The first study which HERO completed was done for the Sandia Corporation—a special contracting agency for the Atomic Energy Commission. The purpose of this study—which we dubbed “Pre-Alert”—was to ascertain the extent to which historical example and experience could be useful in the area of military command and control. The Sandia Corporation had the responsibility for developing the so-called “black box” to provide foolproof, automatic controls which will prevent accidental or unauthorized employment of nuclear weapons systems. Our study was unclassified, so we didn’t get into the classified details of these foolproof, automatic controls. Our task was to assess the likelihood that such controls might be so complicated, or might be so inhibiting to individual initiative, as to preclude adequate military response in the event of unforeseen emergency conditions or circumstances. Sandia had, of course, called upon the psychologists and sociologists to study this problem but the results of these scientific studies were not completely satisfactory in synthetic “model” environments. So we were asked to see if anything could be learned from historical experience. After surveying the history of weapon systems, and the sometimes divergent history of command and control systems, we came to the conclusion that much _could_ be learned from history about the human aspects of command and control. We laid out a program for a detailed investigation of a number of pertinent case studies, and some general areas for intensive research. We don’t know how useful our study was to the Sandia Corporation. We do know, however, that it aroused considerable interest in the Army. And it proved to us, without question, that our thesis about the relevance of history to current and future problems was as sound in the nuclear era, and with respect to nuclear weapon systems, as we had believed would be the case. Our next study was for the U. S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. Entitled “Riposte,” the purpose of this study was to survey historical experience in the field of international treaties, to analyze this experience, and to point out lessons applicable to current and future treaty negotiations and treaty enforcement, particularly as this experience might be relevant to arms control treaties.