Richard DeLauer; Outspoken Ex-Defense Aide

Richard DeLauer, the courageously candid former undersecretary of defense who disagreed with his President and his immediate boss over weapons and contracts, died Sunday of leukemia in Los Angeles. He was 71 and more recently was board chairman and chief executive officer of Fairchild Space & Defense Corp.

From 1981 through 1984, when he left government service to spend more time with his family, the 1940 Stanford graduate was the defense undersecretary for research and engineering during Ronald Reagan’s first term.

At the Pentagon he was known as a government official who answered his own phone, spoke his own mind and disagreed with Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger’s attempt to freeze spending on the controversial Sgt. York antiaircraft gun and with Reagan himself on weapons procurement policies.

But he agreed with Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative, the so-called Star Wars program. He became chief architect of a controversial plan to speed up Star Wars weapons development by eliminating many of the time-consuming tests traditionally performed at each step of production.

DeLauer, who received his doctorate degree from Caltech in 1953, was an aeronautical engineering officer in the Navy from 1943 to 1958 and worked in nuclear rocket propulsion development. He became an executive vice president and a director of TRW Inc. after his service years.

Before joining Fairchild, a Maryland-based corporation, in 1989, DeLauer had his own defense consulting firm, the Orion Group.

Survivors include his wife, Ann, a son, two brothers and two grandchildren.

The family suggests donations to a Richard DeLauer Memorial Fund at Stanford University.