The Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR) was established in October 1951 to manage the Air Force’s basic research portfolio.1 AFOSR is one of nine directorates of the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) and manages the $450.1 million U.S. Air Force basic research budget.2 All but about $114.8 million of this budget is awarded as research grants to universities.3 The remaining funds are directed towards overhead and funding provided to government offices, including the technical directorates at AFRL. In addition to stimulating research discoveries, these funds directly and indirectly support science, technology, engineering, and mathematics graduate education and strengthen ties between the Air Force and academia.
In 2014, the Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Science, Technology, and Engineering and the director of AFOSR requested that the Air Force Studies Board of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine undertake two 2-day workshops to (1) explore the unique drivers associated with management of a 6.1 basic research portfolio in the Department of Defense (DoD) and establish the current AFOSR baseline business practices across all its functional offices; (2) review Army, Navy, and Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) practices for management of basic research that could be benchmarked by AFOSR for incorporation to enhance its own practices; and (3) facilitate a discussion with AFOSR stakeholders (Air Force, OSD, the Office of Science and Technology Policy, and Congress) as to current and future practices that may further the effective and efficient management of 6.1 basic research on behalf of the Air Force. At the time the workshop was requested, there were discussions within and without the Air Force to relocate AFOSR headquarters from the Washington, D.C., area to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio. The issue has since been resolved to keep AFOSR in Washington, D.C. Thus, the topic was not relevant to the scope of the workshop.
Across the two workshop sessions, several common messages appeared to resonate with multiple participants stemming from various presentations and resulting dialog among the participants. These common messages fall under the categories of “AFOSR’s Mission;” AFOSR’s Mission Leadership;” “AFOSR’s Mission Force;” “AFOSR’s Mission Support;” and “Transitioning Mission Success” and are summarized below. Chapter 2 of this report provides additional discussion for each topic. Finally, the report summarizes the views expressed by individual workshop
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1 Air Force Office of Scientific Research, Air Force Office of Scientific Research 1951-Present: Turning Scientific Discovery Into Air Force Opportunity, http://www.wpafb.af.mil/library/factsheets/factsheet.asp?id=8976, accessed November 21, 2014.
2 Mark Amundson, Air Force Office of Scientific Research, personal communication to Carter Ford on June 18, 2015. Note: The figures reflect Fiscal Year 2014.
3 Ibid.
participants. While the committee is responsible for the overall quality and accuracy of the report as a record of what transpired at the workshops, the views contained in this section and in the rest of the report are not necessarily those of all workshop participants, the committee, or the Academies.
1. AFOSR’s Mission. Several participants in both workshop sessions noted that AFOSR is a unique organization that fulfills a mission important to national security—connecting the basic research community to near- and far-term national security needs. Moreover, many of these participants highlighted that AFOSR helps to support growth in depth and breadth of the best and brightest, who develop from individual investigators to leaders of their fields, while at the same time maintaining strong ties between the future leaders and the Air Force. It was noted by some workshop participants that AFOSR international offices are especially critical to building ties with leading researchers throughout the world, obtaining current knowledge about foreign scientific advances, and building international good will. Colocation of AFOSR with the Office of Naval Research, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the National Science Foundation, the Department of Energy’s Office of Science, the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering, and other federal funding agencies in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area is highly beneficial, some participants stated.
2. AFOSR’s Mission Leadership. Past and current directors of AFOSR commented at both workshop sessions on the essential need for stable, qualified, committed leadership at the top of AFOSR for effective mission performance. These leaders stressed that the AFOSR director and other senior leaders should be expected to occupy their positions for at least 4 years. In comparison with basic research organizations in other Services, AFOSR has a disproportionately small number of Senior Executive Service (SES) positions and other senior civilian positions for its budget. As noted by the past AFOSR directors, some AFOSR support organizations are not responsible to the AFOSR director, and this reduces the ability of the organization to accomplish its mission. Many of these directors noted that DoD treats basic research funds as though they were 1-year funds rather than 2-year funds, which, they argue, is inappropriate for basic research and harmful to AFOSR performance. Budget instability also is an issue.
3. AFOSR’s Mission Force. As epitomized in the first workshop session, the mission execution force for the work of the AFSOR is its cadre of program officers. Multiple workshop participants noted that the efficiency and effectiveness of AFSOR in fulfilling its mission rests on the effectiveness and efficiency of this mission execution team. In that context, these workshop participants stated that the highest-quality program officers—with high levels of domain technical competence and the leadership and management experience to lead basic research—are essential to the success of AFOSR. Unfortunately, AFOSR is understaffed from its optimum level of program officers by about 25 percent, and important research efforts are being reduced due to vacancies. Multiple speakers at both workshop sessions cited the importance of recruiting and retaining the right number of well-qualified program officers, including through the Intergovernmental Personnel Act.
4. AFOSR’s Mission Support. Many participants at both workshop sessions stated that practices and processes that facilitate and support discovering and leveraging the best basic research wherever it occurs are essential. Others stated that establishing sustained relationships that produce relevant proposals, funded grants, and other interactions with the best and brightest researchers in the national security arena are also essential. However, some participants asserted that limitations on professional conference and workshop attendance, and on access to journals and big data resources, inhibit AFOSR researchers from keeping pace with scientific and engineering advances, both foreign and domestic. Excellent electronic workflow and other internal information technology business processes have only partly offset the loss of assistant program officers and other support personnel. Program officers at the first workshop session repeatedly raised the issue of time spent doing activities that could be performed by support personnel is time lost from performing the mission.
5. Transitioning Mission Success. Technology transition from AFOSR relies primarily on personal relationships established by program officers. Although many participants noted that this ad hoc procedure often is effective, they also argued that orderly processes for transitioning basic research discoveries to other parts of the Air Force should be established and institutionalized. Additionally, multiple participants believed that AFOSR should document better the many important science and engineering advances it has sponsored.
ORGANIZATION OF THE REPORT
Chapter 1 provides the context for the workshop. Chapter 2 provides workshop participant observations grouped under the following headings: AFOSR’s Mission; AFOSR’s Mission Leadership; AFOSR’s Mission Force; AFOSR’s Mission Support; and Transitioning Mission Success. Chapter 2 concludes with thoughts provided by General Larry Welch (USAF, Ret.), a former chief of staff of the U.S. Air Force. Chapter 3 then provides synopses of the two workshop sessions.
