experience in their proper maintenance, storage and handling. However, he was also aware of the sensitivity of the issue of custody, which Congress had assigned to the AEC. Rather than continue to press for changes in the law, he accepted the situation as it was, and strove to make the best of it, working within the existing framework. McCormack became involved in discussions with Edward Teller over the possibility of developing thermonuclear weapons, then known as the "Super". McCormack became an early advocate of the Super, which promised yields in the megaton range, and directed Norris Bradbury at the Los Alamos National Laboratory to proceed with its development even at the detriment of other weapons. The debate over the merits of the Super pitted the United States Air Force against the other services, which wanted more small, tactical weapons. Concurrently, there was a technical debate between Teller and other scientists like Robert Oppenheimer over the feasibility of the Super, because there was no guarantee that it would work, and even after Operation Greenhouse, the processes involved in thermonuclear reactions were not fully understood. It ultimately became apparent that the Super design would not work, but the development of the Teller-Ulam design provided a new path to high yield thermonuclear weapons. For his services as Director of Military Applications, McCormack was awarded the Army Distinguished Service Medal. Later life McCormack transferred to the United States Air Force on 25 July 1950. After leaving the AEC in August 1951, he became Special Assistant to the Deputy Chief of Staff of the Air Force for Development. In January 1952 he was appointed Director of Nuclear Applications at the Air Research and Development Center in Baltimore, Maryland. He was subsequently promoted to major general, and became Deputy Commander of the Air Research and Development Command. He was called to testify at the Oppenheimer security hearing. Like other witnesses, McCormack testified that Oppenheimer was loyal, and that while the two men had disagreed over the merits of the Super, that he saw nothing dishonest or disloyal in Oppenheimer's opposition to it. McCormack retired from the Air Force in 1955, and became the first head of the Institute for Defense Analysis, a non-profit research organization to provide advice and support to the Department of Defense's scientific and technological research efforts formed by ten universities. In 1958 he became vice president for industrial and governmental relations at