The genesis of this paper was a high-level government planning meeting during which the question was posed "do we really know what the hypersonic test and evaluation (T&E) workforce will look like in twenty years?" A hypersonic subject matter expert (SME) in the room replied "not really." In visioning the future of aerospace, it has become increasingly clear that the manner by which the associated Research, Development, Testing, and Evaluation (RDT&E) workforce is prepared, equipped with the requisite skill sets, and nurtured throughout its career must change to align with the ever-growing range of new technologies and associated cultural norms it will encounter. How can current and future leaders of the aerospace sector identify what's needed and continually grow and train workers throughout their careers as the needs and tools change? As an initial step, the authors developed a solid problem statement that identifies the critical challenges and gaps that must be overcome to ensure that a highly capable workforce is available to support aerospace research and new product development. This paper addresses human resources as the system surrounding the people - the needs are much more than just defining a set of skills, perhaps some levels of competence, and numbers of full time equivalents on a spreadsheet. How do organizations define needs, feed forward into the educational pipeline, find and hire the right people, and nurture those people to retain and grow them across their careers - including across the inevitable aerospace industry boom/bust cycles. The hypersonic RDT&E workforce presents an interesting historical case study on one hand and a compelling call to arms on another. For the past few decades and with few exceptions, the US has minimized the pipeline of skilled participants at precisely the time when there is a significant up-turn in program activities and a new urgency for increased technological maturity. This paper will use the hypersonic workforce case study, supplemented by literature review and surveys, to make broader implications for the overall RDT&E workforce in the form of a gap analysis. This paper is a kickoff for a larger discussion that will utilize a series of AIAA invited sessions to examine RDT&E workforce challenges and to identify best and worst practices, great ideas, and proposed improvements. Findings from these sessions will be rolled up and published as they are generated and will be summarized in future AIAA papers.
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