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Leadership from All Le vels 189

American military leadership recognized that the West’s solu-
tion to this conflict would not come from having more weapons,
but rather from creating radically new and innovative weapons
that were “smarter” and more technologically advanced than what
existed on either side at the time. The American military needed
to leverage the United States’s technological superiority in order
to provide offsetting advantages in the Cold War arms race.
Dr. William Perry was one of the leaders who recognized this
fact and acted accordingly. A future U.S. secretary of defense,
Perry joined the Pentagon in 1976 as director of defense research
and engineering (DDR&E) (a position that was elevated and
renamed undersecretary of defense for research and engineer-
ing in 1977). One of his first orders of business was to take his
team to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency
(DARPA), an advanced technology development organization,
and explore the technologies that might enable the Western
powers to significantly offset the Soviet advantage.
Stealth technology had made some progress under Perry’s
predecessor at DDR&E, Malcolm Currie, and DARPA’s director,
George Heilmeier. Test flights of experimental models, funded
by DARPA, clearly demonstrated that so-called stealth aircraft
could attain exceptionally low radar visibility while performing
within the required specifications. Perry sought the accelerated
development of a real weapons system, instructing his team to
“get it done in four years.” Then-Secretary of Defense Harold
Brown agreed to make the development of stealth aircraft “tech-
nology limited,” as opposed to “funding limited,” thereby free-
ing up all the necessary developmental resources.
Defense developments often face two common challenges:
mandated changes in mission and the redirection of funding.
Programs must regularly defend their budgets against other pro-
grams and respond to the preferences of members of Congress.
Perry’s hands-on management protected the development of