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Reorganization of Air Force Research Labs Aims to Reduce Staff The Air Force is reorganizing its scientific research laboratories in the name of cutting costs, and some materials researchers who work for those laboratories could eventually lose their jobs. On April 8, the Air Force created a new, single Air Force Research Laboratory by merging four major existing laboratories—Armstrong Laboratory at Brooks Air Force Base in Texas; Phillips Laboratory at Kirtland Air Force Base in New Mexico; Rome Laboratory in Rome, New York; and Wright Laboratory at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio. Also included was the Air Force's Office of Scientific Research in Washington DC. Those four labs and the research office all are part of the Air Force Materiel Command, which has the job of developing new weapon systems for the Air Force, including conducting basic and applied research that are required for those weapons. Not surprisingly, materials research is important at these labs—and likely will be equally important at the unified Research Laboratory. For example, projects at the Phillips Laboratory have sought to develop new materials for use in rockets and spacecraft, while materials research at the Rome Laboratory has included an effort to develop optical materials for use in photonic devices. Collectively, the Air Force labs employ about 12,000 civilians and 11,000 military personnel. For now, the four labs and the research office continue to operate as they had, with little having changed except that, at the top of the organizational chart, they now are all headed by a single individual, Major General Richard Paul, commander of the new lab. They are somewhat like different campuses of a single university. By this fall, Paul will try to devise a new organizational structure for the lab that will try to squeeze major savings out of its $1.2 billion budget. The commander will try to cut out waste and duplication, particularly in management. "The result is a streamlined laboratory structure that better meets the needs of the warfighter commands and our other... customers," Paul said. "The goal is to allow us to reduce the amount of overhead involved with research," said David Levingston, a spokesperson for Air Force Materiel Command. He said that there will not be sweeping changes among scientists. "There are no plans at this time to move
anybody anywhere. There are no plans to close a laboratory," Levingston said. But although most of the savings from the new Research Laboratory are expected to come from reducing duplication in management, Paul will also be looking for scientific programs and facilities that are duplicated at more than one of the "campuses" of the Research Laboratory and that therefore can be cut. "You won't have two laboratories doing the same research," Levingston said. Congress has already ordered the Air Force to reduce the staff of its laboratories by 35% by 2001. That is part of a demand by Congress that the entire Pentagon reduce the number of separate laboratories and testing centers that it ope
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