From: bwallet@apssgi.nswc.navy.mil (Brad Wallet)
Newsgroups: sci.space
Subject: Re: Military funding
Date: 30 Sep 92 12:30:28 GMT
Article-I.D.: relay.1992Sep30.123028.14788
Distribution: sci
Organization: Naval Surface Warfare Center

In article <BvD5x2.7tL.1@cs.cmu.edu>, 18084TM@msu.edu (Tom) writes:
|> >As I stated in my previous post.  Until the programs are set up to
|> >orderly divert the money to another R and D effort, it should stay in the
|> >military budget where at least it is going some good.
|> 
|> This is plain silly!  The only good the (extraneous) military budget does
|> is to pay people to work.  We might as well pay them to bury rocks one
|> day, and dig them up the next.
|>
|> Cut the general tax burden by the amount cut, and the companies that
|> would love to hire technically educated people will have the means
|> to hire them.  They don't right now, because the tax burden is too high.
|> 
|> Also, once the people in the military are making wealth (rather than
|> things like weapons, which don't get used in peacetime, and are there-
|> for, not wealth) the general prosperity of the country will improve.
|> 
|> This extra wealth could easily cover the R&D the military does,
|> especially if you buy the argument that military R&D is not as
|> valuable as, say, car R&D or VCR R&D.

What would a VCR look like if it was built using vacuum tubes?  Why was
the IC developed?  To make computers fit into ICBM's and SLBM's.  How
much did the first, very simple IC's cost?  Over $1000 dollars a piece.
That was a lot of money back then.  Only the defense of our nation could
justify such outlays.  But, imagine where we would be if the IC had been
abandoned because of cost.  Would it have been developed if the demands
for national security hadn't required it?  Someone out there will surely
say yes, but I am sure that the true answer is probably no.

Fact is that the technical challenges faced as a part of military R&D are
the most difficult taken on in today's society.  Top dollar is payed to
do RDT&E of these systems because the results of failure can be the 
destruction of our society.  Insane spending turns out to be sound economic
policy.

Truth is the R&D you talk of rarely pushes the extremes of technology
and therefore does an order of magnitude less to futher mankind.
Someone last week stated that the computer on every desktop was the major
computer innovation of the last decade.  This was merely applying and
improving technology which was develop for military (and to some degree
space) usage.  Biomolecular computing, now that is innovation.  Will it
be immediately available to the public?  Does the public have an immediately
need it?  No, but one day society will.  Will it be available?  Only if
the military is not decimated by politicians.

Can the R&D be done outside of the military?  I don't think so.  The military
has the advantage of having to solve problems.  We do research, but we have
a focus.  Program offices want to know what your research is going to do
to benefit their program.  Believe it or not, those of us doing military
R&D are very proud of our systems.  We want to make them better.  We are
not simply burying rocks and dig them up.  We are solving problems and
developing technology which will one day be commonplace is our society.

Research done for research-sake is good.  It is very good.  I support it.
I think we don't do enough.  But, military research, because of the drive
to solve practical, real-world problems, is going to be less risky and 
most likely to lead to the everyday man's life being bettered.  Perhaps,
it is fair to say military research feeds off of the discoveries of purer
research.  So, we could hypothesize a pure to military/space to business to
household model of the passing of technology.

Could the military research and develop systems but not field them?  I used
to favor this method.  You get the R&D benefits of the military.  You decide
that the current ability of the military can meet the current threat.  You
work to ensure that when a new threat arises, we will be ready.  But, I see
three problems with this.  Fielding systems leads to the price dropping to
the point where businesses can afford to invest (see the IC), true feedback
and therefore tasking only really comes from the use of the system in the
field, and the current capabilities are not able to meet the current threat.

-------------------------------------------------
Brad Wallet                 Mathematician
bwallet@see.nswc.navy.mil   Naval Surface Warfare Center
(703)663-4950               (AVN)249-4950
DSMAC - "Tomahawk's Eyes"
"I can neither confirm nor deny that these opinions
are entirely my own and may or may not reflect those
of the US Navy."