ee
likewise necessary for SFO to accelerate delivery to the Military of seven different types of
training weapons with supporting test and handling equipment.
As the quantities of War Reserve and training weapons increased, the need for com-

plete weapons catalogs became more apparent, and at the same time the Military pressed

for the direct delivery by the AEC of training weapons and materials to military depots.

A requirement for adaption kits to support various missile programs was added.

From these examples, it may be seen that every increase in any phase of the weapons

programs has an accompanying impact upon some other phase of weapon production opera-

tions.

:

11.

THE NATURE OF LASL DEVELOPMENT OPERATIONS

The development of atomic weapons of all types involves a composite effort including:
primary experimental research, theoretical investigations and calculations, component

development experimentation, and full-scale nuclear detonations.

It is essentially impossible to apportion credit for progress among primary research,
theoretical investigation, component experimentation, and full-scale detonations. Each
serves a separate function. If the available effort is divided judiciously among them, results from all are combined for maximum progress. Developmental progress does not
depend upon these four activities being related as the links in a chain at any given time.
If any one were to be discontinued no large decrease in the rate of progress would be noticeable immediately. As the interval of no work in one activity increased, it is certain that
the rate of progress would fall very rapidly, not to three-quarters of the previous value but

probably to a virtually insignificant level.

To those immersed in technical development, the law of supply and demand, as applied to pertinent technical information, is a very strong factor governing distribution of
effort among the major activities. Progress in some fields gets ahead of that in others.
A demand for information from those lagging behind then builds up to the point where it

becomes obvious that a shift of effort, with the corresponding increase or decrease in dol-

lar expenditure, is both economically sound and technically advantageous. These forces
keep the activities of a laboratory such as LASL in reasonable balance, the function of
management being primarily to sense small imbalances and continuously to adjust effort
so as to maintain a steady progress in all necessary lines simultaneously.

It is most difficult for one without an intimate and detailed understanding of the part
each of these activities plays and the relative efforts being expended on each to judge

whether a given one is receiving too much ortoo little attention at a given time.

The best

way of judging if the distribution of effort is good is to examine the over-all progress and,

if it is satisfactory over an appreciable period, so must have been the distribution of ef-

fort.

ALGQ

In the more distant past, full-scale testing was not well-balanced with other activities. The need for test information at the time of Trinity was so urgent and so obvious
that a large fraction of the national stockpile of fissionable material was used up during a
hot war in which it might have been put to direct military use. The Crossroads tests were
essentially valueless to weapon development and the growing demandfor test-type informa-

tion again became determining in 1947 leading to Sandstone.
66

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