Research cuts threaten military readiness

Loss of behavioral research funding at defense labs may leave the United States military at a disadvantage.

By Beth Azar
Monitor staff

Cuts by the U.S. Depart-ment of Defense (DoD) in behavioral and social sciences research may weaken the effectiveness of troop involvement in ever more common situations such as Kosovo, which begin as highly specific short-lived military operations and end as more ambiguous long-term peace-keeping missions.

U.S. soldiers now in Kosovo must deal with a highly complex and uncertain situation, which requires good interpersonal skills, as well as technological savvy, says Ed Johnson, PhD, director of the Army Research Institute for the Behavioral and Social Sciences (ARI). From fighter pilots to acquisitions officers, they must interact with the local population, coordinate with civilian contractors and non-governmental organizations and perform technologically more demanding jobs than even a decade ago. And at the same time, the military is having difficulty recruiting and retaining high quality personnel.

Applying basic behavioral and social sciences research to recruitment, training and leadership is key to helping U.S. military forces deal with these manpower, personnel and training issues. But investment in basic research at DoD has decreased by more than $300 million in the last decade, says David Johnson, PhD, director of the Federation of Behavioral, Psychological and Cognitive Sciences, who follows trends in DoD funding.

And behavioral research has been one of the hardest hit areas--even though it investigates such critical military issues as how to select fighter pilots and how best to teach people to work in teams as well as human factors issues related to technology design.

In fact, behavioral research labs in all three branches of the military have come under attack in the past several years in large part because the benefits of behavioral research are less tangible than the benefits of other types of research. ARI narrowly escaped dismantling two years ago when the Pentagon cut its budget to zero; it is now trying to rebuild. The Navy has consolidated much of its behavioral research to a base in Tennessee and in the process lost much of its staff because many people refused to move. And the Air Force has cut its research on manpower and personnel, as well as a good chunk of its human factors research, and left a skeleton crew to deal with training issues.

Some in Congress, including Sens. Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) and Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn.), have voiced concern that the military's cuts in basic research are short-sighted and ultimately will put the nation at a military disadvantage. In addition, the cuts may have serious repercussions for research outside the military; research funded by DoD has long provided an important piece of the nation's basic research infrastructure, forming a foundation for research on personality and language learning, as well as employee selection, job placement and aptitude testing.

To protect against these risks, members of Congress have added wording to DoD's reauthorization bill asking that it recommit to funding basic research (see sidebar). But some fear that before their recommendations take effect some critical programs may be lost for good.

Cutting costs

As the U.S. military shrank in response to the end of the Cold War, it has been forced to close bases and cut its budget. Military officials have had to make difficult decisions about priorities, and, not surprisingly, when it comes down to choosing between basic research--which may take 20 or 30 years to pay off--or new equipment and salary increases for the troops, the research often loses, says Bruce Gould, PhD, who took a forced early retirement in April from his job as director for human resources at the Air Force Research Laboratory at Brooks Air Force Base in Texas.

Basic behavioral research is probably one of the most difficult investments to defend, says psychologist William Strickland, PhD, president elect of APA Div.19 (Military), who held Gould's job at Brooks before moving to the nonprofit military research contractor Human Resources Research Organization (HumRRO) in Washington, D.C.

"We as behavioral researchers don't have products to show off to convince people we're necessary," says Strickland. "I've heard serious, smart people ask, 'You've been selecting pilots for 50 years, when are you going to be done?' My response is, 'We've been doing cancer research for 50 years, are we done yet?'"

In fact, as military jobs change, requiring more technical skills, more teamwork and more interaction with a diverse workforce, selection criteria for specific military jobs will need to change too, he says. But without research into what those criteria should be, the armed forces will be stuck with outdated material.

Training research is a bit easier to defend, as Gould found when, in 1997, he learned that his program, which included manpower, personnel and training research, was slated to be eliminated as of fiscal year 1998. He fought for the program as a whole but was able to save $6 million for training research only. Although Gould was able to stretch that money to keep the manpower and personnel research alive for a while, the budget proposal for fiscal year 1999 left a mere $1.8 million to preserve five civilian research positions dedicated to training.

"On April 30 all the in-house expertise in manpower and personnel left the building," says Gould.

That move bodes ill for the Air Force, says Strickland.

"They've sacrificed something that is fundamental and core to the operations of the military," he says. "The one research and development area that affects everyone that comes in the front door is selection research and that's the area that went away."

APA and the Federation worked successfully with Congress to have money restored to the Brooks lab for 1999, but the Air Force used the money elsewhere. Congress has again provided funding for the lab in fiscal year 2000, but it's still unclear whether the lab will receive it. Even if it does, the program will have to be rebuilt from scratch, says the Federation's Johnson.

ARI is the only branch of the military that has retained any significant resources for manpower and personnel research, says Gould. And it's still recovering from an attempt by the Pentagon several years ago to eliminate its budget. In spring 1996, the Pentagon released a budget planning document that eliminated funding for ARI as of 1998. Efforts by APA and the Federation, and the support of Sen. Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii) restored funding to ARI. Now, although ARI's budget is smaller than before the turmoil of the past several years, it appears to be stable.

"Our funding is healthy and we're rebuilding," says ARI's Johnson, adding that the institute has broad-based support within the military and in Congress.

The Naval Personnel Research and Development Center was slated for closing at the same time as the Air Force lab. However, rather than lose the research altogether, the Navy decided to move it from San Diego to a base in Tennessee. One or two experienced psychologists agreed to move, but the rest left, says Gould. The head of that lab, Murray Rowe, recruited several of Gould's former staff and is trying to rebuild his program.

"But it's a very slow process," says Gould. "They are a shadow of their former self, as is ARI." And they're still at significant risk in the current cost-cutting climate of DOD.

Looking long-term

It's a bad time to lose research on manpower and personnel, says Gould. The Air Force alone is losing 20 percent of new enlistees before they complete their initial training. And the Navy missed its recruitment goal by several thousand last year. In addition, the military is becoming more diverse. Behavioral researchers at the military labs have been working on issues related to improving integration of women and ethnic minorities into the workforce, recruiting high quality people into the military, and training personnel to work in an increasingly technical environment.

One project that was stopped midstream at the Brooks Air Force lab addressed the escalating problem of attrition. Gould and his staff were interviewing all personnel who departed the Air Force without completing at least their initial training. The last interview occurred about a year ago, but there's no one left to analyze the resulting data, says Gould.

And although DoD justifies research and development cuts by saying it will contract out for any new work it needs done, many are skeptical that contractors can provide the expertise and the vision found in DoD-run labs.

"If someone says, 'Let's hire HumRRO to do it,' we could do it," says Strickland. "They've always used contractors and that system will continue to work in the future. But the questions will only be asked when there's a problem big enough for them to sacrifice the money. The in-house lab provided scientists who would come up with questions and answer them ahead of a problem."

The in-house labs also supported visionary basic research that provided the foundation for applied research. For example, basic behavioral research funded through DoD labs forms the basis of what industry knows about training teams, employee selection and job placement.

"There's no one else who will pay for that work any more," says the Federation's Johnson.

In addition to the military's own needs, DoD has "been a part of the research support infrastructure," he adds. "If they pull out, there isn't another part of the infrastructure that's set up to pick up the slack."

A major piece of infrastructure that may be lost is a massive manpower database established at Brooks that includes the testing data from every Air Force recruit enlisted from 1965 to the present. Researchers inside and outside the military have used the data for basic research on aptitude, skills training and job placement. Researchers have used the data to set aptitude standards for jobs within the Air Force and to determine the minimum competence needed to perform certain tasks well.

A manpower data center at Randolph Air Force Base in San Antonio agreed to take the database before Gould left in April. But as of June, a rumor was circulating that Randolph officials don't see the need for retaining the database and are considering keeping the resources that came with the database--several data analysts--and letting the database itself go.

Loss of the database will be a blow to basic behavioral research, says Pat Kobor, director of science policy at APA. And it will damage the military's ability to properly select personnel.

"The crisis will come when the selection system is so out of date that there are serious problems with attrition, performance, and the like," says Strickland. "What will happen then? Someone may come up with cash in enough time to do some quick fixes. But those will ignore behavioral research. They will be operational fixes, mathematical fixes, that are short-lived."

"The Air Force is going to regret this at some point, but they won't know what they're regretting because it will be so far down the road," says Strickland.Y



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