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) / Chapter Skim
Currently Skimming:
Appendix G: Scientists, Engineers, and the Air Force: An Uncertain Legacy
Appendix G: Scientists, Engineers, and the Air Force: An Uncertain Legacy
Pages 145-160
The Chapter Skim interface presents what we've algorithmically identified as the most significant single chunk of text within every page in the chapter.
Select key terms on the right to highlight them within pages of the chapter.
From page 145... ...
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.
|
From page 146... ...
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 4 John S
|
From page 147... ...
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.
|
From page 148... ...
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.
|
From page 149... ...
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 11 Martin Clausen, Comparative History of Research and Development Policies Affecting Air Materiel, 19151944, Historical Study No.
|
From page 150... ...
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.
|
From page 151... ...
, 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.
|
From page 152... ...
"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; In utilizing our technical personnel, the Air Force must realize that the technical man has become this nation's most vital asset and should be given proper recognition for the exhausting and laborious research and development, while another Air Force officer performs the glamorous and exciting job of shooting down enemy fighter aircraft.24 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 DCSMateriel 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.
|
From page 153... ...
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: We cannot have better weapons tomorrow without sacrifice today.
|
From page 154... ...
Actually the Air Force R&D establishment is far too small to meet even the minimum supervisory requirements in connection with the R&D workload, the major part of which is contracted out to industry. The Air Force R&D personnel deficiency is indicated by the facts that, with a smaller R&D program, the Army has more than half again as many people as the Air Force directly involved in R&D work, while the Navy has over twice as many people as the Air Force directly involved in tan R&D program of not appreciably greater magnitude that that of the Air Force.33 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.
|
From page 155... ...
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)
|
From page 156... ...
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.
|
From page 157... ...
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 secondgeneration 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 laserguided 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 F15, F-16, A-10, B-1, AWACS, J-STARS, SRAM, ALCM, and CALCM; and (in the ‘black
|
From page 158... ...
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
|
From page 159... ...
Hughson, USAF, "The Future Role of the USAF Technical Officer," Research Report AU/ACSC/082/2000-04, Air Command and Staff College, Air University, Maxwell AFB, April 2000, p.
|
From page 160... ...
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.
|
Key Terms
This material may be derived from roughly machine-read images, and so is provided only to facilitate research.
More
information on Chapter Skim is available.