V- 
A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  THE  FOREIGN  TECHNOLOGY  DIVISION  (AFSC) 
Technical  Data  Laboratory 
AFSC's  Foreign  Technology  Division  traces  its  lineage  directly  from 
the  establishment  of  the  Technical  Data  Laboratory  in  December  1942,  at 
Wright  Field,  Dayton,  Ohio,  as  part  of  the  Army  Materiel  Command. 
Although  certain  intelligence  functions  within  the  Materiel  Command  and 
its  predecessors  date  back  to  1917  with  the  establishment  of  McCook 
Field,  another  Dayton  airfield,  the  work  of  scientific  and  technical 
intelligence  in  the  Air  Force  began  much  later. 
During  World  War  II,  the  Laboratory's  operations  included  the  evalu- 
ation of  foreign  aircraft  and  related  equipment.  As  the  shipments  of 
captured  equipment  increased,  the  intelligence  data  soon  occupied  six 
buildings,  a  large  outdoor  lot  on  Wright  Field's  hilltop  area  and  part 
of  a  flight  line  hangar. 
T-2  Intelligence 
With  the  merging  of  the  Materiel  and  Air  Service  Commands  on  31 
August  1944,  The  Army  Air  Forces  Air  Technical  Service  Command  was  formed. 
When  the  "Army  Air  Forces"  prefix  was  dropped  on  1  July  1945,  T-2 
Intelligence  replaced  the  Technical  Data  Laboratory  under  the  T-System 
organizational  concept.  This  organization  played  a  major  role  in  the 
continued  exploitation  of  captured  materiel,  documents  and  manpower. 
During  the  summer  of  1945,  General  Henry  H.  Arnold  directed  that  the 
millions  of  captured  German  aeronautical  documents  be  processed  and 
indexed.  The  task  began  in  London,  but  was  transferred  to  T-2  Intelli- 
gence, Wright  Field,  in  December.  When  completed  in  November  1947, 
this  operation  became  one  of  the  outstanding  accomplishments  in  documen- 
tation history;  the  evaluation,  classification,  cataloging,  indexing  and 
microfilming  of  Nazi  Germany's  aeronautical  R&D  literature  from  1933 
to  1945. 
Two  organizational  changes  also  occurred  during  this  period.  One 
change  was  in  name  only  when  the  Air  Technical  Service  Command  became 
the  Air  Materiel  Command  in  March  1946.  However,  the  second  change  in 
August  1947,  was  a  major  reorganization.  At  that  time,  the  Air  Materiel 
Command  headquarters  replaced  the  T-System  with  a  directorate/department 
type  of  organization.  T-2  Intelligence  then  became  the  Technical  Intel- 
ligence Department. 
Technical  Intelligence  Department 
With  the  post-war  rise  of  world  communism,  the  Technical  Intelligence 
Department  intensified  its  efforts  to  produce  technical  intelligence
reports  and  estimates  on  foreign  air  weapons.  At  this  stage,  however, 
background  information  on  foreign  scientific  and  technical  progress  was 
very  inadequate  in  both  quality  and  quantity,  and  the  Air  Force  had  no 
adequate  data  base  to  confirm  or  deny  the  information  that  it  received. 
Therefore,  a  determined  effort  to  exploit  foreign  published  literature 
during  the  late  1940's  was  the  beginning  of  the  Technical  Intelligence 
Department's  technical  data  base.   It  was  also  during  this  period  that  a 
photo  analysis  capability  began  to  develop. 
By  1950,  the  department  was  able  to  predict,  from  all  available 
information,  the  performance  limitations  of  the  MiG-15,  the  capabilities 
of  its  engine  and  various  manufacturing  techniques.  These  proved  of 
inestimable  value  during  the  Korean  conflict  when  United  States  fighter 
aircraft  more  than  held  their  own  against  the  Russian-built  MiG  fighters, 
because  valid  performance  characteristics  estimates  had  already  been 
established  on  these  weapons. 
Air  Technical  Intelligence  Center 
Another  reorganization  in  May  1951,  changed  the  name  of  the  Tech- 
nical Intelligence  Department  to  the  Air  Technical  Intelligence  Center, 
and  assigned  the  new  organization  to  the  Directorate  of  Intelligence, 
Headquarters  USAF,  as  the  1125th  Field  Activities  Group.  With  this  move 
ATIC  became  a  fully  recognized  member  of  the  intelligence  community,  and 
was  able  to  integrate  its  production  schedules  more  efficiently  with  the 
overall  United  States  intelligence  effort. 
By  the  mid-1950' s,  ATIC's  emphasis  on  documentation  had  produced  an 
impressive  file  of  retrievable  scientific  and  technical  information, 
including  the  developing  Soviet  missile  program.  An  important  contribu- 
tion to  the  center's  data  bank  occurred  in  1953  when  a  North  Korean 
defector  flew  a  MiG-15  to  South  Korea  and  collected  a  $100,000  reward. 
In  fact,  a  great  deal  of  foreign  materiel  was  acquired  between  1950 
and  1954,  and  this  wealth  of  raw  intelligence  required  modern  methods 
and  techniques  in  reducing  it  to  usable  data.  In  order  to  accomplish 
this  task,  ATIC  became  a  pioneer  in  the  use  of  computers  in  intelligence 
analysis.  Also  during  the  mid-1 950' s,  the  center  established  radar 
intelligence,  electronic  intelligence  and  machine  translation  capabilities. 
Meanwhile,  worldwide  technology  also  advanced,  and  due  to  the  prog- 
ress of  foreign  aerospace  programs,  the  Air  Technical  Intelligence  Center 
was  renamed  the  Aerospace  Technical  Intelligence  Center  on  21  September  1959 
Foreign  Technology  Division 
The  following  year  a  major  Air  Force  realignment  transferred  the  Air 
Research  and  Development  Command  into  the  Air  Force  Systems  Command  in 
April  196$,  and  the  Aerospace  Technical  Intelligence  Center  was  added  to 
AFSC  on  1  July  1961.  At  that  time,  the  name  of  the  center  was  changed  to 
the  Foreign  Technology  Division  to  correspond  to  AFSC's  division  structure.
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As  a  part  of  AFSC,  FTD  functioned  in  a  dual  role.  The  division  retained 
its  responsibility  for  producing  aerospace  scientific  and  technical  intel- 
ligence for  the  Air  Force  and  other  national  agencies,  while  supporting 
Air  Force  research  and  development. 
As  the  acquisition  of  foreign  materiel  and  data  from  all  sources 
continued  to  expand,  so  did  FTD's  scientific  and  technical  capabilities. 
In  1961,  the  division's  photo  analysis  process  became  automated,  utilizing 
a  first  generation  on-line  system  with  a  second  generation  capability 
added  in  1967.  Since  that  date,  the  system  has  been  upgraded  even  further. 
Also  upgraded  from  the  early  to  mid-1 960' s  to  their  present  capabilities 
were  the  radar  intelligence  and  computer  systems. 
In  1963,  FTD  added  a  telemetry  capability  to  its  intelligence 
arsenal  which  provided  invaluable  information  on  foreign  aerodynamic, 
ballistic  missile  and  space  vehicle  systems.  That  same  year,  the  divi- 
sion upgraded  its  machine  translation  system  with  the  addition  of  the 
Mark  II  Russian  Language  Processor  which  provided  a  Russian-to-English 
computer  translation  print-out.  But  the  real  breakthrough  came  in  July 
1970,  when  the  FTD  machine  Translation  system  became  operational. 
Whereas  the  Mark  I  and  Mark  II  machines  were  literal  translations  and 
reflected  the  word  order  of  the  Russian  sentence  without  the  articles 
and  prepositions  required  in  English,  this  system  made  a  comprehensive 
analysis  of  the  Russian  sentence  and  had  a  larger  dictionary  capability. 
It  also  translated  from  100,000  to  300,000  words  per  hour  compared  to 
50,000  to  100,000  words  per  day  for  older  systems. 
Also  in  1963,  FTD's  data  base  became  automated.  The  Central  Infor- 
mation Reference  and  Control  (CIRC)  system  represented  a  computerized 
library  of  scientific  and  technical  information  from  many  sources  and 
available  for  instant  recall.  CIRC  I  satisfied  FTD  and  command  S&T 
intelligence  requirements  until  1969,  when  it  then  began  serving  the 
entire  Department  of  Defense.  Further  updating  of  the  system  was  com- 
pleted in  1974  with  the  conversion  to  CIRC  II,  a  much  expanded  and  more 
versatile  all -source  data  base. 
Other  capabilities  acquired  during  the  1970's  included  Human  Intel- 
ligence Targeting  in  1970,  a  modernization  program  in  1972,  which  was 
upgraded  from  the  informal  project  status  it  had  had  since  1967,  and 
Laser  Signal  Analysis  in  1973.