Beginning of Military Cost Analysis 1950–1961

Abstract

Abstract : At the time the RAND Corporation formed, just after World War II, the traditional way of looking at military procurement was in terms of a piece of hardware like an airplane, and making decisions on the promise of lighter, higher, faster, further, or more payload. RAND started its work using these same criteria. Fairly early in the game, however, it seemed to some RAND researchers that other things were involved. For example, real estate, people, supply and maintenance were required. It wasn't just delivering the bomb--it was what the bomb did to the economic, social and political structure of the country in which it was delivered. There was the cost of producing the delivery vehicle and the bomb, and their impact on the U.S. economy and society, or those of its allies. These were important, too. As a consequence, by 1948, the concept of what we now call Weapon Systems Analysis had been formulated. In this, RAND tried to bring together the political, economic and social, as well as the technical and military considerations. It was not easy to find one way or one unit for expressing this heterogeneous set of criteria and parameters. Keywords: Cost models, Program budgeting, PPBS(Planning Programming Budgeting System).