Defense Technology International - January/February 2008 - (Page 51) What about programs that have gone well? The best so far—it’s an unbelievably complex e ort—is Future Combat Systems. It has good people on the government and industry side, and it’s gone o and executed very well. From the beginning we assumed that we would deliver things in spirals, with the most mature technologies spinning out early. As [Army Chief of Sta Gen. Peter] Schoomaker came in we got more spin out. Is there pressure to over-promise to sell a program on the Hill, and is that a problem with performance? I was in the U.K. a couple of weeks ago and talked to a senior RAF o cer. I told him, ‘You don’t know how good you’ve got it—you don’t have to defend every program before a board with more than 500 members.’ But if you’ve got a program that’s not well constructed, where the risk mitigation measures are not there, the Hill’s going to be very skeptical of your ability to do it. [The USCG’s] Deepwater [program] did not have risk mitigation; they did not execute it well, and the Hill ripped it apart (DTI November 2007, p. 16.). The Hill doesn’t drive requirements, or Defense Dept. estimates. But when you take it to them they pour a lot of concrete around your feet and hold you to it. If your program executes well, you’ll have 500 cheerleaders. Will stealth retain its value in the long term? Radar and electronic warfare have always been like a fencing match, back and forth all the time. To some degree that’s true with stealth. I don’t think that tomorrow anyone’s going to invent an invisible airplane, or something that will make stealth technology obsolete. More processing power improves the ability to detect things, but at the same time, with more processing power we are better able to design things that are less detectable. Moore’s Law works both ways. Will the Next Generation Bomber be a UCAV? My personal view is that it will be a mixture. There are some times that you want to have a human in the loop. We might still be thinking about nuclear weapons, in which case a fully autonomous system does not make me feel warm. But even if there’s a pilot, you have to use autonomous technology. Put a B-2 on a 40-hr. mission and a large part of it is point-to-point driving. There’s no reason that the pilots can’t be sleeping, with someone on the ground monitoring the airplane. What are today’s most promising new technologies? I used to tell people hypersonics are the future of aerospace— and always will be. But hypersonics are about to be with us. There have been a number of long poles in the tent for years, but we’ve recently had some advances on the propulsion chain. We’re coalescing around some materials that work. Again, processing and analytical tools are important in dealing with flow paths and thermal issues. There are also the space technologies that we demonstrated in Orbital Express—autonomy, miniaturization and microminiaturization. We can do things in an 18-in. cube that required tons a few years ago. We’re talking about spacecraft that collaborate like the X-45 did. They collaborate in orbit, and form virtual large arrays. It’s mature, it’s there. On some of the things we did on Orbital Express, we amazed ourselves with its flexibility, its reprogrammability. We started to learn about it, started to ask it to do new things. It was like the early days of aviation—the more we flew the more we wanted to fly, to try new things. What issues confront the aerospace and defense workforce? It’s a pet rock issue of mine. More than 25% of our aerospace workers could retire. We’re lucky that they don’t want to. But we have to cultivate the next generation. It starts with inspiring kids to take on di cult courses in school. A lot of students don’t get adequate preparation [for the math involved in aerospace engineering] and end up in remedial courses. Then a lot of them get disenchanted when they find that they’re working a lot harder than their peers. But then, a few years ago, [Boeing] lost a lot of people to dot-coms. Almost without exception they were all back. They wanted to work on something that was important. My brother’s a toxicologist, director of quality assurance for a cookie company. I’d have trouble staying enthusiastic about the next batch of crackers. I JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2008 DEFENSE TECHNOLOGY INTERNATIONAL 51 GEORGE K. MUELLNER Background: President of Advanced Systems, Boeing Integrated Defense Systems. President-Elect, American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics. Joined Boeing in 1998; was president of Phantom Works; vice president and general manager of Air Force Systems. Served 31 years in USAF; retired as lieutenant general and principal deputy in the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Acquisition. Experience includes 690 F-4 combat missions in Vietnam; command of 6513th Test Squadron; leader of Joint Stars deployment in Operation Desert Storm; director of Joint Advanced Strike Technology program, precursor to the JSF. Education: Has B.S. degree in aeronautical and astronautical engineering from University of Illinois; M.A. in aeronautical systems management from University of Southern California; M.B.A. from Auburn University. www.aviationweek.com/dti http://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/aw/dti1107/index.php?startpage=16 http://www.aviationweek.com/dti
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