November 2, 2000
RELEASE ON RECEIPT

OBERLIN, OHIO--"The Defense Paradox: More Dollars, Less National Security" is the title of a free, public talk to be presented by defense expert, aeronautical engineer and statistician Pierre Sprey Wednesday, November 15 at 4:30 p.m. in Hallock Auditorium, located in Oberlin College’s Adam Joseph Lewis Center for Environmental Studies, 122 Elm Street.

Sprey, a former Pentagon analyst, served as special assistant to the assistant secretary of defense for systems analysis during the Johnson and Nixon administrations. He also carried on the seminal work of the late Richard Reid Hallock '41 in founding the field of combat data/combat history-based cost effectiveness analysis for weapons. Hallock was an advisor to U. S. Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger.

While at the Pentagon, Sprey also helped launch the military reform movement of the 1980s. The movement attracted widespread attention and led to the passage of a number of military reform laws.

In addition, Sprey was a principal designer of the F-16 and A-10 fighter jets. The latter were used extensively in the final days of the crisis in Kosovo. In June 1999, Lars-Erik Nelson, in the New York Daily News, credited Sprey’s design with demolishing Serb tank formations and helping to end the war.

Nelson added, "Though Sprey is proud of his plane, he is not particularly proud of this war: ‘We managed to put ourselves on the side of the Croatians when we helped them ethnically cleanse Serbs out of the Krajina,’ said Sprey. ‘Now, when the Serbs want to do the same thing, we bomb them. I take no sides with any of those people’."

Since 1988, Sprey has continued to be a consultant on weapons and military reform issues, but his main focus has been researching radical new design approaches to achieve ultra-realistic sound reproduction. His company, Mapleshade Records, records and produces CDs with high-end sound for jazz, gospel and blues.

Oberlin's politics department is sponsoring the lecture series with the support of the Richard R. Hallock Foundation. Hallock, who had a deep interest in issues of national security, met frequently with Oberlin faculty to discuss plans for a class and lecture series that would address the changing nature of security in the new century

Media Contact: Betty Gabrielli 11/2/00 #40 bg