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1975 Tongue In Cheek Article Reprinted
The following was written and circulated by Colonel Bowman in 1975,
when he was Deputy Director of Ballistic Systems for ABRES, the agency responsible for designing reentry vehicles for all the military services. It is a biting commentary on the workings of the military-industrial complex.
To: President of U.S. (thru intermediate offices)
From: SAMSO/RSTA (Lt Col Bowman)
Subject: Randomly Acronymed Program Elements (RAPE)
1. Government agencies at all levels have been increasingly burdened by time-consuming, wasteful, and often agonizing restructuring of activities resulting from our archaic Planning, Programming, and Budgeting System. This paper proposes a new and radically different system which will instantly eliminate all these evils.
2. Our present system is premised on the fallacy that government programs result from a threat or need imposed externally. Billions of dollars are spent unnecessarily attempting to identify these threats. Everyone knows that government programs really originate at the working level, are self-perpetuating, and (under our old system) force the creation of a threat to justify their continuance and growth. In spite of the best efforts of a myriad of clandestine agencies, there is never enough threat to go around. Responsibility ultimately devolves upon Congress to sift through a bewildering array of ongoing and proposed programs whose proponents must spend so much time and effort justifying their activities and competing for their piece of the threat that little time is left to accomplish anything. The annual budget rejustification exercise has become so complex that Congress has had to invent a fifteen-month year in an attempt to complete allocation of funds before they are all spent. This artifice is pre-ordained to failure. At the present rate, by 1980 Congress will spend all its time each year arguing over what should have been spent two years earlier. Government agencies will build facilities, recruit manpower, and contract with industry on projects which may be completed before Congress decides they were cancelled before they started. This will play havoc with the personnel system. Program managers will find that they have spent most of their careers on projects which never existed.
3. All of these evils arise because we do things backwards. Programs are created, acronyms are created, a threat is created, and finally Congressional approval and funding is obtained. Everything can be solved by reversing the process and eliminating the need for a threat.
4. Under the new system, Congressional approval would come first. Based on the real priorities of unemployment level in each area, influence of local congressmen and senators, economic health of contractors in related industries, and public opinion, each governmental agency would be granted a slice of the budget (appropriately unbalanced to result in the desired rate of inflation). Since at this stage there are no programs to defend or attack, this process should be simple enough for Congress to complete before the start of the year affected.
5. Knowing its budget for the following year, each agency will have a good idea how many programs it can afford. The next step is to select four-letter acronyms for these programs. This must be done purely by random. It can be accomplished with darts, an alphabetical roulette wheel, or any other random means. If a pronounceable acronym is desired, such can be computer-generated by proper programming. Alternatively, a random number generator can be used to select page, column, and word numbers in an unabridged dictionary, the acronym to be the first four-letter word following the selected point. Each selected acronym is assigned to an office with its proportionate share of the agency’s manpower and budget. Note that all inter-agency haggling is eliminated, since all share equally in agency resources — all having the same priority (zero).
6. Finally, the program itself is created. This is best accomplished by each agency or sub-agency having a pre-approved (by itself) Yearly Random Acronym Selector (YRAS). This consists of four alphabetically arranged word lists (AAWL) reflecting the character of the agency. Attachment 1, for example, is a recommended YRAS for ABRES. Note that it can turn any one of the 456,976 possible four-letter acronyms into an ABRES program.
7. One of the hallmarks of the new system would be stability. A program, once created, would last five years — no more, no less. After the phase-in period, each agency would have 20% of its programs being completed each year. Any cuts which Congress desired to make in that agency’s budget would have to be within that 20%, reducing the number of new starts in the following year. Programs would never be cut, terminated early, renewed, extended, or expanded. That’s stability! Knowledge gained in non-hardware-oriented programs will be used to update the YRAS to reflect new technologies.
8. Think what this system will do for management. Without budget and program worries and decisions, managers can spend all their time on people problems, technical decisions, and golf. And the jobs of about 90% of our government bureaucracy can be eliminated when the incumbents retire.
9. The Foreign Technology Division, CIA, DIA, etc. can all be eliminated or put to constructive use, since they won’t be needed to generate a threat. Staffs in the Pentagon, Andrews, and all over the country will no longer have to justify programs. They can go back to productive work or retire to their hunting lodges.
10.Working level people will be free to do their thing without harassment or uncertainty. Contractors in industry will benefit from the stability of the agencies they serve. Unemployment will drop markedly. Welfare rolls will fall. Congress can go back to passing laws. The Russians won’t feel threatened if an AABM or a MIRV pops up because it won’t reflect a political decision, but the random selection of an acronym. Detente will be safe. Why, oh why hasn’t anyone thought of this before?
ROBERT M. BOWMAN 1 Atch: ABRES YRAS
Attachment 1
Proposed ABRES
YEARLY RANDOM ACRONYM SELECTOR (YRAS)
for 1976
....... ADVERB ..... PARTICIPLE ....... ADJECTIVE ........... NOUN
A .. azimuthally ....... augmented ............. adaptive ................ antenna
B .. ballistically ....... balanced ................ biconic ................. booster
C .. conically .......... configured .......... communicating ........ comparator
D .. diagonally ........ deployed ................ despin .................. decoy
E .. environmentally . encapsulated ........ electronic ............... evader
F .. fractionally ......... fixed .................... flexible ................... fuse
G .. gravitationally ..... guided ................. grounding .............. gyroscope
H .. hemispherically .. hardened .............. helical ................... heatshield
I ... inertially ............. integrated ............. interstage ............... instrument
J ... junctionally ......... jettisoned ............ jamming .................. joint
K .. kinetically ........... keyed ................. Keplerian ................. kite
L .. locally ................ launched .............. liquid ...................... laser
M .. multiply ............. maneuvered ......... matching ................. missile
N .. nominally ............ navigated ............ nuclear .................... nosetip
O .. organically .......... oriented .............. observable .............. object
P .. pyrotechnically ..... propelled ........... penetration .............. payload
Q .. quadrantally ......... qualified ............ quiescent ................. quencher
R .. redundantly .......... recovered .......... reentry ..................... rocket
S .. separately ............. shrouded ........... screening .................. sensor
T .. terminally ............. thrusted ............. telemetry ................... target
U .. ultrasonically ....... updated .............. unguided .................. umbilical
V .. vertically ............. vectored ............. vibrational ................ vehicle
W .. weakly ............... weighted ............. weather .................... warhead
X .. xo-atmospherically .. xpelled ............. x-ray ....................... xperiment
Y .. yearly .................... yawed ............... yield ........................ yoke
Z .. zodiacally .............. zeroed ............... zenith ...................... zoomer
(Go ahead, try it. Pick any four-letters, maybe the first four letters of your last name, or your first name, or your city ... anything. You will find that those four letters will provide a program that will sound as real as anything dreamed up in the Pentagon -- and probably just as likely to get funded!)
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