Although the military has spent the past two decades-plus relying more and more on commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) components – from computer chips to materials to communications – significantly reducing the demand for unique MILSPECs (military specification equipment), there remain areas crucial to warfighters but with little or no civilian interest.
“It is a challenge when you get to Army-specific requirements, which often are different from civilian market needs. If I need a specific battery, industry won’t do the IRAD [independent R&D] needed to make a battery that won’t blow up if hit by a bullet or will operate at -40 F or +120 F, so we [military labs] will do the initial R&D to do that,” Ormond said.
“I have a lot of scientists and engineers 45 and older and a lot 35 and younger, because we really didn’t hire anybody in the ’90s. If we start letting go of too many of those – junior ones who typically end up leaving and seniors ones who retire – we won’t have a next-generation S&T workforce who have been mentored, trained, and educated so we don’t lose a beat and we keep on going,” he concluded.
Acknowledging the reality of some new technologies being developed outside the United States does not reduce the growing need for American experts and facilities, he added.
Master Sgt. Sean Fagan, a maintainer with Marine Fighter Attack Training Squadron 501, discusses the F-35 Lightning II program and jet to students. The fifth-graders had the chance to get up close to the jet and examine its different parts while asking questions of Fagan. In bringing the aircraft in, the VMFAT-501 Marines hoped to spark the students’ interest in the career fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) – all important parts of furthering and developing the F-35 training program at Eglin Air Force Base, Fla. Air Force photo by Sara Vidoni
“There are some real challenges out there, and we need to encourage our young people, all across the spectrum, to get involved and get our schools teaching and motivating students to take classes that are not that easy. If we want to recruit soldiers who can be effective operators with the kit we will give them, they need to have at least a fundamental understanding of electronics, math, physics, basic science. Without that, they won’t understand how any of this stuff works, certainly not how to fix it in the field or reconfigure if they find themselves in a degraded mode,” he said.
“That is needed just for our future force. But from a national perspective, as the world becomes more complex and technically oriented, we need to have scientists and engineers if we are going to remain competitive. That’s what we hear from industry, that we are not graduating American citizens with those kinds of degrees in numbers we need to remain competitive.”
For the U.S. military, however, being “competitive” is not enough.
“I never want our military to walk into a fair fight. I want them to have the ability to win, every time, to exert the will of the country. In order to do that, we need to have an edge of some sort – either as a result of technology itself or how we use that technology with our TTPs [tactics, techniques, and procedures],” Lacey said.
“Not every problem is a technical issue, but where technology is required for us to enable the military to do what the president asks it to do, I want us to be No. 1. I want our operators to have that.”
Accomplishing that, Walker added, is one of the chief goals and byproducts of maintaining a strong R&D effort in science and technology.
“One of the real keys S&T brings is the ability to continue to maintain a strong industrial base, maintain design teams, maintain new capabilities in times of austerity, so when you come out of times of austerity, it is not a complete restart,” he said. “And because of the recognition that that is important, we have been able to maintain our S&T budgets relatively well in such periods. I hope to see that continue, because I personally believe it a good course for the Air Force to take.”
The decisions being made now on STEM education and R&D budgets, programs, and priorities will shape the nation’s future – perhaps irrevocably.
“I have a lot of scientists and engineers 45 and older and a lot 35 and younger, because we really didn’t hire anybody in the ’90s. If we start letting go of too many of those – junior ones who typically end up leaving and seniors ones who retire – we won’t have a next-generation S&T workforce who have been mentored, trained, and educated so we don’t lose a beat and we keep on going,” he concluded.
“It is important to look at our intellectual capital and how we preserve and maintain and keep building on it and not potentially go back and try to regrow it again because we lost it. We can plant the seed corn of S&T and continue to fund the scientists and engineers who do that work and push out the state of the art – or we can eat our seed corn for other operational considerations. But then, when we need it, we won’t have it – and it is hard to grow that again.”
This article was first published in Defense: Spring 2013 Edition.