IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - September 2019 - 58

Qualitative case study research can
empirically demonstrate the links
between research, innovation,
and the public good.
Hindsight examined 20 different weapons systems
that had undergone an evolutionary upgrade in the
20 years after World War II (see Table 1). An evolutionary upgrade entails an incremental change from a previously existing system, like the upgrade from the
Minuteman 1 missile to the Minuteman 2 missile. Different teams of experts - engineers and scientists -
examined each system. These examinations will be
discussed later in the methodology section. These
teams identified scientific and technological applications

TABLE 1. List of Weapons Systems Evolutions Examined
in Hindsight (adapted from the final report [6]).
Designation

Type of Weapon System

HOUND DOG

Air-to-Surface Missile

BULLPUP

Air-to-Surface Missile

POLARIS A-1

Submarine-Launched Ballistic Missile

MINUTEMAN I

Intercontinental Ballistic Missile

MINUTEMAN II

Intercontinental Ballistic Missile

SERGEANT

Tactical Ballistic Missile

LANCE

Tactical Ballistic Missile

Mark 46 Mod 0

Antisubmarine Torpedo

Mark 46 Mod 1

Antisubmarine Torpedo

M-102

105 mm Howitzer

FADAC

Field Artillery Data Computer

AN/SPS-48

Surveillance and Acquisition Radar

Mark 56

Sea Mine

Mark 57

Sea Mine

Starlight Scope

Passive Night Vision Device

C-141A

Strategic Transport Aircraft

Navigation Satellite

Low-Earth-Orbit Satellite

M-61*

Nuclear Warhead, General-Purpose Bomb

M-63*

Nuclear Warhead, Missile

XM-409

152 mm HEAT-MP Cartridge, Ammunition
for SHILLELACH Antitank System

Hindsight Note: "*Data on these two systems were insufficient to warrant
their inclusion in all analyses."

that were new to the upgraded weapon system. For
each new application, the teams traced the development to prior "critical points called "research or
exploratory development (R XD) Events" [6]. They
defined these RXD Events as "the occurrence of a
novel idea and subsequent engineering application."
The teams classified each event as science, technology, or engineering. Note that RXD is not the same as
Research and Development (R&D) which is a common
science policy acronym.
The Hindsight report also explored the sources of
innovation - whether innovations in military technologies arose from DOD funded projects or from projects
in industry and academia. The report claims that in the
17 years between 1946 and 1963 the DOD spent about
$10 billion (real year dollars) on science and technology
while private industry and the rest of the government
spent $6 billion [6, p. iv]. If all research had an equally
likely chance of influencing weapons systems development, the authors assumed, then roughly 40% of those
influences should come from non-DOD projects, reflecting the total investment made at the time.
The timeline of Hindsight implies how the ongoing
political controversy may have changed the content
between the 1966 and 1969 Hindsight repor t s. 3
Table 2 gives a sense of this controversy. In 1966, the
DOD shared the first preview of the Hindsight work
with other agencies, science policy practitioners, and
journalists. This preview created significant controversy,
as can be surmised by reading journalist Daniel Greenberg's write-up of the initial news report in 1966 for Science [9].4 After the initial response, the DOD released
the better known preview of the report in 1967 and
Chalmers and Isenson summarized it in a paper for the
journal Science. (As of 2019, their paper had been cited
over 260 times according to Google Scholar, while a
criticism of Hindsight by Mowery and Rosenberg [3] had
over 1600 citations.) The 1966 preview report includes
much more detail about the research methods of Project Hindsight than does the 1967 paper in Science.
Because the 1967 paper and the 1969 report emerged
after the political controversy, we will assume that the
description of methods and concepts in the 1966 writeup
3
See Kreilkamp for description of how the methods change. Greenberg
notes changes in the conclusions: "When the report, prior to release, was
making the rounds of federal agencies, NSF and the Office of Science and
Technology - the main bastions of basic research proponents in the federal hierarchy - expressed some concern about the return ascribed to the
Defense Department's investment in basic research. That particular section
was subsequently rewritten. In the original version, it opened with "we conclude, in the systems which we studied, the contributions from recent undirected research in science was very small." The final version was amended
to state that "the contributions from recent [post-1945] research in science
were greatest when the effort was oriented" [9, p. 873].
4
Greenberg wrote: "in terms of providing a rationale for the Defense
Department's huge financial support of undirected basic research, Hindsight has little to offer" [9, p. 872].

IEEE TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY MAGAZINE

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SEPTEMBER 2019

IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - September 2019

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