More from Annie Jacobson’s
The Pentagon’s Brain: An Uncensored History of
DARPA, America’s Top Secret Research Agency:
As
ARPA director, [Eberhardt] Rechtin believed he knew why the agency had
run into so many difficulties during the Vietnam War. He called it the
“chicken-and-egg problem” in congressional testimony related to the
Mansfield Amendment [which barred the
Defense Department from conducting “any research project or study unless
the project or study had a direct relationship to [a] specific military
function]. When asked by a committee member if it was appropriate to
describe the Advanced Research Projects Agency as a “premilitary
research organization within the Defense Department,” Rechtin said that
if the word “military” were replaced by the word “requirement,” then
that assessment would be correct. Unlike the regular military services,
Rechtin said, ARPA was a “pre-requirement” organization and that it
conducted research in advance of specific needs. “By this I mean that
the military services, in order to do their work, must have a very
formal requirement based on specific needs.” Rechtin said, “and usually
upon technologies that are understood.” ARPA existed to make sure the
military establishment was not ever again caught off guard by a
Sputnik-like technological surprise. The enemy was always eyeing the
future, he said, pursuing advanced technology in order to take more
ground. And ARPA was set up to provide the Defense Department with its
pre-requirement needs.
“There is a kind of
chicken-and-egg problem in other words, in requirements and technology,”
Rechtin explained. “The difficulty is that it is hard to write formal
requirements if you do not have technology with which to solve them, but
you cannot do the technology unless you have the requirements.” The
agency’s dilemma, said Rechtin, was this: if you can’t do research
before a need arises, by the time the need is there, it’s clear that the
research should have already been done.
(pp. 335-336)
1 comment:
That was very keen, thanks.
Tim
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