Inside the Navy
December 15, 2003
reposted with permission

Anonymous Paper Raises Fears About Future of Naval Research Lab

Report Critiques Military Handling of Labs

By Malina Brown

A recent, widely circulated report by an anonymous author raises concerns about a Navy decision to transfer some authority of the world-renowned Naval Research Lab away from its civilian leadership, arguing the change is a dangerous precedent that could threaten the future viability of military laboratories.

NRL was founded in 1920 at the urging of inventor Thomas Edison, who explicitly advocated the lab fall under the civilian-controlled Navy secretariat to work on creating tomorrow’s warfighting capabilities. In the ensuing 80-plus years, NRL has achieved a long list of accomplishments in defense technology, having developed the first U.S. radar, the world’s first intelligence satellite, and key concepts and satellite prototypes of the Global Positioning System.

But the anonymous report argues a recent Navy move to transfer responsibility for all Navy shore installation management under one command, known as Commander, Navy Installations (CNI), puts the future of NRL in jeopardy. The report suggests the move is indicative of the power struggle between military or civilian control in the Navy.

“Thomas Edison would be spinning in his grave if he knew the present course” of Navy research and development, the anonymous author writes in the lengthy, and often inflammatory critique of the issue.

The Nov. 17 paper, titled, “Labs Miserables: The Impending Assimilation of the Naval Research Laboratory and the Threat to Navy Transformation,” has been circulating among concerned scientists and was distributed by the Federation of American Scientists’ Project on Government Secrecy. The author is a civilian employee of NRL, Inside the Navy has learned.

Declining to comment specifically on the report because its author is unknown, Navy spokesman Lt. Mike Kafka noted CNI, which stood up Oct. 1, is in charge of installation management only, and thus will have no effect on scientific research. The benefit of the move, he said, is that “centralizing activities where and only when it makes good business sense, has the potential to increase efficiencies, reduce redundant activities, and reduce costs.”

The report characterizes the consolidation as more sinister, noting, “More than facility management is being centralized at CNI. Power is being amassed there, at the expense of Navy civilian control.”

The lab’s dynamic environment is not best served by a military command, the paper states, because commands are used to the predictable, short-term readiness requirements of naval shipyards or depots. In contrast, research and development work is unpredictable, long-term and high-risk, attributes to which the military is generally adverse, according to the report.

“Scientific development advances most rapidly in an unpredictable, serendipitous way, and that is not the way the military operates,” Steven Aftergood, director of the Project on Government Secrecy, told ITN. “The military operates, as it should, by the book. But science doesn’t advance by the book. So, there may just be a cultural incompatibility.”

Aftergood said there is some evidence to support the author’s contention that the quality of the lab could deteriorate under military control.

“I think it’s a credible concern and the reason I say that is that other labs that are under military control are not even in the same league as NRL,” he said last week. “Now there may be multiple reasons for that, but one of them is the regimented culture of the military.”

Even uniformed officers have questioned the military’s handling of its own labs, Aftergood noted, pointing to a scathing critique by retired Army Lt. Gen. William Odom in his 1993 book “America’s Military Revolution: Strategy and Structure after the Cold War.”

“Major savings could be achieved by abolishing virtually all the Defense Department and military service laboratories,” wrote Odom, a former director of the National Security Agency. “Few of them have invented anything of note in several decades, and many of the things they are striving to develop are already available in the commercial sector,” he continued.

“Because they are generally so far behind the leading edges in some areas, they cause more than duplication; they also induce retardation and sustain obsolescence,” Odom wrote.

Though he did not necessarily agree with Odom, Aftergood remarked, “When somebody of Odom’s stature says it, a [retired] lieutenant general, it carries some weight.” -- Malina Brown

Copyright 2003 Inside Washington Publications