 Okay, move out. The ultimate test of weapons, vehicles and equipment is their performance in combat. This M-60 tank is not actually engaged in combat, but the closest thing to it. A workout on the vehicle torture track at the U.S. Army Ordnance Center, Aberdeen, Maryland. The driver of the tank is a civilian, one of the many thousands of civilians who are backing up the Army's combat units around the world. This film is about them and the many ways in which they contribute to our nation's security. When you think of the Army, it is natural to think of the soldier and his military activities. Training and maintaining combat-ready forces is the Army's prime responsibility. It's a big job and a rugged one. These men must learn a variety of disciplines and skills, some of which require extensive schooling. While they learn, these soldiers must be clothed and fed, housed, equipped, transported, supplied with recreational equipment, given medical care, and financially provided for by a finance system that disperses the world's largest military budget. Looking after the soldier is a big job too, and this is where civilian employees of the Army play their vital supporting role. This editor, for example, learned his profession by working for a large publisher of scientific textbooks. Now he helps to produce training literature for the Army, using the same skills and solving the same kind of learning problems. The almost endless variety of skills called for by the Army is even greater than those needed in the most complex civilian enterprise, mechanical skills, office skills that require the mastery of intricate recording and data processing equipment, service skills. The list is as wide as the range of human endeavor. Using civilians to perform essential but non-combat tasks enables the Army to release more soldiers for combat duty. Even the training role can be performed by qualified civilians. Besides, today's technological Army requires a huge variety of highly trained scientific, engineering, and technical specialists. Only among civilians can they be found in the numbers, skills, and experience the Army needs. The supporting role of the civilian in the Army dates back to the war for independence when George Washington made use of blacksmiths, wheelwrights, teamsters, and gunsmiths. When the Louisiana Purchase more than doubled the area of the United States, the Army was ordered to explore and chart the vast region. Civilian specialists went along to draw maps and make studies of wildlife and natural resources. Other experts were hired as guides and scouts and became part of the imperishable legend of the American West. Today, of course, civilian activity in the Army is infinitely greater in scope than numbers. In fact, the Army has more civilian employees than any other government agency except the Post Office Department, over 400,000 serving in every state of the Union and in scores of foreign countries as well. Some of these activities are of critical importance to combat operations, such as studying and forecasting climate and weather. Meteorologists are probing the secrets of the atmosphere, gathering knowledge that soon will make it possible to forecast the weather accurately, weeks, and even months in advance. Other activities lack the glamour of being combat-connected but are highly important in their own right, such as educating the dependence of Army personnel. This schoolteacher works for the Army, which believes that the children of personnel on duty abroad have a right to the same high-quality education they would receive at home. To ensure this, it operates the seventh largest school system in the world, staffed largely with civilians. Similarly, Army hospitals employ civilian nurses and aides who work alongside their commissioned counterparts. They play an important role in maintaining the health and welfare of military personnel and their dependents. Some of the civilian skills the Army needs are obvious in this day of missiles and rockets, specialists on fuel systems, airframe construction, electronics and communications. Other skills called for are much less well-known and demand a most unusual kind of craftsmanship. This man is a model maker. The models he designs and builds are not toys, but highly effective visual aids, like this replica of a .50 caliber machine gun. It is a working model made oversize and assembled in a transparent housing for better visibility. It enables the student to see the action of the firing mechanism. Motion picture technicians provide another out-of-the-ordinary skill. Their subject matter is less glamorous than Hollywood's extravaganzas, but each year these people successfully instruct more individuals in a greater number of subjects than any other filmmakers in the world. Nowhere is the need for specialized knowledge and skills more apparent than in the Army's far-ranging research and development activities. They include human resources as well as weapons and equipment. Trained researchers constantly seek ways to improve the physical welfare of the fighting man as well as his effectiveness in combat. These food technologists, for example, are looking for ways to make Army rations more appetizing, nutritious and easier to prepare in the field as well as on post. One possibility is freeze drying, which has been found to preserve natural flavors better than conventional canning processes. Like many products of Army research, these new processes may eventually be adapted for use by the general public. Another food preservation method that holds promise is that of nuclear radiation. When properly packaged, food sterilized in this manner can be stored for extended periods without refrigeration. Meanwhile, other food scientists are well advanced in solving the unprecedented problems of food requirements during prolonged space flights. Scientists had to study the effect of weightlessness on the human digestive system and whether the high stress environment of outer space imposed special nutritional needs. Since zero gravity hampers the ordinary mechanics of eating, concentrated foods were devised in the laboratory for easy consumption by astronauts. By now, a wide variety of specially developed food items are available and have been successfully tested by American spacemen. As man journeys deeper and deeper into space on trips that will eventually last months or even years, the problem of adequate food supply will become increasingly critical. Food may have to be grown aboard the spaceship itself. Some scientists think the solution lies in the continuous culture of the tiny plants known as algae. These algae would be nourished by waste products from aboard the spacecraft. They would be harvested as required and converted into edible food products of various tastes and textures. While some experts speculate about the future, others are called on to solve problems right away. Not long ago, this foot gear specialist was given a most urgent assignment. Find a way to prevent the casualties inflicted on our troops in Vietnam by poisoned spikes planted in jungle trails. No time for the normal research and development cycle, men were being injured every day. The interim solution developed on a crash basis was as simple as it was effective. A stainless steel inner sole, strong enough to stop the spike, was made to be worn inside the regulation combat boot. Rushed to combat units in Vietnam, the new inner sole worked so well that the spike ceased to be a major cause of casualties. One vital test of both climate and clothing is equipment. These weather chambers can duplicate the climate of any region on earth where troops may be stationed. Civilian experts study men and equipment under carefully controlled conditions, learning exactly how they will perform under various combinations of wind, temperature and humidity. The information by which any weather conditions can be artificially reproduced comes from massive studies by another category of specialists. They are the work of the Army's climatologists. These experts collect and correlate climatic data from around the world. Temperature, rainfall, wind velocity, everything that would affect the performance of men and equipment. The results are published in the form of climatic maps, which show the conditions that are normal for the four seasons of the year. The Army's need for many types of maps has stimulated new map-making techniques. In this particular case, the technician is creating a map that can be viewed stereoptically. A process has been developed for the large-scale production of plastic relief maps for mass distribution to military units. These maps show the face of the earth in three dimensions, together with all the topographical details found in conventional maps. In this age of space exploration, maps of Mother Earth alone are no longer adequate. This is a topographic map of the Moon, the first ever made by stereophotogrammetric methods. It is being used to familiarize American astronauts with the lunar terrain. When they reach the Moon at long last, these small-scale three-dimensional maps will provide the astronauts with an accurate guide to their utterly strained surroundings. Many of the Army's scientists were not sure in advance just what their experiments in pure research would lead to. The researchers who discovered that streams of fluid could be used to control other streams of fluid did not have any particular objective in mind. They sought simply to widen mankind's knowledge of fluid dynamics and the effects of fluid interaction. This is a field of science where much exploratory work remains to be done. This knowledge has already led to practical engineering applications of great usefulness. It has been found that fluid control devices can be operated under conditions where no other control mechanism could perform. Their lack of moving parts eliminates mechanical friction and makes them unusually reliable and trouble-free. For example, this heart pump has run steadily for over two-and-a-half years without failure. This fail-safe quality has proved itself in many other applications, such as this emergency respirator for asphyxiation cases. Here, reliability of performance is quite literally a matter of life or death. The same can be said of this external cardiac compressor, which provides correct pressure for maintaining heart function in case of cardiac arrest. Examples of military research projects that resulted in important civilian applications are practically endless in number. The scientists who developed miniature light bulbs like this one did so for military purposes. They will have many civilian uses as well, particularly in medical instruments. And there are many army firsts in electronics. For example, the world's first printed electronic circuits. From these, the army developed a profusion of new designs to meet the sophisticated needs of modern electronic warfare. And let's not forget the aerosol spray can. This minor marvel came into being because the army needed a more efficient way to dispense insecticide. Now it's used to dispense just about everything under the sun. Many new weapons systems are the result of teamwork between civilians and military experts. This lightweight grenade launcher, which has proved its worth in Vietnam, didn't just happen. It arrived on the battlefield in usable form only after years of designing, developing, and testing. It needed a wide spectrum of civilian specialists, draftsmen, engineers, cost analysts, quality control experts, production managers, technicians, scientists, mechanics, each contributing his indispensable skill or talent to produce a powerful new type of armament. No weapons system is ever truly finished. Other civilian experts are constantly modifying and improving them, testing for greater efficiency and new ways of reducing maintenance and repair. The field of maintenance and repair is a vast civilian operation in itself. It calls for a virtual army of mechanics and technicians to serve the needs of the prodigious variety of army weapons, tanks, communications, and electronic equipment. Here, ultrasonic cleaning methods are used to remove microscopic dirt. Helicopters. Every mechanical, metallurgical, and metalworking skill in the civilian world is called on by the army, which demands the highest standards of craftsmanship and precision. Civilians are also heavily involved in the operation of supply depots. These facilities store and ship the hundreds of thousands of different items the army keeps on hand for its needs. Today, most supply requirements are determined by automation. Requests are received over this teletype network. The stock order is reproduced on punched cards. These go to a data processing center where a two-year record of every supply item is kept. The cards are fed into computers, which select the supply depot a ship from, readjust the amount of inventory, and calculate when reorders are needed. The movement of supplies within depots is thoroughly mechanized, whether by use of the familiar conveyor belt, or via these latest type self-guiding automatic trains. The civilian again has a hand in shipping this material by way of railroad, airplane, steamship, and truck. Two using units in the United States and overseas, especially Vietnam. American civilians play a prominent supervisory role in maintaining the endless flow of supplies to South Vietnam and the rest of Southeast Asia. They provide the experienced personnel to direct the unloading by local national personnel of huge shipments of material. They predominate in the construction and installation of new facilities in support of the war effort in South Vietnam. They serve as foremen and technical experts to supervise workforces composed of South Vietnamese. They are also mainly responsible for the building of many new peer facilities, discharging a wide variety of skilled and often hazardous jobs. Their know-how is indispensable for speeding up the unloading of the vast fleet of transport ships that carry supplies from America. Small armies of civilian craftsmen and engineers are involved in the construction of new airfields. Also in the installation of the latest type of radar equipment to protect our forces against the possibility of a surprise aerial attack. The question is often asked, why do talented people whose skills are in great demand choose careers with the Army? Well, for one thing, they know that the work they do is important, that it makes a tangible contribution to the nation's security. Equally important is the favorable environment in which they function. They know that under the Army's merit system they will be encouraged to advance in their careers as far as their abilities and ambition can take them. On-the-job training programs provide an opportunity to learn new skills which are less easily come by outside, skills which offer young people an opportunity to earn a good livelihood while doing satisfying work. For others, the attraction is a chance to work creatively in their chosen fields, together with other specialists with similar interests. But most of them work for the Army simply because it is a good employer, fair, considerate, genuinely interested in their problems and welfare. The great number of civilians who spend their entire working careers with the Army help provide a very essential continuity to its operations. Unlike uniformed personnel who are deliberately rotated to broaden knowledge and experience, civilian employees are more apt to stay in one occupational area. However, as the employee progresses, he has offered many opportunities for study, personal advancement, and worldwide travel. This provides the Army with a ready source of both technical and executive talent. Nowhere is this unique contribution of the Army's civilians better expressed than in the words of the President of the United States in a ceremony honoring five outstanding civil service employees. Gentlemen, we have come here this morning to honor five distinguished career employees of the federal government for their most unusual and outstanding service to this country. They are all men that are rich in experience. They are also innovators. In their separate fields, each of them has displayed that initiative and imagination which marked the creative man in every profession. So it is our very good fortune as a nation that they do not stand alone even when they stand out. They have been helped and supported along their separate paths by what I believe to be a first-rate civil service in this country. In our day, tired answers to old problems will just not do. The problems we have are so complex and often even the most inspired solution will prove barely adequate. So this place is a very special and great responsibility on the civil service in this country. Today, I look to the federal career service to produce for this government men and women of broad vision with new answers, with good ideas. And we ask them to consider not merely their own department, not only the federal government, but the future of this land. Men and women of broad vision with new answers and good ideas in all of our 50 states and in a thousand locations around the world, the Army's civilian employees are living up to the President's expression of confidence, building sound and satisfying personal careers, making their own positive contributions to our country's strength and security.