[Talk-us] Federally Funded Research R&D Centers: landuse=military?

Greg Troxel gdt at ir.bbn.com
Sat May 26 01:21:08 BST 2012


I agree with Nathan; FFRDCs are basically research labs.  Compared to a
traditional defense contractor, they are non-profit entitities and have
some special deal with the government that they only take federal
funding.  That gets them out of some scrutiny for them trying to cheat
the government, and allows them to be involved in evaluating regular
contractors more-or-less-loyal-to-the-government.  But they aren't part
of the DoD, and there are non-DoD agencies.

I think landuse=military should be restricted to facilities controlled
by DoD which have some military purpose, e.g. a base, and e.g. not a VA
hospital.

There's an interesting case in Massachusetts where MIT Lincoln
Laboratory (LL) is on the ground of Hanscom Air Force Base.  LL is an
FFRDC (but MIT isn't).  So that sounds like there should be a
landuse=commercial polygon for the LL area, within larger
landuse=military polygon.

As a counterpoint to that near-military feel, I once visited another
FFRDC (that does almost exclusively defense work) in a different state.
That facility was a boring 2-story office building with a manicured lawn
and parking lots located on a road with many such buildings, just like
any small company, and distinguishable as an FFRDC only by the company
name.
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