Discusses how to find productive civilian uses for the resources and people formerly devoted to the nation's defense. Focuses on how R&D institutions can be more responsive to civilian technology development. Examines how certain proposed national missions might replace defense in contributing to the country's repository of technology, high-value added jobs, and gross domestic product. Charts and tables.

A North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Advanced Studies Institute (AS I) on Defense Conversion Strategies was held at the Atholl Palace Hotel, Pitlochry, Perthshire, Scotland, from July 2 through July 14, 1995. This publication is the proceedings of the Institute. The NATO Advanced Studies Institute program of the NATO Science Committee is a unique and valuable forum under whose auspices over one thousand international tutorial meetings have been held since the inception of the program in 1959. The ASI is intended to be primarily a high-level teaching activity at which a carefully defined subject is presented in a systematic and coherently structured program. The subject is treated in considerable depth by lecturers eminent in their fields and of international standing. The subject is presented to other experts or practitioners who will already have specialized in the field or possess an advanced general background appropriate to the topic. The ASI is aimed at an audience at the post-doctoral level. This does not exclude advanced graduate students or other senior participants with qualifications and achievements in the subject of the ASI or rclated areas. This ASI was prompted by several events in the defense environment.

Defense plant cutbacks and military base closures have affected hundreds of U.S. communities during the past twenty-five years. Tracing the recovery of four communities after large defense plant cutbacks and of one hundred communities after military base closures, the contributors analyze the transition from the production of military to civilian goods. The contributors examine the market potential of reusing defense industrial plants to produce civilian products within the one- to two-year period called for by economic conversion proponents, showing that the complex process needed to develop, test, and market an entirely new product requires a minimum of five years. They also review the wide range of economic development techniques available at the state and local level, conversion approaches in Western Europe, programs for displaced workers, and reasons why the economic conversion approach has failed to attract public support in the United States. The case studies are used to formulate an integrated, composite approach for coping with plant closures and major employment dislocations. Stressing the in portance of community-based economic adjustment activities, this book will be valuable to all concerned with mitigating the effects of military and civilian plant closures.