Crash program
A crash program is a plan of action entailing rapid, intensive resource allocation to solve a pressing problem. Rapidity may eliminate investigation and planning essential to efficient use of resources when goals are perceived as more important than those resources.
Etymology
The use of "crash" as a modifier meaning "undertaken rapidly or urgently" traces to "crash dive," the emergency rapid-submersion maneuver developed for submarines in the 1920s. The submarine crash dive required normal procedures to be compressed or bypassed, establishing a semantic association between "crash" and urgent, accelerated action.The term "crash program" emerged in American military and scientific circles during World War II to describe expedited production of urgently needed equipment. Documentary evidence places the term in use by late 1940, when the U.S. Army Signal Corps Laboratories built eighteen SCR-268 radar sets on what was described as a "crash" basis, bypassing normal procurement channels. The term appeared frequently at MIT's Radiation Laboratory beginning in 1941, where the services would place "crash production" orders for hand-built, prototype radar sets ahead of mass manufacturing.
By 1944, the Office of Scientific Research and Development formalized "crash procurement" as an administrative category, also known as the "Red Ticket Program," defining it as "a small quantity production of an item which is urgently needed in the field and which can be completed or deliveries started several months in advance of the date when the manufacturer can commence production line deliveries." The practice was most extensively applied to radar and rocket programs, where OSRD undertook limited manufacturing runs because standard military procurement procedures could not deliver new equipment quickly enough for operational needs.