Manufacturing Certainty: Testing and Program* Management for the F-4 Phantom II

Abstract

The American military-industrial complex of the 1950s was dramatically restructured around `program management', a set of organizational techniques used to dedicate engineers to the timely completion of one weapon system. Program managers challenged the managers of established engineering institutions over the methods used to manufacture certainty about how an aircraft would perform. Program managers and institution-builders shaped the F-4 Phantom II, a fighter aircraft built by the McDonnell Aircraft Company from 1954 to 1979, by invoking six types of testing: negotiating the state of the art; aggregation testing; integration testing; acceptance testing; configuration control; and operational testing.