330 ORGANIZING SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH FOR WAR 



made adequate provision for obtaining small quantities of new and unique 

 instruments and weapons. 



Quantity production, with its emphasis upon interchangeability of parts 

 and its discouragement of adaptations, may well continue to be the corner- 

 stone of the Service procurement programs. But the Services must devise 

 some way of introducing a parallel system of obtaining small quantities of 

 new equipment on an urgent basis. The lack of such a provision was glar- 

 ingly apparent in OSRD relations with the Services. After the procurement 

 agencies placed orders for large quantities of newly developed equipment 

 (the first of which unfortunately would not come from the production line 

 for from six to eighteen months), the Services seemed helpless to obtain the 

 smaller but critical number of those same instruments or weapons which 

 could be made by hand or by other than mass production methods and so 

 be obtainable in the interval before mass-produced equipment was available. 



The research groups in the Services maintained that the research was 

 completed, and consequently the procuring of the "few quick" was not 

 properly a research function or one which should be supported by research 

 funds. The procurement agencies on the other hand objected to handling 

 such items because they were not properly standardized and would not fit 

 into the procurement schedules. Both research and procurement groups 

 recognized the existence of a gap between them but neither took the initia- 

 tive in attempting to fill it. 



During the war, much against its will, OSRD filled the breach. In doing 

 so it undoubtedly saved lives and expedited victory, but at the same time it 

 relieved the pressure upon the Services to work out a permanent solution 

 of the problem. Properly organized for the task, the Services could have 

 done a more effective and expeditious job of "crash" procurement than 

 OSRD did, and at the same time have left the scientists to work which 

 only they could do. The Services should work out an effective method of 

 handling such procurement. 



One element operating to keep "crash" procurement within OSRD was 

 undoubtedly the reluctance of the scientists working on a device to release 

 it to other hands. Thus the situation frequently was one in which the Serv- 

 ices on one side and the scientists on the other joined hands to force a 

 reluctant OSRD into "crash" procurement. 



Security. Three aspects of the security problem deserve close considera- 

 tion: classification, clearance and compartmentalization. 



The higher the classification assigned to a research program, the greater 

 is the resultant delay. The cumulative effect of a series of time-consuming 

 details may be serious in the course of a large program. The security officer 

 should distinguish between a strategic plan properly classified secret and a 

 scientific research program which may feed into that plan but may itself 

 better be left unclassified. The compromise between the security officer who 



