Acquisition Management: in the United States Air Force and its Predecessors

During the Twentieth Century the United States became the world's premier aerospace nation, both commercially and militarily. Inventing, developing, testing, evaluating, buying, and producing the implements of air power grew into an enterprise of unprecedented complexity. Leading this effort, the United States Air Force evolved from a small division of the Army's Signal Corps into one of the nation's largest purveyors of technology. As it did so, the Air Force frequently revised its organizational structure to manage these tasks -now referred to collectively as the acquisition process. Although the historical circumstances and the state of technology changed greatly as the century progressed, some recurring patterns of organization emerged. This book lays out a brief history of acquisition management within the U.S. Air Force.