Interviewer: EXPLAIN TO US THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN WHAT YOU DO AND YOU, TRW DOES, AND THE LABS DO?
Leavitt: Basically, there's a broad area of overlap.
Leavitt: But essentially, we take the technologies developed in the lab, validated science, and attempt to take it to the field.
Leavitt: We design it, engineer it, turn it into a fieldable device.
Interviewer: WHEN WE WERE CHATTING EARLIER, YOU MENTIONED SOMETHING ABOUT HOW YOU CAN HELP PUSH A PROJECT FORWARD WHEN IT GETS UNDER AN ACCELERATED SCHEDULE, WHAT TRW CAN DO?
Leavitt: Well, one of the reasons we're here is that the whole FEL technology, in order to get it in the field in any reasonable time, requires an overlap of the activities that you would normally do.
Leavitt: And so by bringing an industrial company in and participating in the experiments and the preliminary design and all those kinds of things that might normally go along in the laboratory, we have an opportunity to put our perspective in earlier so that when the device, the project, is ready to field it already accommodates a number of the priorities that the end user would be looking for.
Leavitt: We're used to dealing with that kind of thing, whereas the laboratory is only interested, not only, they're usually interested, in validating their science.
Leavitt: And the engineering that they would put into an experimental device is just sufficient in order to do that.
Interviewer: IN A CERTAIN SENSE, YOU AS A CONTRACTOR, YOU MAKE THINGS.
Interviewer: I MEAN, YOU MEAN THINGS AND EVENTUALLY YOU MAKE THINGS, MULTIPLE COPIES OF THINGS, WHICH I IMAGINE IS WHERE TRW, IF IT EVER IS GOING TO MAKE A LOT OF MONEY OFF SOMETHING LIKE THIS, WOULD MAKE ITS MONEY? THAT IS, PRODUCING MORE THAN ONE OF THESE?
Leavitt: Well, in the aerospace side of the house, you very seldom make a lot of anything.
Leavitt: And so, that’s really not a good analogy.
Leavitt: It's not like the auto parts side where you crank out millions of them.
Leavitt: But obviously it’s not necessary to implement the sort of project management techniques and other management methods that we bring on unless you were going to build more, or another one, or a more advanced one and that you wanted to have some institutional way of carrying all those features other than the science forward, the reliability, the materials, all those things that you need to be able to improve to make a better one.
Leavitt: We just absorb that in our culture.
Interviewer: LET ME GIVE YOU A SPECTRUM THAT I'VE SEEN AS I'VE TALKED TO FOLKS, WHICH MAY OR MAY NOT BE REPRESENTATIVE.
Interviewer: ON THE ONE END OF THE SPECTRUM YOU HAVE, LET’S SAY, CASPAR WEINBERGER, WHO IS EXTRAORDINARILY ENTHUSIASTIC ABOUT THE POSSIBILITY OF BEAM ENERGY WEAPONS, THE EVENTUALITY OF THEN CREATING REALLY VIABLE WEAPONS DEFENSE AGAINST WEAPONS SYSTEM.
Interviewer: AT THE OTHER END OF THAT SPECTRUM, I WOULD SAY YOU HAVE SCIENTISTS WORKING ON THE GROUND WHO ARE QUICK TO EMPHASIZE THE MANY SCIENTIFIC PROBLEMS THAT HAVE TO BE SOLVED, THE MANY TECHNICAL HURDLES THAT HAVE TO BE OVERCOME.
Interviewer: WHERE DOES THE DEFENSE CONTRACTOR FIT IN THAT SPECTRUM? I MEAN, ALL THOSE FOLKS ARE OPTIMISTIC, BUT THE TIME SCHEDULES INVOLVED ARE VERY DIFFERENT?
Leavitt: Well, one of the things we're used to doing is dealing with risk management and all of this is nothing more than a large risk management program.
Leavitt: And so we try to bring a methodology to the process so that if there are scientific or technical or technology issues that we're really not sure we can get around, we've identified parallel paths and we've identified ways so that those parallel paths bring us the information when we need to have them to take the next step.
Leavitt: And so, while there are a lot of unsettled issues, not so many basic physics issues anymore, but certainly a number of engineering issues, we try to put a process together that just manages that.
Leavitt: That takes a big program, it takes a broad scope.
Interviewer: DO YOU HAVE ANY SENSE OF THE TIME TABLE FOR ELECTRON LASER INDUCTION VERSION OF IT?
Leavitt: Generally, yeah.
Leavitt: For the experimental device that we're trying to support now, which is the Gibvilti experiment in New Mexico, we're going to try to have our part of the sub system online some time in 1992 just when the experimental will go some other time.
Leavitt: But those are the schedules that we're working to.
Interviewer: IS IT CERTAIN THAT IF THAT EXPERIMENT WORKED AND THE PROJECT WERE TO GO FORWARD OR THE GOVERNMENT FUNDING, WOULD TRW GET THE NEXT CONTRACT?
Leavitt: Oh, I don't think that's certain but obviously with the investment, the human investment that's been made, the only places that's captured is in the people.
Leavitt: And if the people stay with TRW and the data that TRW builds, then obviously they've got a leg up for the next system.
Leavitt: There are no patent rights or anything like that that you might have and that in principle, any organization could get the information and proceed on.
Leavitt: But in practice, I would assume that the next step would be fast paced as well and they’d want to have the best-qualified organization do it, assuming we didn't stub our toes and I can't imagine that we’d do that.
Leavitt: I'm sure that we’d get the next one.
Interviewer: LET ME ASK YOU A PERSONAL QUESTION, WHICH YOU MAY NOT WANT TO ANSWER BECAUSE YOU'RE REPRESENTING TRW, BUT I'M CURIOUS.
Interviewer: IF 50 YEARS FROM NOW THEY'RE WRITING A HISTORY BOOK ABOUT THIS PERIOD, THE REAGAN YEARS, AND THEY HAVE A PARAGRAPH DEALING WITH THE PRESIDENT’S CONTRIBUTION TO STRATEGIC NUCLEAR WAR POLICY, WHAT DO YOU THINK THEY’LL SAY ABOUT HIM?
Leavitt: Strategic nuclear war policy?
Interviewer: YEAH?
Leavitt: Well, I'm not really sure.
Leavitt: I'm not sure I can answer it, whether I wanted to or not.
Leavitt: But at least he’s tried to put a different perspective on it.
Leavitt: He has stepped back and in a lot of people’s mind taken a simplistic approach that it’s all insanity and there must be a better way.
Leavitt: And just the fact that he’s asked the question has stimulated a lot of thinking.
Leavitt: We're all hopeful that some of the things that we've seen occurring over the last week or two with Gorbachev Summit, et cetera, may in fact be a payoff from taking that first step.
Leavitt: Who knows? Maybe by the time this is shown, we’ll all know.
Leavitt: I don't know.