Comparative Costs of Air Force Military and Civilians in Selected Science and Engineering Specialties

摘要

In the face of accession and retention shortfalls, the Air Force recently initiated a critical skills retention bonus (CSRB) for officers in the science and engineering (S AND E) workforce. The bonus will be awarded to members with 4-13 years of commissioned service, at the rate of $ 10K per year for those who agree to four-year obligations. The Air Force Materiel Command also has suggested legislation that would offer commissioned officers a proficiency pay incentive for holders of graduate degrees in S AND E disciplines who work in S AND E positions. Monthly proficiency pay incentives would range from $100-5300, depending on experience. The targets of these awards are five career fields (designated 'core groups' by the Air Force): (1) Developmental Engineering (62F); (2) Scientific/Research (61S); (3) Acquisition Program Manager(63A); (4) Communications-Information Systems (33S); (5) Civil Engineer (32F). There are alternatives to using bonuses and proficiency pay to fill all the available military S AND E billets. Among them: the Air Force could use DoD civilian employees or private sector civilians to perform some portion of the work requiring S AND E skills. The objective of our work was to assess the use of Air Force military and civilian science and engineering personnel in RDT AND F positions by comparing the costs of using Air Force officers receiving bonuses with the alternative of using civil servants. A secondary objective was to define alternatives for later consideration.