Word: enthoven
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...said Dr. Alain C. Enthoven, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Systems Analysis, in a lecture this month to the Naval War College at Newport, R.I. Enthoven (rhymes with went rov-in') was certainly right about one thing: when he starts submitting defense policy to his dispassionate, cold analysis, generals explode and admirals shiver their timbers. For of all Defense Secretary Robert McNamara's famed Pentagon whiz kids, Enthoven, at 32, is by far the whizziest...
...Shopping List. What is a whiz kid? Well, by definition he is young and bright. The tools of his Pentagon trade are a piece of chalk, a blackboard on which to slash equations, and a computing machine. Dispassionate, cold analysis is his business, and Systems Analyst Enthoven has no peer. His analysis of the workings of the Pentagon goes as follows: "I think it can best be described as a continuing dialogue between the policymaker and the systems analyst, in which the policymaker [McNamara] asks for alternative solutions to his problems, while the analyst attempts to clarify the conceptual framework...
...somewhat simpler terms, what Enthoven really does is prepare McNamara's shopping list. He welcomes, indeed he solicits, recommendations about weapons systems from professional military men. But as often as not, those recommendations do not stand up under his own independent analysis; in whiz-kid terminology, professional military "experience" often translates as "emotion." In his analyses, Enthoven considers service missions, examines the weapons systems that might best fit those missions, computes costs v. performance, offers alternative answers to McNamara for final decision...
Cost is of prime consideration when Enthoven strikes items from the Pentagon shopping list. On his recommendation, the Skybolt missile was killed for a gross saving of $3 billion. However, to replace the missing Skybolts, the U.S. is spending an additional $1 billion for supplementary Minutemen, so the net saving is $2 billion. Enthoven's recommendations knocked off an estimated $10 billion with the B-70, but his 26-man "shop" did not participate in the controversial TFX decision...
...positive side, Enthoven influenced the expansion of the Air Force's Tactical Air Command. At present, Enthoven is examining the Navy's carrier program to see if all those flattops are really necessary...