Organizational Management of Army Research

The Army has employed several basic organizational management constructs to conduct its research and development (R & D). They are the independent operation of the laboratories under the Technical Services, the Army Materiel Command (AMC) corporate labs complemented with the commodity-oriented labs, the parallel R & D and Readiness commands under the Materiel Development and Readiness Command, the Laboratory Command (LABCOM) construct, and the Army Research Laboratory (ARL) construct. As such, organizational management of Army combat materiel research in areas such as physics, chemistry, and electronics has progressed from a loosely structured decentralized construct to today's consolidated and centralized control mechanism. During the first 162 years, from 1800 to 1962, while the labs operated independently under no formal central structure, major world events included the conduct and end of the World Wars and the Korean War. In 1915, the U.S. government was very concerned about how its military might perform in the future should the nation be drawn into another war. Thomas Edison publicly opined that scientific research aimed at military applications and the technological superiority such efforts would bring was the answer to the government's concern. His remarks were an influential event in military research. In 1916, Congress established the Naval Research Laboratory and charged it with conducting research aimed at military applications in order to establish technological superiority for the U.S. military. Although the Army did not seek an analogous research center, it did support several centers of innovative research in key areas of Army interest.