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The U. S. Navy seems comfortable seeing our technology going to our friends—like these Hornets flying for Australia, Spain, and Canada. The reverse is not so. It’s time to open technology transfer to two-way traffic.
Stemming from our attitude that superiority is an American birthright is our almost paranoid fear of being stripped of our national technological treasures—while at the same time, we maintain a vast foreign military sales operation. We tend to dismiss the thought that foreign technology could possibly be superior to the products of good old Yankee ingenuity. We are organized essentially to sell defense materials and not to maximize our benefits through cooperative defense research.
We have watched the quality of Japanese products improve significantly during the past few decades, with the help of the United States. It seems that our allies always want to join us in cooperative programs for their own exclusive benefit. Can our Navy ever chart a course in international technology transfer on which it does not give up more than it gains?
Dwelling on the losses obscures the whole picture.
Technology transfer can provide gains for the U. S. Navy if we view the technology of others as a resource. An international infrastructure already exists that can facilitate exchange of defense technology with our allies. Can we exploit the opportunities to receive significant technology and allay charges that the United States is on a “one-way street” when it comes to sharing defense technology with its allies?
The Origin: Following World War II, a series of international agreements and organizations among the United States and its allies emerged. These included information exchange programs, the Tri-Partite Technical Cooperation Program (later to become just the Technical Cooperation Program), and the NATO Conference of National Armament Directors. The United States also entered into a variety of bilateral, umbrella-type international agreements for
cooperative research, development, and production of defense products. During the Kennedy Administration, the Mutual Weapons Development Data Exchange Program began. Altogether, such agreements created a non-corporate infrastructure of technical knowledge—the international defense research complex—through which defense research information has been shared by NATO members and other nations friendly to the United States.
The United States took the lead after World War II in re-creating a transnational military command—NATO— to safeguard the sphere of influence vacated by the decay of British power against the threat of the Red Army. Since then, the industrial bases and defense capabilities of all nations have progressed along with technological advances. The United States contributed greatly to this defense development through military assistance programs, grants, and eventually, foreign military sales. According to William H. McNeill: “The recovery of Western Europe with the help of credits from the United States, 1948-53, was spectacularly swift. . . . Japan also began to exhibit an industrial and commercial dynamism after 1950 that eventually left even Germany and the United States behind . . .
Today, member states of the international defense research complex no longer seek to sustain their own defense capabilities solely by purchasing U. S. arms. They Promote their own industries through cooperative development programs, co-production under licensing arrangements, and contracts to trade their products for foreign military equipment. This means competition for U. S. industry, but it also offers alternative sources for Department of Defense (DoD) acquisition programs. In fact, the nited States is currently the largest market for defense e9uipment in the world, and U. S. policymakers try to encourage arms cooperation within NATO.
The Issue: Technology transfer is a polarized issue. The 0fces of the marketplace and the need for national secu- rUy constantly pull at one another. A fine line divides ese two forces, embodying the essential conflict: cooperation versus control. The appropriate degree of U. S. cooperation is a judgment call that is a key factor in the decision to release technology and grant export licenses.
The technology transfer decision is, in the minds of many, solely a matter of how much our national security will be compromised if some innovation or technique is passed to another nation. This perception of the issue was dramatized when the policies on cooperation, and the enforcement of these policies, were the subject of the technology transfer report made by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigation. In his testimony. Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Policy Richard Perle showed how an Apple II computer could be used to target nuclear weapons in the western European theater. He said that the equipment costs about $25,000 and is “an enormously valuable tool netted with other such computers on the battlefield." Such a situation raises an ominous image, but within this image lies a myth.
Policymakers are constantly seeking a middle ground on the unsolvable problem of controlling such technology as the Apple II computer and preventing its exploitation. The idea that the United States sets the world standard for all technical innovation and that Americans have little or nothing to gain from other nations is a myth. Yet, the technology transfer myth must be eliminated, or we will run a more serious risk of losing our competitiveness in developing and applying new scientific innovations. We will die on the vine, to be swallowed up by allies who are competing in the same technological market. The United States must reorient itself to establish goals and consider how to gain—not how it loses—from international technological cooperation.
If the United States sets the world standard for anything, it is for developing vast resources. Strength through resources, however, does not automatically carry the corollary that we are also the most clever at applying or improving them. The post-World War II recovery and development of our allies has put them in competition with, or ahead of, the United States in many areas. We live in an era of cooperative research and development. Therefore, we must view the expertise of others as a potential resource and manage our international cooperative programs accordingly.
There are two broad classifications for international arms development, production, technology transfer, and research for defense materials. The largest in terms of resource allocations is security assistance (i.e., U. S. Foreign Military Sales [FMS]). The other area is cooperative research and development, an important adjunct to FMS because research and development are the initial phases of the production and acquisition process. Foreign military sales are completed under contractual arrangements. However, no money changes hands when the cooperative research information and data are transferred under mutually beneficial agreements. The international defense research complex is involved in the cooperative research and development area.
The Organization: Members of the international defense research complex are industrial Free World nations
with individual organizations and approaches to national defense research and development. All of these separate organizations are intertwined either bilaterally or multilaterally, in a series of international agreements or arrangements. Many are participants in NATO’s Conference of National Armaments Directors. The international defense research complex employs many people—from policymakers to scientists and laboratory technicians.
Because of its size and resources, the United States has a unique complex organization (now undergoing changes owing to the broad reorganization of DoD). Formerly, the responsibility for overall policy and budget development for research and development rested with the Under Secretary of Defense (USD) for Research and Engineering, Donald A. Hicks. This is now the responsibility of Richard P. Godwin, Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition. International program policy development falls under the office of the Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for International Programs and Technology, Everett D. Greinke. In the Department of the Navy, research and development lie with the Assistant Secretary of the Navy (Research, Engineering and Systems), Melvyn R. Paisley. It is below this service staff level that the unique size of the United States sets us apart from our allies.
Other nations (except for Great Britain) have “a fourth service”—a unified staff for research and development— but each U. S. military service has its own research and development organization. Although subject to change under the DoD reorganization, the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations Director for Research, Development, and Acquisition (RD&A), Vice Admiral Albert J. Baciocco, Jr., reports directly to Assistant Secretary Paisley and provides staff support and executes the Secretary’s responsibilities for planning, programming, and budgeting of research, development, test, and evaluation. To execute the Navy’s RD&A program, there is an array of laboratories, facilities, and universities (through contracts), and an Operational Test and Evaluation Force. U. S. Army and Air Force research and development programs each operate under separate organizations.
The U. S. Navy, along with the Army and Air Force, is a technology transfer participant in the international defense research complex through the various information exchange groups under the NATO Conference of National Armament Directors, the Technical Cooperation Program, Mutual Weapons Development Data Exchange Program, and various other arrangements for exchanging scientists. Many cooperative development projects operate under broad umbrella-type agreements, such as the Defense Development Sharing Arrangement with Canada. There are more than 200 data exchange agreement annexes with 19 nations through agreements under the Mutual Weapons Development Data Exchange Program.
Foreign counterparts act through their unified research and development organizations, such as the Defense Science and Technology Organization in Australia, the Technical Research and Development Institute in Japan, La Delegation Generate pour L’Armement in France, Defence Research Establishment in Canada, or the Bun- desamt fur Wehrtechnik und Beschaff in Germany. It seems more economical to have one engineering organization supporting all branches of the armed services.
Foreign defense research attaches are sent to their embassies in the United States to interact with DoD. The attaches are windows for foreign governments into DoD research and development organizations, universities, and industries, through which they can recognize and capitalize upon U. S. technology. Part of a defense research attache’s mission is to administer programs for information, data exchange, and cooperative technological development with the United States.
An example of a cooperative program is the aforementioned Mutual Weapons Development Data Exchange Program, initiated by the United States in the early 1960s with the presumably lofty purpose of assisting our allies. It has resulted in bilateral master data exchange agreements with 19 nations friendly to the United States. Under these master agreements, the U. S. Navy has made more than 200 subordinate agreements, or “annexes,” to share research and development information in a variety of technical areas: oceanography, ship design, underwater acoustics, gun systems, missiles, aircraft, radars, torpedoes, antiship missile defense systems, and electro-optics, to name a few. The agreements cover a broad spectrum of defense-related technologies, providing an opportune environment to increase U. S. technological capabilities and to monitor U. S. progress. Virtually all of the agreements, however, resulted from proposals the United States received from other nations, to which we responded favorably.
The fact that the U. S. Navy has functioned in this “re- ceive-respond mode” indicates that foreign nations have recognized the benefit that can come from these arrangements, have targeted specific areas, and have succeeded in establishing the arrangements. It would be difficult to quantify the amount of improvement and cost reduction that other nations have made in their research and development programs, but there is a general perception that our friends and allies have benefitted more than we have. It does not take a staff study to point out that foreigners are quite aware of what goes on in the United States, while we are embarrassingly unaware of events in other countries.
The United States does not have counterparts in its overseas organizations comparable to the foreign attache- level defense research specialists here. Defense research, embodied in Secretary Godwin’s position as Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, is not represented in our Military Assistance Advisory Groups or Offices of Defense Cooperation. In contrast, these overseas defense offices are staffed only with FMS personnel and are the field offices of the Defense Security Assistance Agency (DSAA). The Navy does have an Office of Naval Research Branch Office in London and a detachment in Tokyo, whose staffs collect and distribute information on foreign technology developments. But little of this intelligence is infused into Navy research and development laboratories because our international defense complex is organized for the sole purpose of selling arms: DSAA stations people overseas to take care of business, while Secretary Godwin’s office does not.
International Politics: It is difficult to pinpoint any one event as the sole causative factor for change in a nation’s technological progress. Since man first threw a stone in self-defense, technology has been on a racetrack of innovations to make defense products stronger, faster, deadlier, more effective, or more efficient. Although many believe that technology evolved gradually with no monumental breakthroughs, there have been definite milestones that were regarded, at the time, as the ultimate device or innovation. History has shown us, however, that the stirrup did not annihilate the foot soldier because the horseman was made more stable. Nor has the crossbow, gunpowder, fixed ammunition, or guided projectile precluded war and ensured peace. Each new device breeds a counterdevice idea in someone else’s mind. This method of technological advancement knows no national boundaries. No one nation, race, or tribe can claim to be the origin of all intelligence and innovation. Discovery and development are human endeavors that, because of the sheer number of participants, form a process sustained by interaction.
During this interactive process, the United States has become a market for foreign defense products, and there is no indication that foreign marketing efforts here will stop. The Reagan Administration views armaments cooperation as a means of strengthening the NATO alliance and inducing the Europeans to carry a larger share of the NATO
dardization and interoperability. In quite another sense . . . they have generally consumed more allied resources than outright purchases from one another. . . . All of NATO’s transatlantic cooperative efforts to date have failed to induce our European allies to carry their fair share of the burden of NATO’s defense.”2
In an effort to analyze problems related to cooperation on defense programs, the Defense Science Board responded to a request from Dr. DeLauer and appointed a task force on Industry-to-Industry International Armaments Cooperation. The group was asked to recommend solutions to existing problems in industrial cooperation. The task force produced a two-phase report: one in June 1983 devoted to NATO, and a second a year later concerning cooperation with Japan.
The task force concluded that there were several fundamental prerequisites for increasing industrial cooperation. First, the European allies must be persuaded to increase their investment in key military-oriented technologies in order to better balance technological partnerships—thus, the DoD demand for a “two-way street” in technological sharing with both NATO and Japan. Officials recognize that there must be a fundamental philosophical foundation to technology sharing on both sides to achieve industrial cooperation—as well as definition of complementary
Key players in the DoD tech-transfer business are (left to right): Richard P. Godwin, Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition; Everett D. Greinke,
Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for International Programs and Technology; and Melvyn R. Paisley, Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Research, Engineering, and Systems.
defense burden. It is through the international defense research complex that such cooperation can happen.
NATO has been involved in armaments cooperation for rr,°re than 25 years, which has resulted in about 200 bilateral and multilateral European and transatlantic co-devel- °Pment, co-production, licensed production projects, Memoranda of understanding, and family-of-weapons Projects industry-to-industry efforts and sales. Examples these programs are the F-104 Starfighter, AV-8A and ^V-8B Harriers, Sidewinder and Sea Sparrow missiles, ~4 Phantom, C-130 Hercules transport, and NATO air- orne warning and control system. To varying degrees, bese programs have been successful in one sense and unsuccessful in another. Dr. Richard DeLauer, former USD 0r Research and Engineering, states:
“These individual projects . . . [have] provided jobs, technology transfer and some limited measure of stan-
roles for governments and industries in pursuing these technology transfer projects. Department of Defense international acquisition policies and practices must be improved, and a better understanding must be reached with NATO Europe on matters concerning third country sales.
Of all its discoveries, the task force stressed the finding concerning the direction of U. S. investment in research and development as the most important. The report states that U. S. technological leadership is perishable, that it is now dwindling, and that our national goal should be world leadership, both in defense and commercial technology. The recommendations cover DoD organization and policies, DoD industry relations, technology transfer, U. S.- European actions, and U. S. investment in research and development. Most critical for the implementation of these recommendations is the support of the services, which will require some organizational and attitudinal changes on their part. Without these, the recommenda-
tions will cause only a momentary flurry of discussion and activity, and then it will be back to business as usual.
The task force also discovered a widespread perception that the armed services do not want industrial cooperation with NATO. Cooperative endeavors cannot be successful if they are forced down the services’ throats. Although cooperative programs are frequently initiated at the Secretary of Defense levels because of political pressures, the military services must consummate and conduct the programs.3 Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger has reemphasized the 1981 Reagan Administration policy of supporting armaments cooperation with our NATO allies. In explicit terms, he stated that DoD activities in NATO armaments cooperation should achieve four objectives:
- Share technology—reciprocally—to avoid unnecessary duplication of developments
- Support interoperability
- Urge greater investment by allies in conventional military equipment
- Achieve economies of scale by coordinated research, development, production, and logistic support programs4
West Germany, Denmark, and the United States researched and developed the RAM (rolling airframe missile) for shipboard, surface-to-air defense, upper right. There also are opportunities to share technology outside NATO—here, then-Chief of Naval Operations Admiral James D. Watkins receives a briefing on hardware in Dalian, China.
process. These complications result from congressional decisions that impact on the programs. While the armed services make every effort to acquire the best military capability possible to meet their operational requirements, they usually do not consider foreign inputs because there is little vested interest in foreign technology. Having their acquisition plans thus altered by political decisions does little to engender support for international cooperation.
Acquisition managers worry about control. Dealing with foreign sources of supply involves more dimensions to the acquisition process than are involved in domestic programs. Different budget cycles, uncertainty of production lines meeting critical deadlines, negotiation of international agreements, and legislative restrictions (for example, “Buy America” provisions) all complicate an already complex process. The Arms Export Control Act is another legislative impediment to international cooperation. This act is currently the only legislative basis for cooperative projects, and it has proven cumbersome because it places our allies in a buyer relationship rather than a partnership arrangement.5
A fundamental question that the task force did not pursue is whether the armed services are able to deal effectively with international programs. It questioned only how well the services can assess objectively the benefits of “internationalizing” a program, rather than those of a United States-only program. Because of their current organization the services cannot objectively assess any such benefits. Although the task force addressed organizational matters within DoD, it dealt with only the upper echelons. It was concerned with anomalies in defense organization and called for the appointment of a high-level official at the Secretary of Defense level, transfer of the Defense Security Assistance Agency’s management and acquisition functions to the Acquisition Executive, and the creation of high-level military positions to implement international cooperation.
An additional organizational change would be required, however, at the working level of the service headquarters platform and program sponsors—an international plans and policy section in each major sponsor’s office, tasked with pursuing, recognizing, incorporating, and sponsoring international cooperative programs. This section would require individuals adaptable to or skilled in international dealings and aware of technological achievements in foreign countries. Such an organizational change requires more manpower to staff the new offices which, like the attitude problem, is a major stumbling block.
There are two ways of staffing new international plans and policy section offices: move personnel from other areas, to stay within existing manpower ceiling points; and/or, increase manpower ceiling points. Although service chiefs may voice support for international cooperative research and development programs, the main business of the Pentagon is to allocate resources, and existing manpower levels are straining to meet the current demands.6 To add more manpower requirements to “internationalize” acquisitions means an increase of tasks for existing organizations and their staffs. Since the latter option of increasing manpower ceiling points seems impossible in light of current congressional budget cuts and reorganization of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and DoD, which will further reduce the number of headquarters’ personnel, the true test of support for international cooperation will be seen in how far they are willing to stretch their valuable personnel resources.
The Moral: The technological developments and capabilities of foreign counterparts cannot be ignored. The United States can use them at all possible junctures by becoming aware of their capabilities and establishing objectives at all levels to acquire their technologies through the legal channels of the international defense research complex. Although the technological base of the United States may be wider than those of its allies, no case can be made that Americans are superior in intellectual and imaginative capabilities. As one Science and Government Report pointed out, the United States makes little use of the existing opportunities for staying abreast of science and technology from elsewhere.7 In today’s international defense research climate, relying on our own devices and imagination is not enough.
’William H. McNeill, The Pursuit of Power (University of Chicago Press, 1982), p. 365.
2Richard D. DeLauer, Statement to the House Armed Services Committee Subcommittee on Procurement, 28 March 1984, pp. 2-3.
Memorandum for the Chairman, Defense Science Board, “Report of the Task Force on Industry-to-Industry International Armaments Cooperation, Phase I,” 30 June 1983.
“Caspar Weinberger, Memo: "Emphasis on NATO Armaments Cooperation,” 6 June 1985, p. 2.
5Richard D. DeLauer, Letter to Representative Samuel S. Stratton, House Armed Services Committee, 30 March 1984.
‘Department of the Navy, Fiscal Year 1985 Report to the Congress, by Admiral James D. Watkins, then-Chief of Naval Operations.
’Science and Government Report, 15 March 1984.
Commander Frenzinger graduated from California State University at Los Angeles and earned a master's degree in the National Security Studies Program at Georgetown University. He has served in destroyers, the earner USS Oriskany (CV-34), and the River Patrol Force in Vietnam. Ashore, he was an exchange officer with the Canadian Armed Forces and an adviser to the Imperial Iranian Navy. He recently retired from serving on the staff of the Chief of Naval Operations as the International Research and Development Programs Officer, and is now self-employed as a consultant in international defense cooperation.
The Wrong Hands
By Lieutenant Colonel Wayne A. Silkett, U. S. Army, and Major Eric J. Nickerson, U. S. Air Force
The foremost stake in transferring technology is national security. Many products of U. S. high technology—parts of weapons or communication systems, hardware or software— have found their way into Soviet hands. The Soviets do not have to duplicate the item immediately, or in a few years—or even at all—before the U. S. comparative advantage in the hem is reduced. Soviet engineers only have to understand the concept and the design.
Once this is done, a countermeasure is more readily developed. Subsequently, over the past decade, the U. S. lead in advanced military technology has dropped from 10-12 years to 3-5 years, owing to legitimate exports alone.1
In the worldwide technology race, the Soviet Union does not compete in the same sense as the nations of the Free World. The Soviets promote national primacy as all other nations do, but they have an additional goal—international dominance. Soviet ideology holds that communism-will prevail inevitably over all other social, political, and economic systems, and this affects their methods and motives in world trade.
The Soviet system of acquiring technology is also unique— the Soviets gather technology from elsewhere rather than develop it themselves, saving years of research and development as well as vast sums of money.
The Soviets adapt Western designs—once acquired—to enhance their industrial capacity to produce military weapons and equipment. The Soviets have a massive, comprehensive, well- planned, well-managed national