Air Force lab seeks private plug for brain drain

The Air Force Research Laboratory could lose nearly half of its scientists and engineers over the next five to 10 years, as an aging workforce becomes eligible for retirement.

The loss of that much brainpower could cripple the lab if it proceeded with business as usual, and replacing all of the retirees could be difficult. Instead, the lab has adopted a strategy of increased collaboration with universities, not-for-profit organizations and technology companies.

"We want to try to be more agile," said Maj. Gen. Richard Paul, the lab's commander. "This is in response to our needs for focused technical expertise and possible funding constraints in the future."

The decision to increase collaboration was the result of a study, "Science and Technology Workforce for the 21st Century," requested in 1999 by Air Force Secretary F. Whitten Peters. The findings of the study have been adopted as the core of an initiative labeled STW-21.

The initiative seeks to give the Air Force lab a workforce that is constantly refreshed with the best minds from the complex, cerebral worlds of academic and commercial technology.

The lab last week issued a request for information designed to solicit innovative ideas on how it can gain from leading-edge private research. "We are willing to co-locate operations at our various lab sites or set up agreements to exchange people," Paul said. "Basically, we are looking for interest and any ideas the highest-quality universities and industrial components out there may have on the subject."

The lab is seeking to decrease its permanent workforce by only 5 to 10 percent. It would use short-term hires, personnel exchanges and other such techniques to do the work of the lost employees.

Downsizing and collaboration with the private sector are nothing new to the lab. It currently devotes 75 percent of its budget to what Paul termed "extramural research."

The workforce has shrunk by 30 percent over the last decade. Of its 6,000 government employees, 25 percent are in uniform and assigned to AFRL for tours of duty lasting three to four years. "This is a good situation that allows us to have some workforce refreshment," Paul said. The lab supplements its workforce with visiting professors and government employees hired for the term of specific projects.

The AFRL has nine technology directorates located at Air Force bases all over the nation. Its mission is to provide the Air Force with any technological option the service might need to remain the world's dominant air power.

One program the AFRL has been working on for two decades is placing a powerful laser on a jet airplane in order to shoot down ballistic missiles. The AFRL has been working on making the laser smaller while increasing its strength. Precision munitions are another specialty.

"Our lab is not broken," Paul said. "We call our move toward increased collaboration more an adjustment. It's not a new way of doing business for us. We just don't want to get too comfortable and fall into a rut."