page_title: Air Force Systems Command
section_title: Cold War
hierarchical_section_title: Air Force Systems Command / History / Cold War
caption_attribution_description: Boeing NB-52A (s/n 52-003) permanent test variant, carrying North American Aviation's legendary X-15, and mission markings. Horizontal X-15 silhouettes indicating glide flights, near-vertical ones recording powered ones.
context_page_description: The Air Force Systems Command is an inactive United States Air Force Major Command. It was established in April 1951, being split off from Air Materiel Command. The mission of AFSC was Research and Development for new weapons systems.
context_section_description: Research and Development Command was redesignated the Air Research and Development Command (ARDC) on 16 September 1950, and the Arnold Engineering Development Center was dedicated by President Harry S. Truman on 25 June 1951.
  During the 1950s, the new command began to make its mark. ARDC developed many ambitious aircraft and missile prototypes. Among the successes of this period were the North American F-86 Sabre swept wing fighter, the Boeing B-52 Stratofortress intercontinental bomber, the Boeing KC-135 Stratotanker jet-powered refueling tanker aircraft, the Lockheed C-130 Hercules turboprop transport and the Lockheed U-2 very high-altitude strategic reconnaissance aircraft.  In addition, ARDC played a major contribution in the development of Intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), which became a priority after the world learned that the Soviet Union had detonated a thermonuclear (hydrogen) bomb on 23 August 1953. A crash program was employed which developed America's first ICBM (the SM-65D Atlas), that became operational in 1959. In terms of importance, resources, and success, the ICBM program was rivaled only by the famed Manhattan Project of World War II.
  AIMACO, the "Supply Control Command compiler" for Air Materiel Command, began circa 1959 with the definition of a high level programming language influenced by the UNIVAC Flow-Matic and COMTRAN programming languages.  The draft AIMACO language definition was developed by an AMC-chaired committee of industry representatives from IBM, United States Steel, and AMC Programming Services. AIMACO had two compilers specified/designed (never produced), and AMC originally intended all programming for AMC systems would be in AIMACO and compiled on a UNIVAC at the AMC headquarters at Wright-Patterson AFB for operation on UNIVAC or IBM computers. An alternative compiler was designed by AMC Programming Services to compile systems on IBM computers for operation on IBM computers.  AIMACO, along with FLOW-MATIC and COMTRAN, influenced development of the COBOL programming language.
  The Atlas program led to the belief that the entire responsibility for deploying new weapons systems – from research, development and testing through procurement and production – should be vested in one command, rather than split between Air Materiel Command (AMC) and ARDC.  It was the Soviet Union's launch of Sputnik 1 in October 1957 that greatly influenced HQ USAF and ARDC thinking. The Stever Report, completed in June 1958, which proposed a new Air Force command for weapons acquisition. With this report and a realization of DoD's desire to assign the military space mission to the Air Force, the Air Force won the approval of Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara in 1961 for a new major command. In the reorganization and re-designation actions of 1961, Air Materiel Command was re-designated Air Force Logistics Command (AFLC) while Air Research and Development Command, gaining responsibility for weapon system acquisition, was re-designated Air Force Systems Command (AFSC) under General Bernard Schriever.
  Under the Kennedy Administration, Secretary McNamara instituted powerful centralization tools in acquisition such as the Total Package Procurement concept (TPP). This system shifted many major program management functions to the Pentagon. Stressing computer modeling, concurrency, and paper competitions among the contractors, TPP sharply curtailed the flexibility of Systems Command program managers. Cost overruns and serious technical difficulties in such TPP programs as the Lockheed C-5 Galaxy and General Dynamics F-111 Aardvark lead to drastic changes in DoD acquisition practices. In 1970, Deputy Secretary of Defense David Packard revised many McNamara policies. He decentralized the acquisition system and reemphasized prototyping in weapons development.
caption: Boeing B-52B Stratofortress carrying the North American X-15 Rocket Plane taking off from Edwards AFB, California
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