 Here in Vietnam, a new concept in military tactics and organization has proven itself, the airmobile concept. The helicopter mated with new and devastating weapons, new organizations of battle-ready squads, battalions, brigades, using new tactics that exploit the mobility, flexibility and firepower of the new concept. These are helping to destroy the myth of invincibility so vital to the aggressors in Vietnam. This new concept did not just happen, however. Today, the swift pace of technology leaves no time for trial and error in deciding the shape and substance of our army. It must be made ready and kept ready to meet any challenge on any battlefield anywhere on earth. Now, a year from now, or 20 years from now. So, the ingredients of the airmobile concept, the soldiers, the tactics, the equipment and the organization, all were conceived, compared with countless other possible combinations, and evaluated in depth before the ultimate test of actual combat. This had to be, because as we move forward into the demands and challenges of the future, the time for guesswork is past. To look into that future and work out the concepts which it will demand, to answer the questions which must be answered correctly and answered today, the army has created a military command unique in the history of arms. This command has its headquarters at Fort Belvoir in Virginia. Its name, the United States Army Combat Developments Command. Move out. It is rather new and it is vitally important to the present and future effectiveness of the entire United States Army. Its mission is to find answers to three vital questions. First, how shall the army of the future fight? Then, how shall it be equipped? And finally, how shall it be organized for maximum effectiveness? Problem, how do you separate fact from opinion in searching out the demands of the future? Answer, scientific methodology, using the massive impersonal capabilities of today's computers to portray all the possible tomorrows, always making sure that the information fed to the computers is based, so far as humanly possible, on fact. The professionals of the Combat Developments Command are the fact seekers, and theirs is an organization which spans the continent, drawing on the skills and knowledge of military, scientific and industrial experts in every field, and reaching across the oceans to consider every possible battle area on earth. Across the continent from the Virginia headquarters is the largest of CDC's nine subordinate commands, whose job it is to compare the army's alternatives for the future and come up with objective facts on which to base decisions about that future. Here at Fort Ord, California is based the Combat Developments Command Experimentation Command, C-DEC. C-DEC and the job it does are unlike anything in the history of warfare, a product and a necessity of our time. Here is where the combinations of men, tactics, equipment and organizations, the army's options for the future are brought together and evaluated in the world's first military field laboratory. And the term laboratory is an accurate one, for C-DEC is a place where combat experienced military specialists came up with more than 100 civilian scientists and technicians to search out meaningful military truth about the future. To do this they create in the field a realistic slice of a future battle field using complex and sophisticated instrumentation to gather precise measurements and descriptions of key events during the make-believe battle. Then they combine the mountains of objective facts from the field with other hard data as computers portray the overall picture for detailed analysis. What are these key facts which C-DEC's military scientist team provides the army? Elements which play a key role in any combat situation. Things like these. Hits and near misses. The factual outcome of an engagement of men and weapons. And event time, exactly when key events take place in relation to the clock and to other key events. Position location, exactly where every man, every unit, weapon, vehicle or aircraft is during the course of the action. And resource consumption, the ammunition, the fuel, the spare parts used up in a given situation. These are the factors, the dimensions, if you will, by which any combat action can be measured. But how is this measuring done? That's best answered by watching the C-DEC team in action. The search for facts on this aspect of air mobility began in 1962. Question, what are the odds? What are the chances for survival of a helicopter against rifle fire, against machine guns, against other types of weapons, singly and in all types of combinations? The answers are sought. A few minutes copter flight from Fort Ord where the rugged terrain of the Hunter Liggett military reservation serves as C-DEC's main field laboratory. To get the facts you must have to judge the value of the air mobile concept, you first deploy troops on the ground. Troops organized to represent every kind of enemy force that the air mobile unit could expect to face. Alert the troops for air attack, but don't tell them where it will come from or when. Then you send in aircraft at varying heights and speeds, over well-chosen tactical approach routes. And action is blank, but the events occur just as they would in combat. While data collection devices linked by radio to a central control provide split second reporting and recording of each key event. Exactly when aircraft are sighted from the ground, when fired on, and for how long. To have to such devices report copter position second by second to be matched with ground data for a complete coordinated picture of what happens. No personal opinion here, no clipboards and stopwatches, just hard objective facts recorded in exact time sequence and in a free-moving environment. And at what ranges were aircraft sighted? When did they come under fire? And for how long? The facts are gathered. But other questions must be answered, and blank ammunition won't do the job. For example, how effective was the ground fire? How many hits? How many misses? And by how far? This is something it will take live firing to answer. Target instrumentation offers a whole new set of challenges. Here is one of C-DEX answers. On a full-scale tow target of a Huey helicopter, a framework of special microphones is installed. Calibrated so exactly that they will record not only when a bullet passes nearby, but in what direction and how many feet away. If it hits, the special skin of the target will sense the impact. All of these facts are recorded by the armored package of instrumentation inside the target's shell. And this is only one of the live fire targets of the C-DEX laboratory. This fully instrumented target needs no towing. It flies on its own by radio control. The full-scale Huey tow target, with its sophisticated instrumentation package, rides the end of a 2,000-foot nylon cable, as it is total off by helicopter. The same kinds of weapons which fired blanks before now fire hundreds of thousands of live rounds at more than 1,600 different target passes. It takes time to build up a statistical body of data. Each pass, a radar controller in constant contact with the tow copter pilot carefully controls target altitudes and ranges, watching with electronic eyes to make certain that target position and speed are exact every time. The facts flow in. From each gun position, every muzzle blast is sensed by a microphone in a protective casing, and a running account is flashed to the central data collection point. And from the target itself, hit and near miss information pours into the same collection point. These impulses are monitored visually and recorded on tape as well. To simulate the speeds of Army fixed-wing aircraft, a high-speed tow target is used. The pilotless drone targets provide a realism of result which is indispensable. Into the computer laboratory come the mountains of data collected, literally millions of bits of information gathered during both the simulated and the live firing runs. The facts are correlated, analyzed with lightning speed. From such analysis of impersonally collected data come realistic objective insights. Facts, not guesswork. But the story doesn't end there, for out of the answers come more questions. What about the effectiveness of Army copters against armor? And how vulnerable would copters be to the weapons of an armored unit? First with drone helicopters to provide realistic targets, you examine the effectiveness of the tank's weapon. The drone remains exposed only for the length of time it would take to guide a missile from the copter to the tank. But at longer ranges, this exposure time can stretch too long. This is a two-way street, and real copters get their turn to fire live missiles at tanks. Here too, realism is the keynote. Wearing heavy gloves, goggles, and flame-proof coveralls, and with steel plates welded over the hull and turret openings, the tank crew now becomes the target. A little short on ventilation, but completely safe. On his firing approach, the gunner arms his missile. It's the M-22, which trails control wires along which the gunner's guidance signals are carried. With warhead removed and a marker powder in its place, the impact is clearly visible. Covering a wide range of possibilities, missiles are fired from varying distances and altitudes. From copters hovering and moving at top speed, at tanks standing still and moving at 15 miles per hour. It remains to be done, but the doctrine, the tactics of the air-mobile concept evaluated in experiments like these are already proving their effectiveness in combat. But questions involving Army aircraft are not the only ones for which scientifically valid answers are needed. For example, consider this age-old question. What is the best size, composition, and weapons mix for the basic infantry element? How many men? With what skills? Bearing what kinds of weapons? And how many of each kind? In approaching this problem, the SEDEC team wanted to measure four basic elements of combat effectiveness for infantry units. First, mobility. Their ability to move where and when they are needed, to arrive on time, fresh and ready to do their job. Second, controllability. The ability to respond quickly and effectively to a changing combat situation. Sustainability. Their ability to keep up the fight, take their knocks, and remain an effective fighting unit. And finally, fire effectiveness. The ability to gain and keep fire superiority over an enemy that is shooting fast. Let's take a look now at how SEDEC is searching out the facts about this last element, fire effectiveness. One of the first things needed is a series of very specialized firing ranges to simulate natural combat terrain. The terrain is available. The rest calls for some know-how. For this has to be a firing range, which is a great deal more than just a firing range. A computer-controlled test environment. Targets which are coordinated with split-second control and provide as realistic an enemy force as possible. Targets which appear at exact intervals of time for a precise number of seconds and in a highly specific order. Realistically shaped and able to sense electronically when they are hit. Equipped with a calibrated microphone to report just how close any near misses come. Able to give a realistic impression that they are firing back at the men who fire at them. And able to do all this over and over again in exactly the same way. So that their functioning becomes literally a control constant in this experiment. No hand-operated targets could provide this precision of timing. This exact repetition of performance by every target on every one of scores of test runs. The key to this indispensable precision is the computer van. Here is the heart and brain of this unique experimentation environment. Here the controlling signals originate and here a thousand different events per minute are kept track of. The action of every target in every array downrange is determined by program tape, which is fed into the control section of the computer bank. Another section of the same interlocking system keeps a running account, all in exact time frame of every target move, every shot fired, and the effect of every shot hit or near miss. Elsewhere in the van impulses from the electronic brain present a visual display of what happens during a test run. So that C-deck technicians and the civilian scientists working with them can make sure that things are going according to plan. This is instrumentation. This is what makes a field environment with free-moving actors a true laboratory with controlled test conditions. Now to see it in action. There are three ranges presenting situations from first contact with enemy to assault of enemy position to defense against enemy assault. But the principle of operation is the same for all. To protect the validity of the test each team fires a given range situation only once and has never fired it before in just this way until the time comes to make the test run. Added authenticity comes from the fact that many of these men are experienced veterans of combat in Vietnam. Fire the test group will be reacting to unforeseen targets in unknown numbers at uncertain ranges. This spontaneity of reaction is essential to the realism the range is designed to produce. Even the firing positions are made to resemble the hasty foxholes of a defense perimeter in combat. Here too realistic field conditions combine with laboratory instrumentation. Alongside every firing position is an acoustic device which will inform the electronic brain of the exact moment each weapon is fired. A few last minute preparation and the test run can begin. Commence firing which is monitored and recorded in detail and evaluation every minute detail of what has just taken place on the range. Another run just one of hundreds on which final statistical analysis will be based. The test squad turns in its unused ammunition so that the exact number of rounds remaining can be figured into the final results of the test run. Meantime the experiment will continue with other fire teams, other test runs. The indications are that final completion will mark a milestone in military history. For the first time an army will have an impersonal scientific body of fact on which to base its decisions as to the best organization and weapons for its basic infantry elements. This unique military scientific operation is just beginning to realize the potential contribution it can make to the military planning and preparedness of the United States Army. In the works now are plans to increase the automation of CDEC's fact gathering process which will mean still greater freedom of action in the simulated combat situations being evaluated in the Fort Ord Field Laboratory. What CDEC is doing has never been done before, but it had to be done now. The speed of military and technological development in our century leaves no margin for guesswork, no time for the leisurely trial and error of yesterday. Our planning, our decisions must be based on measured fact and that is what the Military Field Laboratory of CDEC is designed to provide. The methodology may be complex, but the ultimate purpose is simple. To help give greater effectiveness to the soldier who has to win on the battlefield. The individual American in uniform on whom in the end it all depends. This is what it's all about. All the thinking and planning, the measuring and recording and analyzing. For the combat soldier and for his commanders, today's problems and tomorrow's problems need the best solution. To help ensure that they will be the best is the job of the combat developments command and CDEC. To help make of today's vision tomorrow's victory.