ASC formed in 1961, and over its lifetime it managed 420 Air Force, joint and international aircraft acquisition programs and related projects; executed an annual budget that reached $19 billion and employed a workforce of more than 11,000 people located at Wright-Patterson Air Force base and 38 other locations worldwide.

[1] The Airplane Engineering Department, precursor of ASC, was first established under the U.S. Army's Aviation Section, U.S. Signal Corps in late 1917 at McCook Field.

The division also pioneered aviation safety with the use of free-fall parachutes and the development of protective clothing, closed cockpits, heated and pressurized cabins, and oxygen systems.

As the stockpile of aircraft and parts grew the division was able to spend more time finding ways to enhance tools and procedures for pilots.

Specific advancements of the division in the 1930s include the Norden bombsight, internal bomb bay, and power-operated gun turret.

In 1963, the Materials, Avionics, Aero Propulsion, and Flight Dynamics Laboratories were established and placed under one organization, the Research and Technology Division.

Research during this time included examining different materials for aircraft structure, phased-array radar, and improved power plants.

Part of this concept was "Project 1559" which provided a means for rapidly evaluating new hardware ideas to determine their usefulness for conducting limited war.

During the early 1970s the Department of Defense became concerned with the rising costs of military procurement and consequently abandoned the concept of buying a weapon system as a complete, finished package, and reorganized the acquisition cycle into five phases: conceptual, validation, development, production, and deployment.

In addition to equipment engineering the ASD worked on process improvement as well by introducing Total Quality Management (TQM).

The Avionics and Flight Dynamics Laboratories coordinated research on an "all-glass" cockpit of the future that would allow a pilot, through voice activation, to mix or "enhance" data presented in picture-like symbols on one large TV-like screen.

In light of the new security climate ASC moved to upgrade the B-1 Lancer and B-2 Spirit from exclusively nuclear to conventional weapons.