USAT: Report: U.S. missile science slumping

Experts are getting thin in many aerospace engineering fields. Where there used to be 10 aircraft programs - a few fighters and a few bombers - going at all times now there is one, with possibly one follow on, unless it gets killed. And both are run by the same company. And both are fighters.

The last bomber we built was the B-2. We made 20 of them I think. We built 12,700 B-17s (Source Link).

JSF(F-35) might be built in "significant numbers", but the F-22 surely will not.

And then when will the next fighter move in development? Who will design and build that fighter? What company will have an aerospace engineer with expertise in fighter design who is not retired by then?

People forget what is required to keep an industrial base in place, or perhaps they no longer care.

Perhaps a single company can maintain the engineers necessary to produce all the future aircraft needs of the US government. Perhaps not. We are about to find out.

USA Today 03/24/2006
Author: Matt Kelley
(Copyright 2006)
WASHINGTON -- The Pentagon risks running out of scientists to operate and upgrade the nation's arsenal of intercontinental nuclear and conventional missiles, according to a report released this week by the Defense Science Board.

As the nation's veteran engineers and scientists retire, the military will lose much of its expertise in long-range missile technology, the report says. That means the Air Force and Navy, which operate most of the 1960s-vintage missiles, will be unable to cope with system failures or develop improved weapons, the report says.

Not only are fewer American engineers and scientists choosing to work on missile technology, there are fewer of them altogether, the report says. Each year, about 70,000 Americans receive undergraduate and graduate science and engineering degrees that are defense related, compared with a combined 200,000 in China and India, the report says.

The government should pay higher salaries and offer other incentives to attract more experts into the strategic missile field, the report says.

A task force of five outside missile experts spent two years preparing the report at the Pentagon's request.

Although the board lacks the power to force the Pentagon to act, Lt. Gen. Frank Klotz, acting head of the Air Force Space Command, told a Senate committee this month that the Pentagon is trying to improve its recruiting and retention of missile experts. Space Command runs the intercontinental ballistic missile system.

The report does not give specifics on the number of experts who are retiring or the numbers needed to replace them, but it says about 20,000 research and development scientists and engineers work in the aerospace industry as a whole, down from more than 140,000 in the mid-1980s.

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