Chapter X: 
 
Project 80: The End of a Tradition
 
At Secretary Stahr's request General Decker appointed a General Staff committee under the Comptroller of the Army, Lt. Gen. David W. Traub, to study the Hoelscher Committee report and recommend what action the Army should take. The Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Logistics, Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Military Operations, and Office of the Chief of Research and Development (OCRD) were directed to prepare supporting studies with recommendations on the internal organization of the proposed logistics, training, and combat development commands.1 At the same time Secretary Stahr forwarded the report to Secretary McNamara notifying him that the Traub Committee would probably take three or four weeks to make any recommendations but that it was "better to be right than rapid." While he welcomed suggestions from Mr. Vance and would supply him with whatever information he wanted in accordance with Secretary McNamara's instructions, he firmly believed that as Secretary of the Army he should retain the initiative in Project 80 until he had submitted his recommendations.2
 
Instead Secretary McNamara seized the initiative. At the end of October he told Secretary Stahr he wanted more details on the internal organization of the new commands, especially the logistics command. The lack of clear-cut assignment of responsibility for requirements, procurement, and supply particularly bothered him.3
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For the Hoelscher Committee veterans, Project 80 soon became a series of frenzied crash actions in response to a continuing barrage of detailed questions from Secretary McNamara and Mr. Vance, such as should there be four, five, seven, or ten subordinate commands within the logistics command? How many people would be assigned the new commands and where would they come from? What major steps were required in changing over from the old to the new organization? What were the pros and cons of alternative proposals for grouping the various commodity commands and the functional supply command? Secretary McNamara also wanted detailed organization charts for each of the new commands showing where they would come from.4
 
Secretary McNamara and Mr. Vance bypassed the Traub Committee and worked directly with the harried band of Project 80 veterans under Col. Edward W. McGregor. General Illig's office in DCSLOG and the office of Lt. Col. Wilson R. Reed, Deputy Director for Plans and Management in OCRD, provided expert assistance in rushing through one organization chart after another. These Colonel McGregor personally carried from one office to another for approval and finally to Mr. Vance's office.
 
This disregard for traditional staff procedures dismayed the Army staff. The Traub Committee could not keep up with the rapidity of Secretary McNamara's requests and decisions. A disagreement between DCSLOG and OCRD over the internal organization of the logistics command proved very embarrassing when it went directly to Secretary McNamara. Under Secretary Stephen Ailes directed General Traub to "insure that everything that goes forward, to OSD from now on out in fact represents an Army position as decided by the Undersecretary or other proper authority." Finally on 28 November Mr. Ailes was able to recommend creating five subordinate commodity commands under the logistics command: missiles, munitions (including chemical, biological, and radiological material), weapons and mobility, communications and electronics, and
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general equipment (formerly Quartermaster and Engineer functions). Secretary McNamara approved this disposition without further changes.5 Similar procedures were followed in developing the internal organization of the Combat Developments Command.
 
The Traub Committee Report
 
While Secretary McNamara was principally interested in Army logistics, the Traub Committee worked on training and Army headquarters organization. These were also the major areas where the final decisions made departed substantially from the Hoelscher Committee recommendations. At the insistence of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Personnel, Lt. Gen. Russell L. Vittrup, the Traub Committee deliberately avoided the area of personnel management on the grounds that this function should be dealt with by DCSPER. The only substantive comment the Traub Committee made was that OPO begin operations by simply taking over in place the personnel management staffs of the technical services pending physical consolidation when space became available in the Pentagon. There were no organization charts or annexes on OPO's internal structure. Neither its functions nor its relations with DCSPER and the rest of the Army were clearly defined.6
 
The Traub Committee rejected the principal Hoelscher Committee recommendations on Army headquarters except for agreeing that OPO should be an additional Army staff agency. Its members were unanimous in opposing a Director of the Army Staff as unnecessary.7 They objected to the Hoelscher Committee's recommendation for splitting DCSOPS into one agency for joint planning and military operations and a separate one for training and programs. Neither the Vice Chief of Staff, General Clyde D. Eddleman, nor the Deputy Chief of Staff for
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Military Operations, Lt. Gen. Barksdale Hamlett, saw any need for a separate Deputy Chief of Staff for Plans, Programs, and Systems. Instead the committee recommended creating a new post of Director of Army Programs within the Chief of Staff's secretariat who would be responsible for co-ordinating plans, programs, and systems within the Army staff itself. It rejected the proposal for a new Chief of Administrative Services and the abolition of The Adjutant General's Office. On the other hand it accepted the Hoelscher Committee proposal to abolish the Office, Chief of Military History, assigning its functions to TAGO.
 
To reduce the number of separate agencies reporting to the Chief of Staff directly, the committee proposed to group the special staff, except for the Chief of Information, the Inspector General, and the Judge Advocate General's Office, under the existing Deputy Chiefs of Staff, including the vestigial technical and administrative services. Finally the Traub Committee ignored recommendations concerning improved management and co-ordination of the Army's plans, programs, and systems and for streamlining Army staff procedures.8
 
Concerning training, the Traub Committee, following recommendations from DCSOPS and CONARC, recommended making "individual training" a directorate within CONARC headquarters under a Deputy Commanding General for Training instead of creating a separate command. The training centers would in this case continue to remain under the several CONUS armies.9
 
In accepting the Hoelscher Committee proposals for a Combat Developments Agency which it designated as a field command, the Traub Committee recommended expanding its functions. It suggested transferring from the Army's school system those functions and personnel connected with the development of doctrine, preparation of tables of organization and equipment, and combat developments field manuals. Within the schools these functions were often assigned to individuals whose main responsibilities were for training ox teaching and who neglected combat developments as a consequence.10
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Considering the magnitude of the proposed reorganization the Traub Committee thought eighteen months would be a highly optimistic estimate for an operation involving nearly 200,000 people and nearly two hundred installations. There would be three phases: planning, activation, and adjustment. While it might take only three months to reorganize Army headquarters and the Office of Personnel Operations, it might take ten months to set up the Combat Developments Command headquarters. Another factor determining how long it would take to complete the reorganization was the location of the new commands. To avoid losing key technical service personnel, the committee thought the logistics command should be headquartered in the Washington area where the people were.11
 
The Traub Committee recommended assigning "General Staff responsibility" for planning and co-ordinating the actual reorganization to the Comptroller of the Army, General Traub. To assist him it recommended creating a special "project office" within the Office of the Comptroller to "maintain current information on the progress of the planning or execution as appropriate" of the reorganization and to serve as "the focal point for all coordination, periodic reports, and information required prior to and during the transition." Other Army staff agencies should "assist" as required.12
 
The Approval and Execution of Project 80
 
After approving the Hoelscher Committee report, as amended by the Traub Committee and himself, Secretary McNamara sought the support of General Maxwell D. Taylor, then President Kennedy's military adviser. A formal briefing for him by Mr. Hoelscher and the Department of the Army Reorganization Project Office (DARPO) staff was arranged for 22 November 1961.
 
General Taylor had earlier told members of the Hoelscher Committee personally that he considered the Army's mission was to support the fighting man and that everything should be subordinated to this goal. Mere change for its own sake was
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wrong because any organization the size of the Army required stability to function effectively. This comment represented the position of combat arms officers generally. He might organize the services along functional lines, were he starting from scratch. But, considering Army traditions and the large number of people accustomed to them and to the existing system, he questioned whether any drastic changes were really desirable such as a major overhaul of the technical services.13
 
At his Thanksgiving DARPO briefing General Taylor repeated these ideas, again emphasizing the importance and value of Army traditions for Army morale. The proposal to eliminate the technical services was not new, and he wryly wished the committee good luck in its venture.
 
While impressed with the thoroughness of the Hoelscher Committee report, he wanted further details on Army logistics under the current organization as well as the proposed future organization. Taylor also asked for more details on personnel management and training, the impact of the Combat Developments Command on the combat arms, and the effect of the reorganization on the Army's "combat readiness." Last he wanted to know the views of the technical service chiefs and other Army staff officials on Project 80 proposals. 14
 
To answer these questions a second briefing for General Taylor was scheduled for 21 December. In the meantime two formal briefings for the technical service chiefs were held on Friday, 8 December, known afterward as Black Friday among the once proud technical service headquarters, to obtain their views. Observers noted at the outset three empty chairs reserved for Secretary Stahr, General Decker, and Mr. Vance. When they did appear toward the end of the briefing they were preceded by Secretary McNamara whose presence had been unannounced. He said that while he would welcome the views of the technical service chiefs, he also felt that when the
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President made his decision, they should support it and not engage in public controversy.
 
The technical service chiefs did not present a united front. General Colglazier, a Reserve officer and civil engineer in private life, Was not a career technical service officer himself and had spent most of the previous decade dealing with DCSLOG management problems. The new Defense Supply Agency would remove the bulk of the Quartermaster Corps from the Army and as a result had created some confusion among the chiefs. Few appeared to have digested the details or to have read the several volumes of the Hoelscher Committee report. They were very concerned about those proposals which would relieve them of their responsibilities for training and for officer personnel management. They did not believe the new organizations could or would provide the kind of trained specialists the Army needed to keep up with changing technology.
 
The Chief of Ordnance, Lt. Gen. John H. Hinrichs, questioned some details of the organization, to which Secretary McNamara replied that he was interested primarily in the view of the chiefs on the broad concepts of Project 80, not the details. Maj. Gen. Webster Anderson, the Quartermaster General, complained that the new DSA had practically eliminated his agency. The Surgeon General, Lt. Gen. Leonard D. Heaton, was neutral. Maj. Gen. Ralph T. Nelson, the Chief Signal Officer, favored the reorganization, while Maj. Gen. Marshall Stubbs, the Chief Chemical Officer, violently opposed Project 80 since it proposed to eliminate his office entirely. The Chief of Engineers, Lt. Gen. Emerson C. Itchner, objected to Project 80 proposals dealing with the training functions of his office. Maj. Gen. Frank S. Besson, Jr., the Chief of Transportation, who favored the reorganization, strongly endorsed the basic management concepts advanced by the Hoelscher Committee. Those present at the briefing were not surprised later when General Besson was selected as commanding general of the Army Materiel Command and promoted rapidly to a four-star general.
 
After Secretary McNamara had left, General Hinrichs returned to the attack, accusing the Army staff of allowing itself
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Picture - GENERAL BESSON. (Photograph taken in 1972.)
GENERAL BESSON. (Photograph taken in 1972.)
 
to be stampeded by the Secretary of Defense who, he asserted, had taken over the direction of Project 80 from them.15
 
At his second briefing on 21 December General Taylor expressed greatest concern over technical service officer personnel management, reflecting the lack of precise information on the division of responsibility for this function in the Hoelscher Committee report. Like the technical service chiefs, General Taylor asked how the proposed Officer Personnel Division of OPO would improve the quality of technical service officer personnel management. Lt. Col. Lewis J. Ashley, Project 80's veteran on personnel management, said that the officer personnel branches of the technical services would be transferred intact. They would retain their separate service identities but under larger control groups "combat, combat support, support, and colonels," permitting greater flexibility in career management than had been possible under technical service control. A separate Specialist Branch would manage careers of officers assigned to the Army's nine specialist programs of which aviation and logistics were currently the largest. Technical
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service officer personnel management under OPO would be "branch-oriented, but not branch-tied." The proposed assignment of officer personnel to OPO, from all branches of the Army, would also promote greater flexibility on the career management of officers based on the interests of the Army as a whole rather than its separate branches.
 
Colonel Ashley also stressed that officers would continue to be assigned on the basis of their technical service branch and that there would continue to be technical service units identifiable as such in the field. All that really was eliminated was the "command functions" of the technical service chiefs. In the 1942 Marshall reorganization the chiefs of the combat arms had been abolished, but officers continued to be assigned as infantrymen or artillerymen to infantry and artillery units. Under the Office of Personnel Operations this concept would be extended to the technical services with the advantage that positions associated with particular services or as "branch immaterial" with no particular service could be filled by the best-qualified personnel regardless of their assigned branch.
 
Second only to officer personnel management was General Taylor's interest in testing new equipment in the field and on maneuvers. His particular concern was that, under the proposed Combat Developments Command, the "consumers" or "users," the combat arms, would not have sufficient voice in deciding the weapons and equipment they would have to use. He thought a combat arms officer should command the new Test and Evaluation Agency under the Army Materiel Command. When General Taylor was told that under Project 80 combat arms officers would serve with technical service officers on tests boards and in the environmental or field maneuver testing center and that it was intended that a combat arms officer command the Test and Evaluation Agency, he appeared satisfied.
 
Eleven other topics were discussed at this second and final briefing of General Taylor. General Traub said the proposed reorganization affected Army headquarters only and would not have any direct effect on the Army's combat formations or on their combat readiness. Mr. Vance, speaking for Secretary McNamara, outlined the alternative organizational patterns considered for Army logistics. He said the Secretary believed the
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Army took.too long to make decisions and that the technical services were a major cause for this delay. Those alternatives which left the technical services intact with only one or two major functions removed did not seem much of an improvement over existing conditions. A return to the holding company concept of ASF was rejected for similar reasons and because it would leave a number of services and functions that properly belonged at the Army staff level under a subordinate command. Alternatives which would remove more than two functions from the technical services seemed just as drastic as "functionalizing" them entirely. In the end, Mr. Vance said, it seemed "better to go all the way," although he admitted it was "radical surgery.
 
General Taylor indicated his approval of the over-all reorganization, but he also wanted a summary of the problems anticipated in dealing with Congress, the public, and within the Army itself. Mr. Vance said OSD wanted approval from the President to notify Congress of the proposed reorganization as soon as possible according to the terms of the McCormack-Curtis amendment to the Defense Reorganization Act of 1958, which allowed Congress thirty days to reject or amend the plan. But for this provision Secretary McNamara's proposals would have had to run the usual gamut of hearings and action in both houses of Congress, including the possibilities of amendment and rejection. Those opposed to the changes involved, especially the technical services, might have organized their forces successfully to scuttle the project as they had in the past.16
 
From the middle of November 1961 to the end of January 1962 Colonel McGregor and his staff prepared over Seventy-five formal briefings besides those for General Taylor and the technical service chiefs, including the White House staff and key Congressional leaders such as Chairmen Carl Vinson and Richard B. Russell of the House and Senate Armed Services Committees. They also prepared a summary, Report on the
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Reorganization of the Department of the Army, explaining the proposed plan. Known as the Green Book, this was the document through which the Army and the public at large learned of Project 80.17
 
On 10 January Secretary McNamara issued an executive order on the reorganization of the Army which abolished the statutory positions of the technical service chiefs and transferred them to the Secretary of the Army subject to Congressional approval. The same day he forwarded to the President identical letters for Congressmen Russell and Vinson explaining Project 80 and including copies of the reorganization plan. President Kennedy formally transmitted Secretary McNamara's letters to Congress on 16 January. 18
 
Careful preparation of Congressional briefings under the direction of Mr. Horwitz helped ensure favorable Congressional reaction to Project 80. Chairman Vinson's public endorsement on 5 February seemed to indicate this. "I am satisfied in my own mind," he said, "from the information I have received, that this is an important and forward moving step on the part of the Department of the Army and that its adoption will lead to more efficiency, particularly in procurement activities and in personnel planning in the Army." 19
 
Some adjustments were required. In response to protests from Michigan's congressmen and governor, Secretary McNamara personally decided not to transfer functions from Detroit's Ordnance Tank-Automotive Command to the proposed new Weapons and Mobility Command at the Rock Island Arsenal. As a consequence the Weapons and Mobility Command was separated into a Weapons Command with headquarters at Rock Island and a Mobility Command with headquarters in Detroit.20
 
No formal objections arose in Congress to Secretary Mc-
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Namara's reorganization plan and it went quietly into effect at 1115 on 17 February.21
 
Carrying out the reorganization was the responsibility of the Department of the Army Reorganization Project Office. This was another name for the Management Resources Planning (MRP) Branch of the Comptroller of the Army's Directorate of Organization and Management Systems (ODOMS) . Brig. Gen. Robert N. Tyson, the Director of ODOMS, had created this office on 10 November 1961 under Colonel McGregor as chief so that Project 80 would have a formal organization base. The formal functions of the new branch involved "broad basic research" in the fields of management and organization and long-range Army planning in these areas. Temporarily its mission was to provide administrative support for Project 80 until final decisions had been made and then to direct and supervise the resultant reorganization under General Traub. DARPO's location within the Comptroller's Office instead of the Chief of Staff's Office was to create awkward problems of co-ordination in dealing with other, coequal General Staff divisions. 22
 
From a small staff of eight people with only two clerks during the hectic days of November, the DARPO headquarters staff had expanded by March 1962 to twenty people, including six clerks and technical assistants.23 As finally organized, under a TAGO letter of 26 January 1962, the Department of the Army Reorganization Project Office operated under the direction of a Project Planning Council, consisting of General Traub as chairman and the newly appointed chairmen of the reorganization planning groups, one each for Army headquarters, Continental Army Command, Combat Developments Command, Office of Personnel Operations, and Army Materiel Command, who provided the detailed planning required to carry out Project 80. (Chart 30) In the Project Office one section, an Operations Office, was responsible for briefings, Congressional relations, and other special assignments, while a
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CHART 30
DEPARTMENT OF THE ARMY REORGANIZATION PROJECT, FEBRUARY 1962
 
CHART 30 - DEPARTMENT OF THE ARMY REORGANIZATION PROJECT, FEBRUARY 1962
 
* Member Planning Council
 
Source: DARPO files
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Plans Office, as its name implied, developed and co-ordinated the detailed planning and execution of the reorganization.
 
The Planning Council met weekly to review progress and resolve problems and conflicts that arose among its members on the basis of majority rule. Two of the planning group chairmen, General Besson and Lt. Gen. John P. Daley, were also slated to be the first commanding generals of Army Materiel Command and Combat Developments Command and thus had a vested interest in the success of the reorganization. Maj. Gen. George E. Martin, temporary chairman of the OPO Planning Group, was in ill-health and about to retire. Not until April was a commanding general of the Office of Personnel Operations selected, Maj. Gen. Stephen R. Hanmer, who then became the OPO Planning Group chairman.
 
General Traub in addition to being Comptroller of the Army and Project Director was also chairman of the Headquarters, Department of the Army, Planning Group. Consequently, Col. Frederick B. Outlaw of ODOMS, acted as chairman of the latter group most of the time. General Decker, General Eddleman, and General Traub were all to retire soon and, unlike Generals Besson and Daley, would not have to live with the consequences of their decisions. As a result the Headquarters, Department of the Army, Planning Group, lacked strong executive support in dealing with other General Staff agencies and planning groups.
 
General Traub's position as Comptroller and merely one among equals also complicated his role as Project Director because his colleagues on the General Staff refused to accept the decisions of the Planning Council, composed largely of "outsiders," where their interests were involved. General Vittrup, the Deputy Chief of Staff for Personnel, bluntly told the Chief of Staff that he would accept the Planning Council's decisions so long as CDC and AMC did not attempt to make decisions affecting the General Staff. General Decker and General Eddleman finally agreed that they personally would have to settle disagreements arising between the DARPO Planning Council and the General Staff. As a result General Eddleman
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himself had to decide finally which individuals were to be transferred from the General Staff to the new commands.24
 
Secretary McNamara played as vital a role in the execution of Project 80 as he had in its initiation. The principal reason for his later intervention was the Army's slowness in carrying out the reorganization. The final detailed planning directive, known as DARPO 10-1, did not appear until 19 March. Preliminary implementation plans, or PIPS, would not be ready until the end of April. They were then to be revised as "Activation Plans." The Army Materiel Command was scheduled to begin its operations on 19 September 1962 and assume full responsibility for the Army's logistics system in February or March 1963.
 
At the end of March 1962 Secretary McNamara told Secretary Stahr to accelerate the reorganization so that AMC would be in full operation by 1 July 1962, nine months ahead of the DARPO schedule. Secretary Stahr protested. This decision was only the latest in a series of what he considered unwarranted interferences by Secretary McNamara in the internal affairs of the Army. On 2 May he resigned and was replaced in July by Cyrus Vance, who supervised the final stages of Project 80.25  
 
The General Staff also protested that the proposed revised schedule would seriously disrupt current operations, create unnecessary turmoil among personnel, and turn the reorganization into a series of crash actions of "gargantuan proportions." Several DARPO planning group chairmen complained that the General Staff was dragging its feet and delaying decisions. At this stage neither the principal subordinate commanders of Army Materiel Command had been selected nor the sites of their headquarters. The location of AMC headquarters was also undecided.26
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Despite these problems General Besson and his staff developed a three-stage plan under which Army Materiel Command would assume responsibility for the Army's logistics system by 1 July, simply by "taking over in place" the materiel functions and elements of the technical services. This depended on the prompt assignment of two hundred key personnel for AMC headquarters and those of its subcommands to provide essential continuity of operations. The complete transfer of all personnel assigned to AMC would take another six months beyond 1 July.
 
After approval by the General Staff and Under Secretary Ailes, the Besson plan was finally approved by Secretary McNamara on 25 April. The only change made in the Besson plan timetable was to advance the date when Army Materiel Command would assume its operational responsibilities from 1 July to 1 August.27  
 
On 1 August 1962, when AMC assumed responsibility for the Army's wholesale logistics system, the Offices of the Quartermaster General, the Chief of Ordnance, and the Chief Chemical Officer disappeared. AMC took over most of the Chief of Ordnance's responsibilities. The Defense Supply Agency had already assumed most of the Quartermaster General's functions. The remainder, certain personnel support and supply services, including the care and disposition of deceased Army personnel and responsibility for the National Cemetery System, became the responsibility of the new Chief of Support Services.
 
The most difficult problem DARPO and the Planning Council had to deal with was the transfer of functions and personnel from DA headquarters to the field commands. Ultimately about 3,200 persons were transferred from the Army staff to the field, although most of them remained in the Washington area in Army Materiel Command or Combat Developments Command headquarters.
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Secretary McNamara's intervention had exacerbated the already existing antagonism between the General Staff and the DARPO Planning Councll.28 The General Staff's refusal to accept decisions by "outsiders" on the DARPO Planning Council continued to delay transferring people from Headquarters, Department of the Army, to the new field commands because, among other reasons, the demand for such personnel exceeded the supply. How to separate command and staff functions inextricably intertwined at the General Staff level, how to deal with the "hidden field spaces" in various Washington headquarters staffs, how to allocate spaces for overhead administrative support, and how to determine where to assign an individual performing functions belonging to several organizations under the new dispensation-were the specific issues which delayed action.29
 
Faced with this critical situation, the new Vice Chief of Staff, General Barksdale Hamlett, agreed that he would personally decide what people were to be transferred based on recommendations from DARPO. On 8 June he approved the personnel ceilings for the Army staff and the new commands on the basis of which DCSPER then made bulk allocations to the new commands which they could draw on as needed.30
 
There were other disagreements about transferring functions and personnel. Beginning in March, CONARC and CDC disagreed over assigning responsibility for preparing tables of organization and equipment and field manuals. CONARC insisted that transferring these functions to CDC, as the reorganization directive proposed, would disrupt the operations of its school system. The Planning Council backed by the Chief of Staff decided in favor of CDC, but dividing the functions, spaces, and personnel involved remained a problem. The basic issue was the fragmentation of these disputed functions among CONARC school personnel whose primary responsibilities were for training. In many cases, the same person was perform-
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ing both training and doctrinal functions. In the end DARPO had to send a three-man team to visit the schools, investigate the problems, and make recommendations. Lt. Gen. Charles Duff, the new Comptroller and Project 80 director, approved the recommendations of the teams on 31 August.31
 
Another dispute arose between the Office of Personnel Operations and CONARC over controlling the "Flow of Trainees through the Training Base," a battleground already worked over by the Hoelscher Committee. CONARC wished to control enlisted assignments from induction through basic training. OPO, supported by DCSPER, wished to retain TAGO's former responsibilities for induction. General Traub appointed an ad hoc task force to study the problem and make recommendations. Its solution, acceptable to both CONARC and OPO and approved by General Traub, was that OPO should exercise "staff supervision" over trainees while CONARC would exercise "operational" control over them from induction through basic training. At that point OPO would assume responsibility for future assignments.32
 
In other areas OPO lost its responsibilities for Army headquarters civilian personnel management and for military personnel support and morale services. On 22 March General Eddleman ordered Army headquarters civilian personnel management to remain where it was within the Office of the Chief of Staff. Personnel Support and Morale Services remained within TAGO.33
 
The principal Army staff deviation from the Green Book involved the Office of the Chief of Military History which the DARPO Planning Council agreed should retain its special staff status and not be transferred to TAGO where it might be submerged under records keeping. Otherwise the Army staff emerged from Project 80 relatively unscathed except for the painful transfer of personnel, spaces, and functions to the new field commands which reduced it from approximately 13,700 to 10,500 people. DARPO as such ceased operations on 30
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September 1962, and responsibility for further reorganization of the Army staff passed to the secretariat in the Chief of Staff's Office under Project 39a.34
 
Project 39a, announced by Secretary McNamara in May 1962, aimed at streamlining decision-making within the three service headquarters and reducing their personnel by 30 percent during 1963. The reduction of the Army staff under Project 80 was to count for one-half this total, or 15 percent. Mr. Horwitz was again project co-ordinator and on 11 July 1962 outlined for the three service secretaries the criteria and objectives of this review. Secretary Vance took personal responsibility for this study, acting through Brig. Gen. Arthur W. Oberbeck, Director of Coordination and Analysis, whom he designated as Project Director. He did not want the completed report submitted to the General Staff for its opinions. Instead he wanted it sent through General Wheeler, the new Chief of Staff, directly to him for approval.35
 
Army staff agencies made detailed manpower surveys of their offices to determine how the new 15 percent reduction could be achieved without any mass reduction in force by consolidating similar functional elements, eliminating overhead and duplication, and transferring some functions to the field. After reductions had been made based upon these surveys, the secretariat claimed that Army headquarters personnel had been reduced during 1963 by another 14.8 percent, a total of 38 percent-from 13,700 people before Project 80 to about 8,500.36
 
The relationship between the Army staff and the Secretary of the Army's secretariat was reviewed. Mr. Vance, to avoid developing a civilian staff which duplicated the work of the
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General Staff, undertook to confine himself and his staff to broad policy and program decisions demanding his personal attention.
 
Streamlining the Army staff's decision-making process was the subject of an Office of the Chief of Staff memorandum on 28 May 1963, which attempted to reach a compromise between the rapid decisions of Secretary McNamara and the slower traditional summary staff actions of the Army staff.37
 
One result was to establish a Staff Action Control Office within the Office of the Chief of Staff to improve co-ordination. The functions of the Director of Coordination and Analysis were also redefined to include responsibility for cost-effectiveness studies and systems analysis within the Army staff.
 
The most important organizational change by Project 39a was to resurrect at Mr. Vance's request the recommendation of the Hoelscher Committee to split DCSOPS into two agencies. DCSOPS would remain responsible for joint planning and serve as the Army's contact with the JCS and the joint staff. The Office of the Assistant Chief of Staff for Force Development, OACSFOR, created by Department of the Army General Order 6 of 7 February 1963, would be responsible not only for training and doctrine but also for force planning and programs, weapons systems, Army aviation, chemical, biological, and radiological (CBR) material, and later nuclear operations.38 A minor organizational change eliminated the Office of the Chief of Army Reserve and ROTC by merging it with the Offfce of the Chief of Reserve Components under Department of the Army General Order 7 of 13 February 1963.
 
The Offices of the Chief of Ordnance and the Quartermaster General had disappeared under Project 80. The functions of the Chief Chemical Officer, absorbed by DCSOPS under Project 80 as a separate CBR directorate, were now
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transferred to the new Office of the Assistant Chief of Staff for Force Development. Placed under the general staff supervision of DCSOPS on 1 August 1962 the Chief Signal Officer became the Chief of Communications-Electronics, still under DCSOPS, on 1 March 1964 by Department of the Army General Order 28 of 28 February 1964, and its field activities were transferred to a new major field command, the United States Army Strategic Communications Command. Department of the Army General Order 39 of 11 December 1964 redesignated the Office of the Chief of Transportation on 15 December as a Directorate of Transportation within the Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Logistics (ODCSLOG). Of the traditional technical service chiefs only the Office of the Surgeon General and the Chief of Engineers remained in 1965. The Department of the Army major command structure and the organization of Headquarters, Department of the Army, as of April 1963 are outlined in Chart 31.
 
In summary, the chief impact of Secretary McNamara's reforms on the organization and administration of the Department of the Army was the elimination of the offices of five of the chiefs of the technical services. Their command functions were taken over by the Defense Supply Agency and by the new field commands of the Army, Army Materiel Command and Combat Developments Command, their training functions by CONARC, their personnel functions by DCSPER, and their staff functions distributed among the remaining Army staff agencies.
 
While the Army staff, especially DCSLOG, lost about a third of its personnel to the new field commands, it had successfully rejected a number of changes proposed by the Hoelscher Committee, particularly in the area of personnel management. DCSPER remained heavily involved in personnel operations, while TAGO continued to combine administrative and personnel functions.
 
Instead of creating a new three-star position of Director of the Army Staff as recommended by the Hoelscher Committee, the role and functions of the Secretary of the General Staff under the Vice Chief as a super co-ordinating staff were expanded.
 
While the McNamara reforms, and Project 80 in particular,
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CHART 31
ORGANIZATION OF THE DEPARTMENT OF THE ARMY, APRIL 1963
 
CHART 31 - ORGANIZATION OF THE DEPARTMENT OF THE ARMY, APRIL 1963
 
1 The General Council also Serves as Assistant to the Secretary of the Army for Civil Functions.
2 The Chief of Public Information also serves as Chief of Information.
 
Source: AR 10-5, Change 2, 19 Apr 63.
 
appeared on the surface to be radical surgery, they were in fact part of a continuing evolutionary process dating back to the Marshall reorganization of 1942. Reformers within and outside the Army had struggled for over twenty years to rationalize the Army staff along recognizably functional lines. Traditionalists, represented by the chiefs of the technical services, countered by conducting a series of rearguard actions aimed at preserving their dual status as both staff and command agencies.
 
At the same time the Department of the Army was growing larger and its operations more complex and diverse. Reformers sought a means of establishing more effective executive control over these expanding activities along lines similar to those developed by DuPont and General Motors in the 1920s. One means was to functionalize the archaic structure of Army and Defense Department appropriations and later to reorganize them on the basis of military missions performed. Another and parallel effort was to establish such controls through a top-level staff above the Army staff which would co-ordinate and integrate military budgets with military plans. Project 80 and Project 89a were part of this evolutionary process which, judging on the basis of past performance, was likely to continue indefinitely into the future.
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Endnotes

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