14 REPORT or THE UNDERSEAS WARFARE ADVISORY PANEL 



of weapons required for ASW work. Such tests should be of course 

 performed in a manner consistent with keeping radioactive contami- 

 nation and fallout to a minimum. 



IX. Weapons Systems Management 



The bureau system of the Navy was established at a time when 

 naval technical problems were easily defined and separable. This 

 system provides for independent control under chiefs with the rank 

 of rear admiral. These billets represent the highest technical posts 

 in the Navy. 



To a large extent, the bureaus are staffed with personnel whose 

 chief career goal is line responsibility within fleet commands and the 

 Office of the Chiefs of Naval Operations, rather than promotion in 

 technical grades. 



It has been demonstrated repeatedly that the bureau system has 

 shortcomings in the present area of highly integrated and comnlex 

 weapons systems. These shortcomings assert themselves both in 

 overall management and in technical decision making. 



How^ever, the admitted strength of the bureau system should be 

 preserved until a better alternative is evolved. A precipitate de- 

 parture from this system could cause unacceptable disruption. 



In the meanwhile, a study should be made of manning within the 

 technical bureaus, to make sure that technical decisions are made by 

 properly trained selected civilians or technical officers. Promotions 

 of technical career officers, moreover, should be consistent in scale 

 and rank with those of line officers. 



We regard it as more important to make a limited number of critical 

 weapons systems available to the fleet on time than to cover all 

 possible systems inefficiently and too late. 



To this end, we believe that such vertical organizations of the type 

 now used for management of the Polaris program would be useful 

 for other high priority projects. This type of vertical management is 

 most successful for engineering projects— systems progi*ams which 

 appear to be technically feasible within foreseeable advances in the 

 state of the art. This type of management is not generally suitable 

 for basic or long-range applied research. Also there is a distinct 

 limit to the number of vertical organizations which can be operated 

 at any one time, and the value of this system quickly declines once 

 this number is exceeded. 



We recommend that a limited number of vertical management 

 organizations, under officers reporting directly to the Chief of Naval 

 Operations and to the Secretary of the Navy, be established for such 

 projects as ocean surveillance systems and attack submarine systems. 



