RESEARCHERS SHACK UP IN REALIGNMENT

Obviously, the big news today is the Pentagon’s announce­ment of which mil­i­tary bases they’d like to pare back, and which ones they want to close down alto­gether (a com­plete list is here).

Already, Senators are howl­ing about the bases that might be shut­tered in their home states. But lost in the shout­ing are some seemingly-​​small changes that have the poten­tial to make an out­sized impact on the future of the American mil­i­tary.
Several of the Pentagon’s most impor­tant cen­ters of sci­ence and tech­nol­ogy devel­op­ment — includ­ing the mad sci­en­tists at Darpa, the Office of Naval Research, the Army Research Office, and the Air Force Office of Scientific Research — are all going to leave their old offices behind, and become room­mates at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland.
The moves will save a bit of money — $573 mil­lion over 20 years, the Defense Department fig­ures. And they’ll prob­a­bly help with secu­rity, by tak­ing these groups out of leased office build­ings, and onto a mil­i­tary base.
More impor­tantly, being neigh­bors might help these far-​​thinking research groups get rid of some over­lap as they hand out grants to sci­en­tists and engi­neers. Recently, both Darpa and the Office of Naval Research launched under­sea spy­cam efforts that sound awfully sim­i­lar; the Army Research Office and Darpa are both fund­ing a Duke professor’s stud­ies into “auto­mated self-​​configuring sur­veil­lance net­works.“
Maybe some of that dupli­ca­tion can be squeezed out, under the new plan. Darpa’s been crit­i­cized, recently, for stray­ing from its man­date to fund way-​​out, “blue sky” research. Having agen­cies nearby that are fund­ing the here-​​and-​​now might help Darpa return to its mis­sion.
The Defense Department is also push­ing to move all research into ground robots to Detroit. That’s where the auto indus­try is cen­tered, of course. And the Defense Department wants to bet­ter “lever­age the worlds intel­lec­tual cap­i­tal for automotive/​ground vehi­cle research.“
Ft. Monmouth, NJ — where the Army cur­rently does a lot of its com­mu­ni­ca­tions, sen­sors, and anti-​​IED research — is slated to be shut down. Much of that work will go to Maryland’s Aberdeen Proving Ground. In addi­tion, the Pentagon wants to set up major research and devel­op­ment cen­ters for things like air­planes, heli­copters, air arma­ments, navy sen­sors, and guns and ammu­ni­tion.
Obviously, all this is extremely pre­lim­i­nary. There will be major fights — within the ser­vices, among the military’s branches, and between Congress and the Pentagon over nearly all of these changes. Stay tuned.

May 13th, 2005 | Money Money Money | Comments Off Both comments and pings are currently closed.