The Metrics of War

A couple days ago a bunch of new "snowflakes" were released on the Rumsfeld Library. I almost want to put that library bit in quotes, but really it's somewhat commendable such a controversial public figure would be willing to release so much of his own documentation and leave it open to public debate. I'll let the former SecDef (DefSec?) tell you what a snowflake is:

The term “snowflake” covers a range of communications, from notes to myself on topics I found interesting, to extended instructions to my associates, to simple requests for a haircut. There was no set template; some are several pages and some just a few words. They were all conceived individually and I had never considered them as a set until I started work on the memoir. I then found that when reviewed together, they give a remarkable sense of the variety of topics that are confronted by a secretary of defense.

Paul McCleary over at the Ares blog at Aviation Week already did a very interesting post on these. How Rumsfeld was known as somewhat of a detail oriented micro manager. Yet these new memos show him as being out of touch, slow to respond, and forgetful in following up on issues.

Among some of the older, previously released memos I found this gem from Ryan Henry, the Principal Deputy for Policy under the Secretary of Defense (how do fit all that on a business card?) back in July 2004. He seems to be responding to Rumsfeld asking about certain metrics that a senator had asked be included in the Iraq Weekly Report. Henry states they were already using all of the metrics besides two: number of prisons and number of tv stations broadcasting.

He comes off fairly professional but you can almost hear his incredulous tone as he later explains that they could report number of prisons or number of prisoners but feel that reporting the number of prisons up to international standards would be a more valuable metric. I've certainly got a few politely worded emails under my belt that similarly dance around the "really? you want me to start doing what now?" issue.

If you were wondering what they did track here's some of it:

• MW of electricity produced, percentage of Iraqis with power
• Numbers of schools open, percentage of boys and girls attending
• Number of hospitals open, percentage of Iraqis receiving care
• Timetable to democracy (hahaha)
• Crude oil production
• Number of militia and police, and number in training
• Gallons of water available, number of Iraqis with fresh water access
• Number of troops from other countries (you'd hope someone's keeping track of this)
• Number of US troops (again...)
• Food available, number malnourished
• Unemployment rate

My favorite part happens in the header of the next page:

I'm curious if 7 years later if we have finally "built justice".

Graying workforce, the easter bunny, and other myths

Apparently one of the popular search terms that brings people to my blog is jobs for older engineers. Not sure why I, total newbie engineer, would draw this crowd of experienced and wise folks looking for answers. Probably because the economy is total trash. I've done my own share of job hunting and been rebuffed and ignored, had only a few phone interviews (I'm beginning to think I get called simply out of curiosity and then no one wants to talk to me anymore). So I'm not really sure who's taking all these lowbie jobs in my stead. If I had to guess based on my internal experience at MegaCorp it would be that we're hiring no one. That we have a ton of jobs open, are totally overworked, interview a bunch of people, and then don't hire anyone. Not sure why this is, remember I'm just a newbie.

I always enjoy the Editor's Desk over at Aviation Week. I've linked to it before, and Tony Velocci is a intelligent writer with contacts in the defense and aerospace world who looks beyond the line his contacts feed him. He's warned the industry can't get too comfortable with itself and assume endless funding for overpriced contracts will continue, that pricing and timetables will become important and that programs need to start operating like businesses rather than government pork. He's also talked about the lack of recruiting women in the industry which when you are a guy who's friends all work in defense is a pretty brave thing to do.

Last year he talked about the expectations of young engineers not being met when they go to work in the industry. And again he's covering similar topics on the attrition rate of young engineers in aerospace and defense.

I have less confidence in industry's appreciation for how challenging it will be to attract, and especially retain, young engineers and technical specialists--the men and women who will develop the technologies the country needs.
 

In a recent visit to a leading engineering school that also is the alma mater of some of aerospace's most celebrated, most highly accomplished individuals, I was stunned to hear that 80% of the graduates who chose to pursue careers in aerospace five years earlier either had left the field or are on the move. Eighty percent!

He discusses how young engineers leave the challenging environment of university, that employers require to remain increasingly competitive, only to end up not being tested or tried in their jobs.

The one place where Velocci loses me is his concern over all the retiring old people who will leave this big gap of tribal knowledge and experience (where he argues they need to get young people up to speed). In my experience, neither young people nor old people are being encouraged or hired. Well, in fact, no one's really being encouraged, but there's this middle section of people in their 30s and 40s who seem to be getting hired and getting promoted at MegaCorp. I don't see us losing a whole lot of people in their 60s. There are a few, but they aren't the ones with crucial knowledge and none of them seem ready to retire yet. The typical notice to retirement around here seems to be about two to three years and there are quite a few people who've retired on the job. We don't seem to be doing anything to retain these people, and haven't hired anyone over 35 in quite a while.

First, I think the idea of a huge gap arising from a bunch of people retiring is a huge myth, and mostly a scare tactic. Companies have been saying that for years, and so a ton of people I went to school with went in thinking they could get stable jobs and do this for life. Many of them have been jobless and wrong and have left for other careers. Many older engineers working in industry may also have the experience of stagnant wages which I think contributes. I think the only reason companies try to hang on to older workers is because they are actually cheaper than the star player in his 30s who thinks he's going to move up in the company. The older workers still in the industry are less demanding and willing to work for lower wages considering their experience, probably because they've been through too many layoffs.

Second of all, if you build it they will come. If a ton of people leave engineering (like all those nurses were going to retire, right?) we won't have any problem getting bodies in. If there's a demand for engineers it'll lead to better wages and better working conditions and people will be flocking to the industry in droves.

Now if these companies want sustainable recruitment and people with a wide variety of skills and backgrounds that's a completely different thing. If they want new ideas that will save them money and lead to future contracts they're going to have to work hard to recruit, diversify, and raise job satisfaction. But I suspect the government pork buffet they've been enjoying for decades isn't going to force them into any kind of competition over engineers anytime soon. I recommend going to medical school: can't outsource doctors and despite all the bureaucracy and long hours and poor locations and stress and the suffering that is trying to support a family on six figures in this country it's still not a bad job to have. So it's pretty much like being an engineer except you probably won't get laid off and you'll probably make more.

Crazy Cat Lady

The US DoD finally announced a winner for the KC-X tanker contract. The $35 billion contract was hotly contested with two major bids: Boeing and a team of Northrop Grumman and EADS/Airbus. After the USAF initially awarded the contract to the NGC EADS/Airbus team in December 2007 Boeing of course protested this award. This sort of thing is pretty normal in the defense industry. Slightly less normal was the patriotic response initially from Congress but eventually backed up by the Secretary Defense and a reassigning of who would make the final decision. Some stuff about European government support came to light to possibly explain the new award but in the end it was probably congressional pressure and the desire to award an American contract to an American company: Boeing.

In other news, not only do defense contractors manipulate congressmen to get contracts but turns out your cat might be manipulating you.

Turns out the relationship between your cat and you, especially if you are a woman, might be more interesting than you think. Turns out our cats actually form social bonds with us. They control when and how they are fed as do human infants and many cats take the place of a dependent child in families. In other cases, the cats and the humans both exhibit controlling behavior on one another.

Women tend to interact with their cats more meaning cats are more likely to approach women. But the kinds of relationships tend to be the same both with men and women.

Cats could very well be man's -- and woman's -- best friend.

"A relationship between a cat and a human can involve mutual attraction, personality compatibility, ease of interaction, play, affection and social support," co-author Dorothy Gracey of the University of Vienna explained. "A human and a cat can mutually develop complex ritualized interactions that show substantial mutual understanding of each other's inclinations and preferences."

As a lady with several kitty friends in her lifetime I can definitely see this. Unfortunately for me, even my own cat came to prefer HerrTech over me so the preference for women doesn't hold true in personal experience, but I probably interact more with TechCat. And I'm sure we manipulate each other all the time. She's manipulating me right now by looking adorable in exchange for being petted. Tricky cats.

Jet Engine Eats Tax Dollars

Here we again. More infighting and lying and bragging on the "alternate engine" for the F-35. You see, Pratt & Whitney won the initial engine competition for the F-35. The main competitor, a team of GE and Roll's Royce (not the same as the car manufacturer) lost the competition. You would think that would be the end to it. But no. Congress has been diverting program money towards the alternate engine. I talked about this before.

 

On Monday, just in time for a romantic Valentine's Day, the Department of Defense budget will be released. The budget will likely not include funding for the alternate engine. And the two engine manufacturers are trying to get ahead of the story with their own competing press lines.

 

So far Pratt & Whitney is running at 16% under cost per engine. But the new budget is going to include more funding for them, along the lines of a billion dollars more. GE and Roll's Royce are trying to draw plenty of attention to this extra funding as while some of it is for extra delivery of engines and related services, some is also pegged towards improvement. GE and Rolls are trying to demonstrate their engine is more innovative than the P&W engine and both are arguing about how worthy metrics like fuel burn are.

 

I suspect this will be contentious and I frankly don't care which engine is actually better. But we should be angry when competition doesn't fuel (see what I did there?) a better product but instead a hissy fit that serves no one, and congress while cutting budgets everywhere else continues to fund a defense item that is completely redundant and as far as typical defense programs completely unnecessary.

Bite the Hand that Feeds

Congress just passed a stopgap bill to keep federal funding at current levels through March. Republicans tried to squash any attempts at funding healthcare or financial reform agencies as being too costly, but one measure that managed to stay in was funding for the F-35 alternate engine.

 

By the skin of its teeth, the GE/Rolls Royce partnership building the alternate engine for the Joint Strike Fighter maintained its funding from last year, $430 million. Congress has been funding this effort for the last fourteen years and even with a "new" no-earmark "fiscally responsible" party about to take over, it's not about to hit the chopping block yet. Secretary Gates considers the program wasteful and unnecessary and Obama had said he would veto any bill that included new funding for it, though I suspect he won't veto this bill.

 

When's an alternate engine a good thing? When you have doubts about the contractor making the primary engine. When there's a remarkable improvement with the alternate engine. When the company making the primary engine may not be able to deliver. But most importantly, only when you are looking to phase in the alternate at some point in your production. Engine development is expensive. First there's obtaining the base hardware than making all the improvements you plan to as a gradual process. There's a lot of R&D that goes into most defense engines, they do not come standard one size fits all and there's a lot of time on both the engine side and the aircraft side in making a good fit, doing the appropriate amount of testing, and getting the needed certifications and oversight from the federal government. Oversight from federal employees who are looking at a two year pay freeze while GE and its Ohio management employees will get to suck up millions more in federal funding for an engine that after 14 years is apparently still not ready for final phase and does not look to be a necessary alternative to the current engine.

 

In a move that will make you blink, the conservative Brookings Institue actually recommends cutting or cancelling entirely the whole of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter budget. Their report is like a report written in complete denial. They admit current defense budgets, not including the war(s) effort, is 5% of GDP compared to 8 or 9% in the 1960s, 5% in Reagen's time, and 3 and 4% up until 2007. Thus it considers this level "moderate". It applauds Secretary Gates' efforts at reducing overspending programs and then offers this assessment:

In 2010, he proposed closing Joint Forces Command, reducing the number of flag officers in the military, and curbing contractor workforces by 10 percent a year for three years running. This last recommendation is dubious. Calls for reduction of some arbitrary percentage in a workforce over some period of time are appealing but usually unsuccessful, if the past is a guide. For example, similar goals were established in the 1990s for privatizing defense support functions, with an eerily similar goal of finding 30 percent savings in total support spending. But this effort was largely unsuccessful—privatization did occur in many areas, but 30 percent savings did not, and in fact overall trend lines in operating accounts did not curve downward at all.

A conservative think tank admitting that privatizing everything doesn't actually save money? But let's continue to not give our federal employees raises while we let this engine project drag on and on. I don't know what definition of earmarks the new congress will be using when the new majority is pledging to forgo them, but I hope someone stands up against this ridiculous kind of pet project. Four hundred million might not seem like a lot. This estimate stated extending a public healthcare option to tens of millions of uninsured Americans would cost less than $1 trillion over 10 years. Or, you guessed it, less than we spend on this engine. It's reasonable to fund successful defense programs that are important to our national security and protect soldiers on the ground. It's unreasonable to keep funding these wasteful, local pet projects.

DARPA Thursdays: Phantom ship chases subs

There seems to be a trend in autonomous, constantly patrolling vehicles lately what with Solar Impulse's 24 hour flight and Boeing's plan for a five year flight. So it should come as no surprise the DARPA is trying to develop a pilotless robot ship that could automatically chase enemy subs around without needing control or direction. It would need to be light and carry a lot of fuel for this kind of stamina which it does and will be made from aluminum. But at 62 ft long with a high point of 45 ft it doesn't sound like it will be too sneaky. It'll use an obstacle avoidance system which is pretty common for autonomous vehicles in other mediums. I suspect in a few years we'll see requests for proposal of versions of this craft that are mostly imperceptible to sonar or otherwise difficult to track by the subs they are chasing. The general idea is shooting it down will only create a red flag for someone to chase down thereby giving away the location of the escaping sub. But from what I know of the military they don't like their expensive unmanned crafts to suffer enemy fire if they can help it.

Some white guys pontificate

Tony Velocci, one of the editors over at Aviation Week, writes this week about an executive roundtable in which he and some aerospace and defense executives discussed diversity in the industry. Or maybe more appropriately, the lack thereof.

It is a question worth pondering as one surveys the makeup of the industry as a whole: mostly Caucasian men, with nearly a third of the total workforce 50 to 59 years old. Among larger contractors, about 40% of all employees, many of them involved in major defense programs, will be eligible for retirement within several years.

Of course that's the same spin on soon to retire engineers we keep hearing every month or so. And it appears to be total bunk. I'm pretty sure the 60 year olds I'm working with will keep working long past when they are eligible for medicare, which tends to be the defining measure for when people retire around here. But clearly they aren't getting real good data when they throw out predictions like that. The Wall Street Journal recently ran an article about Gen X in the workplace: stuck in the middle. Frustrated Gen Xers waiting for Boomers to retire and dealing with "entitled" young millenials in the workforce.

 

But is it really like that? Yes it seems like there's a lot of old guys hanging on, but at the same time most of my management chain are either Xers or at most on the young side of Boomers. And I don't see too many people here counting down the days until retirement. We all know the recession destroyed a lot of people's portfolios so I'm sympathetic that people need to work longer and save more. While most commenters on Velocci's story predictably said things like "this isn't even an issue" or "this is a silly story" a few had insightful comments on the aerospace industry. Bill Sweetman, another Aviation Week writer, had this to say:

Part of the problem with attracting "the best and brightest" to a mature industry is that you are competing with the new and trendy. Aeronautics and space were in that position once - think of the 1950s and 1960s in southern California - but the bloom went off the rose with the 1970s layoffs, and since then the hot tickets have been IT, biomedical engineering, and robotics.

 

You do have to wade back in and compete. And indeed to some extent, the problems we see in aerospace might be of its own making, along with its customers. See my post today: what is exciting about 25-year procurement cycles? You become an engineer to make things, not support the tenth analysis of alternatives that may (this time) lead to an RFI, before the customer takes his ball and goes home.

 

It's fast-cycle companies that are attracting the talent (Scaled, SpaceX, Insitu, iRobot, Aurora, to name a few). But it is still industry giants that have most of the money.

And he's right. It's hard to tell people what I do because when you think engineering you think something really hands on and awesome. Many of my classmates have leapt at the opportunity to use me as a contact to get in at my company. But then they talk about the lab where they are currently working, happily often, and sometimes I think they should stay. Or another commenter, who points out the industry is still as appealing as anything else:

But since graduation, I've applied to countless jobs across the industry with no response. After nine months of searching I eventually went back to graduate school to try and improve my chances and keep my skills sharp, but so far it's only resulted in a single phone interview. I'm not alone, either - some of my friends have sent out over a hundred applications with no success, and my graduate classes are filled with people who gave up for the time being on getting into the aerospace industry and went back to school. I hear stories at job fairs and company presentations of hiring managers that are swamped with hundreds of applications for each entry position, and the booths of companies like Lockheed and Boeing often have lines just as long as those at Apple and Google.

So young people are still trying to get in at these companies, and in high numbers. And does the defense industry want to rebrand anyways? I am reminded of an old Admiral who didn't want too many days off because "the military doesn't get those days off." And the military in this case was also the customer. Or as Mr. Velocci asked,

Companies like Apple and Google are magnets for young people, but can you imagine any of the 20 largest companies trying to duplicate the work environment that exists in those iconic enterprises? Probably not. You do not want your culture to look too different from that of your customer, one senior executive observed.

But even the dismissive posts, the ones that think this topic is silly, that you just hire a consultant and the consultant will tell you how to fix your problem. They have actually managed to nail it on its head. It's an employer's market right now. And if a company can't get young people/minorities/women/ewoks it's probably because they're not really trying. And maybe that's what disappoints me the most. Not that engineers continue to tend to be mostly white males, but that nobody cares. That the people with the money and the authority to make a difference choose not to, again and again.

I have seen the future, and it is unmanned

There seems to be a fair amount of buzz on unmanned military drones. Many soldiers love them and swear by them. Many US citizens couple them with their dislike of the war and cite the many civilian casualties associated with them. Whatever your opinion, they are mean fighting machines. Capable of long stakeouts, detailed video, and precise strikes. Perhaps that's why the civilian casualties are so alarming. We expect perfection from our robots even as the people giving the order to fire are only human.

 

Unmanned helicopters have been an interesting technology to watch. Some manufacturers have taken existing helicopters and retrofitted them to be remotely pilotable. Others have done the development from the ground up. Now NAVAIR has issued a request for proposals for cargo carrying unmanned helicopters and the Marines have done the same.

 

If anyone wondered what was going to happen to all these drones when the Afghanistan war eventually slows down I think we have our answer. We can expect to see them carrying things and doing reconaissance missions. Drones have been able to survey the aftermath of the Haitian earthquake, sweep over the fire-prone areas out west looking for new outbreaks, and even fly over the gulf mapping the spread of the oil spill. Now those same drones might be able to drop much needed supplies to people in remote areas of disaster zones where weather or prep time for mobilization might have prevented a human pilot from flying. It is a hopeful thing I think.

Bombs for Jobs

US manufacturing has been a historical powerhouse. But as time goes on more and more of our products (ships, cars, computers, appliances) are getting sent offshore. Congress is too cowardly to impose any tax disincentives to slow this down. Then you have all these idealists who think we spend way too much on defense on not enough on what...corporate bailouts? Tax cuts? Outsourcing more jobs? Let's get real. Congress might be working on some $26 billion dollar aid program that will supposedly "save" 300,000 teacher jobs, but until Republicans listen to anybody but themselves and cautiously approach the idea of raising tax rates we won't get anywhere. Instead, middle and lower class conservatives have been conned into the idea that less taxes will somehow mean more money in their pockets. That if only greedy liberals could stop funding things like education, police and firefighters maybe they'd have an extra $2 in their pockets from those poor, poor corporations who are just taxed so hard.

 

One thing not difficult to get through this republican-controlled congress is defense spending. So when I tell you missile and arms manufacturer Raytheon won a $450 million dollar contract for a new bomb you'll know that's defense budget situation normal. The F-35 will be using this small/smart bomb as well as the F-15 at some point. Maybe you're a hippie and think the only places for bombs are in some dystopian future and that peace is the key to success. Well in theory you're probably right. But the truth is, defense spending creates domestic jobs. This new bomb plant will be in Alabama. I'm sure Alabama state representatives doctored a nice tax-advantaged plan to entice Raytheon there much as the same way the South is selling out its union employees for half the wages just to get a few auto plants. Raytheon's engineering is located primarily in Arizona, one of the major economic engines in that state. A few years back Raytheon bought Hughes Aerospace and is now 12,000 people strong in Tucson. They make a lot of our missiles and bombs. And for now, it all has to be done over here for security reasons. So Apple, Ford and GE can send plenty of their manufacturing (and engineering) overseas, but there's still at least one thing partisan greed can be counted on to keep domestic. For national security, of course.