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This series of essays written for trustees and administrative
leaders of universities and colleges draws on the authorsâ
extensive consulting experience, research into the dynamics of
boards, and service as trustees, to focus on practical insights
that will help readers improve governance. The authors have
contributed a series of essays on governing well to Inside Higher
Education, which formed the inspiration for this volume. The
primary aim of the book is to provide insight that boards can use
to enhance their governing practices. Our take is not a âhow to
doâ book but rather one on âhow to think.â Our basic premise
is that too many boards are underperforming because they adopt or
continue ineffective practices. However, thinking in more
intentional if not new ways about not only what they do as boards,
but how they go about their efforts, will help boards add value to
the institutions and state systems they govern. We use thought
provoking-titles and a conversational tone to engage the readers,
get them to reflect on their work, and broaden their horizons.
The Army team at the Center for Technology and National Security
Policy has been doing technology studies for the Deputy Assistant
Secretary of the Army for Research and Technology since 2003. In
2007 we published Enhancing Army S&T: Lessons Learned From
Project Hindsight Revisited, which we refer to here as Vo l. I.
That publication was a summary of critical technology contributions
to the development of four successful Army warfighting systems.
Since then, we have completed a number of studies of important
aspects of the Army science and technology (S&T) program with
an emphasis on the Army laboratories. In the present paper, Vol.
II, we integrate the findings of these studies and make
recommendations after each chapter, as well as in a separate final
chapter. Chapter I of this volume is an introduction, and Chapter
II offers an updated view of the work discussed in Vol. I with an
emphasis on the relative roles played by the Army laboratories and
the contractors that manufactured the systems. The close
collaboration between the two groups was judged by us to be the key
to the successful outcomes. Both the Army laboratories and the
technical personnel at the contractors were essential-without
either group the work would have cost more, taken more time, and
might well have failed. We believe the collaboration was the result
of the efforts of the mid-level managers who pressed technologists
to work together. In Chapter III, we discuss the impact of the lack
of publicity given to the Army laboratories' work. This lack of
publicity has caused some observers to conclude that the
laboratories are not significant contributors to the warfighters.
This belief in turn has produced recommendations from outside the
military to close the laboratories and assign the research to the
private sector. We do not agree with the criticism or the
recommendation. We discuss two aspects of addressing this problem:
the need to maintain high-quality work and the need to provide
detailed information about the contributions of the laboratories to
all parties concerned-namely, Army senior leadership, officials in
the Department of Defense (DOD), the Administration, the Congress,
and the general public. Chapter IV explores the laboratory quality
question. We begin by asserting that the most important asset of a
laboratory is its technical staff members and that, therefore,
ensuring staff quality should be a top priority of management. We
discuss a number of methods for locating and bringing new employees
onboard, including use of the Intergovernmental Personnel Act
(IPA), post-doctoral appointments, and visiting scientists and
engineers. Chapter V discusses two reports we issued on the role of
technology in stabilization and reconstruction. We surveyed the
experiences of recently returned soldiers from Iraq. More recently
we have conducted Gedanken Experiments at Fort Bennning to explore,
with experienced soldiers, various challenges facing the laboratory
programs. These experiments brought together a number of officers
and senior non-commissioned officers in combination with Army
scientists and engineers and observers from ASAALT and other Army
organizations. The participants have been enthusiastic about the
experience and are urging that more such experiments be carried
out. In Chapter VI we recommend that the Army laboratories be
managed as the important component of developing new capabilities
for warfighters that they are. The Army should emphasize reporting
relationships and the role of ASAALT in developing policy affecting
the laboratories.
The Army science and technology (S&T) program is conducted both
in-house and in external laboratories. The program consists of
basic research, applied research, and advanced development, known
by their respective budget codes of 6.1, 6.2, and 6.3. The 6.1
basic research program is conducted primarily through grants to
academia, although some research is conducted in-house. There are
also some 6.1 efforts, such as the Army's collaborative technology
alliances (CTAs), that bring together subject matter expert from
industry and academia with counterparts from the DOD laboratories.
The 6.2 applied research program also consists of in-house and
external efforts. Here, the external efforts involve m ore industry
technologists than are seen in the 6.1 program . The 6.3 program,
because of its developmental nature, is primarily executed by
industry, but is overseen by in-house technologists.
An important challenge for the Department of Defense (DOD) science
and technology (S&T) programs is to avoid technological
surprise resulting from the exponential increase in the pace of
discovery and change in S&T worldwide. The nature of the
military threat is also changing, resulting in new military
requirements, some of which can be met by technology. Proper
shaping of the S&T portfolio requires predicting and matching
these two factors well into the future. Some examples of
technologies which have radically affected the battlefield include
the Global Positioning System coupled with inexpensive hand held
receivers, the microprocessor revolution which has placed the power
of the Internet and satellite communications into the hands of
soldiers in the field, new sensing capabilities such as night
vision, the use of unmanned vehicles, and composite materials for
armor and armaments. Some of these new technologies came from
military S&T, some from commercial developments and still
others from a synthesis of the two sectors; but all were based on
advances in the underlying sciences. Clearly, leaders and planners
in military S&T must keep abreast of such developments and look
ahead as best they can.
This paper reviews the technology forecast assessments of the
Strategic Technologies for the Army of the Twenty-First Century
(STAR21) study conducted for the Army by the National Research
Council in the early 1990s. The review in this paper was requested
by the Army Chief Scientist, Dr. Tom Killion. The goal for STAR21
was "to assist the Army in improving its ability to incorporate
advanced technologies into its weapons, equipment, and doctrine."1
The objectives were to: identify the advanced technologies most
likely to be important to ground warfare in the next century,
suggest strategies for developing the full potential of these
technologies, and project implications for force structure and
strategy for the technology changes."
In this paper we review some of the landscape of research and
development on power and energy as it pertains to the needs of the
Army warfighter. We focus on the battlefield and consider questions
related to vehicles, dismounted soldiers, and forward operating
bases. The literature in the overall field of energy research is
immense; we make no attempt to review all these reports but rather
have looked at a few selected studies that focus on the military
challenges. The context of the study is twofold: the National need
to reduce the use of petroleum-based fuels and the Army's need to
reduce the logistical burden and hazards of moving said fuels on
the battlefield. The conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan have
highlighted the danger inherent in transporting supplies over
terrain that is difficult to render safe from terrorist raids and
hidden explosives. The Army seeks to reduce this dependence by
improving the fuel efficiency for uses that cannot now be entirely
supplied by alternatives. These efforts will also provide the
opportunity to save a great deal of money and reduce the number of
personnel in the logistics chain. Needless to say, there will still
be convoys carrying other supplies to forward bases. However, any
reduction in the amount of supplies convoyed will be desirable.
Understanding past military technological successes is crucial to
defense science and technology investment and management. This
study is the second in a series that examines some of the key
factors that have led to meaningful technology generation and
ultimate incorporation into the U.S. Army weapons systems we see in
the field today. The first report covered the development of the
Abrams tank.1 Analysis of the development of the Javelin and
Stinger missiles will follow. The results of all studies will be
compiled in a wrap-up report that will include a look at the
implications of the findings for today's science and technology
environment.
This paper originated with the concerns of the Deputy Assistant
Secretary of the Army for Research and Technology (DASA(R&T)),
whose duty is to assess the Army's science and technology (S&T)
program.1 The Deputy Assistant Secretary has aggressively sought
innovative ideas for measuring the impact of the Army's S&T on
the future fighting force. Recently, the National Defense
University's Center for Technology and National Security Policy
(CTNSP) conducted a full review of the past contributions of Army
laboratories to today's military capabilities.2 Aware of that
review, the Deputy Assistant Secretary asked CTNSP to develop
approaches for measuring the benefits of today's S&T
investments on the future military.
The assumption underlying the value of peer re view is that the
quality of work is substantiated or improved through critiques by
individuals who are independent, objective, and have specialized
knowledge in the subject matter. One of the authors (Dr. Lyons) has
had firsthand experience with such reviews. Some time ago, while in
the private sector, he was asked to serve on a National Research
Council (NRC) ad hoc committee of external, independent experts to
review the fire research program at the National Bureau of
Standards (N BS). The committee found the program s to be
fragmented and deficient in basic research, and made a number of
recommendations on how to improve them. (For more on how such a
committee operates, see the discussion of the National Institute of
Standards and Technology in chapter 3.) The result was the creation
of a newly focused organization with a strengthened scientific
knowledge base. These reforms helped NBS become a world leader in
the field of fire research.
Recent studies at the National Defense University (NDU) have
documented the important science and technology (S&T)
contributions of the military service laboratories.1 These studies
showed that in-house Department of Defense (DOD) laboratories, in
cooperation with the private sector and academia, developed
critical technologies for weapon systems that strongly impacted the
outcomes of World War II and the Cold War. Involvement of the
in-house laboratories continues today, undiminished, as our Nation
battles the threat of international terrorism.
In a Defense and Technology Paper (DTP) entitled "A Methodology for
Assessing the Military Benefits of Science and Technology
Investments,"1 the National Defense University (NDU) Center for
Technology and National Security Policy (CTNSP) presented a variety
of approaches for deriving the return on investment - in terms of
warfighting capabilities - for Army science and technology
(S&T) efforts. As a follow-up to the methodology study that
generated the DTP, the CTNSP wished to demonstrate parts of the
methodology in the evaluation of an actual Army S&T effort. The
Army Research Laboratory's (ARL's) Micro-Autonomous Systems and
Technology (MAST) Collaborative Technology Alliance (CTA)2 program
was chosen to demonstrate the utility of the methodology because it
offers significant future capabilities for our Army, provides a set
of very robust present-day technical challenges, and offers a
significant assessment challenge since it is focused on basic
research.
Since World War II, predictions of science and technology for
military applications have occurred periodically. A study chartered
by the Army Air Force predicted in 1947 a broad range of
developments in aeronautics and air power and has been a model for
such forecasts ever since. Projections in science and technology
have been issued for many years by the National Research Council
(NRC) of the National Academies, which publishes decadal studies
for specific disciplines. Such studies for astronomy and
astrophysics, for example, go back to at least 1964. An important
task of DOD science and technology (S&T) programs is to avoid
technological surprise resulting from the exponential increase in
the pace of discovery and change in S&T worldwide. The nature
of the military threat is also changing, with the result being new
military requirements, some of which can be met by technology.
Shaping the S&T portfolio requires predicting and matching
these two factors well into the future. Some examples of
technologies that have radically affected the battlefield include
the Global Positioning System coupled with inexpensive, handheld
receivers; the microprocessor revolution, which has placed the
power of the Internet and satellite communications in the hands of
soldiers in the field; new sensing capabilities such as night
vision; and composite materials for armor and armaments. Some of
these technologies came from military S&T, some from commercial
developments, and still others from a synthesis of the two sectors,
but all were based on advances in the underlying sciences. Clearly,
leaders and planners in military S&T must keep abreast of such
developments and look ahead as best they can. In the Department of
Defense (DOD), the last series of forecast studies was done in the
1990s. In 2008, National Defense University's Center for Technology
and National Security Policy (CTNSP) assessed the Army's STAR 21
(Strategic Technologies for the Army of the Twenty-First Century)
study,3 in which the basic and applied sciences were assessed and
forecast as separate and discrete disciplines. Future capabilities
were discussed in a separate set of STAR 21 volumes on systems. In
general, the technologies of individual systems were not discussed
with reference to the underlying sciences. This separation of
future capabilities from the underlying S&T forecasts was true
for the studies of all three services.
In the area of stabilization and reconstruction (S&R)
operations, this study examines capability gaps and science and
technology (S&T) needs and concludes that some areas require
renewed emphasis, to include: scaling Blue Force Tracking down to
the individual soldier, developing an on-the-ground biometric
identification device, and fielding hover and stare unmanned aerial
vehicle (UAV) assets for use at the platoon level.
This paper seeks to identify the Critical Technology Events (CTEs)
in the development of the Stinger and the Javelin missiles. It is
the third paper in a series that, driven by the importance of
understanding past military technological successes to today's
defense science and technology (S&T) investment and management,
examines some of the key factors that have led to meaningful
technology generation and ultimate incorporation into current U.S.
Army weapons systems. The first paper in the series focused on the
Abrams tank.1 The second focused on the Apache helicopter.2 With
studies of a complex ground system and a complex air system
complete, this paper turns to two technologically advanced infantry
weapons, the Stinger and the Javelin. These armaments have
different roles in the arsenal, but they are both man-portable,
fire-and-forget missiles whose development posed some unique
challenges. A fourth and final paper in the series will summarize
findings of this report, and the reports on the Abrams and the
Apache, and offer recommendations for managing the Army's S&T
portfolio.
Presents the experiences of campuses without tenure and campuses
where faculty may choose tenure or contracts. Issues covered
include academic freedom, faculty recruitment, selectivity,
turnover, and reward structures. Answers the question, "What
lessons can be learned from campuses with contract systems?"
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