Author: Thomas L. McNaugher Publisher: ISBN: Category : Combined operations (Military science). Languages : en Pages : 118
Book Description
Examines the U.S.-West German effort to collaborate in the development of main battle tanks. The effort begain in 1963 with the MBT-70 program, an ambitious cooperative attempt to develop a single tank. Because the two armies could not reconcile their differing concepts of tanks and tank warfare, this effort produced a complex and expensive tank and increasing duplicative development work in each nation. In 1969 the program was abandoned and each nation set about developing its own tank. Collaboration was suggested again in 1973, this time as an effort either to sell West Germany's Leopard II to the U.S. Army or to trade components across ongoing national development programs. The latter effort produced an agreement to mount the German 102mm gun on later versions of the U.S. XM-1 tank, but this amount of collaboration succeeded only after substantial political debate in the Congress. The note discusses major impediments to collaboration in these cases, and suggests strategies for future collaboration on armored vehicles. (Author).
Author: Publisher: DIANE Publishing ISBN: 1428981101 Category : Languages : en Pages : 460
Book Description
This publication presents the results of an intensive 11-month program for three military research fellows. The Under Secretary of Defense (Acquisition) (USD (A)) chartered the Defense Systems Management College (DSMC) Military Research Fellowship Program in 1987. The program brings together selected officers from the Army, Navy, and Air Force for two primary purposes: first to provide advanced professional and military education for the participating officers; and second, to conduct research that will benefit the Department of Defense (DoD) acquisition community. This report focuses on transatlantic cooperative programs. Cooperation with Europe was chosen because of the important political, military, economic, and historical transatlantic ties, but most important, because America's relationship with Europe is rapidly evolving. There is substantial concern about a "Fortress America - Fortress Europe" syndrome. Political leaders and the public both here and in Europe are attempting to come to terms with the meaning of the NATO alliance in the post-Cold War era. European assertiveness and unity are clashing with dated perceptions about Europe held by Americans. Our intended audience is both the U.S. defense acquisition workforce and policy makers. For the former, we hoped to produce a useful guide that will make them more effective as members of a cooperative team. For the latter, we attempted to provide an updated comprehensive view of the salient features of transatlantic armaments cooperation and some ways in which the context is changing.
Author: Alan G. Draper Publisher: Springer ISBN: 1349097330 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 143
Book Description
When Britain becomes part of a Western European free industrial market in 1992, British experience during the last three decades with collaboration in defence equipment projects will be of great importance to Britain and her NATO partners. This work examines and evaluates this collaboration.
Author: Ron Matthews Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 1134574584 Category : Business & Economics Languages : en Pages : 200
Book Description
First published in 1992. The changing strategic environment of the 1990s has been characterised by events such as the Middle-East conflagration and super-power disarmament which represent the two opposing ends of the present security spectrum. The framing of appropriate defence policies now depends on increased NATO industrial defence restructuring and cooperation, especially within Europe. This book identifies, explains and analyses the key issues involved in Europe's defence-industrial reorganisation progress. It tackles head-on controversial issues such as: divergences between practice and policy in NATO US-European positions; the high costs of collaborative ventures; competition vs concentration and the complexities of adopting an European defence consensus within NATO. At a time when the diminution of NATO's defence-industrial base goes hand-in-hand with product reorientation and specialization, this book provides concise, critical and contemporary assessment of European and NA TO collaborative issues.
Author: Richard Chait Publisher: CreateSpace ISBN: 9781478195160 Category : Technology & Engineering Languages : en Pages : 58
Book Description
The urge to remain militarily strong has long been a driver of technological advancement. This interplay between strength and technology, so evident in America's global military reach, has for decades prompted U.S. defense planners to engage in technology forecasting. Analysis of emerging technologies was, and is, vital to making wise defense investments. Among the preeminent examples of such analysis are the studies undertaken by Theodore von Karman just after the Second World War. The von Karman reports represent an exhaustive review of science and technology related to the military services. His analysis projected the importance of unmanned aircraft, advanced jet propulsion, allweather sensors, and target seeking missiles. While it is important to assess the needs and challenges of the future, understanding past military technological successes can be equally important to defense science and technology (S&T) investment and management. To complement the above efforts and the many other technology forecasts too numerous to mention, this study is the first in a series that will examine some of the key factors that have led to meaningful technology generation and ultimate incorporation into the U.S. weapons systems we see in the field today. Included here are such factors as where the technical work was performed, funding source(s) for the effort, collaboration between government and non-government laboratories, and management style. This series of studies will focus only on Army weapons systems, beginning with the mainstay of the Army's armor force, the Abrams tank. Analysis of other Army systems, such as the Apache helicopter and the Javelin and Stinger missiles, will follow. The results of all studies will be compiled in a wrap-up report that will focus on the implications of the findings for today's S&T environment. We begin the paper by briefly reviewing a project that served as a source of inspiration for this study: Project Hindsight, a 1969 Defense Department (DOD) report. Hindsight was an in-depth study sponsored by the Director of Defense Research and Engineering (DDR&E) that provided some insights into the development of approximately 20 weapons systems across the DOD spectrum. Following the review of Hindsight, we present a short history of U.S. battle tanks as well as a summary of events leading up to the Army decision to replace the M60 Patton tank with the Abrams tank. This is followed by a description of the methodology used to gather key data on the development of the Abrams. The information is broken out by topic area (armament related subjects; armor and other survivability related subjects; engine and drive system; vetronics, C4ISR and fire control) and presented in terms of critical technology events (CTEs). CTEs are ideas, concepts, models, and analyses, including key technical and managerial decisions that have had a major impact on the development of a specific weapons system. CTEs can occur at any point in the system's life cycle, from basic research, to advanced development, to testing and evaluation, to product improvements. The final portion of the paper presents the concluding remarks and findings based on the CTEs that characterize the Abrams tank's development. The CTEs are noted in the left margin throughout the report. They are summarized in Appendix B. CTEs are numbered only for ease of reference; there is no hierarchical or chronological significance to their order. While the link between high-tech weapons systems and battlefield success is often readily apparent, the geneses of and processes associated with CTEs often are not. CTEs depend on several important factors, including effective management, adequate funding, establishment of clear priorities, fostering of proper technical competencies, and leveraging of the resources of the private sector and academia.
Author: Thomas L. McNaugher Publisher: Brookings Institution Press ISBN: 9780815718703 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 268
Book Description
Americans spend more than $100 billion a year to buy weapons, but no one likes the process that brings these weapons into existence. The problem, McNaugher shows, is that the technical needs of engineers and military planners clash sharply with the political demands of Congress. McNaugher examines weapons procurement since World War II and shows how repeated efforts to improve weapons acquisition have instead increased the harmful intrusion of political pressures into that technical development and procurement process. Today's weapons are more complicated than their predecessors. So are the nation's military forces. The design of new systems and their integration into the force structure demand more care, time, and flexibility. Yet time and flexibility are precisely what political pressures remove from the acquisitions process. In a series of case studies and conceptual discussions, McNaugher tackles concerns at the heart of the debate about acquisition—the slow and heavily bureaucratic approach to development, the preference for ultimate weapons over well-organized and trained forces, and the counterproductive incentives facing the nation's defense firms. He calls for changes that run against the current fashion—less centralization or procurement, less haste in developing new weapons, and greater use of competition as a means of removing the development process from political oversight. Above all, McNaugher shows how the United States tries to buy research and development on the cheap, and how costly this has been. The nation can improve its acquisition process, he concludes, only when it recognizes the need to pay for the full exploration of new technology.
Author: Thomas L. McNaugher
Author: Thomas L. McNaugher
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Author: Alan G. Draper
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Author: Ron Matthews
Author: Elliott Vanveltner Converse
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Author: Richard Chait
Author: Thomas L. McNaugher