Defense Technical Information Center (U.S.)

The Defense Technical Information Center (DTIC) is the repository for research and engineering information for the United States Department of Defense (DoD). DTIC's services are available to DoD personnel, federal government personnel, federal contractors and selected academic institutions. The general public can access unclassified information through its public website.

As a Department of Defense (DoD) Field Activity, DTIC operates under the leadership of the Secretary of Defense and reports to the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering USD(R&E). DTIC supports the USD(R&E)’s efforts to mitigate new and emerging threat capabilities, enable affordable or extended capabilities in existing military systems, and develop technology surprise through engineering by: Preserving and disseminating the research that led to the technologies our warfighters use today; Delivering the tools and collections that empower the research and engineering enterprise to accelerate the development of technologies that will help maintain our nation's technical superiority; Stimulating innovation by providing access to DoD-funded research and digital data to the public and industry; and Maximizing the value of each dollar the DoD spends through the analysis of funding, work-in-progress, and Independent Research and Development (IR&D) data to identify gaps, challenges and way forward. These areas of responsibility support USD(R&E) in their efforts to mitigate new and emerging threat capabilities, enable affordable new or extended capabilities in existing military systems, and develop technology surprise through science and engineering.

The DTIC traces its history to the June 1945 formation of the Air Documents Research Center (ADRC), a joint effort of the US Army Air Force, US Navy and Royal Air Force to build a single collection of captured German aeronautical research, based in London. The ADRC was initially tasked with the sorting of the document collection into three broad groups; documents that would assist the war in the Pacific theater, documents of immediate intelligence interest to the United States or British forces and documents of interest for future research.

With the ending of the war in 1945, the ADRC moved to Wright Field in Dayton, Ohio and became the Air Documents Division (ADD). In 1948, the secretaries of the Navy and Air Force redesigned ADD into the Central Air Documents Office (CADO) giving it the collection of captured documents and also broadened its mission to include collecting, processing and disseminating information.

1951, the group was renamed the Armed Services Technical Information Agency (ASTIA) to "provide an integrated program of scientific and technical services for the Department of Defense and its contractors". As part of this reorganization, a branch office was opened in the Library of Congress, Washington. One major project during the ASTIA era was to develop library catalog systems to organize the growing body of work. This led to the Uniterm indexing system in the early 1950s.

In 1963, the group was once again reorganized to become the Defense Documentation Center for Science and Technical Information (DDC), and placed under the direction of the Defense Supply Agency (DSA). The DDC moved to Cameron Station, Alexandria, Virginia. In 1979, the DDC officially changed their name to become the DTIC. In 1995, it moved to Andrew T. McNamara Headquarters Complex, Fort Belvoir, Virginia, as part of the reformed Defense Logistics Agency.