The SAIC Library

The story of the disappearing SAIC research library occurred in the middle of the 1990s, during the same time as the HERO Library was disappearing. SAIC had an “Military Operations Analysis Division” that for a time was a competitor to HERO/DMSI. In particular, around 1990, they hired three former HERO/DMSI employees and used them for studies that normally would have been done by us. Trevor Dupuy was on-the-outs with some people at the U.S. Army Concepts Analysis Agency (CAA). Some time in the mid-1990s, SAIC decided to close down their military operations analysis division.

The early 1990s were a difficult time for defense contractors. The Warsaw Pact and the Soviet Union had disappeared and the defense industry was shrinking. SAIC got rid of the division that did analytical work for DOD as they realized it was a dying business (something that we could never get through our heads). Companies like BDM, one of the stalwarts in the industry since 1959, was sold off in 1990s; with Trevor Dupuy’s old company, DMSI, also going out of business in the 1990s.

Anyhow, SAIC had a library for this division. It was the size of two double offices, maybe 400 square feet or more. It was smaller than the HERO Library. They decided to dissolve the library along with the division. They told the staff to grab what they wanted and dumped the rest. Having never had access to this library, I do not know if there were any holdings of value, but as SAIC had been around since 1969, it is hard to believe that there was not something unique there.

 

This post is related to:

The HERO Library

Missing HERO Reports

 

Share this:
Christopher A. Lawrence
Christopher A. Lawrence

Christopher A. Lawrence is a professional historian and military analyst. He is the Executive Director and President of The Dupuy Institute, an organization dedicated to scholarly research and objective analysis of historical data related to armed conflict and the resolution of armed conflict. The Dupuy Institute provides independent, historically-based analyses of lessons learned from modern military experience.
...
Mr. Lawrence was the program manager for the Ardennes Campaign Simulation Data Base, the Kursk Data Base, the Modern Insurgency Spread Sheets and for a number of other smaller combat data bases. He has participated in casualty estimation studies (including estimates for Bosnia and Iraq) and studies of air campaign modeling, enemy prisoner of war capture rates, medium weight armor, urban warfare, situational awareness, counterinsurgency and other subjects for the U.S. Army, the Defense Department, the Joint Staff and the U.S. Air Force. He has also directed a number of studies related to the military impact of banning antipersonnel mines for the Joint Staff, Los Alamos National Laboratories and the Vietnam Veterans of American Foundation.
...
His published works include papers and monographs for the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment and the Vietnam Veterans of American Foundation, in addition to over 40 articles written for limited-distribution newsletters and over 60 analytical reports prepared for the Defense Department. He is the author of Kursk: The Battle of Prokhorovka (Aberdeen Books, Sheridan, CO., 2015), America’s Modern Wars: Understanding Iraq, Afghanistan and Vietnam (Casemate Publishers, Philadelphia & Oxford, 2015), War by Numbers: Understanding Conventional Combat (Potomac Books, Lincoln, NE., 2017) , The Battle of Prokhorovka (Stackpole Books, Guilford, CT., 2019), The Battle for Kyiv (Frontline Books, Yorkshire, UK, 2023), Aces at Kursk (Air World, Yorkshire, UK, 2024), Hunting Falcon: The Story of WWI German Ace Hans-Joachim Buddecke (Air World, Yorkshire, UK, 2024) and The Siege of Mariupol (Frontline Books, Yorkshire, UK, 2024).
...
Mr. Lawrence lives in northern Virginia, near Washington, D.C., with his wife and son.

Articles: 1592

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *