Previous IFPA-Fletcher Conferences

36th Annual IFPA-Fletcher Conference on
National Security and Policy
Nuclear and Non-Nuclear Forces in 21st-Century Deterrence: Implementing the New Triad

December 14-15, 2005
Grand Hyatt Washington Hotel
Washington, D.C.

Session 6 - Personnel Requirements: The Science/Technology Base
and Other Expertise to Meet Future New Triad Needs

Address by Dr. Robert B. Barker, former Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Atomic Energy

Thank you, Dale. It's truly a pleasure to be here and to see what winter’s like every now and then.
[Laughter]

As the last speaker of the last session of the last day, I really wanted to thank Bob Pfaltzgraff and his crew and the sponsors of this meeting. I think it’s something that’s long, long overdue. I have nattered for four years, I think since the Nuclear Posture Review was published, over the failure to get these issues out into an open forum to be discussed and argued about and finally it seems to me it’s starting to happen. This conference has been a tremendous contributor to that and OSD policy, DTRA, NNSA, and STRATCOM really deserve a lot of credit for having the courage to sponsor this event and getting some of these issues out where people can talk about them and complain to their heart’s content if they don’t like what they hear. I think it’s been tremendous.

Let me add a little bit to the credentials that Dale ran off for you about me. There are several that are maybe somewhat more relevant to why I'm standing here talking about personnel requirements for implementing the New Triad. I got introduced to evaluating the skill situation by Hank Chiles who taught me, as a member of the Chiles Commission everything he knew about how to evaluate this sort of thing. The NPR has a very specific requirement in it that the Department of Defense take a look and evaluate strategic strike skills. As a result of that, the Defense Science Board formed a Task Force on Strategic Strike Skills, and I was lucky enough to be on that group which was chaired by Walt Morrow, the Director Emeritus of Lincoln Lab. We spent almost a year and a half talking with industry, services, service laboratories, OSD&emdash;- talking to them about their perception of their skill base and how well it was being maintained.

Subsequent to that, I headed up a study group for the Threat Reduction Advisory Committee to take a look at how well DOD was doing in implementing their responsive infrastructure leg of the triad, which gave me the chance to go back and talk with many of those same people all over again. In fact, I got to hear from Frank Moore here twice as a result of those exercises. These recent studies have yet to be published - they're in the bureaucratic review process - and so what you’ll hear from me today are obviously my own comments and they’re not necessarily reflective of the official conclusions of either one of those studies. So they’ll be a very, very personal perspective on what I think has and has not been going on, what does and what doesn’t need to be done.

The title of my talk says Personnel Requirements for Implementing the New Triad, and let me very rapidly shrink that down to a rather small subset of that whole triad. The four speakers who preceded me have already made the point for me that personnel are critical to the entirety of what the Department of Defense structure does, what the entire strategic strike—what the entire triad structure can do. Facilities and equipment are useless unless you've got competent people able to do the development, research, production, testing that needs to be done. And equally well, you need expertise within the services in order to operate those systems and be prepared to use them effectively if it needs to happen.

We are second to none in terms of military capability in the world, and that's because we’ve had excellent people and an excellent system that has allowed that to happen. As a result of that process, that system that has existed for a very long time, very capable, very competent people are attracted to very real, very challenging technical work. And if you look at the current triad, there's a lot of exciting work going on in the defense leg, I'm not going to talk any more about that because good people are attracted to exciting and challenging work.

If you take a look at the conventional, the non-nuclear strike piece of the New Triad, again you’ll find exciting, new systems being developed, being deployed. And so you've got good people attracted to do that.

What stands out as strikingly different? It's the old fashioned Triad. If you take a look at the modernization schedule or the replacement schedule for existing systems, you've got to go out to 2030 and 2040 before you reach a predicted retirement time for those systems. There will have been some life extension programs ongoing, both in the Navy and the Air Force, but replacement systems are not scheduled to come online until 2030 and 2040. That's a heck of a long time for experts to sit around waiting for the next system to come along, and that is the challenge.

During the Cold War, for the 50 years since the Second World War, as a matter of fact, we had seen a continuous modernization process of these strategic strike systems. And as a result, we have had a cadre of people who are skilled in the necessary skills for research, development, test and production of those items. We are now in a very, very different world. The infrastructure, the people who had maintained that expertise, were paid for by existing major programs. Nobody had to go out and write a check for infrastructure alone; infrastructure was an integral piece of ongoing programs. That is no longer happening. The Department of Defense, the Congress of the United States needs to wake up to that fact and begin to think about some of the things that Frank Moore spoke about. We have to have a new model for business if we’re going to sustain the competency we need to respond to future, unidentified threats.

You’ll hear this again from me later on in my talk, but the one way, of course, of sustaining this capability is through exploratory development programs, which don’t necessarily go into full scale production, but at least see some hardware being built and some hardware being tested, and that means you've exercised the production complex, the testing complex, the design and system engineering elements. Unfortunately, there is a significant sentiment within the Congress of the United States who views the exploratory development programs as “white collar welfare”. I think it is a major disaster, a major failing of the defense industry’s Associations, of the United States technical S&T community, that the Congress has not been educated, has not been helped to understand that these exploratory development programs not only allow the country to explore potential capabilities that we or may not be interested in building in large numbers, but the most critical thing they do is maintain an expertise that the country must have to respond to the kinds of surprises that we're likely to have in the future.

That's where I'm going to come out at the end of this. I'm going to go through some charts with you now. I’ll look forward to your Q&A.

If you’ve looked at this issue at all, you will realize there's been a lot of buzzing around the subject of the S&T workforce of the United States, the significant reduction in students in science and technology and engineering, the dramatically large fraction of those students today who are not clearable, they are not U.S. citizens, and therefore we face some major future crisis. If we take a look at what's being done about that, I think you see different things going on in different segments. So let’s take a look at the next chart. I want to talk about three different personnel segments, the DOD civil service, the DOD military, and then the industrial base.

A champion as far as the DOD civil service and the DOD laboratories is concerned, was Ron Sega, who as DDR&E looked back to the Nuclear Defense Education Act and said we really needed to do something to get more scientists and engineers involved in DOD’s business. And the fact is that the civil service faces a particular problem because of salary structure and also, in some areas, of not having the sufficiently exciting work to do. But Ron put together, with the help of basically an across government effort, and working with the Congress, a thing called the Science, Mathematics and Research for Transformation, or SMART program. The next chart describes some of the highlights of that effort. In FY’05 $4.5 million was appropriated, basically to establish scholarships for people in the science, mathematics area with a requirement for a little bit of quid pro quo of service important to government after having received education under this particular fund.

The current authorization bill, that’s not yet quite finalized, has $10 million for this program in FY ’06. The plan is to continue with the future actions described on this chart, and looking again to see if the program is properly focused. These SMART slots exist across the government. They are able to work part time within the services, within OSD, with the service laboratories, the defense agencies, and the hope is this will be a much, much larger program in the future. So this is what OSD has been doing to address what it sees as an S&T problem.

The first order of business should be to identify where your personnel problems lie. And as a member of the panels I spoke of earlier, I discovered that the Office of Personnel Management, good old OPM, actually had a directive out that required all government agencies to do a human capital management strategy. You can bump into all kinds of people who’ve never heard of the requirement, but it is an OPM requirement. Well, the Congress apparently got wind of this and so the Authorization bill for FY ’06 has a Congressional requirement on DOD for a human capital management strategy, for its civilian employees, with reporting requirement to the Congress periodically on how well they're doing in the areas I’ve outlined in the subsequent bullets on the chart. And so it’s first understand what capability you need, then figure out what you're about to lose, then worry about how you educate the next generation before the old generation moves out the door; finally worry about how you transfer this knowledge, using mentoring and all of the training things that good management does. The Department of Defense may take this somewhat more seriously now that it’s a Congressional requirement. The Navy had already gotten very serious about human capital management. While I can’t speak to the actual implementation of the program I do know that he CNO has been very, very hot on human capital management.

So at least there's some hope that the needs—the holes —will be better identified and people may begin to think about how you replace people, replace competence before it’s lost. I continue to emphasize the point that Frank, and I think everybody on this panel has made, that you're not going to succeed in transferring that knowledge unless people are going to do real work. You don't bring them in and sit down at a desk and talk to them, you don't pass papers back and forth. That knowledge is not transferred until you actually do design, do engineering, do the testing, and actually do some production.

The next chart addresses the service area, the military services. This is in the non-standard hierarchy of service names. I guess if you think it’s random, that's why the Navy’s first. [laughter] But actually, the Navy Strategic Systems Programs most impressed me of the three services for the approach that they have taken to this problem. I can go back to the mid-1990s when SSP realized that their modernization schedule was such that they stood in grave danger of losing a competency that they needed and began to work on it—began to understand what kind of replacement schedule for system components they needed to implement in order to maintain the vitality of its industrial base. And they have allowed their contractors to cost out as part of their overhead a mentoring program at their production facilities, within their industrial base, that allows for the additional overhead you need to have a training process take place.

With respect to the service themselves, the Navy has got a unique advantage in that they’ve got life to death responsibility for the SLBM Program and so they have been able to create a career path for their people that exposes them to the full breadth of the SSP responsibility, that allows people to grow, to get depth and breadth within the SSP structure so that their senior managers really have come up through the system and do understand what they're working on at significant depth as well as breadth in the technologies, in the areas that need to be managed.

The Army, it may shock some people to realize, has a nuclear career path. When the Army lost all of their nuclear weapon delivery mission in 1991, they made a very, very conscious decision to preserve Functional Area 52 and actually provided a career and a career path for Army officers who were experts in nuclear weapons effects That expertise is now expanded to nuclear, biological and chemical effects. But these officers constitute a tremendous base of nuclear expertise that is utilized throughout STRATCOM, throughout the OSD offices, within the Defense Threat Reduction Agency. And so a nuclear competency at a management level, a senior level, exists within the Army as a result of this FA-52 activity.

The Air Force was the odd man out for a while but in the last three years has put together two programs that have enabled them to do a much better job of tracking nuclear expertise and to a certain extent helping design a career path. One is a result of General Lord’s establishment of a credentialed space professional program of which nuclear is a specific piece. And the other is the Air Force Nuclear General Officer’s Steering Group chaired by Major General Roger Berg, that consists of two star officers throughout the Air Force who meet periodically to sit down and talk about nuclear things, everywhere from security to indeed personnel growth paths.

(I don’t want to mislead anybody with respect to something again I owe to Hank. Long, long ago, Hank taught me that the expertise of the deck plate was “not at issue.” I didn't know what a deck plate was at the time. [laughter] But the men and women who have their hands on nuclear weapons who have operational responsibilities, continue to be, as far as I can tell, continue to be very, very well trained and very, very capable in those jobs. )

What was of concern to many people, including myself, was the fact that in the officer career path post Cold War, there was—with nuclear becoming less important, other things becoming more important, with the breadth of assignments provided to officers, that there was the danger of a less than critical mass of expertise within this nuclear area.

And I was therefore very, very pleased to hear about these two Air Force programs. They're too new for me to know exactly how successful they’ve been. But I encourage you at every opportunity you have to talk to General Berg about how well he’s doing in that regard. And General Lord, if you happen to get hold of him.

Now, let’s talk about industry. I'm going to start out with the advertised industry perspective on this. Industry has, we found, a very good awareness of the demographics of its workforce. They do know how old the people are and how many they’ve got and whether they're coming and going, etc. I will repeat what I think both Steve and Frank have said, and that is that the vitality of that skill base is really dependent upon them believing that there is a DOD vision of the future. They can’t stand programs being turned off and on - Steve made this point. Every industry rep we talked with in the strategic area said that they had little difficulty in hiring new people out of school. Now, that's to a certain extent contrary to some of the charts I'm going to show you. But when you sit down and talk with people, that’s what they say, “Yeah, we can hire people.”

The real challenge is keeping them. I mean, the real challenge is keeping people who don’t see a clear future within an organization, who don’t know when the next system is coming along, who don’t see the excitement of a new program, of new technology. And so the DOD vision in both strategic air and in terms of ballistic missile capability, is a real missing element for industry. And both of those things can be provided by DoD if their importance is understood.

The last point on this chart has to do with ballistic missiles, which is in true danger of being a basket case. And the danger in this area was recognized back in the mid-‘90s when the Strategic Advisory Group to the STRATCOM commander did a thorough study and identified some technology areas that clearly would be lost if there were not some level of funding. They recommended what have become to be known as Applications Programs, applications programs in guidance, applications programs in reentry technology, applications programs in propulsion, three areas that don’t get exercised in the same way in any other military activity, military industrial activity.

They recommended funding at a certain level. It’s been less than half of that ever since the programs were created. When the NPR was issued in 2001, a commitment was made to fix that funding. In the last year, it’s been dropped again because of budgetary pressures. And so those three technology areas are in some degree of danger.

I actually stole this next chart from a Ron Sega briefing, but what they’ve done is extract the cases from a National Defense Industrial Association 2004 study and an Aerospace Industry Association report of March of 2004. And let’s just go through it.

One, industry does see—this may be hope—but they see a larger demand for people than the supply of clearable citizens might predict you're going to get. But they also point out that priming the pump, getting new people on board is only the first step. The effect of utilization on retention is critical, and our two industry reps have said, you're only going to do that if you’ve got real work to keep them on board. And the last point on there is the one that Ron’s picked up on, that is the SME education point.

Now, let’s look at the ballistic missile situation in two specific ways. The next chart is one that I have appropriated from one of the studies that I was working on, there is no identification of what company this is, and it just says typical—but there aren’t that many ballistic missile industrial companies around. [laughter] And you can see what the problem is. The average age is high with a significant proportion nearing retirement. New hires do come on board but in unless you’ve got something challenging work you can’t keep new people. If they're old enough, they don’t go away. They don’t seek new challenges or they don’t want to move, but if they're young enough after they’ve gotten smart enough, they’ll go find a job where something interesting is going on.

The next chart looks at the health of the reentry system skills from the point of view of the Ballistic Missile Program Office. The chart was created by the ICBM Program Office, but the Navy assures me they agree with it. What you see here is a good old stop light chart showing changing colors, corresponding to changing health, as a function of time. And 2010 is about where that arrow is. There is noticeable sustainment activity. But a point that needs to be made over and over and over again for our own benefit and for the benefit of the Congress, is that sustainment is not design, sustainment is not system engineering, sustainment may be some production, but it is certainly not design or system engineering, two critical skills that you really have to have in top notch shape to try and deploy a new capability and response to some kind of a surprise.

And the propulsion chart looks even worse than this. If you don't know, the current two large diameter ballistic missile manufacturers in this country, have as their only customers DOD and NASA. The Air Force, the Navy, the Missile Defense Agency, and NASA. Right now today, the Navy is building Trident motors because they're converting the boats that used to carry the C4 to the D5. The Air Force has got some production going as part of a life extension program. The Missile Defense Agency has some production. NASA still has some production going. All four of those programs stop in 2010. Simultaneously. And this has been known for some time, and a decision has still not been made as to what to do to preserve the capability—In this particular area, as in virtually every other area we talk to, what industry says is that if they lose the capability, and primarily they mean by is that lose people, it’s going to take five to seven years to get back the capability, and when you've got it, you're probably going to find cost overruns and mistakes in the initial production.

So a recommendation is that the Department of Defense really needs to sit down and understand the situation. Very particularly, if a conscious decision is made to let a capability die and buy it back later on when you need it, what's it going to cost you? If you've got some kind of exploratory development program under way that allows you to sustain a critical capability in the interim, what is that going to cost you? Then you also better be prepared to address what the risks are of being without a capability over that certain number of years. Now, the propulsion situation is recognized—has been a recognized problem without a solution for some time. But what has been missing is a systematic examination by the DOD across the whole spectrum of strategic strike and asking the question, where are the other incipient failures that are coming down the pike and what needs to be done to preserve it? Maybe one makes a conscious decision to let the capability go. But at least let it be a conscious decision, not an accident.

The next chart addresses human capital management. There are programmatic implications, of course, as well. But today you can’t find the person in the Pentagon who says this is my job. There is no focal point of coordination on this. As I said, within the Navy strategic systems program, it has been an issue for some time. Within certain elements of the Air Force, there are pieces of it that have been looked at, but there is nobody keeping a report card across the board as far as the totality of a strategic strike is concerned.

So let me go to the last chart, which summarizes what I’ve been saying. In active defense and in the non-nuclear strike capability, those people are doing exciting work and training the next generation. Nuclear strike is in sustainment mode, which is doing a great job of sustainment, but that does not preserve design, system engineering or necessarily the right production skills or attract the next generation of expertise. We lose it, it’s going to take us five to seven years to get it back. And even when we get it back, don’t be surprised if there are mistakes and cost overruns.

In the absence of work on next generation systems, we must have exploratory development programs if we’re going to preserve the capability. Sustainment programs alone will not preserve the expertise we need to be prepared for surprise.

And finally, in DOD today, in my view the message has not really sunk in because they have not stepped up to the management issue that I spoke of. It sounds like the Congress has gotten wind of this too, with the requirement for a human capital management strategy. And so hopefully something will happen in the very near term.

I owe my conclusions to data provided to me by a tremendous number of companies, very, very helpful input from the services, service laboratories, and I'm pretty confident in them. But remember these are Bob Barker’s views and not necessarily that of the Defense Science Board the Task Force on Strategic Strike Skills or the Threat Reduction Advisory Committee study on Responsive Infrastructure. I thank you. [applause]

Questions and Answers

Audience: My name is Hank Witek from Sandia National Labs. When I looked at the agenda for this conference, I had a different idea in terms of how the New Triad would couple to the nuclear weapon complex. And I’d like, perhaps I’m on a wrong tangent, but I’d like an explanation. My expectation was, when you look at that triangle that we would follow the successes that were demonstrated through the conventional munitions program, look at things like JSALs, JDAMs, and look even at things like predator. And the challenge to the nuclear weapon complex, would how could one in the future adapt the nuclear payload in these very successful conventional delivery systems? A payload that was low yield, a payload that had low fission, a payload that was perhaps very, very intelligent in terms of its capability. You achieve all the results that I think this committee has talked about in terms of modular, a significant design margin, but not one where we would start with MCs and the STS. As a matter of fact, the environments that the conventional payload would provide would be our input for doing the job. That's what I expected in terms of adapting to the New Triad. Am I still on the wrong tangent?

Dr. Barker: I think you're in the right place. I think my point that the next generation of the current triad has not—does not require replacement until 2030 or 2040 is not the only thing that needs to be considered. In fact, I think maybe there was a hint of this in a comment made last night by the dinner speaker. It could very well be that the most responsive capability that we could provide in the face of a new threat is the adaptation of an existing conventional capability to a nuclear delivery platform. There are a whole bunch of issues that need to be looked at in that regard, and the sooner we do so, the better. It is very, very clear that technology today is such that the conversion or the making use of an existing conventional platform does not necessarily raise all of the huge cost factors that were a problem 20 years ago. And I firmly believe the sooner we sit down and study such systems, we’ll understand whether it’s truly doable. I mean, I'm not sure of some of their major safety and security challenges associated with that. Nuclear systems in the past have been unique for a very good reason, because of the importance of safety, security, reliability.

And it’s an open question as to whether that can be met, those criteria can be met, by making use of the development of current conventional platforms. But we’re not going to know until the work is done, and the sooner we do it, the better. That's my personal opinion.