Misunderstood engineers?

The Boeing clipping service today popped up an article that appeared in the Washington Times. "Why we fund unneeded weapons." Basically the author argues that useless projects like the space shuttle (!) occur because the engineers that did the last big project (such as the Apollo program) need to work. "When large numbers of smart people only know how to design advanced weapons, they will always find another one to design."

Huh?

I didn't know engineers had the ability to magically create government funding, and were completely unable to find jobs in related fields if the one they were in starts shrinking.

I know a number of people here at Boeing who've only worked in the aerospace industry. I know a number who haven't, too, but setting them aside, even the ones who've only worked aerospace have had a number of highly varied jobs. They don't "only know how to design" any one thing, or any TEN things. They know how to use the modeling and database tools the company uses (and expect to have to learn new ones every decade or so, if not more often). They know how to take requirements and turn them into hardware. They know how to convince management of things. True, they'll be best at what they were doing last, but a guy with 15 years as an engineer working on "advaced weapons" is still going to be more useful to the commercial aircraft business unit than a novice right out of college. He'll be more expensive, sure, but he'll be worth it, too.

Are engineers really this poorly understood? Do people think that an auto engineer can't become a tooling engineer? An airframe engineer? Zarth, an electrical engineer, if he's willing to spend a little time at it?

Where does this guy think the "advanced weapon" engineers came from in the first place? Were they all hired right out of college and told "OK, now you're advanced weapon engineers." Is it just possible that some (a large majority, even?) were automobile engineers, HVAC engineers, and even toy engineers?

He's right that projects tend to take on a life of their own, and that maintaining the intellectual brain trust in specialized fields is something companies do. But that can be (and is) done with small research projects, not the space shuttle or the Joint Strike Fighter.

I also disagree that we don't need the space shuttle, and somewhat disagree that we don't need the JSF. Space is the future, and we need to be out there. The space shuttle has maintained the US manned presence in space since the Apollo missions ended.

As for the JSF, true, we probably don't need it today. But what if we need it tomorrow? WWII is frequently cited as a technologically revolutionary war - the first use of jet aircraft, rockets, atomic bombs, etc. But all of those were in development before the war. Wars are fought with the tools at hand - the process of developing, testing, producing, developing doctrine for, and equiping armies with completely new ones takes years. Interestingly enough, it is also a war we went into convinced of our technological superiority. We were wrong. Luckily, we had better equipment in the pipeline.