Book Review: Military and Scientific Affairs: The Weapons Acquisition Process: Economic Inventives
| Author | C. F. Pound |
| Date | 01 December 1965 |
| DOI | 10.1177/002070206502000417 |
| Published date | 01 December 1965 |
| Subject Matter | Book Review |
BOOK
REVIEWS
545
It is a
fundamental
belief
in
the
United
States
that
the
question
of
civil
control
of
the
military
was
settled
once
and
for
all
in
1789.
But
in
peacetime
Presidents
do
not
give
as
much
attention
to
defence
policy
as
in
wartime,
and
Defense
Secretaries
before
McNamara
did
not
possess
the mental
equipment and
technical
knowledge
to
control
the
service
chiefs
and
to
assert
initiative.
Their
rivalry
undoubtedly
diminished
the
degree
of
military
influence
on
policy.
Mr.
Riess
would
like
to
eliminate
the
rivalry
by
his "two-hat"
system;
but
he
is
sus-
picious
of
the
effectiveness
of
a
single
civilian
head.
He
may
be
right,
though
on
different
grounds
from
those
on
which he
stands.
For
no
successor
to McNamara
may
be
able to
exercise
the
same
personal
initiative
and,
as
with
the
Emperor
Napoleon,
personal
military
leader-
ship
may
have
to
be
succeeded
by
a
staff
system
of
some
kind
when
the
individual
with
the
genius
to
control
such
a
vast
organization
as
the
modern
American
armed
forces
is
gone.
In
those circumstances
will
we
see
an
increase
of
military
influence
in
the
direction
of
American
policy?
Indeed,
is it
not
possible
that
we
are
already
seeing
it
even
before
McNamara
goes,
simply
because
he
has
been
able to
suppress
inter-service
rivalry?
Professor
Riess discusses
the
background
of
this
general
question;
but
he
does
not
provide
any
convincing
answers.
Yet
it is
the clearest
account
of
the
problem
so
far
produced.
Royal
Military
College
of
Canada
RICHARD
A.
PRESTON
THE
WEAPONS
AcQUIsITION
PRocEss: EcoNoMIc
INVENTIVES.
By
Frederick
M.
Scherer.
1964.
(Cambridge,
Mass.:
Harvard
University
Press.
xxi,
447pp.
$7.50)
This
is
a
very
thorough
and
valuable
study
in
the
highly
specialized
field
of
contracting
for
defence
systems
and
the
incentives
designed
by
the
government
to
provide
efficiency
both
in
the
development
and
production
phases. The
uncertainties are
cost,
time
and
quality
in a
buyer-seller
relationship
where
the
automatic
guides
and
restraints
of
a
market
economy
are
absent.
To
replace
them
the
government
has
instituted first
of
all
controls
(at
a
cost)
and
secondly
incentives
where-
by
the
contractor
is
rewarded
for
good
performance
and
penalized
for
poor
performance.
In
this
volume
the author attempts
to
isolate the
conditions
under
which
existing
incentives
have failed to
encourage
efficient
and optimal
performance
by
contractors
and
explores
the
opportunities
for
creating
a
more
effective
system
of
incentives.
The
author
deals
with
incentives
in
two
classes:
competitive
in-
centives
involving
the
correlation
of
sales
rewards
for
contractor
performance:
and
contractual
incentives
involving
the correlation
of
contractor
profits
with
contractor
performance.
In
development
con-
tracts,
competition
with
substitutes
and
budget
limitations
have
pro-
vided
fairly
strong
incentives
for
quality
maximization
and
time
mini-
mization
but
weak
incentives
for
cost
minimization.
Disutilities and
user
costs
are
the
factors
blocking cost reductions.
The
contractor
attempts
to
maximize
long-run
profits
and
deducts
from
contractual
in-
centive
profits
user
costs
reflecting
expected
future
sales,
profit
losses
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