represent a significant percentage of the Soviet military RDT&E budget. Furthermore, many of them have an apparent or possible relationship to vital mission areas of our own forces. Some of the enigmas appear to be related to strategic missiles; others may be oriented toward new approaches to ballistic missile defense, and some may be directed against our fleet ballistic missile submarines. Still others seem to represent possible threats to our general purpose forces.

"We do not know whether these enigmas represent departures from the basic Soviet development policy of technological conservatism or whether Soviets are simply attempting to cover all possible technological bets, including options that are inconceivable to us. We have seen them undertake sizeable programs in the past, and abandon the projects after having made a substantial investment. However, they have also surprised us in the past, although not in ways that immediately jeopardized our defense posture.

"We can and I believe we should avoid technological surprise, through three actions:

Continue our program of detection, monitoring, and assessment of the se enigmas and how they fit into the technological balance which we understand relatively well and where we clearly have the initiative.

Maintain a vigorous and focused R&D effort to
generate technological options in areas where our
vulnerability may be uncertain, and where the
potential risk of surprise is great.

Maintain a persistent and coherent program of RDT&E exploiting the technological areas where we are strong, so as to retain the overall technological initiative.

One of these is

"With regard to the last point, there are - in pricniple two ways we can hold on to our technological leads. to try to deny the Soviets access to our technology, by controlling its export, for example. We certainly should do our best to delay the transfer of basic technology to the Soviets, but delay is the best we can hope to achieve. In some areas, such attempts may be futile if other nations are developing similar technologies. The delay tactic is best suited to areas where we have a practically unique lead.

"The other way to protect our technological lead is to continue to advance and exploit our technological base. In so doing, we can show the Soviets that they will never catch up, that the military balance will be maintained because the technological balance will always be in our favor. We have many opportunities for pursuing this positive approach. For example:

We can continue to extend the military utility of our precision guided munitions, employing existing and new technologies to achieve all-weather, day or night attack capabilities against heavily defended targets, and we can transfer this capability to our strategic forces.

We can exploit our lead in micro-computer and minicomputer technology to realize distributed commandand-control systems, which will improve the timeliness and precision of execution of command decisions, and reduce the vulnerability of the command system to enemy attack.

We can continue to advance our leads in space technology to give us more effective navigation and communication systems for the strategic and general purpose forces.

"We have long passed the point where we can exploit every technological opportunity that presents itself, but by careful selection of those opportunities that really make a difference, I believe that we can keep the technological balance tipped in our favor - and thereby maintain the military balance as a deterrent to aggression at a cost we can afford.

Reading List

1. Bagby, Frederick L. "A Unified View of the R & D Economy." Astronautics and Aeronautics, January 1974, pp. 32-39.

2. Battelle Memorial Institute.

Focus on R & D in the Seventies:

A Report. Columbus, Ohio: Battelle Memorial Institute, 1970.

3. Dickson, Paul. Think Tanks. New York: Atheneum, 1971.

4. Laszlo, Ervin. The Systems View of the World. New York: Braziller, 1972.

5.

6.

Orlans, Harold. The Non-Profit Research Institute. New York:
McGraw-Hill, 1972.

Perry, Robert. Prototype Strategy for Aircraft Development.
Santa Monica, Calif.: Rand, 1972.

7. Rosenberg, Nathan. The Economics of Technological Change. Harmondsworth, England: Penguin, 1971.

8. U.S. Department of the Army. Army Research and Development. Washington, D. C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1973.

9. U.S. Department of Defense, Office of the Director of Defense Research and Engineering. Research and Development in the Department of Defense. Washington, D. C.: U.S.

Government Printing Office, 1971.

10. U. S. Department of Defense, Office of the Director of Defense Research and Engineering. Program of Research,

Development, Test and Evaluation, FY 1976. Statement to 94th Congress, First Session, 1975.

ROLE OF THE U.S. FOREIGN SERVICE

The following information is extracted from a booklet published by the Department of State entitled, "Career Fields in the Foreign Service of the United States":

"This leaflet briefly describes the five basic kinds of work in which officers specialize in the Foreign Service. The Foreign Service of the United States includes both Foreign Service officers (FSOS) employed by the Department of State and Foreign Service Information officers (FSIOs) employed by the United States Information Agency (USIA). Candidates for the Service must indicate at the time of application whether they wish appointment as FSOS or FSIOS. Indivuduals considering employment as FSIOS are advised that the number of appointments have been curtailed in recent years; consequently, competition for these positions is unusually rigorous.

"On entering the Service FSOS and FSIOS receive several weeks of basic orientation at the Department of State's Foreign Service Institute. Subsequently training prior to the officer's first overseas assignment may involve area studies, language training and functional training (in consular or administrative affairs, etc.). In later years, officers may receive specialized training at the Institute, at universities, and subsequently at the War Colleges or the Department's Senior Seminar in Foreign Policy.

"Department of State

"The Department of State is responsible for conducting relations with foreign nations and international organizations; for protecting and advancing political, economic/commercial and other interests of the United States overseas, and for rendering a variety of services to individual Americans abroad and foreigners travelling to the United States. Much of this work is carried out by FSOS who, when abroad, serve as diplomatic and consular officers and who, when in Washington, fill most of the more responsible positions in the Department aside from those requiring technical or professional training, such as lawyers, electronic technicians, security officers, etc.