The U.S. military's ability to launch strategic strikes with both nuclear and non-nuclear weapons is at risk of erosion due to the "imminent loss" of skills required to support research, development and production of systems that assist in delivering long-range attacks, according to a group of senior advisers to the Pentagon's leadership.

In a new study, a Defense Science Board task force decries “a serious loss of certain critical strategic strike skill may occur within the next decade.”

Released this week, the report on “Future Strategic Strike Skills” urges Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to direct a series of remedial actions to bolster the workforce and provide new programmatic direction to ensure the military retains key capabilities.

The two-year study by the influential advisory panel determined that workers with specialized skills who sustain the strategic strike capability are retiring at alarming rates, with more leaving than joining the ranks. The study also notes that China and India are generating significantly more graduate students than the United States in the science and engineering disciplines that are key to strategic strike needs.

“It is now evident that our ability to execute the full spectrum of strategic strike will be in danger as a result of the imminent loss of many of the skills necessary to carry out strategic strike, from research through development, testing, production and sustainment,” the board panel wrote in a draft action plan for Rumsfeld that is included in the 89-page report.

After decades of robust support during the Cold War, when strategic forces were the linchpin of the military's deterrence capability, strategic strike capabilities over the last 10 years have suffered “a continuous erosion of national priority, clarity of mission and funding levels,” states the report. “The current focus on the global war on terrorism has pushed the role of future strike systems further to ‘backburner' status.”

The task force did not examine the workforce that designs and builds nuclear weapons; instead, it examined the state of the workforce required to support the wide range of other systems that enable the use of nuclear weapons, including delivery systems -- such as ballistic missiles, bomber aircraft, submarines; C4ISR capabilities, which encompasses intelligence to provide threat assessments and analysis as well as surveillance and reconnaissance to monitor those threats; and battle management.

Led by Walter Morrow, the task force found the Defense Department has not provided clear guidance for next-generation strategic strike systems, which has resulted in an industry and government talent base that is “marginally thin” and “may not be available for potential next-generation systems.” Accordingly, the panel calls for clear guidance to ensure the successful development of future strategic strike systems.

The panel also labeled the Defense Department's exploration of new concepts and technologies in this area “inadequate” and recommended the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency be assigned responsibility for crafting a new vision for strategic strike capabilities that can eventually be transitioned to the services.

The area most at risk, the DSB task force contends, is the development of ballistic missiles. “Design skills are rapidly disappearing, both for major redesigns of current systems and for the design of new strategic systems,” the report states. The Defense Department's policy of funding programs that aim to maintain a cadre of experts is “not sufficient” to maintain skills, it continues. To address this problem, the report recommends ballistic missile program offices fund programs to transfer “critical knowledge and skills to early career personnel in industry.”

Also, the panel recommends Rumsfeld direct the Air Force and Navy to fund the advanced development of subsystems, prototypes and testing to support next-generation systems.

The Defense Department and the companies involved in the strategic strike business have difficulty attracting and retaining top-notch students with necessary science and engineering backgrounds, the DSB panel found. The task force recommends the creation of combined undergraduate Scholarship programs that would encourage the study of relevant science and engineering disciplines and, in exchange, compel students to work for a period of time in the Defense Department or defense industry.