of the Army's research and development programs and
symptomatic of the lack of effective executive control in these areas.
-
-
- The continental armies went
through three major changes in their relations with the Department of
the Army during the 1950s. One change was the inauguration of a combat
developments program, discussed above. Another concerned the house-
- [262]
- OFFICE OF THE DEPUTY
CHIEF OF STAFF FOR COMBAT DEVELOPMENTS, HEADQUARTERS, USCONARC, 1 JANUARY
1959
-
-
- Source: Organization & Functions Manual, Hq, USCONARC, 1 January
1959.
-
- keeping functions performed by
the continental armies for the technical service Class II installations
within their jurisdiction. A third change involved resurrecting the
principle of Army Ground Forces as a field command with command
authority over the continental armies.
-
-
- The housekeeping functions
performed after World War II by continental Army commanders as landlords
for their tenants, the Class II technical service installations, became
a chronic source of irritation for the Army commanders who had to
perform them, the technical services chiefs who complained service was
inadequate, and the Army staff which had to referee the disputes that
constantly arose.
-
- The Army commanders in 1948 had
sought full command and authority over all installations in their areas.
This led to setting up Operation TACT in the Third Army area as a pilot
project for testing the practicality of the Army commanders'
- [263]
- proposals. The Army staff
considered the test a failure and attempted only to define more
precisely the housekeeping responsibility of Army commanders for Class
II installations in Special Regulation 10-500-1 of 11 April 1950.
-
- This regulation listed more than
sixty administrative and support functions that Army commanders were
responsible for providing for Class II installations in their areas. The
principal functions were repairs and utilities, accounting for 48
percent of the funds involved, and motor transport, accounting for
another 17 percent. Others included manpower ceilings and
authorizations; personnel funds; security and intelligence; information,
education, and special services for military personnel and public
relations; inspections; and common supply services such as food, medical
care, and general supplies for installation operation.86
-
- Despite this effort Army
commanders and technical service chiefs continued to quarrel over
responsibility for repairs and utilities, personnel authorizations, and
motor pools. The Management Division of the Army Comptroller's Office,
after a series of detailed investigations of technical service
installations between 1950 and 1953, concluded that at least budgets
and personnel required for repairs and utilities at these
installations should be charged to the technical services.87
-
- During this same period the
Management Division of Headquarters, First Army, surveyed the
housekeeping problems of selected technical service installations within
its area. One major finding was that First Army did not have sufficient
personnel to carry out its assigned housekeeping responsibilities. On
the average, 32 percent of the military personnel spaces authorized in
1953 were not filled. Requests to convert these spaces to civilian
positions were rejected by the General Staff because of arbitrary
manpower ceilings imposed by Congress. As a result, Class II
installations often had to divert their own funds to these functions.88
-
- Repairs and utilities (R&U)
created conflicts between
- [264]
- Army commanders and their
technical service tenants because failure to perform these functions
directly interfered with the latter's primary functions. Without them
they could not operate. These functions included changes to and
maintenance of real property, permanently installed equipment, utility
services, plants and systems, fire protection, packing and crating,
and insect and rodent control. Ordnance Department and Chemical Warfare
Service industrial plants and arsenals which built and operated their
own utilities were exempted.
-
- It was difficult to determine
what was properly repairs and utilities and what was the responsibility
of the technical services. Maintaining and repairing production
machinery and equipment, a responsibility of the technical services, was
"dependent upon" maintenance functions paid for by R&U
funds. Often there were separate repair shops set up for each category.
-
- Planning and budgeting through
two separate command channels created frequent delays, particularly when
there was disagreement over priorities. The technical services resorted
to diverting funds from their primary missions when they could not
obtain sufficient funds from Army commanders. The First Army survey
pointed out that had the technical services not diverted these funds the
operations of their installations might have broken down or at least
been seriously impaired. At one Quartermaster depot in upstate New York
there were no R&U funds for snow removal. Prompt shipments in and
out of the depot were considered vital for national defense;
therefore Quartermaster funds were diverted to meet the immediate
emergency. The Ordnance Corps often used emergency "expediting-production"
funds for R&U projects. In defense of the Army commanders, the First
Army survey said that they were often not informed sufficiently in
advance of Class II requirements for R&U projects, a weakness it
attributed directly to the system of dual command.
-
- The survey concluded that, while
there were many areas that could be improved within the existing system,
basically the system of dual command was at fault. The Army commanders
ought not to be assigned responsibility for support functions directly
affecting the primary operations of Class II installations. Such matters
as Red Cross, military police and justice, or fire protection did not
fall in this category and
- [265]
- should remain the responsibility
of Army commanders. These minor functions aside, "Class II
installations and Class II activities should be provided with funds
and personnel authorizations for mission and support functions through
a single channel-the Parent Department or Army agency."89
-
- The Davies Committee studied the
First Army survey and recommended that responsibility for funds and
personnel required to support Class II installations be assigned to
the technical services. The Slezak report agreed and decided that this
time unity of command, the basic concept that "a Commander must
have control of the resources required for the accomplishment of his
mission," should be decided in favor of the technical services
instead of the Army commanders. As a result, under Army Regulation 10-50
of 25 March 1955 Army commanders were relieved generally of
responsibility for providing funds, personnel, and other resources for
principal Class II mission and support activities. They retained
responsibility only for common support functions incidental to these
primary missions: chaplains, military justice and provost marshal
services,
counterintelligence, medical and dental services, public information and
troop education programs, and general inspection and review. Thus
ended a decade of constant irritation and friction between the
continental armies and the technical services.
-
-
- The Davies Committee's major
criticism of the continental armies was that the Army's organizational
framework for military operations and training was diffuse and
confusing. The commanders of all the continental armies and the Military
District of Washington reported directly to the Chief of Staff, and the
General Staff was too involved in minor administrative decisions
concerning the continental armies that ought to be made at a lower
level.
-
- The committee believed a
Continental Army Command along the lines of the wartime Army Ground
Forces would provide more effective control over the continental armies
and relieve the General Staff of unnecessary involvement in operations.
In addition to absorbing the current functions of the
- [266]
- Office, Chief of Army Field Forces, a revitalized AGF
should review plans, programs, and budgets for the continental armies,
supervise individual and unit training, and direct the activities of the
testing boards and the preparation of long-range combat developments
plans.90
-
- The Slezak report approved these
recommendations, and under Change 7 of 1 February 1955 to Special
Regulation 10-5-1 the Office, Chief of Army Field Forces, was
redesignated
Headquarters, Continental Army Command, with command over the six
continental armies, MDW, the five service test boards, an Arctic Test
Branch, and three Human Resources Research units.91
-
- In addition to performing the
functions recommended by the Davies Committee, CONARC was also to be
responsible for logistical and administrative support of the continental
armies, except Class II installations. It assumed the functions of the
Assistant Chief of Staff, G-3, for approving tables of organization and
equipment and for preparing and reviewing tables of allowances. It was
also assigned responsibility for preparing and executing plans for the
"ground defense of the United States" and for preparing plans
to assist civil authorities in disaster relief and controlling domestic
disturbances.92
-
- Despite its increased
responsibilities on paper for financial management CONARC remained in
concept and practice a tactical command like an Army group headquarters,
"with the ZI Army Commanders acting as deputies to the CG, USCONARC
for the administration of their own army areas," functions they had
been performing since 1948. McKinsey and Company in its 1955 report
thought effective control over the continental armies required that
CONARC assume greater administrative responsibilities for supporting the
ZI armies and eliminating General Staff involvement in these
functions.93
-
- More specifically McKinsey and
Company recommended
- [267]
- that CONARC be assigned
responsibility for distributing bulk manpower authorizations and for
allocating personnel spaces within its command. Instead of confining
itself to the Army's troop training program, CONARC should direct
development and execution of all programs and missions of the CONUS
armies, including supply and administrative support. The essential
requirements, it asserted, was that CONARC gain "control over
missions, programs, money, and manpower resources for managing the ZI
Armies." 94
-
- Under Army Regulation 10-7 of 4
April 1957 the Army group concept of CONARC was replaced by that of an
overseas theater command with full control over the resources needed
to direct the operations of the ZI armies as McKinsey and Company had
recommended. CONARC's new responsibilities included manpower controls
over both civilian and military personnel and the planning, direction,
and control of nearly all major administrative and logistical support
activities within the ZI armies. Under the Army's revised "Program
System," as outlined in Army Regulation 11-1 of 31 December 1956,
CONARC was made responsible, beginning in fiscal year 1959, for
development, execution, and review and analysis of the new
installations, mat6riel, reserve components, and research and
development programs. Its new financial management responsibilities
included the direction of progress and statistical reporting and the
provision of "management engineering" assistance. It was
also assigned responsibility for intelligence activities within the
continental armies and for the management and direction of Army aviation
training except for units under the command of the Chief of
Transportation.
-
- Further changes gave CONARC
control over training of civil affairs and military government personnel
and units in both the active Army and Reserve Components and over the
management of hospitals, dispensaries, and other medical facilities.
Following the 1958 recommendations of the "Report of the Officer
Education and Training Review Board," in September 1960 the
Commanding General, USCONARC, was designated Director of the Army
Service School System and assigned responsibility for supervising
curricula and instruction, among other things. The Military Academy
and certain
- [268]
- advanced Army schools like the
War College, the Army Logistics Management School, and professional
medical courses were excluded. At this same time, CONARC's practical
control over technical and administrative service schools remained very
limited.95
-
- The organizational changes
discussed in this chapter were internal ones within the Department of
the Army and the continental armies. The Palmer reorganizations of the
Army staff represented a swing of the pendulum away from the effort made
in 1950 to centralize control over the department and the Army under the
three-deputy system. General Palmer sought instead to centralize control
at the next lower level under the several General Staff divisions,
vesting them with greater authority over the technical services and
special staff agencies.
-
- Despite General Palmer's
efforts, control over Army logistics and the technical services remained
necessarily fragmented among the General Staff divisions. The addition
of the Office of the Chief of Research and Development, created as the
result of pressure from the scientific community both within and outside
the Army, complicated the problem further.
-
- The establishment of CONARC as a
unified field command represented a return to the wartime concept of
Army Ground Forces. In this change the fragmented control over the
continental
armies among the General Staff divisions was abandoned for centralized
control in a single command. At the same time the divided authority
exercised by the continental Army commanders and the chiefs of the
technical services over housekeeping functions performed at technical
service installations, a constant headache for all concerned after World
War II, was abolished. The technical services were made responsible for
the bulk of their own housekeeping functions.
-
- The same technological
developments which led to creation of the Office of the Chief of
Research and Development and a separate Assistant Secretary for Research
and Development resulted at the level of CONARC in efforts to set up
an effective combat developments program which would combine new weapons
and equipment with new tactical doctrines. The pro-
- [269]
- gram was still in its infancy at
the end of the decade, plagued by the same fragmented control over its
operations that bedeviled Army logistics generally.
-
- These internal changes within the
Department of the Army took place within the framework of organizational
changes at the Department of Defense level that not only influenced Army
structure but also changed the position of the Department of the Army
within the Department of Defense. Particularly important were changes in
the fields of financial management, common supply activities, and control
over military operations.
- [270]
Endnotes
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