Sunday, March 26, 2006
U.S. missile science slumping
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.
John Steinbruner, head of the Center for International and Security Studies at the University of Maryland, says few scientists want to work on long-range missiles because "it's not too hard to figure out that American security doesn't depend on this any more."
Instead, Steinbruner says, the Pentagon's priorities have shifted toward fighting terrorism and "low-intensity conflicts," such as the insurgency in Iraq.
The report, he says, sounds like the Pentagon advisory board is "just trying to keep the money flowing" and may be biased toward Cold War-era ballistic missile systems.
The report also questions a Pentagon plan to seek more than $500 million to replace nuclear warheads on some submarine-launched Trident ballistic missiles with conventional warheads. The Pentagon says those missiles could be used to strike fortified targets such as nuclear weapons facilities in rogue nations.
Converting the warheads on these missiles will be difficult, the report says, because the Pentagon lacks the necessary engineering skills. It adds that technical requirements for non-nuclear warheads are much different for long-range missiles from those for shorter-range missiles or nuclear weapons.
