Revitalizing the Technical Excellence of the Workforce at the Arnold Engineering Development Center (AEDC)and Beyond

Abstract

N effort to revitalize the technical excellence of the workforce at Arnold Engineering Development Center (AEDC) to include military, civilian, and contractor personnel has been initiated. Since its inception the center has provided world-class subject matter experts on the collection, validation, and analysis of ground-test data in support of most major military weapon system development programs. Over a period of years reductions in budget, changes in funding policies, and acquisition reforms have had an unintended consequence of restricting the engineers and scientists at AEDC from developing and applying their analytical skills. In addition, the accumulation of well-meaning processes and controls has further stifled development of ground-testing technical expertise. More emphasis has been placed on having test engineers manage cost and schedule of test projects eroding the time available to evaluate the test environments and systems under test (SUT). In response to these trends, we argue the Department of Defense (DoD) has put too much emphasis on improving the efficiency of testing (faster and cheaper tests, fewer facilities, fewer personnel) and not enough emphasis on good systems engineering and enhancing the effectiveness of testing (catching system defects early). This misplaced emphasis fails to address the root causes for excessive cost and schedule delays in major acquisition programs. AEDC believes having experienced scientists and engineers with appropriate testing domain knowledge is critical to increasing the effectiveness of test and evaluation (T&E) in acquisition programs, hence, the renewed emphasis on building technical expertise. This paper describes the issues, the plan developed at AEDC to address the issues, and the broader context in which the desired changes are taking place.