Air University Review, May-June 1985
THE role of the military officer in the research and development engineering environment is significantly different from that of the officer associated with flying organizations; relationships with coworkers, diversity of work contacts, and the personality skills required to accomplish the technical research mission successfully can be markedly different from the skills required to achieve the man-machine interface and command orientation of flying.
In December 1980, when I entered the Air Force Flight Dynamics Laboratory, via the Air Force Institute of Technology at Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio, for a rated supplement assignment, the first significant adjustment I had to make was in regard to the composition of the workforce: roughly 80 percent of my coworkers were civilian. Having spent my military career up to this point surrounded by an entirely military workforce, I was now a member of a military minority in this particular Air Force organization. I had to assimilate into my field of reference my first perceptions of civilian coworkers, their perceptions of me, and our feelings about how each other was perceived. The fact that the majority of these civilians had been in the branch more than fifteen years deepened my initial feeling of being an outsider. While my five years of flying experience had given me a wider mission perspective, it also represented a period during which I had not continued my engineering development; this digression set us farther apart.
Probably the strongest initial bond I had with my civilian counterparts revolved around education. During the course of the undergraduate engineering program at the U.S. Air Force Academy and an extensive graduate program in residence at the Air Force Institute of Technology (AFIT), I had received excellent technical preparation using essentially the same engineering texts and reference works which they had used during their undergraduate and graduate studies at various civilian institutions. Also my thesis project at AFIT had been sponsored by the Flight Dynamics Laboratory, one of the four laboratories composing the Air Force Wright Aeronautical Laboratories, Aeronautical Systems Division, Air Force Systems Command, at Wright-Patterson AFB. It had given me the opportunity to work on a problem of direct interest to laboratory researchers and to develop productive contacts with them. Moreover, many of my coworkers bid either taken or taught courses at AFIT or presented papers, briefings, or seminars there. As a result, they were familiar with my technical background.
My initial reaction that civil-service engineers were, in general, very professional in their approach to work responsibilities has been reinforced with the passing of time and additional experiences. However, we often do have differing perceptions of what should constitute work responsibilities. I view their outlook as that of engineers working for the government, as opposed to government employees working as engineers. Although there are exceptions, their work goals are often in terms of advancing the state of technology, with resultant improvements to defense applications (technology push), rather than pursuing improved defense applications that may require new technological developments (technology pull). This technology push approach is very appropriate to an organization such as the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, whose charter is to develop new technology for the general rise of the aircraft industry. The same approach is not as applicable to the Air Force Systems Command responsibility to develop weapon systems to support the Air Force mission, although there are defensible arguments for a limited basic research effort.
Mission accomplishment is directly related to individual dedication. I have seen civilian engineers further a development program or support another engineer's investigation without benefit to their own advancement opportunities. Some put in extra hours and work weekends without extra compensation or, special recognition. But there are those who will covet programs as their personal ticket to career advancement, sometimes to the detriment of those programs; there are others who treat their jobs merely as attendance requirements to acquire comfortable salaries. It can be frustrating to expect needed corporate loyalty and organizational pride front these latter individuals, especially when they identify more strongly with neighborhood or community organizations than with their workforce.
My perception of pay scales and performance rewards is that opportunities are essentially equal for military and civilian personnel. The higher basic salaries of the civilian employees are sometimes offset by incentive pay for rated or engineering duty that the military receive. Military engineers have better access to government-sponsored graduate education. Both military and civilians are promoted based on performance ratings, and both compete for organizational awards that recognize technical or managerial excellence. Probably the most significant difference in rewards is that a civilian can be awarded a monetary incentive for overtime or outstanding performance, whereas a military person cannot; the latter must be satisfied that exceptional performance will result in improved promotion opportunities or a broadening of responsibilities, which call be very gratifying. My personal view is that most professionals react more favorably to opportunities to wield greater authority or solve problems of greater significance than to strictly monetary rewards.
There are other, often overlooked, differences between military and civilian research and development employees that are no less significant for their subtlety. Until recently, military engineers have had a specified wartime duty position, typically in a zone of hostilities, to which they would mobilize if required for national defense.1 All rated military engineers still retain a flying position as their primary duty identifier and fully expect to be mobilized to flying duties in times of national emergency.
The flexibility implied by these commitments and reinforced by regular PCS moves highlights a significant point of contrast. The military engineer-manager is not only expected but required to change jobs and areas of professional responsibility regularly; a civilian employee is normally able to live in the same location, specialize in a given technical area, and continue with it for a large portion of his or her career. Military mobility reflects the expectation that the officer will bring operational experience, new ideas, a capacity for critical evaluation, and contacts with other organizations into the gaining organization. While the officer will have more contacts in the flying-force user community through previous shared assignments and schools, civilian teammates will probably maintain the edge in technical experience and corporate memory. Ideally, these two positions should not be in competition but should complement each other for the greater accomplishment of the technical development mission. The officer-engineer can use earlier operational interface to maintain the credibility of the organization in terms of whether its products contribute to the Air Force mission "to fly and fight." The effective civilian engineer-manager has the background of having nurtured the research effort through five to ten years of development before it is ready for release and general scrutiny; without these contributions of technical excellence, experience, and contacts in the industrial community, the project would never come to fruition.
Instances of poor military-civilian interaction aggravated by the military officer can occur because the offender, typically in a supervisory position, is more concerned with taking credit for program accomplishment for personal enhancement than with the product itself. Such individuals typically fail to recognize and support the predominantly civilian research and development personnel who have done the preponderance of the program preparation. The officer-supervisor might also deemphasize important long-term research in favor of short-duration projects that have immediately visible payoffs. Subordinates can sense when they are being used, with a resulting drop in morale and productivity. Correspondingly, civilian manager detriment to the military-civilian team can occur when a well-entrenched civilian manager will not willingly share program background or insight with military peers. The civilian manager's reticence may be due to a lack of trust or respect for the contributions that the military members will make or a suspicion that innovative ideas or work already accomplished will be appropriated for the other's gain. When such situations occur, programs can stagnate for lack of fresh approaches, constructive criticism, and extra organizational support. Entire research laboratories have closed in part because their projects were perceived to lack mission relevancy or their objectives became fragmented.2 Therefore, it is not surprising that most management structures in Air Force laboratories have military-civilian management teams at virtually all levels of command, with the military member as commander and the civilian as deputy, or vice versa.3
Another significant difference in the respective roles of civilian and military coworkers is that, higher in the Air Force Systems Command organizational structure,4 the proportion of military in command positions becomes dominant. My rationale for this situation is that the military engineer is expected to have developed more executive capacity than comparable civilian engineers, primarily as a result of varied operational assignments, professional leadership schooling, and exchange tours with other organizations and agencies. To anyone who compares the relative age and rank of military and civilian supervisor-managers with equivalent responsibilities, it becomes obvious that the military officer rises more quickly and is expected to transition to management functions as much as ten years earlier than civilian coworkers. This situation is not merely the status quo; it is the expectation.
Thus, the military technical manager, in the thirties age bracket and with only two years' time in a branch, competes for manpower and budget resources with civilian technical managers who are in their forties or fifties and who have been in the organization for twenty years. Simultaneously, these managers, although competitors, must also cooperate for mission accomplishment.
The challenge to champion the people in the supervisor's particular work element who need a certain level of backing, while synergistically supporting the overall goals of the parent organization, requires deft management skill and political savvy. This high-pressure situation requires, and often results in, rapid professional development by the officer. It also lays the groundwork for similar responsibilities of decision and judgment, at higher levels, in future assignments.
MY advice to officers entering research and development assignments is to fully integrate yourself with the civilian workforce, from which you will draw strength, to which you must repond, and over which you will eventually exercise authority. Every social and work opportunity to interface with these well-established research partners should be exercised; the rewards in terms of enhanced mutual respect and organizational support will more than compensate the effort expended. If a firm bond with civilian counterparts is not established, not only will the military engineer manager be a less effective individual, but the organization as a whole will be less dynamic. Due to routine PCS moves, an officer's opportunities to develop into a technical specialist are diminished; thus, few officers have the chance to become the national expert in a technical area. However, the professionally mature officer can be satisfied that his or her primary contribution to the Air Force is the effective application of leadership. You must develop the team which will bring the product and accomplish the national defense mission.
Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio
Notes
1. Such wartime AFSCs were removed from general use in 1982.
2. My perception of contributing factors to the deactivation of
Aerospace Research Laboratories (AFSC) in 1974, from interviews conducted with former members of ARL. Other factors, perhaps more significant, included the desire to spread the highly qualified technical talent from ARL among other laboratory organizations and the need to make major cuts somewhere due to budgetary restraints. ARL, under its parent organization, may not have had the organizational muscle needed to compete for budget against MAJCOM-sponsored agencies.
3. My observation from i he Air Force Wright Aeronautical Laboratories Organizational charts.
4. Aeronautical Systems Division organizational chart, January 1982.
Captain Steven G. Reznick (USAFE;M.S.A.E., AFIT) is a Ph.D. candidate in aeronautical engineering at Stanford University doing his dissertation research at NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, California. He has served as technical manager of wind tunnel aerodynamic research testing in the Flight Dynamics Laboratory at Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio, and as instructor weapons systems officer and navigator in F-4 aircraft at Tactical Air Command and Hq USAFE. Captain Reznick is a graduate of Squadron Officer School and the Marine Corps Command and Staff College.
Disclaimer
The conclusions and opinions expressed in this document are those of the author cultivated in the freedom of expression, academic environment of Air University. They do not reflect the official position of the U.S. Government, Department of Defense, the United States Air Force or the Air University.