"We have a shortfall of about 10 percent and that means we can't do the work that needs to get done," said Major General Richard V. Reynolds, commander of the U.S. Air Force Flight Test Center at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif.

Speaking to engineers at Autotestcon 2000, a test equipment conference devoted to the defense industry, Reynolds was joined by private contractors who stated that the shortage is close to reaching crisis proportions. "We want to warn people that there's a storm coming," said Bob Rassa, director of systems supportability at Raytheon Systems Co. (Los Angeles). "There's going to be an exodus of software engineers who design test equipment and aerospace systems. And if defense companies don't have the quality of software engineers they need, then they'll deliver their products late, and that will be detrimental to our military readiness."

Speakers at the technical conference sessions said that the exodus is especially difficult for the automated test equipment (ATE) community, where the real value of a system is in its software. Such software is critical for the military, too, because it allows defense engineers to operate, maintain, test, and develop defense systems. "Ninety percent of ATE content is software," Rassa said. "The hardware is just a host."

Adding to the problem is the fact that ATE systems require specialized expertise, which is lost when software engineers leave for other industries. "A software engineer who makes switches for Nortel can't create an automated test program, or write mission avionics software," Rassa said. "We need people who understand the test market."

Fierce competition

Engineers from the defense community and the ATE industry agreed that several factors are working together to draw software engineers away. The biggest one is a proliferation of dot-coms and other startups in industries ranging from telecommunications to banking to entertainment. "I've lost more software engineers to the entertainment industry than I'd care to think about," said Reynolds. Edwards Air Force Base is located in the California desert about 90 minutes northeast of Los Angeles' entertainment industry, he noted.

The competition for engineering talent is exacerbated by the fact that universities aren't turning out enough computer scientists and electrical engineers to meet the fast-growing needs of Internet-based companies. Some universities have reportedly combined their electrical engineering programs and computer science departments as a means of keeping up their enrollments. Such moves, however, don't help address the shortage of graduates. "It's like using a garden hose to put out a forest fire," said Marsh Faber, higher education marketing manager for Agilent Technologies Inc. "There's so much demand for software engineers and so little supply."

The explosion of Internet companies has fostered a form of competition that the defense industries and ATE community have never seen before. In years past, defense industry giants battled one another for the best talent, but now they must compete in a larger arena. "This isn't like the computer industry vying for electrical engineers," said Rick Robinson, director of technology for Agilent's Measurement Components Technology Center (Loveland, Colo.). "It's a matter of the whole world pursuing software engineers."

The competition has led to a dramatic jump in the software engineering pay scale. Some Internet companies pay as much as $55,000 to $60,000 a year to new college graduates. And competitors are luring experienced software engineers with signing bonuses. "How can an ATE company that pays $35,000 a year compete with that?" Rassa asked. "Aerospace companies can't pay those kinds of salaries and ATE companies pay even less."

Aerospace firms have been particularly hard hit by the competition. Rassa said that one unnamed "aerospace giant" has an attrition level of 37 percent annually among its software engineers. And a study by the U.S. Department of Labor shows little hope for an immediate solution. The study revealed that the shortage of software engineers has reached 300,000 nationwide, Rassa said.

Search for solutions

Despite efforts to solve it, the defense industry and test community admit they are still baffled by the problem. The National Defense Industrial Association, a Pentagon-based group that has studied the situation, examined the possibility of using subcontractors for software engineering. But such measures wouldn't work, the committee reportedly learned, because subcontracting wouldn't allow for the build-up of proprietary expertise among engineers.

For the test community, experts say that part of the problem lies in the fact that university-trained engineers receive no exposure to the subject while in school. "We went to 900 universities looking for papers on automated test and found zero," Rassa said. "How can we expect to hire engineers out of school when they haven't heard of us and we offer them less money?"

Some industry insiders have discussed the possibility of seeking government support to help match salaries during negotiations and to aid in relocation of potential new employees.

The U.S. Air Force has tried to deal with the shortage by launching the Acquisition Workforce Demonstration Project, a program that allows it to pay more up front to software engineers, to advance the best performers more quickly, and to alter the government rating systems for civilian engineers. The program is being implemented at Edwards Air Force Base and at the Pentagon.

Experts say that many defense-related programs need to find solutions in a relatively short time. Edwards Air Force Base, for example, faces the potential loss of 40 percent of its workforce between now and 2003. At the same time, Edwards has begun testing the X-32, as well as other new entries in the line of fabled X-planes.

All of those programs could be affected by the shortage, engineers said. "This situation is going to get worse before it gets better," Rassa said. "When you look at the attrition rate and the salary problems, you realize that it's a serious, serious problem."