Defense Conversion

As an alternative to either supporting an overweight dinosaur defense industry or else letting it go extinct on its own merits, advocates integrating US industries into a civil/military structure that is both militarily and commercially viable. Gansler, former deputy assistant secretary of defense and director of an applied information technology company, says the US government should help defense companies diversify just enough to continue providing military products without depending solely on that market. Annotation copyright Book News, Inc. Portland, Or.

Gansler knows his way around the "military-industrial complex." A senior executive of an applied information technology company and a visiting scholar at the Kennedy School of Government, he has held civilian Pentagon posts, served on government advisory boards, worked for ITT, Singer, and Raytheon, and authored The Defense Industry (1980) and Affording Defense (1989). Gansler sees a "dramatic transformation of the nation's industry into a largely integrated [civil/military] structure" as vital if the U.S. is to maintain its military strength--including technological superiority and a strong industrial base--with a greatly reduced budget. Drawing lessons from past conversions, addressing economic and political as well as military concerns, Gansler analyzes "the best structure for the twenty-first century" and identifies barriers to industrial integration. The transformation strategy Gansler proposes demands a shift in government rules and incentives to encourage dual-use restructuring of defense-reliant businesses, as well as major government investments in technological research and development, improving U.S. workers' skills, and public infrastructure. The alternative to integration, Gansler insists, is "a small, highly subsidized, inefficient, ineffective, noncompetitive, and technologically obsolete defense industrial base." A thoughtful view of conversion from inside the defense establishment. Mary Carroll