Decline of military labs undermines U.S. security.

• Author: Erwin, Sandra I.
• Position: WASHINGTON PULSE: NEWS FROM INSIDE THE BELTWAY

In recent years, the private sector has been increasingly tasked to carry out research and engineering work that previously had been assigned to Defense Department laboratories. Now, "there is a growing body of evidence that, rather than faster, better and cheaper, the new approach is actually slower, less effective, and costlier," says Don J. DeYoung, senior research fellow at the Center for Technology and National Security Policy at the National Defense University. The government's "scientific and engineering competence, a hallmark of the great successes in the past, has been destroyed or bypassed as a result of the private sector's ascendant role," he writes in a recently published NDU paper. "The loss...