The Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA) is an American non-profit corporation that administers three federally funded research and development centers (FFRDCs) – the Systems and Analyses Center (SAC), the Science and Technology Policy Institute (STPI), and the Center for Communications and Computing (C&C) – to assist the United States government in addressing national security issues, particularly those requiring scientific and technical expertise. It is headquartered in Alexandria, Virginia.
History Two ideas critical to the birth of the Institute for Defense Analyses, also known as IDA,The Institute is generally known by its acronym, "IDA." Per Vance, Burt. "IDA." A Dictionary of Abbreviations. : Oxford University Press. Oxford Reference. 2011. Date Accessed 21 Apr. 2014. And also Ann Finkbeiner, The Jasons: The Secret History of Science's Postwar Elite. New York: Penguin Books, 2007, p. 36. emerged from World War II. The first was the necessity for unifying the several services into a single, coordinated department. The second was the realization of the strength of the relationship between science—and scientists—and national security. The first reached fruition when President Harry Truman signed the National Security Acts of 1947 and 1949, creating the Department of Defense. (In 1947 the Department of War and the Department of the Navy had been combined to create the National Military Establishment. From it the present Defense Department was created in 1949."U.S. Department of Defense." Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online Academic Edition. Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2014. Web. 21 Apr. 2014.)
To give the nascent Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) the technical expertise and analytic resources to hold its own and to help make unification a reality, James Forrestal, the department's first secretary, established the Weapons Systems Evaluation Group (WSEG)A history of the WSEG—whose life extended until September 1976—has been published in the IDA paper, "Analytical Support for the Joint Chiefs of Staff: The WSEG Experience, 1958–1976 ." Alexandria, Va.: The Institute, 1979. in 1948 to assist OSD and the Organization of the Joint Chiefs of Staff by:
Bringing scientific and technical as well as operational military expertise to bear in evaluating weapons systems; Employing advanced techniques of scientific analysis and operations research in the process; and Approaching its tasks from an impartial, supra-Service perspective.
The demands on WSEG were more than its small staff of military and civilian analysts could satisfy, and by the early years of the Dwight Eisenhower administration, there were calls for change. The several options gradually coalesced into one and, in 1955, the Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff asked James R. Killian, Jr., then president of MIT, to help form a civilian, nonprofit research institute. The Institute would operate under the auspices of a university consortium to attract highly qualified scientists to assist WSEG in addressing the nation's most challenging security problems. And so, in April 1956, IDA was incorporated as a non-profit organization.The birth of IDA was due to the failure of WSEG to attract top talent or compete with the RAND Corporation, which had been established at the same time as RAND. IDA was designed to be able to pay its employees higher salaries and operate with greater independence than those on the federal payroll. See Paul E. Ceruzzi, Internet Alley: High Technology in Tyson's Corner, 1945–2005. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2008, pp. 44–48. According to a report for Congress which summarizes the founding of IDA, "There was considerable concern in the early and mid-1950s that [WSEG] was not performing effectively, so the Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA) was created to act as a technical backstop to WSEG and to facilitate the recruitment of high-caliber scientific manpower." See U.S. Congress, Office of Technology Assessment. A History of the Department of Defense Federally Funded Research and Development Centers , OTA-BP-ISS-157. Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, June 1995, p. 26. In 1958, at the request of the Secretary of Defense, IDA established a division to support the newly created Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), later renamed the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Shortly after its creation, the mandate of this division was broadened to include scientific and technical studies for all offices of the Director of Defense, Research and Engineering (DDR&E).By 1960 WSEG had established five working groups for the fields of cost accounting, mathematics, nucleonics, air defense, and ballistic missiles. See George E. Pugh, "Operations Research for the Secretary of Defense and the Joint Chiefs of Staff," Operations Research (Nov/Dec. 1960, vol. 8, issue 6), p. 844.
Universities overseeing IDA expanded from the five initial members in 1956 — Caltech, Case Western Reserve, MIT, Stanford and Tulane — to twelve by 1964 with the addition of California, Chicago, Columbia, Illinois, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Princeton.IDA was created using a $500,000 grant from the Ford Foundation. See Paul Dickson, Think Tanks. New York: Atheneum, 1971, p. 146. University oversight of IDA ended in 1968 in the aftermath of Vietnam War-related demonstrations at Princeton, Columbia, and other member universities.The book, Nothing Personal: The Vietnam War in Princeton, 1965–1975 describes demonstrations against IDA taking place on the campus of Princeton University. See Lee Neuwirth, Nothing Personal: The Vietnam War in Princeton, 1965–1975. Privately published by the author, 2009. Additional information appears in the article, "IDA: University-Sponsored Center Hit Hard by Assaults on Campus," by D.S. Greenberg. Science, New Series, Vol. 160, No. 3829 (May 17, 1968), pp. 744–748.
Subsequent divisions were established under what became IDA's largest research center, the Studies and Analyses Center (now the Systems and Analyses Center), to provide cost analyses, computer software and engineering, strategy and force assessments, and operational test and evaluation. IDA created the Simulation Center in the early 1990s to focus on advanced distributed simulation, and most recently, established the Joint Advanced Warfighting Program to develop new operational concepts.As of 1993, after creation of its simulation center, IDA reported that approximately two hundred research tasks were underway at any given time, three-quarters of which were evaluations of defense systems and assessments of advanced technologies. See James A. Smith, Idea Brokers: Think Tanks and the Rise of the New Policy Elite. Simon and Schuster, 1993, p. 292.
IDA's support of the National Security Agency began at its request in 1959, when it established the Center for Communications Research in Princeton, New Jersey. Additional requests from NSA in 1984 and 1989 led respectively to what is now called the Center for Computing Sciences in Bowie, Maryland and to a second Center for Communications Research in La Jolla, California. These groups, which conduct research in cryptology and information operations, make up IDA's Communications and Computing FFRDC.
In 2003, IDA assumed responsibility for the Science and Technology Policy Institute, a separate FFRDC providing technical and analytic support to the Office of Science and Technology Policy and other executive branch organizations.IDA Annual Report, 2006, pp. 4–5, 18, 32.
Throughout its history, IDA also has assisted other federal agencies. Recent work includes research performed in support of the Department of Homeland Security, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the Director of National Intelligence, and others.
Leadership The following have served as president of IDA: James McCormack, 1956–1959 Garrison Norton, 1959–1962 Richard M. Bissell Jr., 1962–1964 Jack Ruina, 1964–1966 Maxwell D. Taylor, 1966–1969 Alexander H. Flax, 1969–1983 Andrew Goodpaster, 1983–1985 William Y. Smith, 1985–1990 Larry D. Welch, 1990–2003 Dennis C. Blair, 2003–2006 Larry D. Welch, 2006–2009 David S. C. Chu, 2009–2020 Norton A. Schwartz, 2020–2025 Charles Richard, 2025–present
Sponsors IDA's Federally Funded Research and Development Centers (FFRDCs), work with governmental sponsors and do not work for commercial enterprises or for-profit organizations.Former IDA president Maxwell D. Taylor expounds on the matter of FFRDCs, in particular IDA's membership in this family of organizations and how they serve the Department of Defense, in his 1968 paper, "Case Study of a 'Think Tank': The Institute for Defense Analyses." Alexandria, Va.: The Institute, 1968.
The Systems and Analyses Center's primary sponsor is the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics. SAC assists the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Unified Combatant Commands, and U.S. Department of Defense agencies in addressing national security issues, particularly those requiring scientific and technical expertise. With concurrence from the USD(AT&L), SAC also supports other sponsors – including the Veterans Administration Veteran's Administration; the Intelligence Community; U.S. Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Department of Commerce, and U.S. Department of Energy.
The Science and Technology Policy Institute provides analyses for the National Science Foundation as STPI's primary sponsor and the Office of Science and Technology Policy as its primary customer. STPI also provides analysis for the National Institutes of Health, the U.S. Department of Energy, the National Aeronautics and Space Agency, and other science-performing Federal agencies.
The Center for Communications and Computing supports the National Security Agency.
IDA's FFRDCs Systems and Analyses Center
The Systems and Analyses Center (SAC) is the largest of IDA's three FFRDCs and is co-located with the IDA headquarters in Alexandria, Virginia. SAC assists the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD), the Joint Staff, the Combatant Commands, and Defense Agencies in addressing important national security issues, focusing particularly on those requiring scientific and technical expertise.The Department of Defense, as IDA's sponsor, requires IDA to identify and adhere to "core competencies." Core work is defined as "that which is appropriate for IDA to conduct in pursuit of IDA's mission and charter to support DOD..." IDA's core competencies are defined as systems evaluations, force and strategy assessments, technology assessments, and resource and support analyses. See Report of the Defense Science Board Task Force on Federally Funded Research and Development Centers (FFRDC) and University Affiliated Research Centers (UARC) Independent Advisory Task Force. Washington: Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Technology, January 1997, p. C-4. It includes the following divisions:
Cost Analysis and Research Division (CARD) helps guide the Department of Defense and other federal agencies in the decisions, policies, and processes of resource – both people and money – allocation. Specifically, CARD analysts engage in: Evaluating costs for pending government acquisition or retention Examining resource allocation policies to guide sponsors’ decision Improving the efficiency and effectiveness of our sponsors’ resource allocation processes CARD also supports the Department of Homeland Security efforts to assess and validate new anti-terrorism systems as mandated by the Support Anti-Terrorism by Fostering Effective Technologies Act. Similar to the support to DoD, analysts provide the technical evaluation ensuring that proposed technologies are safe and effective.