U.S. ARMY MATERIEL COMMAND
A Brief History of the
U.S. Army Materiel Command 1962-2012 Compiled by the AMC Historical Office Genesis of AMC
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ollowing the inauguration of President John F. Kennedy in January 1961, Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara directed a study to determine how well the Army’s organizational structure was responding to changes in the defense environment. Completed in November 1961, the report recommended that the materiel functions of the technical services and the testing functions of the U.S. Continental Army Command be combined into a new organization. On April 2, 1962, Maj. Gen. Frank S. Besson Jr. was promoted to lieutenant general and appointed commanding general of this new organization called the U.S. Army Materiel Development and Logistics Command, or MDLC. MDLC was activated as the “U.S. Army Materiel Command” on May 8, 1962, with the new name chosen by Besson for its simplicity and clarity. Although the new command was established on May 8, 1962, it was not yet fully operational. Its major subordinate command’s (MSC’s) headquarters were activated on May 23, 1962. On July 1, 1962, a nucleus in the AMC Headquarters took over responsibility for programming and budget. On Aug. 1, 1962, the various field activities and installations were transferred to AMC and the command became fully operational. They came primarily from six of the technical services: Chief Chemical Officer, Chief of Engineers, Chief of Ordnance (the largest single source of AMC installations), the Quartermaster General, Chief Signal Officer, and the Chief of Transportation. The seventh technical service, the Surgeon General, provided one medical depot, and several other installations and activities came from Headquarters, Department of the Army Deputy Chief of Staff for Logistics (HQDA DCSLOG), the Continental Army Command, and the Chief of Research and Development (R&D). The newly activated command consisted of 190,000 people; more than 250 installations, activities, arsenals, and laboratories; an inventory of weapons and equipment worth $23.5 billion ($176 billion in 2012 dollars); and had an annual budget of $7.5 billion ($56 billion in 2012 dollars). The command’s mission from its beginning until the late 1980s was the life cycle management of materiel from concept through research and development R&D, procurement
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and production, supply, distribution and maintenance, and, finally, disposal. From 1962 until 1973, the original headquarters was located in a building at what is now Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport. Some AMC employees will remember the building as “T-7.” In early 1973, the AMC Headquarters moved to its new home at 5001 Eisenhower Ave., in Alexandria, Va. The command held a $100 contest to determine a name for the building. More than 500 applicants participated in the contest. And the winning entry was … “The AMC Building.” In the first 10 years of its inception, the Soldiers and civilians of AMC had established an exceptional record of service to the nation. They supplied and supported the most advanced radios, switches, teletypewriters, and telephones the Army had ever seen up to that time. They also fielded the M-16 rifle and replaced the first-generation “sniper scope” of World War II with second-generation night-vision devices. They also made military history in May 1972 when the Tube-launched Optically tracked Wire-guided (TOW) missile system, in its airborne configuration, became the first American-made guided missile to be fired in combat by U.S. Soldiers.
AMC Becomes “DARCOM” At the same time that AMC was moving into its new headquarters facilities, the Army was scaling down its activities worldwide. In 1974, an Army Materiel Acquisition Review Committee recommended that the Army establish independent development and logistics organizations to improve management of both acquisition and readiness activities. As a result, AMC was designated the U.S. Army Development and Readiness Command (DARCOM) on Jan. 23, 1976, to symbolize the change to a more corporate structure. As part of this reorganization, the commodity commands formerly managed by AMC were broken into separate commands for R&D and readiness. During the late 1970s through the mid-1980s, DARCOM focused much of its energies on what became known as the “Big 5” – the Apache, the Black Hawk, the Abrams tank, the Bradley Fighting Vehicle, and the Patriot missile system. Other notable