Over the past decade, as spending on new military projects has reached its highest level since the Reagan years, the Pentagon has increasingly been losing the people most skilled at managing them. That brain drain, military experts like (Paul) Kaminski say, is a big factor in a breakdown in engineering management that has made huge cost overruns and long delays the maddening norm.
Kaminski’s generation of engineers, which was responsible for many of the most successful military projects of the 1970s and ’80s, is aging. But declining numbers of top young engineers, software developers and mathematicians are replacing them. Instead, they are joining high-tech companies and other civilian organizations that provide not just better pay than the military or its contractors, but also greater cachet – what one former defense industry engineer called “geek credit.”
The answer, says Pentagon experts, is a cohort of disciplined systems engineers.
You get what you pay for.
One of the problems I see is that there just aren’t enough projects to cut your teeth on. Think of how many planes were designed and fielded back in the late 40′s into early 50′s. X-planes out the wazoo not to mention lots hitting the fleet.
Now, if you missed out the F-35 you’ve missed the one chance in your life to design a pointy-nosed jet from scratch.
The good news is we’re popping out new UAVs like babies from Britney Spears. Plenty of chances to screw up and LEARN. That’s where you get your good systems engineers, from experience.
Bah humbug. I notice they use the term “acquisition” a lot. Let’s see there’s been TQM, DAWIA, Sigma, ERP, NERP, and so on and so on…
This is what happens when sales folks run the company. See the IBM collapse in the late 80′s and early 90′s
I think that I read something like 50% of the aerospace workforce will be retiring in the next 3 years. That stat may be high, but I just remember I was astonished.
Sure enough, in the next three years, we’ll be losing 1/3 of my workmates to retirement and in the next 5-7, 2/3. I personally don’t think it bodes well when *I* am the senior ranking engineer. I’m sure as hell not ready for it…
I’m just curious, what are these successful programs from the 70′s and 80′s that Mr. Kaminski touts? What is he holding them against in today’s terms?
Sounds like typical Baby Boomer BS to me.
I spent about 5 years working in a SYSCOM located in San Diego and had my little program shuffled 4 times in reorganizations with each shuffle resulting in a move to another building at Old Town Campus. One thing really struck me at the 3rd move when we moved to the 3rd floor of OT3 where we, to my surprise, worked directly over rocket scientists from Lockmart/now ULA. I never saw more than a dozen metal benders, welders, engineers, NDT types, QA, supervisors, managers, etc making rocket fuel tanks but every week or so there was another gigantic Level A fuel tank ready to blast off into space.
Visible product, invisible work force and what a contrast with the 2500 govies who worked month after month in the other 3 buildings at OTC with nothing at all to show for all their hard work. It almost made me want to get a job with lockmart.
Nose, I don’t know which programs Kaminski is touting, but in the 70s-80, for the Army, it was “The Big Five”. The Army took a long hard look at what it NEEDED vs. what it wanted.
Abrams
Bradley
Patriot
Blackhawk
Apache
I’d call that a success.
XBradTC,
Thanks. As the offspring of the Army Director of Weapon Systems and Program Manager for the Bradley that finally put it into production it’s nice to see someone else who thinks the Army chose wisely back then.
Some of it was a very convincing demonstration that perfect was the enemy of good enough. The movie was not at all flattering….but I’m glad to see that some folks were happy mutadis mutandis.
What they want a new round of “Whiz-Kids” to replace the ones that are starting to hit mando-retirement age?
I think were seeing a derth of engineers across the board. I’m at a 40,000+ person school that had to drop its entrance requirements for Aerospace from a 3.0 to 2.0 over the past several years and still has trouble finding enough people to fill 100 slots. It seems like many of the people who would have gone into Engineering are now trying the BioMedical route thinking it will pay better in the long run ( or possibly due to watching too much Grey’s Anatomy) along with the multitude who are headed into the business school.
Then theres the lack of presence and wow factor in military projects these days. Sure the F-35 will be at the tip of the spear but how many people will ever see a display of American Airpower in there backyard. On the other hand who doesn’t either have or want an iPhone.
On top of that some aspects of military technology seems a little bit behind the times. during most of the 20th century the DoD had the world most advanced computers.I’ve heard that now a single blackberry has three times the bandwidth of an entire Arleigh Burke class destroyer. Or I’ve heard talk about how burst transmission will be the wave of the future for military communications. I’m pretty sure most American teenagers are already well aquainted with burst transmission in the text message.
Go check out my post on the M-1. It follows the same theme. Perfect is the enemy of good enough.
http://xbradtc.wordpress.com/2008/06/25/tank-battles/
Lex, I apologize for my blatant blogpimp there. It was specifically intended for Curtis, as it seemed germane to the discussion.
Curtis: from me, thank your pop. it worked. damn well.
XBradTC: concur, you beat me to the response.
ALCON: gee. if only we had some kind of educational institutions, military kinds of institutions, that were all like kinda focused sorta on the engineering disciplines… but where would we ever find such a place? hmm…. Nah, nevermind, it would never work!
I also posted on this at Chicago Boyz.
Some success stories are the first ballistic missile subs, U2, SR71, defense systems program (bunch of satellites). and a bunch of different airplanes. NASA did OK on the moon landing thing. We fielded them all in years not decades.
I will attest to the poor project management aspect of this, especially from the contractors side. Several years ago I was working for a subcontractor supplying a new production line to a shipyard who had just won a contract to build the Coast Guards new Deepwater fleet. After the initial release of the specification to us for the line, a group of experts would meet every month to review what was already an agreed upon specification. The result was a near complete rewrite of the equipment specification every time this group met, meaning thousands of engineering manhours down the tubes and the delay of the project by months meaning millions of dollars in delays.
An effective managerial staff on the shipbuilder and Coast Guard’s end would have put the kybosh on this kind of back and forth, but that was never seen. Instead, a production line that was supposed to be up and running 18months after the release of the specification and 12 months after the contract was awarded took almost 40months, and in the end the package that was purchased looke nearly identical to the first specification they released.
As I may jump on
Curtis, What X Brad and RRM said.
XBradTC,
While not detracting from what you’ve posted, I would like to add one to your list of what the Army wanted/needed in the 70s… that didn’t have such a happy ending:
SGT York.
One of the major problems causing the long timeline to fielding on current projects is the complexity. Back in the 60s and 70s, a missile had a simple gyro system for orientation, a fairly un-complex seeker (Paveway laser spot detector, for instance), and some simple electronics to tell which fin to wiggle to turn left. Now, we’re building systems that can track and hit an incoming ballistic missile, in a specific location along the body, at closing speeds that are eye-popping. They are linked to sophisticated ground radar and comm systems that are themselves networked to a command center.
On JSF and F-22, we’re talking massive computer power and fly-by-light fiber-optic control systems that actually fly the plane. The pilot uses the stick to tell the plane which way to go, but the computers figure out the correct combination of control surfaces and vectored thrust will make the plane go that way. Add in all the sensor suite, weapon system integration, and sorting all the data to give the pilot a managable view of his situation, and we’re talking systems with a complexity that the commercial world rarely deals with.
I find my job extremely interesting, get a six-figure salary, and get great satisfaction from the knowledge that products I helped design are being used by our troops to send al-Qaida to see allah. ipods are neat, but designing a trendy plastic case around a flash memory card doesn’t get my blood flowing.
A friend of mine was one of those “Whiz Kids”. Straight out of college, with a BS in Computational Physics, got a big $$ contractor job doing robotics and computer algorithm work for NASA. A year later, he left. Why? He made more $$ and felt that less of his time was being wasted by “entrenched bureaucracy ” doing something else.
What is that something else? Writing a web comic.
http://www.xkcd.com
SSG Jeff
Hey 5 outa 6 ain’t bad…
SGT York was actually working pretty well by the time the cancelled it. But what was the point. It was expensive, and for a much cheaper price, you could use stingers with almost the exact same range. ADA was the one branch that really screwed up aquisition in the 70s/80s, Roland was the other big program. A large part of the reason we even had the program was to balance some trade with our European friends. But they tried to improve the product. That rarely ends well. The M-60 was an “improvement” of the MG-42. It was a dog. The Germans still use the MG-3, which is just an MG-42 in 7.62Nato.
I’d also add that most defense contractors can’t hire HB1′s to fill those positions that American’s won’t do. We’ll have to listen to yet another whine from engineering firms about being unable to fill positions, and yet more statistics about “fewer engineering students” from the Bureau of Labor.
This is what I wrote (albeit a bit off topic from the original point that fewer students were taking I.T. courses):
[quote]Cry me a river. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics has been shilling for the big I.T. companies for years so that the companies can import low-cost workers from (name you (sic) country here. India gets the most press but there are others).
What very seldom gets the press is there is very rampant age discrimination endemic in I.T. I just had this conversation with a friend of mine at a technology company. When I was in my 30′s I laughed at the notion of age discrimination until I reached my 50′s and was shown the door. Then I got my head out of my * and looked around. I see companies EVERYWHERE decrying the lack of ‘skilled’ I.T. workers and see them shuffling out highly educated, highly trained, experienced, knowledgeable, but aged workers through the back door. You want to see? Watch what happens when Hewlett-Packard completes its acquisition of E.D.S.
High pay and longevity are the warning signs that departure may be in your future.
I was lucky. I found an I.T. job at a company that valued my experience and knowledge in I.T.; albeit as a contractor with no benefits (yet another hazard of being over 50). I have watch numbers of my peer group laid off at H.P. struggle with finding new employment and some have…. but most not at commensurate salaries.
So lack of I.T. workers? I highly doubt it. What I do see is I.T. companies no longer investing in their employees in training and skills updating, preferring to cost shift that to the new hire. The companies express a willingness to ‘downsize’, rightsize’ and ‘redeploy a position’ (rehire in another geographical area) in a bid to lower salary and benefits by bringing in a much younger worker.
Entropy happens. [/quote]
What I see is a company (be it any technology company) needs to reduce costs and the first thing they do is pick high salary workers (which happen to be older) because of longevity and cut them (more bang for the cut). Then they hire a cheaper replacement and start over. As I said, entropy happens.
I have seen it from both sides as an employee and employer and I don’t have an answer…..
Curtis: You talk about LM being more efficient and effective than the government. The government has since forced LM to turn into a government-type operation, because obviously there’s no possible way to do anything correctly if it isn’t done the government way.
On the stupidity of government contracting in engineering, I would encourage everyone to read Ben Rich’s “Skunk Works”. Great tale about how hard it was to design and build the F-117.
as usual they confuse good “manager” with good “engineers”. Its a rare day that they both come packaged in the same warm body.
Hence the fame of guys like Kelly. Good management is still been sorely lacking in defense business – makes me long for the automotive industry…. the engineering talent is still as good as ever – or certainly no worse than ever – from the youngest buck up to the senior most guy handling technical data.
Stop the nonsense of confusing the two things or forcing a career track on perfectly serviceable engineering talent – a pay raise wouldn’t even have to be that much – esp considering what segment of that cash goes into lobbying for getting a crack at the work to begin with.
Another novel idea is cross breed the engineers – if I were king of LM, GD, or SAC for a day = I would not hire a new engineer that hadn’t had at least 5 years in the commercial sector – and reverse that for the commercial side of the business too – ship them around…
I don’t know how many times a day I hear – “… we did it this way on program X back in the day…” only to find out program X was a bloated POS that was over budget, over cost, inefficent, and sometimes cancelled by its equally inept customer – the government… ANYTHING the government puts their hands on by definition can not be cutting edge or advanced – it just moves too slow.
This is good and this is bad(and a different discussion) – but whomever wrote this doesn’t get it. They tell you this in the interview – it’s gobmint work… that’s all you really need to hear if you really are deciding on a career on the edge or a career in the belly of the machine. If you don’t know that then you really don’t belong in the engineering program at ANY school.
Jeff and Brad: whenever the topic of SGT York comes up, I just usually lump it in with the M60A2 and Shillelagh and call it a day.
the stuff we actually ended up getting worked better than what the dreamsie versions would have been.
Nose,
re-”Sounds like typical Baby Boomer BS to me”
We gave you genXers your chance 10 years ago and you missed Mars..
b2
It seems like there are a couple of problems:
Some of the projects are managed as jobs programs than engineering programs. No one seems to have mentioned this.
The lack of projects seems tied up with incredibly small production runs that take — literally — decades. And each time everything is, per the first post, done from scratch.
Now, I’m a software developer, not an engineer, so I have to wonder, why doesn’t anyone try incremental development? Instead of producing brand-spanking-new craft every ten years, why not try a series of successive improvements to what you already have (I’m talking about changes a bit more substantial than the various blocks that you’ll see in aircraft like the F-16).
Am I missing something that makes this hard?
This is coming from a new-hire Aero-Engineer. I can decidedly say that classes are declining, mostly because any engineering program worthy of the name (with greater than 50% getting PEs) is hard. It is not fun, your college experience will not likely match any one else’s on campus, except for the Nursing students. This is a tough sell. Coupled with grade inflation (especially from the Ivy League and other get-into-grad-school colleges), busting tail to squeak over a 3.0 doesn’t seem like the best way to spend 4 years.
This also ties into the engineer vs. manager aspect. It is hard to get people who are both (I am lucky, my bosses are both, and do it well). On one hand, owing to the increased complexity of engineering, you get the types that do not have much in the way of linguistic or verbal skills. They will not make effective managers of people nor communicate with non-engineers well. On the other hand you have managers (that get the title engineering manager a-la Star Trek) that have little to no grounding in engineering or even science. This not only hurts communication, but also leads to overruns because they are not comprehending the engineers saying what can and can’t be done. Cross training is possible, but only a few can have the ‘knack’ in both places like LockMart’s Kelly.
Again, grain of salt, I’m just a youngin’ at this.
Robert: There is a large amount of incremental development, most of it done at the ‘sub-assembly’ level, where the aircraft itself is the finished product. The reason why it is slow is the necessary work to document everything is involved. In coder-speak, every line of code must be commented and checked before entering.
If you want to read a pair of books on screwed up aqusition programs. Check out J.P. Stevenson’s pair of books, “Pentagon Paradox:The Development of the F-18″ and “The $5 Billion Misunderstanding:The Collaspe of the Navy’s A-12 Program”. Mr. Stevenson does have an axe to grind, but in both of these books he talks about how not only inter-service fighting induces more issues with the procurement process (such as redeveloping stealth technology), also those who go into a program as a ticket punch on the way up the chain of command (such as members of the USAF fighter mafia), and finally how the Comptroller’s fail to have proper oversight on various procurment projects out there.
His axe to grind comes from the fact that he was an Undersecretary for something or other when Rumsfield was SecDef the first time. Mr. Stevenson said that both the F-18 and F-16 programs were ripe with contract bloat, did so in front of congress. He was shown the door during an administration change. He still feels strong opinion about that and it colors some of his opinions.
Here’s an example of contracting being just a little too overthought. The C-27J. The planes already in production, based on a 40 year old design, and yet the Air Force and the Army are futzing around coming up with the specs for it and won’t even buy the first ones until 2010. Just buy the thing, get 90% of what you want, and go from there. Before the buy is even done, you’ll be upgrading and modifying the thing, so just buy already.
Procurement and engineering- as different as a bear and a snake.
re “Some of the projects are managed as jobs programs than engineering programs.’
I agree with that sentiment but I must say “engineering program”, as a phrase, is an oxymoron.
A-12 again? Geez..get over it. Find something more ‘today’…We can’t blame everything on that type of buffoonery. Even the A-12 would have eventually found it’s way into the fleet for good or bad..Look at the 30 year V-22 program. It depends who survives to write the history.
IMO, Engineers and engineer managers used to solve problems and nip ‘em in the bud..The same problem plagues this industry as any other- the requirement to create consensus and not making a timely decsions until you get consensus…The process takes precedence over the product- I see it every day. Ex- ever hear of earned value management?..spit…
b2
Badbob, you owe me a roll of antacid tablets. EVM is one of the biggest crocks out there.