Materiel Command and the Materiality of Commands: An Historical Examination of the US Air Force, Control Data Corporation, and the Advanced Logistics System - History of Computing: Learning from the Past - page 89

Materiel Command and the Materiality of Commands:
An Historical Examination of the US Air Force, Control
Data Corporation, and the Advanced
Logistics System
Jeffrey R. Yost
Charles Babbage Institute, University of Minnesota
Abstract. In the late 1960s the US Air Force Logistics Command (AFLC) en-
gaged in an unparalleled, real-time computer networking project to manage all
its logistics (location, inventory, maintenance, and transportation of personnel,
aircraft, weapons, components, spare parts, etc.), the Advanced Logistics System
(ALS). The $250 million ALS project was substantially larger in size and cost
than earlier real-time computer networking projects (including SAGE program-
ming and SABRE), but it has received virtually no attention from historians of
computing. Ultimately, the ALS project failed. Drawing from an oral history
with lead contractor Control Data's (CDC) longtime ALS project manager, pre-
viously unavailable CDC documents, and documentation and an oral history
from a leading external Air Force advisor on ALS, it shows how the AFLC
pushed too far too fast in seeking to be a first-mover in creating a massive uni-
fied database and real-time computer network for highly complex logistics.
Keywords: Air Force Materiel Command (AFMC), Control Data Corporation
(CDC), Advanced Logistics System (ALS), supply management, technological
failure, real-time computing, and computer networking.
1 Early Air Force Logistics and Information Technology
Applications
The importance of Air Force logistics (managing the location, transportation, main-
tenance, and supply of personnel, aircraft, weapons, components, spare parts, etc.) to
military operational effectiveness and cost containment is impossible to overempha-
size. 1 The trade journal Business Machines reported that the Air Force Logistics
Command in 1960 managed more assets than any organization in the world—more
than General Motors, United States Steel, Metropolitan Life, and Western Electric
combined [1]. Information systems and communication technologies have long been
central to aiding Air Force logistics. In 1926 the Air Force Materiel Division
1 Some weapons, or weapons systems, were managed by the Air Force Services Command
(AFSC)—see footnote 2.