Despite a steady drop in scientific research funding since 1993,
the Air Force's top technologist believes the budgets have bottomed
out and will remain stable in the foreseeable future.
"We've come to a [funding] level that is the sustainable level,"
said Brig. Gen. Paul D. Nielsen, commander of the Air Force Research
Laboratory, at Wright Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio.
"The big thing for us is to try to get some stability in our
budget so we can plan our programs with a long-range viewpoint,"
Nielsen told National Defense, during a recent interview in Dayton,
Ohio.
The 5,700-employee lab is a vast organization spread throughout
10 locations nationwide. It receives $1.4 billion a year from Congress
and gets an additional $1 billion a year from contract work. About
75 percent of lab dollars go to contractors.
Nielsen took over as head of the lab earlier this year and, for
the most part, has focused on trying to expedite the flow of technology
from the lab to the battlefield. "We are looking for new methods
and techniques," he said.
One of those innovations is the so-called "applied technology
councils," which bring together, on a quarterly basis, the
researchers, the acquisition managers and the equipment users. The
councils, said Nielsen, enable the lab work to "get high level
attention and visibility."
Most lab programs-after technologies have been approved and tested-move
to the "product centers." For the Air Force, those are
the Aeronautical Systems Center, at Wright Patterson; the Space
and Missile Center, in Los Angeles; the Electronic Systems Center,
at Hanscom Air Force Base, Mass., and the Air Armaments Center at
Eglin Air Force Base, Fla.
Nielsen cautioned, however, that part of his job is to ensure that
enough dollars also get assigned to basic research, which may, or
may not, end up on the battlefield. "We need balance between
responding to war-fighting needs and long-term research," he
said. "We have to look 20 or 30 years down range and forecast
what our users will need."
Additionally, he noted, "We need to find a way to involve
industry better, to be more comprehensive in the programs we present,
to make sure we understand the work that is going on in the other
services and other agencies of the government."
Partnerships
Nielsen conceded that the Air Force has not done a good job partnering
with other organizations. "Other agencies' work doesn't get
presented to our war-fighters as cleanly as it could."
Asked whether rivalries among service labs hamper cooperation,
Nielsen alluded to the good and bad sides of competition. "I
see the advantages of some friendly competition among good researchers
in all areas," he said. "I really don't see the destructive
competition you might be worried about."
The following are technology areas the lab plans to emphasize during
the next several years: