Army Labs Cut Back Basic Research

Editor's note: The U.S. armed services operate a network of in-house laboratories to pursue basic research that fits the mission of each service. In the months to come The Scientist will offer a glimpse of these little-known but well-respected facilities and the challenges they face. The first two articles in the series deal with the Army's labs. ADELPHI, MD.—"As Bell Labs is to AT&T, the laboratory command is to the Army Materiel Command," says Ira Marcus, associate director for engineering and technical support of Harry Diamond Laboratories in this suburb of 'Washington, D.C. One of the Army's largest and most highly regarded laboratories, Harry Diamond is part of what Army officials like to call the service's "corporate technology center." But all is not well between the labs and the Army's top leadership. This spring, during a monthly teleconference that linked the directors of the service's seven laboratories, the conversation turned to a familiar topic: how to persuade top Army officials to back their own research priorities with dollars. The Army's R&D budget foresees an increasing scarcity of money for basic research. The Army proposes to spend just under $200 million next year on its 6.1 budget category, which funds the most basic research. That figure compares with $250 million in 1986 and $216 mlllion in the current year. Funds for its 6.2 budget category, called advanced technology development, are also expected to decline slightly, from $635 million this year to $625 mllion in fiscal 1988. Even more distressing to lab officials are the Army's five-year projections, which show a steady decline in basic research funds. The Navy and Air Force, by contrast, have requested increases of 7 percent and 2 percent, respectively, for 6.1 research in 1988, along with hefty increases in funding for advanced technology. Although Pentagon officials note that the Army traditionally has devoted a larger share of its overall R&D budget to basic research, that dominance is ending. In 1988 both the Army and Navy expect to allocate about 3.6 percent of their total R&D budgets to basic research, about three times the share spent by the Air Force. Most scientists in Army labs work on technical problems in the development of specific weapons. A team at Harry Diamond Labs, for example, recently developed an improved device to detonate the warhead on the Patriot anti-aircraft missile as a subcontractor to the Raytheon Corporation. Raytheon, in turn, assembles the missile for the Army. Into the Unknown Last year, however, the Army adopted an "investment strategy" that called for the labs to shift their efforts away from such engineering work on present-day weapons. Under the new strategy, the labs are to "focus on what we don't know," said Marcus, by concentrating on research at the cutting edge of key technologies. Laboratory directors had supported the shift in emphasis, arguing that their labs' resources were best suited to overcoming fundamental technical barriers that would make possible dramatically more effective weapon systems decades down the road. Scientists at the Harry Diamond Labs, for example, planned to concentrate on high-power microwaves, acoustic sensors and better signal processing systems. But the planned cutbacks in basic research funding threatens to make the Army's laboratory investment strategy a hollow, meaningless document. Scientists will be compelled to work on precisely the sort of applied engineering projects the laboratories had hoped to de-emphasize. "It's disheartening," said John Rosado, director of the Sensor and Signal Processing Division at Harry Diamond. "You want to attract top-notch people from the best universities, but when they ask about your basic research program, you have to say, well, it's being cut back." Although Rosado said there is no immediate problem, he is worried that a shortage of basic research funds could make it difficult for the Army to attract and keep top scientific talent. One program that has been eliminated allowed the director of each laboratory to fund small, speculative basic research projects at his discretion. The program, called In-House Laboratory Independent Research, or ILIR, will be sorely missed, said lab officials. "ILIR had a special aura to it," said Kiplinger Hine Jr., associate director of Harry Diamond. ILIR was not a big program. In 1987 it amounted to $16 million of the $216 million that the Army designated for its 6.1 budget category. But it sometimes provided seed money for speculative research projects that resulted in, large payoffs. Quick Off the Mark When researchers at HDL noticed several years ago that Soviet scientific publications were filled with reports on high-power microwave devices (which could be used to disrupt the electronics of hostile weapons), they used ILIR fields to explore the possibilities of surrounding slow-wave microwave tubes with a magnetic field. The device succeeded in generating microwaves of a higher power than had been thought possible, said Rosado. Within a few years, the Army and the Strategic Defense Initiative Organization were spending tens of millions of dollars annually on high-power microwave research. ILIR money has also allowed Keith Warner of HDL to create tiny electromechanical sensors by a process of three-dimensional etching on silicon chips. A tiny cantilever beam 0.1 to 0.3 inches long can be etched directly onto the chip, and linked to the chip's complex electrical circuitry. According to Warner, the devices could replace current, clockwork-type mechanisms that automatically "arm" an artillery shell after it is fired by sensing the shell's sudden acceleration and spin. "These devices promise not only to be very small, but also to take advantage of Silicon Valley technology and bring down costs," said Warner. The elimination of ILIR, however, has left the project on hold. Cutting the ILIR program would not create a serious problem if the overall level of funds designated for basic research remained high, said Pete Johnson, director of the Electronic Systems Laboratory at HDL. Funds for basic research are earmarked for use in broad areas, and each laboratory director enjoys great flexibility in allocating them to specific projects. Each year, laboratory scientists submit research proposals to their division and lab directors, who evaluate each proposal for technical merit and on how well it fits into the priorities of the laboratory. Morale Suffers But fewer proposals to do such work will be accepted as the pool of money for basic research projects dries up. For Harry Diamond Labs, where researchers specialize in the effects of nuclear weapons, radar, electronic surveillance systems and signal processing, the cuts will force a reduction of 25 percent or more in the number of scientists doing basic research next year. "It really hurts their morale," said Rosado about his staff of scientists. "They're very upset." Harry Diamond, like most of the other Army labs, is staffed almost entirely by civilians. About 60 percent of its work force of 711 are research scientists and engineers; 17 percent of its scientists hold a Ph.D. degree. Its overall budget is the largest of the seven Army labs, most of which have budgets ranging from $20 million to $60 million. The majority of its funds come from contracts with other agencies, with about one-fourth drawn from the Army's own 6.1 and 6.2 budgets. The laboratory directors have asked top Army officials to replenish the 1988 basic research fund by reprogramming money from other items within the R&D budget, said Rosado. But they admit that any additional funds are unlikely. A portion of this money may also be set aside to pay' for the speculative projects that the ILIR program once supported. One consequence of the shift from basic to applied research will be an increase in the number of scientists at the Army labs whose work will be secret. None of the basic research done at the Harry Diamond Laboratories (and funded from the 6.1 budget account) is classified, said Johnson. The closer that research is tied to a specific weapon, however, the more likely it is to be classified. Charles is a freelance writer in Washington, D.C.

Army Labs Cut Back Basic Research

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