A significant gap has developed between DoD’s view of industry as an always-ready supplier of military capabilities and how industry actually makes decisions on what capabilities to offer. And that gap is widening.…
This hasn’t always been true. Military technologies used to be much more closely related to civilian technologies. They even used common production processes. But because DoD is today the sole customer for industry’s most advanced capabilities, the defense industrial base is increasingly specialized and separate from the general manufacturing and technology sectors. That means even a healthy general economy will not necessarily help underwrite the industrial capabilities DoD most needs…
The earliest RAND studies concluded that a minimum viable [aircraft] organization was “about 1,000 engineering and technical management personnel, and operating with an annual budget of about $100 million (in 1992 dollars).” More recent data cited by RAND suggests that the size of such teams might range from 1,000 to 2,000 engineers at an annual cost of $250 to 500 million.
So, while today’s weapon systems are expensive, it’s because they require technologies undreamed of in previous eras… The barriers to entry are generally much too high for commercial companies to successfully cross over to higher technology defense products when a future competition occurs, not to mention the difficulty and cost of complying with government acquisition laws, regulations and procedures.
That was from a 2009 Aerospace Industries Association report, “The Unseen Cost: Industrial Base Consequences of Defense Strategy Choices.”
It is certainly in the aerospace industry’s best interests to make it appear as though its work is closed off to outsiders, that its too big and complex for any new entrant to reasonably take on. Interestingly enough, it was right around the same time that Elon Musk and Space X were launching the first privately funded rockets into orbit.
Far from requiring at least 1,000 engineers, European development teams were able to build functioning hardware with far fewer people. Here is Albert Shapero in “Life Styles of Engineering”:
… in Holland the very successful Fokker Friendship airliner was developed from scratch by a team of 50 engineers, supported by 200 draftsmen, technicians and craftsmen. Or that the French Mirage 3 fighter required 53 engineers, 50 draftsmen and 95 craftsmen to get from contract award to first flight in 13 months. It’s doubtful if today any U.S. company could prepare a proposal for such a plane without a staff larger than that.
The benefit of smaller teams is the assignment of responsibility for success or failure. Also, larger engineering teams build complexity into systems so that each of them is able to express their creativity.
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