Army Materiel Systems Analysis Activity

The Army Materiel Systems Analysis Activity (AMSAA) was formed in 1968 from the Weapon Systems Laboratory of the Ballistic Research Laboratories at Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland, "to enhance the decision-making process through broad-based systems analysis of the Army materiel systems." It was created "as a separate reporting activity under the Commanding General (CG), Army Materiel Command (AMC)," and its work combined operations research, mathematical and computer modeling and statistics to "predict performance, analyze effectiveness, identify shortfalls, compare alternatives, and recommend potential courses of action."¹ In 1978 and 1979 it ran the U.S. Army's own test of the remote-viewing protocol of Stanford Research Institute under the program named Grill Flame.²³

Mission and reorganizations

The activity's published chronology lists, for 1968, both its formation from the BRL Weapons Systems Lab and a formal charter for the Joint Technical Coordinating Group for Munitions Effectiveness (JTCG/ME), with AMSAA in the chair. Its narrative history dates the addition of the role of "independent technical evaluator of major Army programs" to 1974; the same page's timeline places the assumption of the "Technical Independent Evaluation mission for DT" in 1975. In 1990 the Army's Deputy Chief of Staff for Logistics designated AMSAA "the Army's independent logistician." The timeline records the acquisition of the Inventory Research and Logistics Studies Offices in 1981, designation as "Army focal point for systems performance data" in 1988 and as "Army Exec Agent for Reliability Standards" in 1995.¹

On June 12, 1996, the Vice Chief of Staff of the Army consolidated the Army evaluation mission into the Operational Test and Evaluation Command, renamed the Army Test and Evaluation Command (ATEC), a decision "based on a reengineering study performed by AMSAA." On October 1, 1996, evaluators of AMSAA, the Test and Evaluation Command and the Survivability and Lethality Analysis Directorate of the Army Research Laboratory were transferred to ATEC's Army Evaluation Center; AMSAA kept the independent evaluation of chemical demilitarization. The Industrial Engineering Activity and the Management Engineering Activity were consolidated into it. It became part of the Research, Development and Engineering Command (RDECOM) in 2002 and was realigned in 2012 as a separate reporting activity of the headquarters of Army Materiel Command. As of September 2016 its director was James Amato, at Aberdeen Proving Ground.¹

Grill Flame

At a meeting in Jack Vorona's conference room on August 24, 1978, called "to establish a unified DoD effort in the development of remote viewing technology for intelligence purposes," Vorona stated that the DIA, the Foreign Technology Division and AMSAA "have contractual funds at the Stanford Research Institute (SRI) for some preliminary investigations into remote viewing feasibility."⁴ SRI's later accounting of its sponsors lists AMSAA for 230,000 dollars over 1978 to 1980;⁵ the funding table in DIA's 1995 history of the service programs gives AMSAA 220,000 dollars for remote viewing in 1978.⁶

After lectures by Hal Puthoff on March 21, 1978, AMSAA ran twenty sessions of its own to test "confirmation and/or rejection of the SRI remote viewing protocol," renaming "subject" as "remote viewer" and "experiment" as "session," and reported that "our replication of the protocol did not result in statistical significance."³ Ingo Swann visited AMSAA on October 17, 1978.⁷ John Kramar, chief of AMSAA's Ground Warfare Division, and Colonel Albert De Prospero of AMSAA were named as discussants, with Dale Graff of the Foreign Technology Division, in the "Sensory Technology Assessment" of November 14, 1978,² and both attended the first meeting of the Defense Department's Grill Flame committee on November 28, 1978.⁸ On January 12, 1979, Major Murray Watt and Lieutenant Frederick Atwater of INSCOM visited AMSAA at Aberdeen, then running its own tests of the SRI protocol.⁹

On February 15, 1979, the Army general counsel found that Grill Flame involved testing on human subjects and halted the AMSAA work.³ AMSAA's Interim Note No. 15 of July 1979, "Project Grill Flame AMSAA Phase I Efforts," listed "Mr. John Kramar," "Dr. Evan Harris Walker" and General Lewis Walt among its acknowledged participants and stated that "the identification of the specific roles played by specific individuals in the AMSAA GRILL FLAME program must be protected."¹⁰ On August 8, 1979, the military assistant to the Under Secretary of the Army wrote to Manfred Gale that "Dr. LaBerge discussed your proposed change in test design with USAMSAA. They are taking action to implement the proposal at this time."¹¹

The Gale committee

The Grill Flame Scientific Evaluation Committee, chaired by Gale, reviewed AMSAA's replication trials along with the SRI research, the psychokinesis contract of the Army Missile Command (MICOM) at Redstone Arsenal and the INSCOM unit at Fort Meade, and visited AMSAA on November 6, 1979. Its report of December 1979 stated: "Examination of SRI findings by this Committee has not resulted in a finding that SRI has proven anything of military operational value... The SRI effort should be terminated for the convenience of the government. The current AMSAA effort should also be terminated." The AMSAA and MICOM work "should be discontinued and terminated in the most cost-effective manner."¹² An unsigned paper of findings in the committee's file recommended terminating "efforts at MICOM, AMSAA, and FTD."¹¹

Kramar, as AMSAA's Grill Flame project officer, wrote for the record on February 13, 1980, that the report, "transmitted to AMSAA January 1980, was found to be somewhat ambiguous and confusing," and took "exception" to the recommendation to "Terminate all AMSAA GRILL FLAME efforts": "This recommendation, as best as can be determined, is based only on a partial understanding of AMSAA's initial effort, which was terminated before the SEC came into being. There is an apparent mistake by the SEC in considering the AMSAA challenge/validation efforts to be an integral part of the SRI contract." He copied Gale and DARCOM.¹³ DIA's 1995 table lists DARCOM for 700,000 dollars for remote viewing in fiscal 1981.⁶