Examination of the U.S. Air Force's Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) Workforce Needs in the Future and Its Strategy to Meet Those Needs (2010)

Richard P. Hallion¹

Smithsonian Institution

Air Forces, more than other military Services, are critically dependent upon science and technology. The nature of air and space power intrinsically dictates the use of systems and the projection of capabilities that demand mastery of the three-dimensional medium of flight, an environment vastly different than two-dimensional surface movement. Flight is a relatively recent human endeavor: ballooning appeared in 1783, with its application to battlefield observation just over a decade subsequently. The heavier-than-air airplane first flew in 1903, and the first use of the airplane for wartime reconnaissance and bombing came less than eight years later, in 1911. However crude, the use of the airplane as a primitive intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance system decisively influenced the outcome of the two great opening battles of the “Great War,” the Battle of Tannenberg and the First Battle of the Marne, thereby dramatically transforming (indeed shaping) the subsequent nature of the war. The surprising value of aircraft converted even its critics. By 1916, French Marshal Ferdinand Foch, who before the war had thought aviation had “zero” military value, was writing “Victory in the air is the preliminary to victory on land.”² By war’s end, as British Prime Minister David Lloyd George noted afterwards, “Supremacy in the air” constituted “one of the essentials of victory.”³ Indeed, the combatant nation’s technologists and airmen had evolved aircraft, doctrines, and tactics for virtually all subsequent military uses of the airplane, including strategic and tactical reconnaissance and bombardment, and maritime air operations.

The interwar years witnessed steady evolution of the airplane. By the end of the interwar period, the wood-and-fabric biplane had given way to all-metal highly streamlined monoplane fighters, bombers that could carry heavy payloads over hundreds of miles, and transports that could span continents and cross oceans. The power of the aircraft piston engine had increased over a hundred-fold since the time the Wrights flew at Kitty Hawk, and the speed of aircraft had increased over ten-fold in the same period, from 40 mph to over 400 mph. Already, far-seeing

innovators were forecasting the era of gas turbine “jet” propulsion, with routine flight speeds over 550 mph. The invention of the high-performance liquid-and-solid-fueled rocket, though itself then in its infancy, offered the promise of extending military striking power well beyond the range of conventional artillery, exceeding the speed of sound, and possibly reaching into space as well.

The Second World War made manifest the multifold capabilities of military aviation. In 1939, Nazi Germany’s air-land forces swiftly overran Western and Northern Europe. England’s salvation from possible Nazi subjugation came through the air, in the bitter Battle of Britain fought over Kent in the summer of 1940. At sea, maritime Allied air power—most of it projected by land-based aircraft—proved of crucial significance to winning the Battle of the Atlantic and defeating the menace of both surface raiders and the infamous U-boat. The Allies’ Combined Bomber Offensive effectively constituted an aerial “Second Front” that forced Nazi Germany’s leadership to redirect military priorities and acquisition goals from offensive to defensive systems and forces, in a futile attempt to protect the Reich from Allied air attack. When, in 1944, Allied invasion forces landed at Normandy, they did so under an umbrella of fighters shielding them from meaningful German air attack. Invasion commander General Dwight Eisenhower stated boldly “If I didn’t have air supremacy, I wouldn’t be here.”⁴ Overwhelming Allied air power denied German ground forces any ability to decisively intervene. “The enemy’s air superiority has a very grave effect on our movements,” German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel confided to his wife, noting “There’s simply no answer to it.”⁵ A decade afterwards, Nazi Lieutenant General Bodo Zimmerman still vividly recalled “the unimaginable effects of the enemy’s air supremacy,” and “the impossibility of travelling along any major road in daylight without great peril.”⁶ The subsequent advance of Allied forces across the European Continent was so dependent upon Allied air power for its rapidity of movement and overall success that, at war’s end, Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels confided in his diary that “Our whole military predicament is due to enemy air superiority.”⁷

The Pacific war was won by the projection of three-dimensional attacks against Japanese forces. The synergistic interplay of submarine and air attack destroyed Japan’s merchant and combat fleet, severed its lines of communication, and effectively made hostages of its deployed forces. In the China-Burma-India theater, air transport substituted for the lack of road and coastal access, keeping China’s military forces supplied with critical weapons and materials. At war’s end, fearsome bombing raids destroyed Japanese industrial and urban centers, culminating in the use of two atomic bombs that shattered any remaining will to resist among the Japanese military and civilian leadership. But even without the atomic bombs, the aerial destruction wrought upon Japan’s homeland caused Japanese Premier Kantaro Suzuki to state afterwards “merely on the basis of the B-29s alone I was convinced that Japan should sue for peace.”⁸

Having secured its birthright in the hot crucible of air combat, the United States Air Force emerged as a fully independent military service in September 1947, its creation greatly eased by the extraordinary record of accomplishment its airmen had established in a remorseless global air war. The triumphal fulfillment of a vision dating to the days of “Billy” Mitchell and the early service of Henry “Hap” Arnold, the Air Force was created amidst one of the most challenging

periods in aeronautical history. Already, over the decade from 1935 to 1945, the speed of the fastest military aircraft had more than doubled, and the explosive energy of a bombers’ payload had risen almost ten-fold for conventional bombs, and over ten-thousand fold for atomic ones. Now the mid-century turbojet and high-speed revolution, entwined with the onset of the atomic and computer ages, promised to transform it further still. For Air Force airmen, the recognition of the challenges and opportunities of this new era was accompanied by the uncomfortable realization that, for all of America’s aeronautical excellence, its wartime triumphs had been (as Wellington remarked of Waterloo) “a close-run thing.”

The authors of the United States Strategic Bombing Survey’s Summary Report on the European and Pacific air war noted somberly that:

In the postwar era, of course, annual research and development appropriations for national defense eventually consumed far more, on average, than a billion dollars. But the authors of the USSBS Summary Report hinted more accurately at an essential and enduring truth: the critical importance of securing the services of well-trained and qualified scientific and technical personnel for maintaining and ensuring “Air Age” security.

Indeed, the need for scientific and technological competency historically was, arguably, the single most consistent and persistent requirement repeatedly enunciated by the airmen-leaders of the Army Signal Corps, the Army Air Service, the Army Air Corps, and, prior to establishment of the United States Air Force, the Army Air Forces. In contrast to European air forces, many of whose leaders were professional infantry or cavalry officers in background, the Army and Navy chose their air leaders from the graduates of West Point and Annapolis who were, in the interwar period, effectively all trained engineers. Many--Generals Henry H. “Hap” Arnold and James H. Doolittle foremost among them--were active in professional scientific and technological organizations such as the Institute of the Aeronautical Sciences (predecessor of today’s American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics) and the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA, predecessor of today’s National Aeronautics and Space Administration), and thus intimately cognizant of the state of contemporary and future aeronautics. They formed close associations with leading aircraft industrialists, designers, government scientists, and academicians, individuals such as Donald Douglas, Glenn Martin, James Kindleberger, Jerome Hunsaker, George Lewis, Hugh Dryden, and Theodore von Kármán.

Repeated studies from the earliest days of the air service emphasized the significance of a science and technologically cognizant military and civilian workforce. As early as 1914, in the foundational period of American aeronautical engineering, the U.S. Army Signal Corps sent technical officers to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to study aeronautics. In 1919, the Crowell Committee argued for establishment of both an independent air force, the importation of European aviation science and laboratory organization, and establishment of a national military-and-civil air academy to train air-minded officers and civil air leaders. The Army Air Service’s need for properly trained scientific and technical officers triggered creation of the Air Service

Technical School, predecessor of today’s Air Force Institute of Technology. Exposure to European (particularly German) aeronautical development caused air prophet (and gadfly) William “Billy” Mitchell to arrange the importation of study examples of modern European aircraft, and individuals as well, notably Russian émigré Igor Sikorsky, inventor of the first great intercontinental airliners and the practical helicopter. Successive investigations over the interwar period—the Lampert Committee, and the Morrow Board most memorably—stressed the necessity of adequately supporting the technical infrastructure and advancement of American aviation, and ensuring the quality of technical staffs. In partnership with American universities, and encouraged by Federal agencies such as the NACA and the military services, the private Daniel Guggenheim Fund for the Promotion of Aeronautics (1926-1930) effectively established professional aeronautical engineering education in universities, its greatest and most notable educational accomplishment being creation of the Guggenheim Aeronautical Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology (GALCIT) and securing Hungarian scientist Theodore von Kármán as its director. The establishment of GALCIT, an American equivalent to Ludwig Prandtl’s world-renowned fluid mechanics research institute at Germany’s Göttingen University, effectively led to a “special relationship” between the school, the American aircraft industry, and the military services, but particularly the Army Air Forces. Nurtured by the strong personal bonds and mutual respect existing between Arnold, Douglas, and von Kármán, Caltech became a leading center of government-industry sponsored research, and a vital adjunct (and occasionally cross-check) to the service’s own laboratories and those of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics.

America’s enthusiastic embrace of professional science and engineering training constituted, like mass-production and rational industrial organization, one of the distinctive hallmarks of its national aeronautical style. During the Second World War, when Sir Roy Fedden led a British technical mission to the United States, its members were most “impressed with the scale and size of the engineering staffs of the most important firms in America,” Fedden’s report noting “the general technical training and theoretical knowledge of the average aeronautical engineers” was “of a higher order” than Britain’s, due, the mission believed, “to the excellent facilities at the various engineering universities for the training of aeronautical engineers.”¹⁰

In the years between the Great War’s Armistice and VJ Day, America’s uniformed and civilian military aeronautical engineers contributed notably to the advancement of American aeronautical technology. Air Service, Air Corps, and Air Forces engineers achieved a number of significant “firsts” including:

• Derivation of the first American thick-wing section airfoils enabling design of high-lift cantilever monoplane aircraft. (Virginius Clark).

• The first discovery of transonic shock phenomena around a propeller tip, including drag divergence and loss of lift. (Elisha Fales and Frank Caldwell).

• Development of the world’s first retractable landing gear low-wing high-performance fighter-type monoplane anticipating the “normative” fighter configuration of the Second World War by more than a decade. (Alfred Verville).

• Development of improved air-cooled cylinder configurations leading to the high-performance radial piston engine. (S. D. Heron).

• Development of the first American all-metal redundant aircraft structures for monocoque and cantilever design. (Charles Monteith and John Younger).

• Development of the first understanding of structural loadings and deformations during maneuvering flight. (William Brown and James Doolittle).

• Development of blind-flying instrumentation and navigational aids. (Harry Diamond, James Doolittle, and Alfred Hegenberger).

• Development of the practical pressurized cabin (Carl Greene and John Younger).

• Development of the first practical configuration for a transonic and supersonic rocket-propelled research airplane, leading to the Bell XS-1. (Ezra Kotcher).

The service sent many officers to specialized training at civilian institutions; in 1938-39, for example, Wright Field sent seven officers to study at Caltech, Michigan, Stanford, and MIT.¹¹ The Air Corps Engineering School was very advanced in its course offerings; in the early 1930’s, its student engineers in an aircraft design course, were already integrating such advances as all-metal monocoque and cantilever construction, controllable-pitch propellers, and retractable landing gears, at a time when such features were far from standard elements of the “normative” airplane.

However, the service did not possess an unblemished record in aeronautical achievement. Its engineers missed the significance of gas turbine propulsion, in part because the Air Corps, in the late interwar period, relied excessively upon other Federal agencies and industry for its scientific and technical expertise. When the NACA, the Bureau of Standards, the U.S. Navy, and the aero-engine industry all missed the significance of the jet engine, the Air Corps was not then in a position to contradict such technological conservatism. Air Corps chief General Hap Arnold, shocked to learn of British turbojet advances during a key 1941 visit to the United Kingdom, immediately recognized the necessity of importing Whittle engine technology to the United States, and from this sprang the first American jet airplane program, the Bell XP-59A. Missing the jet engine would be the strongest single goad driving Arnold to appointing his own scientific advisor (the eminent von Kármán), and ultimately for the Air Force to possess a Chief Scientist, a comprehensive laboratory system, and a Scientific Advisory Board.

The wartime encounters between American propeller-driven fighters and bombers, and German cannon-and-rocket –armed jet fighters, and postwar examination of the German aeronautical industry and research establishment (particularly its investment in high-speed swept-and-delta-wing design), offered mute evidence of the close nature of the Allied aerial victory. A shift of several years, a differing approach to physical sciences research, and a change in Nazi aeronautical research policies to more effective coordination and management, could have dramatically reversed the course of the war, with German aircraft and missiles carrying German atomic weapons at transonic and supersonic speeds well beyond the ability of Allied defensive forces to intercept and destroy them.

Arnold’s enthusiastic, indeed driving, support of a robust science and technology establishment within the service is well-recognized by both practitioners and historians of American aerospace science. At his behest, in 1945, von Kármán headed a team that assessed German scientific and technical accomplishments. As well as recommending that the wartime practice of relying upon civilian expert consultants continue, and that the Air Force chief of staff have a special scientific advisory body reporting directly to him, their report, Science, the Key to Air Supremacy, recommended exchanges of military and civilian scientific and engineering personnel, and stressed the necessity for “the infiltration of scientific thought and knowledge throughout the Air Forces and, therefore, certain organizatory [sic] changes in recruiting

personnel, in training, and in staff work.”¹² It stated that “scientific ideas” must be introduced into day-to-day staff and command work, particularly long-range planning, management of research and development, intelligence, and operations. “The theory than an intelligent officer is able to direct any organization, military, technical, or scientific, is certainly obsolete,” it argued, further noting:

While not all of their broader objectives were actually achieved, the von Kármán reports set forth an agenda that drove much of subsequent Air Force investment in science and technology. As one consequence, from it sprang the Arnold Engineering Development Center, its creation triggered by discovery of the extensive German investment in supersonic and hypersonic wind tunnel facilities.

The recommendations and positions of the von Kármán reports, especially those emphasizing the significance of science and technology have echoed in the years since their initial enunciation. As the nation drew-down from one conflict and uneasily progressed towards even longer and more intricate one that followed, the “Cold War,” science and technology assumed even greater significance. A particular concern then, and one apparent in various studies since, was the challenge of ensuring the availability of trained scientists, engineers, technologists, and technically qualified personnel sufficient to fuel the needs of postwar American industry, military Services, and government research laboratories. In 1947, the President’s Scientific Research Board reported the Soviet Union increasing its engineering training programs to produce upwards of 140,000 trained engineers per year.¹⁴ Alarmed by this and a growing shortage of scientists in academia, industry, and the government, Board members recommended formation of a National Science Foundation, and expanding scientific research and education in anticipation of driving competition over the next decade.¹⁵

Such concern resonated strongly within the aviation community, where wartime employment levels of science and engineering professionals had dropped precipitously. Production plummeted within the aircraft industry, and with it, numbers of engineering and technical personnel, manufacturing efficiencies (measured in terms of pounds of structure produced per worker per day). Senior industry executives testifying before the President’s Air Policy Commission (the Finletter Commission) repeatedly complained of the declining numbers (and competency) of engineering and technical staffs, one terming it “a real hazard,” and another judging it

“alarming.”¹⁶ The Finletter report itself found lack of trained scientific and engineering personnel “The most serious bottleneck in the research and development picture,” more, even, than the paucity of money and need for new and expanded facilities, recommending:

Vannevar Bush, wartime chief of the Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD) and President of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, added his own prestige to arguing the case for expanding scientific and technical education, in his influential Modern Arms and Free Men. “In a world where wars were crudely fought, with little relation to industry of the application of science, we could coast along fairly safely,” he wrote in 1949, adding, “In a world where the prosecution of war or the avoidance of war demands that we be in the forefront in the applications of science … we can no longer afford to drift with a slow current.”¹⁸

Ironically, even as industry and the professional science and engineering community argued the centrality of science and engineering to American aviation supremacy, the leadership of the Air Force, in the post-Arnold era, grappled uncertainly with the future of Air Force S&T. Despite Arnold’s strong endorsement, and despite von Kármán’s prestige and the evident lessons of the Second World War, science and engineering had a tough slog to incorporation within an Air Staff confronting many seemingly more pressing resource challenges. In October 1947, the same month that Air Force test pilot Charles “Chuck” Yeager ushered in the era of supersonic flight with the Bell XS-1 (an aircraft program conceived in 1944 by a Wright Field engineering officer), the Air Force leadership briefly entertained abolishing the Air Force Scientific Advisory Board, and a von Kármán assistant took time from his own doctoral studies at MIT to warn him “there seems to be considerable question as to whether or not the SB will continue to exist,” noting that “the board is nowhere shown on the new organization charts.”¹⁹ It took the personal intervention of von Kármán, with his legendary persuasiveness, to convince Air Force Chief of Staff General Carl Spaatz to incorporate the SAB as a functional element of the Chief of Staff’s office; otherwise it might never have existed to serve the nation over the next six decades.²⁰

The SAB’s travail matched the then-generally disorganized and fluctuating state of Air Force S&T, which itself reflected the precipitous decline of Air Force personnel strength and resources in the 1945-1950 era. Overall, the Air Force had less than forty percent of the authorized R&D personnel of the U.S. Navy, and less than sixty percent of the Army’s, even

though both the Army and Navy had considerably smaller R&D budgets.²¹ The number of engineering officers had fallen from 9,964 at the end of 1945 to less than half this (4,049) at the time of formation of the Air Force as an independent Service less than two years later.²² (By the time of the Korean War, it had risen slightly, to 5,357).²³ Many believed themselves little utilized, with little prospect of advancement in a Service heavy with combat veterans, many quite distinguished. “Research laboratories and establishments will never be provided with inspiring technical leadership if tactical accomplishments become a primary requisite for assuming positions of technical leadership,” one complained in an Air University research paper;

But higher commanders were more concerned than more junior officers might have suspected. Reflecting SAB concerns, General Donald Putt, Director of R&D within the DCS-Materiel at Headquarters Air Force, considered the numbers inadequate, noting in particular that “The shortage of high-ranking USAF R&D personnel compromised the effectiveness with which USAF R&D needs are presented.”²⁵ Central to improving the position of Air Force S&T was the idea of forming a specialized air research and development command to separate R&D from production. In April 1949, Air Force Vice Chief of Staff General Muir Fairchild, acting on behalf of chief of staff Hoyt Vandenberg, asked the SAB to survey the state of Air Force research and development, during which he emphasized that the Air Force required:

1. Inspired and competent leadership for our technical activities

2. Adequate career opportunities for technically trained personnel, to provide incentives and to insure integration into the Air Forces high command of a sufficient number of men with sound technical backgrounds. [and]

3. The attraction of a sufficient number of young professional personnel each year into technical work.²⁶

Out of this sprang a committee, chaired by Dr. Louis Ridenour of the University of Illinois, strongly endorsed creation of R&D within a single agency. As well, General Vandenberg directed that Air University form a study team under General Orville A. Anderson; it submitted its own report in November 1949. In his cover letter, General George C. Kenney, wartime chief of the 5^th Air Force turned Air University commander, excoriated Air Force research and development,

stating bluntly that “the Air Force is seriously deficient in providing for its own future strength, a strength which may well be of critical importance to the security of our country.”²⁷ Kenney’s words were more than matched by the Anderson committee, which had, as its first conclusion, the provocative statement that “The United States Air Force is now dangerously deficient in its capacity to insure the long term development and superiority of American air power;” and which went on to conclude “Personnel policies are not designed to support the specialized requirements for highly trained scientific and technical personnel for the Research and Development function, noting subsequently “Our personnel procurement program has not provided us with adequate numbers of scientifically and technically trained personnel; we have not fully utilized those we do have; and our personnel policies have not been conducive to keeping those we have on the job or fully effective on the job.” The committee recommended establishing policies so that only scientific or technically qualified officers could hold management positions in research and development, and developing a long-range plan to ensure recruitment of adequate numbers of technically qualified personnel. Finally, it recommended “Immediate establishment of a Research and Development Command,” noting “We cannot hope to win a future war on the basis of manpower and resources. We will win it only through superior technology and superior strategy.”²⁸

Thus, by the end of 1949, coincident with the shock of the Soviet Union exploding its first atomic bomb, the ground had been well-prepared, thanks to the one-two of the Ridenour and Anderson reports. In February 1950 ARDC stood up as an independent command.²⁹ Formation of ARDC did not automatically resolve the challenge of adequately supporting R&D and of finding and nurturing STEM-qualified officers in the Air Force. The Korean War, which broke out in June 1950, resulted in the Air Force withdrawing 250 officers from civilian institutions and returning them to active duty, most of whom had been destined for research and development billets.³⁰ General James Doolittle, himself a distinguished aeronautical engineer (and holder of one of the first earned doctorates in aeronautical engineering awarded in the United States) advised Chief of Staff Hoyt Vandenberg in April 1951 that:

As an individual intimately familiar with civilian scientific and engineering organizations, agencies, and personnel, Doolittle recognized that the Air Force could not simply rely upon its officer cadre to resolve the challenge of increasing the numbers of STEM-qualified personnel. Instead, he recommended that “competent civilians must be given authority, responsibility, and prestige commensurate with their capacity,” including a position “high on the organizational chart,” with “real responsibilities, the opportunity to produce, and official recognition,” including social privileges including membership in Officers Clubs. He urged intensified recruitment of civilian and military engineers and scientists, with particular emphasis upon ROTC graduate recruitment. (In fact, ARDC went beyond this, securing Air Force waiver to directly commission engineering graduates into ARDC, whether they had any previous military or cadet training at all). Echoing Lt. General Putt’s concerns previously, Doolittle noted:

By the end of the Korean War, a period coinciding with the “Golden Age” of Air Force transonic and supersonic research and development, ARDC had a total officer, enlisted, and civilian personnel strength of 41,000. Of these, 6,900 were defined as “R&D professional and scientific,” with a further 8,100 listed as “R&D technicians.” Supporting this workforce were 3,400 contractor personnel at various centers such as Lincoln, Eglin, and Arnold.³⁴

The Doolittle survey of Air Force research and development constituted a seminal document from an author of unquestioned integrity and authority, and, as such, it had great influence. Several years later, Doolittle again reviewed the subsequent work of the ARDC, this time as part of an SAB team, which noted approvingly that:

But, again, the SAB noted that, for all ARDC’s successes, “The career management of technical personnel of high intelligence and competence remains a major problem area in ARDC as evidenced by the difficulties fully reflected in data supplied to us of recruiting and retaining officers and civilians of desirable technical caliber.” R&D officers, he stated, should be retained in R&D billets, and that “a few officers of exceptionally high caliber should be provided from systems development through testing to operations and training.” Overall, it urged, “R&D officers and civilians should be promoted for their technical accomplishments in R&D, not for their operational abilities nor for their administrative experience. Promotion boards sitting on the promotion of R&D personnel should be made up mainly of R&D officers and civilians.” Civilians, the report argued, should be

It recommended greater opportunities for civilian graduate technical training, perhaps as an adjunct to, or emulating, education grants from the National Science Foundation.

This second look at ARDC coincided with the onset of the Sputnik crisis, which rocked American science and confidence in American technical excellence. It was a crisis that involved more the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (soon to be reorganized as the NASA), the Navy (developing the Vanguard booster which spectacularly failed before an international audience just weeks after the Soviets had orbited their first satellite), and the Army’s von Braun team which successfully (if belatedly) launched Explorer I in January 1958. The Air Force came under little criticism, for it had a full plate of advanced research and development initiatives, was in the midst of transforming its fighter force from a subsonic one to a transonic and supersonic force, and had as well as robust missile development program that would soon bear fruition. Although Sputnik dramatically reshaped America’s attitude toward science and technology education and undoubtedly encouraged many to enter the new field of “aerospace,” in a practical sense it may be argued that little changed in the short-term. Those scientists and engineers working within the government, military, and industry in 1957 were largely those who, over the next decade, led the crossing of the space frontier and the landing on the moon in July 1969.

Further, the concern over the national state of science and engineering education was one that predated the catalyzing shock of the “Red Moon.” In April 1956, fearing that “as a result of our continuing shortages of highly qualified scientists and engineers we are running the danger of losing the position of technological pre-eminence we have long held in the world,” the Eisenhower administration had appointed a national “Committee on Scientists and Engineers.”³⁷ It sought, by “the stimulation of community action across the Nation” to use scientists and engineers more effectively, and undertake other initiatives including strengthening scientific and mathematics training in elementary and secondary schools, and to motivate students to enter the

science and engineering field.³⁸ At that time, as a group, scientists and engineers constituted approximately one-half of one percent of the American population, and, if seemingly small, even this represented the quadrupling of scientists and doubling of engineers over the previous twenty years, much of this increase due to the benefits of the G.I. Bill encouraging veterans to take up technical and scientific education. At a higher administration level, members of the President’s Science Advisory Committee differed on the relative merits of “science” and “scientists” versus “engineering” and “engineers.” In one February 1959 meeting, confronting evidence of a national decline in engineering enrollments and an even more disturbing ratio between those students securing bachelor’s degrees and doctorates (only one student in fifty went on to earn a doctorate in engineering), members could not agree whether there was a problem. One remarked that “industry in general would prefer to hire well trained physicists rather than well-trained engineers” and another affirmed “good science was basically more important than good engineering.”³⁹

As Sputnik most dramatically indicated, the time period of the 1950’s was one of tumultuous expansion of American investment in science and technology, and particularly aerospace. Federal expenditure for research and development increased by roughly 75% between the end of the Korean War and the onset of the Sputnik crisis, with industrial research and development in aviation expanding from approximately $758 million dollars annually to $2.1⁴⁰ billion per annum, unmatched by any other industry. Hidden within this were Air Force R&D developments that radically transformed American military capabilities: development of transonic area-ruled nuclear strike fighters such as the F-105; introduction of the Boeing B-52, an aircraft of immense potential, flexibility, and subsequent significance; development of the first jet tanker-transports and turboprop airlifters that revolutionized global and theater access and mobility; development of increasingly sophisticated “systems” aircraft beginning with the Air Defense Command’s SAGE system and progressively more refined interceptors leading to the Mach 2+ F-106; development of the Atlas and Thor ballistic missiles, followed soon by Titan, and Minuteman; and the progressive expansion of the X-series to the hypersonic X-15, with a variety of other specialized X-craft developed as well. The science and technical cadre producing these advances was small; in 1955, for example, ARDC’s total personnel strength was 37,616 military and civilian members. Of this, just 7,138—19percent--were engineering and scientific personnel.

Table G-1 shows the number of officers assigned to scientific research and engineering development at five years intervals coinciding with the immediate postwar drawdown, onset of the Korean War, the full-flowering of Air Force supersonic and high-speed research, and the beginnings of the drive into space; over this time, the locus of Air Force science and technology shifted from its Army roots in the interwar era at McCook and Wright Fields to a postwar orientation first at Wright, then in Baltimore, and finally (following creation of Air Force Systems Command) to Andrews AFB. (It would return in time to Wright-Patterson, following establishment of Air Force Materiel Command after the Gulf War. Along the way, organizations changed: from the wartime Air Technical Services Command (ATSC), to the postwar establishment of Air Materiel Command, in 1946, to the ARDC in 1950, and on to AFSC in 1961, with AMC renamed Air Force Logistics Command at the same time. (It would be these that would merge and return the locus of Air Force R&D once more back to Dayton, in the sweeping

organizational reforms of the Secretary Donald Rice—Chief Of Staff General Merrill McPeak era).

Table G-2 continues the five-year cut of scientific and engineering officer assignments to these through the onset of the “Space Age,” the “Hollow Force” of the 1970s, the Reagan buildup of the 1980s, and the post-Desert Storm establishment of AFMC, into the post 9-11 era and the Global War on Terror.

Again this was an era of profound transformational change: early on, the cancellation of much-anticipated programs such as the XB-70A, F-108, and X-20; then the rapid adjustment to the war in Southeast Asia and its demands for new capabilities such as light STOL observation aircraft (the OV-10) and “Wild Weasel” SAM-killers armed with new electronic combat sensors and “hard-kill” anti-radiation missiles; the painful development of the F-111; maturation of space launch with the Titan III heavy launch family and its successors; development of a new second-generation global jet airlifter, the C-141; development of the large bypass engine and its enabling development of the C-5, another troubled but immensely useful system; development of the laser-guided bomb; development of GPS and a host of other military space systems; investment in new materials technology and in electronic flight controls; advances in sensor systems such as Pave Tack and LANTIRN; rebuilding the force with the aircraft and missiles of the 1970s-90s, the F-15, F-16, A-10, B-1, AWACS, J-STARS, SRAM, ALCM, and CALCM; and (in the ‘black

world”) the F-117, B-2, and ACM. The Air Force scientists and engineers of the 1965-2005 era gave the United States Air Force the tools to wage overwhelming air war of the sort that won the Cold War and savaged the Saddam Hussein regime during Desert Storm, and again after 9-11.

Once more, one is struck by how small these numbers are in relation to what was accomplished. At the end of 1964, still early in the onset of the Vietnam-era “ramping up,” but in the full-flowering of the national space program (to which the Air Force was heavily committed), Air Force Systems Command had 5,361 officers assigned to R&D functions, an “overage” of 109percent; civilian manning at the same time was 5,464, and might well have been lower except for the Federal Salary Reform Act of 1962 which had materially assisted AFSC in being able to attract and retain highly qualified civilian engineers and scientists.⁴¹ Even so, such actions only enabled AFSC to keep up. Two decades later, in the early 1980’s (the onset of the Reagan-era buildup and the height of post-Vietnam force restructuring, coinciding with the most challenging—and arguably most dangerous—days of the Cold War, AFSC was still experiencing shortages of scientists and developmental engineers. The engineer and science shortage at the time was endemic across the defense community, so much that the American Defense Preparedness Association (ADPA) had issued a summary report in 1981that called for reinvigorated recruitment of suitable candidates by the military Services. In response, Air Force Air Training Command stepped up its own activities, awarding the majority of AFROTC scholarships to science and technology officer candidates, and increasing technical officer generation via the enlisted training and commissioning pipeline, and engaging more aggressively in outreach and other activities such as campus visits. “Procuring additional engineers and scientists to help alleviate the Air Force shortage,” ATC Commander General Thomas M. Ryan wrote the ADPA, “is a top priority for Air Training Command.”⁴² Indeed, by now, for AFSC, S&E officer manning, rather than characterized by overages (except a whopping 180percent overage for lieutenants!), was between 69 percent and 74 percent manned for Captains, Majors, and Lieutenant Colonels, and 90 percent manned for Colonels. Civilian manning concerns caused some AFSC and Air Staff scientist and engineering advocates to press for a centrally managed career program for USAF scientists and engineers, though this, of course, was not pursued either then or subsequently.⁴³

Instead, the S&E community continued to limp along. At the end of the Cold War, at which point the total of Air Force civilian scientists and engineers numbered 16,109 (of which Systems Command possessed 7,976, and Logistics Command a further 4,904), a study of S&E civilian demographics by AFLC concluded that the “quality of the AF S&E work force is eroding;” it was aging (the average age being 42), and experiencing high attrition rates (a loss rate of approximately 10percent, yet an accession rate of at best only between 1percent and 3percent). The study came up with no better solution than suggesting “Devoting dollars to training seems to be the most economical answer.”⁴⁴ AFLC merged shortly afterwards with AFSC to form Air Force Materiel Command (AFMC), essentially a return to the structure of the 1940s—and ironic given how Kenney, Anderson, Putt, Doolittle, and others had castigated the previous Air Materiel Command for its deficiencies in trying to fulfill both logistics and R&D.

Merger did not resolve the shortages and imbalances afflicting key elements of the new organization. Table G-3 shows AFMC’s civilian and military Scientist (61S) or Developmental Engineering (62E) from its creation through 2005:

Overall organizational strength declined, even as taskings grew, and as the age of the workforce continued to rise and increasing numbers of professionals approached retirement age.

Table G-4 shows demographics for officers and civilian scientists and engineers across the Service from the immediate post-Gulf post-Global Reach-Global Power strategic planning period through the present.

Again, roughly speaking, the percentage of Air Force officers remains remarkably consistent with the previous history of the Service from immediately after the Second World War.

In sum, a review of the history of the Air Force indicates those charged with responsibility for the technical maturation of the Service and the application of S&T to weapons development have repeatedly worried over the size of their personnel force, the relationship of those personnel to the Service, and even the Service’s commitment to science and technology excellence itself. They have voiced continuous concerns about how to nurture, sustain, and grow a cadre of trained professionals to meet the constantly dynamic expansion of science and technology. Periodically they have called for centralized career management of such personnel. Practitioners have performed well, even occasionally brilliantly, while all-too-often perceiving with evident and oft-stated exasperation that their career opportunities are limited by the very nature of their working within a service devoted so thoroughly to operations. For example, for many military S&E officers, the road to a viable career is seen not in the laboratory or test center but, rather by transitioning from the 61S scientist or 62E engineer billet to a 63A acquisition program management AFSC, a career field where a STEM background, mandatory for a scientist or engineer, may be desirable, but not necessary.⁴⁵

Given this, it may be said with some unintended irony that the relationship of the Air Force to science and technology and the people who pursue it has left a long-standing, synergistic, and powerful legacy, one confirming the wisdom and foresight of Arnold, von Kármán, Kenney, Anderson, Putt, Doolittle, and many of their successors who championed science and technology within the Service. But that legacy was more fortuitous and reflective of individual merit than organizational excellence. At heart, the issue is starkly simple: America projects global air and space power thanks to Air Force scientists and engineers. They and their predecessors helped create every single one of the major technical revolutions that led to the robust capabilities the Service now enjoys. However, if their accomplishments have been commendably consistent, the record is not one that is either untroubled, or one reflecting far-sighted planning and resource allocation. It is not a comforting record in the emergent era of air, space, and cyberspace warfare.