outbreak of hostilities and would make its own contribution to our over-all deterrent posture.

We have successfully deterred war with the Soviet empire by convincing its leaders that we shall not hesitate to employ all nuclear weapons at our disposal if such employment is necessary to prevent the enslavement of the free world. I believe we can prevent future limited aggression by the Soviets or their satellites if they become equally convinced that we can and will employ nuclear firepower from the outset.

Headquarters United States Air Forces in Europe

Basic Research

for National Survival

BRIGADIER GENERAL BENJAMIN G. HOLZMAN

ASIC research is the "Cinderella" of military and industrial technology.

B Until recently an ill-fed, ill-housed stepchild, basic research is now enjoy

ing its greatest popularity in American history. The date on which this transition began is 4 October 1957, when Sputnik I joined our natural moon in orbit around the earth.

Today basic scientific research is recognized in Congress, optimized in the Executive agencies, and eulogized in the press. Unfortunately it is still almost as widely misunderstood as it was before and not much better supported.

A large part of the misunderstanding arises from the myriad definitions. Basic research has almost as many definitions as definers. We in the Air Force Office of Scientific Research have resolved this difficulty by ignoring all definitions except that contained in the Department of Defense "Policy on Basic Research." This defines it as "that type of research which is directed toward increase of knowledge."

I speak of AFOSR and not of the entire Air Force Research Division because my topic is basic research. AFOSR is the Air Force agency with primary concern for basic research conducted outside Air Force laboratories and facilities. There are valuable contributions to basic research from other Air Force agencies and from other departments of the Government. But the primary interest of these other Air Force agencies is in something else. Basic research discoveries are apt to be almost incidental bonuses in the developmental or applied research directed toward specific applications. Because of my subject, I am also leaving out the other components of the Air Force Research Division, whose research programs are largely "in house." Thus, I speak only of the AFOSR programs, since they are at the heart of the Air Force's basic research endeavor.

If a research proposal has a potential payoff for the Air Force and arouses no interest anywhere else, we will support it to the extent that we are able. In many cases the decision as to whether a given project is basic or applied research is an arbitrary one, on which two equally eminent scientists might disagree diametrically. Our attitude is not to worry about a line which is so indistinct. This attitude has resulted in substantial dividends to the Air Force in AFOSR'S brief existence.

The origin of AFOSR was reported in the Winter 1953-54 edition of Air University Quarterly Review by its first commander, Dr. Oliver G. Haywood, Jr., then Colonel, USAF. At that time it was an integral part of Headquarters

Air Research and Development Command. It was elevated to center status on 8 August 1955 and opened its own headquarters in Washington, D. C., on 1 July 1956. Between that date and October 1957, despite innumerable evidences of its value, afosr led a precarious existence and often was rescued from extinction only by the efforts of my predecessor, Brigadier General Hollingsworth F. Gregory (now retired), and the faith of Generals Thomas S. Power and Samuel E. Anderson, as successive commanders of ARDC.

Now, thanks to the interest generated by recent space probes by both American and Soviet scientists, and thanks also to the dynamic philosophy of ARDC's present commander, Lieutenant General Bernard A. Schriever, afosr has become the nucleus of an expanded Air Force Research Division, one of the four major operating divisions of ardc.

It is not my purpose to dwell on AFOSR's philosophy or operating technique, both of which are roughly similar to that outlined in Dr. Haywood's article. Rather I should like to review AFOSR's contributions to the Air Force to date and the trends in basic research as we see them.

One of the hard truths we must live with is that tangible results from basic research seldom become visible very quickly. The atomic bomb is credited with saving untold days of war, many thousands of lives, and millions of dollars. It was made possible only by the basic research on the atom performed decades earlier by scientists who had no conception of, or interest in, its war potential; and the total cost of all the basic research would hardly have come to one per cent of the cost of the Manhattan Project.

Many of the projects we are supporting today will uncover knowledge of natural laws whose full value may not be known until 5, 10, or 20 years from now, but which may then spell the difference between life and death for our Nation. I feel strongly that the Air Force, in its aerospace operations, is bound to benefit from the results of any investigation conducted by competent scientists into any unknown area of any field of science and that the only wasted research is that which is not properly supported.

Fortunately some AFOSR-Supported projects have already produced important results and others have reached the point where important contributions

to our military strength are clearly discernible. The best way to give the broad picture is to describe briefly the work of the individual directorates and divisions that supervise AFOSR's research operations and to select a few of their actual and potential payoffs to date.

solid-state sciences

AFOSR recognized very early that the most fruitful investigation in metallurgy, ceramics, semiconductivity, and magnetism would require cooperative contributions from each of these areas, rather than separate efforts. From this realization was born the concept of a new solid-state sciences discipline over seven years ago. Today the acceptance of this as a new integration of the research effort is everywhere evident. Universities and other research administrators have followed our lead in encouraging experts in physics, chemistry, metallurgy, ceramics, electronics, and high polymers to view their research on the solid state of matter as part of a unified scientific problem area. Investigation is profiting in a way which might have been impeded by the previous departmentalization, and the striking achievements of our solid-state sciences team validate AFOSR's novel departure from tradition. This in itself can now be listed as a major Air Force contribution to science.

The Solid State Sciences Directorate has, from its inception, had two major objectives: (1) to clarify existing fundamental knowledge on which many present applications rest, and (2) to explore unusual phenomena which may result in significantly new ideas with respect to metals, alloys, ceramics, all the electronic materials (e.g., semiconductors, ferrites, ferroelectrics, magnetic materials, and dielectrics), phenomena occurring on the surface of solids and especially on interfaces (the points at which different materials come together), and low- and high-temperature properties of solids. The implications to the Air Force of any new discovery in these areas are obvious.

The discoveries of scientists supported by AFOSR in this area include:

• Field electron-emission and field ion-emission microscopy which first enabled scientists to "see"-and actually photograph-individual atoms and to study their important role in the ultrastructure of solid materials.

High-purity indium antimonide crystals, which possess greatly enhanced sensitivity as an infrared photodetector.

Recently the statement has been often made that air weapons must be constantly rethought and replanned to achieve breakthroughs in performance and reliability rather than the incremental improvement to be gained from piecemeal redesign of components. Perhaps even more than the developmental engineer, the researcher in basic science can provide the new, fundamental knowledge of natural processes from which such breakthroughs often proceed. Brigadier General Benjamin G. Holzman, Commander of the Air Force Research Division, ARDC, shows how the Air Force is pioneering in such research with contracts let to civilian universities, research laboratories, and individual scientists that enable them to probe the unknown and the poorly understood. Out of basic research on the beetle's eyes, for example, comes a new, sensitive groundspeed indicator for century-series aircraft.

MASER (microwave amplification by simulated emission of radiation) action in synthetic ruby and other solid-state crystals, which may greatly simplify long-distance microwave and infrared communication.

• Synthetic, room-temperature, ferroelectric crystals (lithium trihydrogen diselenite), which offer a new class of solids for converting electrical energy into mechanical energy and vice versa.

• Methods of controlling the purity and surface conditions of normally brittle, refractory crystals so that they become ductile and may be bent and twisted at room temperatures. This may lead to an important new class of materials for high-temperature applications in future Air Force weapon systems.

• Electron-microscopical and precision X-ray-scattering techniques that can depict the role of atomic dislocations and the migration of dislocations in crystals in various phenomena in structural metals and alloys.

• High-vacuum instrumentation for precise measurements of metals over a wide range of low and high temperatures under controlled atmospheric conditions, which has made possible the study of many metals of special interest to the Air Force (e.g., titanium, zirconium, hafnium, thorium, uranium, and the rare earths). Such study has been hampered in the past by the ready contamination of these substances by oxygen and nitrogen.

At the present time our solid-state scientists are emphasizing:

1. Crystal growth. Most solids are found, under microscopic examination, to consist of crystalline units. The study of how these crystals grow should lead to the achievement of a facility for producing materials with unusual mechan