Refining Government Consulting with BAARINC

In 1947, the U.S. Air Force brought Booz Allen in for a highly technical and geopolitically significant assignment at Wright Field in Ohio. The challenge: to conduct a guided-missile production management study. The broader challenge: to help the government advance its technological competence to win the Cold War.

We were thorough. We reviewed every missile research project and estimated the cost of producing the guided missiles in terms of plant space, production staff, materials, and labor. Then, our newly minted missile group pored over reconnaissance photos to determine the Soviet Union’s missile capabilities and compiled our findings into a highly classified report with a red leather cover that became known around the Pentagon as “the Red Book.”

Delivering work on time and on budget while managing unprecedented complexity inspires confidence and trust. Confidence and trust breed more confidence and trust—and more assignments from clients. The U.S. Air Force soon asked us to develop an electronic intelligence strategy—the biggest contract we had won to date, and a turning point for us as a driver of technology in government.

The Wright Field guided missile work had demonstrated to our government clients that Booz Allen was much more than a management consultancy. We were a technology company as well. However, the U.S. Air Force did not want to entrust its intelligence strategy to non-technical organizations—and given the highly classified nature of the work, we would have had to send our entire workforce through the government’s complex clearance process.

In 1955, Booz Allen Applied Research Inc. (BAARINC) was our solution. While our commercial practice focused on private sector clients, BAARINC could go on to securely plan, coordinate, and implement increasingly complex and technologically advanced systems for the military and other government agencies. BAARINC’s original main office was in Dayton, Ohio, allowing us to work at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. Five years later, BAARINC’s headquarters moved to Bethesda, Maryland, to be closer to federal agencies.

When the Soviet Union announced that it had successfully launched an unmanned satellite into orbit in 1957, it lit a fire under the United States. Sputnik demonstrated that the Soviets had far greater technological sophistication than the world had known and a level of rocketry power and precision that was alarming for a nuclear-armed adversary. Because of our experience with missile work, we found ourselves at the starting blocks of the Space Race. Congress created the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in 1958—a year after Sputnik’s launch—and BAARINC and Booz Allen soon formed a relationship with the space agency as an organizational and technical consultant.

Booz Allen Engineer Fred Pitts—who joined BAARINC in 1962 and continues to work for Booz Allen today—recalled how one successful mission led to the next.

“We did work on advanced Navy planning and planning their projects, including communications projects,” said Fred. “And that grew into work with NASA at Goddard Space Flight Center, where we assisted them in operating this spacecraft test facility. Every spacecraft that was going to go into orbit in a scientific experiment setting had to go through these test procedures: shake, rattle, and roll, and vacuum chambers. We created programs that monitored and measured all those results for NASA, and that led us to work with NASA headquarters downtown, where we got involved in supporting management of some of the NASA programs.”

At the height of its productivity, BAARINC generated 40% of Booz Allen’s revenue. It was, by all accounts, a major success. But the separation it required from the rest of the company created dividing lines between our commercial and government consultants that followed us for decades, eventually coming to a head during CEO Michael McCullough’s tenure between 1985 and 1990.

Between our commercial business and our government business, different regional offices, and a compensation structure that rewarded rainmaking rather than collaborating, we were operating in silos. Michael sought to address these issues, instituting reforms upon which his successor Bill Stasior built. BAARINC evolved into the Public Management & Technology Center before being reorganized into the Worldwide Technology Business (WTB) in 1991, which became the modern-day Booz Allen.

In 1994, the introduction of Vision 2000 reprioritized, for the entire organization, the cross-functional project teams that BAARINC had introduced decades earlier. The silos were broken and the importance of teamwork validated—a critical step that we have continued to refine and build upon with the introduction of our VoLT strategy in 2021. Just as BAARINC was the answer to the historical moment in which it was created, VoLT has propelled us into a new era and equipped us to confront new challenges.