Lt. General Thomas McInerney has been in the news lately, mostly for saying things that are getting him kicked off of news shows:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_McInerney
It is my understanding that he was the person who was responsible for making sure that DACM (Dupuy Air Combat Model) was funded by AFSC. He then retired from the Air Force in 1994. We completed the demonstration phase of the DACM and quite simply, there was no one left in the Air Force who was interested in funding it. So, work stopped. I never met General McInerney and was not involved in the marketing of the initial effort.
But, this is typical of the problems with doing business with the Pentagon, where an officer will take an interest in your work, generate funding for it, but by the time the first steps are completed, that officer has moved on to another assignment. This has happened to us with other projects. One of these efforts was a joint research project that was done by TDI and former Army surgeon on casualty rates. It was for J-4 of the Joint Staff. The project officer there was extremely interested and involved in the work, but then moved to another assignment. By the time we got original effort completed, the division was headed by an Air Force Colonel who appeared to be only interested in things that flew. Therefore, the project died (except that parts of it were used for Chapter 15: Casualties, pages 193-198, in War by Numbers).
Our experience in dealing with the U.S. defense establishment is that sometimes research efforts that takes longer than a few months will die……because the people interested in it have moved on. This sometimes leads to simple, short-term analysis and fewer properly funded long-term projects.
It must have an adverse effect on any research work and so on the planning etc based on the research. Two or three months is a very short time frame for research.
Yea, it is dynamics of the situation. Often officers are assigned to a position for only 2 years or so. So, if they want something researched and developed, by the time a vendor if found, an RFP is issued, a contract is awarded; the officer has moved on to the next assignment. The new replacement is then in charge of a project that he has no particular interest in. Added to that is budget shifts, changing priorities by senior commanders, and other such factors….and it often difficult to maintain any research project that lasts more than a year (or even a few months).
For example, The Dupuy Institute from mid-1993 and on did not ever have a single multiple year contract. Even our multi-year projects (like the Kursk Data Base) were funded on a year-by-year basis. As long as we had multiple customers, multiple projects and multiple contracts coming in, we were able to maintain our staff. On the other hand, we did have the scenario where an incoming contract was pulled from us a month before award and we were suddenly forced to lay people off.
The General was spot in with his comments and I know this because I read JM’s book.