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The personnel of the Air Force Operational Test and Evaluation Center, (AFOTEC), Kirtland Air Force Base (AFB), New Mexico, codified the centers six core test principles in 2018. These principles (now known as 6P) consisted of: early involvement of operational testers in the acquisition process; tailoring the test effort to the situation or program at hand; providing continuous feedback; Streamlining processes and products where practicable; integration of developmental test and evaluation (DT and E) and operational test and evaluation (OT and E) efforts: and staying adaptive. They arose in the context of a mindset of continuous improvement in the Air Force and in acquisition. Two of these principles also had roots in the earliest history of the operational test activities of the center and the acquisition system. AFOTEC's discussions of early involvement, sometimes used interchangeably with early influence, and sometimes defined in opposition to it, dated to the centers founding in 1974. The notion of integrating developmental and operational test, or contractor-led, developmental, and operational test, held a more equivocal place in the centers test philosophies between1974 and the early 2000s. Particularly early on, when AFOTEC had neither established its utility or its full independence, the idea of integrating developmental and operational test and evaluation seemed liable to detract from resources available for operational test, or to imperil AFOTEC's autonomy. Such qualms slowly waned following the designation of the center as a direct reporting unit (DRU) to the Chief of Staff of the Air Force in 1991. An examination of the origins of the six principles and how these values evolved within the center reveals their importance to the longstanding value of AFOTEC, and its contributions to the betterment of the Air Force acquisition system.