Graves went to see
Major General Leif J. Sverdrup, the head of the Engineer Command (ENCOM) in the Philippines, and requested a transfer to ENCOM, which was granted. Graves served in Japan with ENCOM from 23 September 20 October 1945, when he was transferred to the Engineer Section of
Eighth United States Army Headquarters. He was promoted to
captain on 3 January 1946. During the war the military side of the
Manhattan Project had relied heavily on
reservists, as the policy of the Corps of Engineers was to assign regular officers to field commands. The reservists were now eligible for separation. To replace them, the director of the Manhattan Project, Major General
Leslie R. Groves, asked for fifty West Point graduates from the top ten percent of their classes to man bomb assembly teams at
Sandia Base, where the assembly staff and facilities had been moved from Los Alamos and
Wendover Field in September and October 1945. The personnel manned the 2761st Engineer Battalion (Special), which became a field unit under the
Armed Forces Special Weapons Project (AFSWP). Graves was one of those selected. He knew Groves well, as he had been a
cub scout with Groves's son Richard, but his selection was based on his West Point class standing. The 2761st Engineer Battalion (Special) was commanded by Colonel Gilbert M. Dorland, and consisted of a headquarters company, a security company (Company A), a bomb assembly company (Company B) and a radiological monitoring company (Company C), although Company C was never fully formed. For training purposes, Company B was initially divided into command, electrical, mechanical and nuclear groups, but the intention was to create three integrated 36-man bomb assembly teams. The battalion was redesignated the 38th Engineer Battalion (Special) in April 1947, and in July it became part of the newly created AFSWP Field Command. Graves served with Company B, assembling bombs. He became a permanent first lieutenant in the Corps of Engineers on 6 January 1947. The following years he participated in the
Operation Sandstone nuclear weapons test series at
Eniwetok Atoll in the Pacific. Deciding to pursue a graduate degree in physics, Graves asked Dorland to put him on the list of nominees for graduate school, but was passed over. So he went to see Groves, who ordered Dorland to add him to the list. Because Graves's West Point class had missed out on a year of coursework, the Army first sent him to the
Naval Postgraduate School in
Annapolis, Maryland, where he took a year of senior undergraduate courses in math, physics and chemistry from 20 July 1948 to 28 May 1949. Graves then entered the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). When Groves left the AFSWP, the sending of officers to study for postgraduate courses was reconsidered, as three years was thought to be too long to be away from the service, and there was talk of cancelling the program. Graves spoke to the
Chief of Engineers, Lieutenant General
Raymond Albert Wheeler, who had known him since he was a boy. The program continued. The next year, on the basis of Graves's first year of coursework, MIT invited him to complete a
PhD. His father spoke to the new Chief of Engineers, Lieutenant General
Lewis A. Pick, who approved it over the objection of the personnel section. He completed his thesis on "The angular distributions of particles emitted from nuclear reactions in gaseous targets" in 1951. While at MIT, Graves met Nancy Herbert Barclay, a graduate of
Wellesley College with a
Bachelor of Arts degree in economics, who was working for a law firm in Boston. They were married in
Paoli, Pennsylvania, where her parents lived, on 12 May 1951. That had four children: Ralph Henry, Robert Barclay, William Hooper and Emily Birnie. Ralph and Emily later became US Army officers, He was promoted to
lieutenant colonel on 29 March 1960. In 1964 and 1965, Graves attended the
Army War College at
Carlisle Barracks,
Pennsylvania. This is normally followed by a staff posting, and he became a staff officer at
The Pentagon in the Office of the Deputy Under Secretary of the Army for International Affairs. In February 1967 he moved to the staff of the
Secretary of the Army. At this time he took the
Advanced Management Program at
Harvard Business School in
Cambridge, Massachusetts. He was promoted to
colonel on 6 April 1966. For this service, he was awarded the
Legion of Merit and the
Army Distinguished Service Medal. In September 1968, Graves assumed command of the 34th Engineer Group, which was based at
Vung Tau, and later at
Can Tho in the
Mekong Delta, supporting the
9th Infantry Division during the
Vietnam War. The main tasks of the five battalions in the group were the maintenance of
Đồng Tâm Base Camp and the upgrading of QL-4, the main highway linking the
South Vietnamese capital of
Saigon with the Mekong Delta. For his service, he was awarded the
Legion of Merit, a
Bronze Star, and the
Air Medal with an
oak leaf cluster. nuclear reactor in 2017 Graves returned to the United States in September 1969, where he became the deputy director of Military Construction in the Officer of the Chief of Engineers in Washington, D.C. He was promoted to
brigadier general on 10 October 1969. As such, he was responsible for $1 billion of military construction each year for the Army,
United States Air Force and
NASA. At this time, the space program was winding down. The Canaveral District, which had overseen the construction of the
Kennedy Space Center was inactivated, and the
Electronics Research Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts was completed but soon closed. He also served as president of the Air Defense Evaluation Board that recommended the development of the
Patriot missile system. In December 1970, Graves became the Division Engineer of North Central Division, based in
Chicago,
Illinois, with the rank of
major general from 1 August 1971. In this role he was responsible for the water resources of the
Great Lakes and the
Upper Mississippi River. In December 1973 he returned to Washington, D.C., as the Director of Military Application at the
Atomic Energy Commission. This was broken up in 1974, and he became the Director of Military Applications at its successor, the
Energy Research and Development Administration. In this role he oversaw the development of nuclear weapons at the
Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory and
Livermore Lawrence Radiation Laboratory at Livermore, production activities at
Pantex and
Rocky Flats, and testing at the
Nevada Test Site. Graves returned to the Office of the Chief of Engineers in September 1975 as the Director of Civil Works. He carried out a review of all the Corps of Engineers' water construction projects after President
Jimmy Carter attempted to halt work on 35 projects. In July 1977, he became the Deputy Chief of Engineers, with the rank of lieutenant general from 1 March 1978. His final posting was as the director of
Defense Security Assistance Agency, which was responsible for providing security assistance and arms sales to friendly countries, mostly in the Middle East. Of particular importance was assistance to Israel and Egypt under the terms of the
Camp David Accords. For this service, he was awarded the
Defense Distinguished Service Medal. His military decorations also included the
Army Commendation Medal with three oak leaf clusters. ==Later life==