Industry is already short of skilled engineering personnel.
The defense industry would likely struggle to rebuild the U.S. military’s crucial space capabilities during a war with China or Russia because it will have too few skilled engineers to do the work, according to a new report from RAND.
Today, the country’s space-focused defense companies employ roughly 3 percent of its engineers, and competition for skilled personnel means many jobs go unfilled. If an adversary destroys space-based intelligence, targeting, and communications assets, that shortfall would likely keep the military from getting them back online quickly.
“Modern warfare relies on space-based capabilities; therefore, a key question is how quickly then United States can replace those capabilities during a conflict,” the report said. “Although much attention has focused on making these systems more resilient, far less has examined how fast they can be rebuilt after an attack, especially within 12 to 24 months. China and Russia have shown they can threaten or destroy U.S. space assets, potentially weakening U.S. and allied military operations across many domains. In a prolonged conflict, the ability to restore these capabilities on a short timeline could be critical.”
Various commissions have long warned that U.S. dependence on space could become a vulnerability. In recent years, concerns have arisen over Russian and Chinese nuclear anti-satellite weapons. Rebuilding devastated constellations could require more engineers than the country has available, RAND wrote.
While recent Space Force and White House initiatives aim to turn the tide, it doesn't match the demand the administration is putting on the military space industry and, ultimately, more creative solutions are needed to grow that workforce, the report said.
“Being able to reconstitute after a conflict is absolutely essential, and that's not just business as usual for people who are working in the space industry. That's a massive surge in production,” Alexandra Gerber, the report’s lead author, said in an interview. “Think like World War II, Rosie the Riveter, everybody's on the line, and this is not just you can teach somebody how to work in a factory after one day. The timelines for creating people to work in the space industry are much much longer than that. So, we need to be thinking about what the space workforce might need to look like to support reconstitution during a conflict, 10, 20, 30 years in advance. Not just six months.”
Software development, data analytics, and artificial intelligence will be compete for future engineers, the report said. It can take at least 15 years to develop some of the more highly-skilled, space-focused experts.
RAND researchers found “there are approximately 30,000 job openings per year for technicians and technologists, but only 11,000 individuals are credentialed annually. The space industrial base annual demand is approximately 5,000 of the annual openings (17 percent).” For the 244,000 assembly-related job fields hired for annually, there are only 13,000 people credentialed.
“The space industrial base constitutes about 11,000 (5 percent) of the annual openings for assemblers, and competition for the 13,000 credentialed workers will be fierce,” the report said.
Other major hurdles to growing the talent include security-clearance delays for six months or more, and a limited pool of qualified experts — foreign nationals hold 70 percent of electrical and computer engineering doctorates, making them unavailable from most national security-related work, the report said.
Gerbet told Defense One the workforce isn’t needed just for a possible wartime surge. Last month, the White House released a new space transportation policy which aims to reach “more than 1,000 launches and reentries” by 2030. Building new launch infrastructure to meet that demand requires more skilled workers.
“We're currently at about 200 launches per year in the U.S. And they're talking about timesing that by five, but who are the workers who are going to build all of this infrastructure to support that?,” Gerber said. “Then what happens if there is a conflict on top of that. Then you're talking about a double surge.”
Last week, President Donald Trump announced plans to create a U.S. Space Academy to “educate and train an entire generation of skilled service members, engineers, and civil operators.”
“Think about what the volume throughput of the space academy is likely to be. I mean, you're only talking about what, a couple hundred graduates a year,” Gerber said. “This is not sufficient, right? I mean, that's not really happening at a scale that would impact what we're talking about.”
RAND researchers recommended that the Space Force and Pentagon focus new policy on growing workforce development by funding additional internships and vocational, bachelor's, and advanced degree levels scholarships for science, technology, engineering, and math students, investing in fellowships, and promoting space engineering careers.
Researchers said the Space Force should also “allow Reserve Officers’ Training Corps graduates and specialized program scholars to fulfill service obligations by working in qualifying” space defense firms.
Additionally, researchers said the defense industry should also look to automation as a supplement to those workforce challenges.
“Notably absent from these discussions were mentions of process automation, robotics, or artificial intelligence (AI)–enabled productivity tools as means to reduce the inherent labor intensity of space manufacturing, assembly, integration, and testing,” the report said. “Stakeholders appear to be addressing a structural productivity challenge primarily through volume-based hiring and training strategies and giving little weight to automation as a complementary surge enabler.”
Facts Only
* Space-focused defense companies employ approximately 3 percent of the country’s engineers.
* Competition for skilled personnel results in many jobs remaining unfilled.
* A shortfall in skilled engineers would likely hinder the rapid rebuilding of U.S. military space capabilities during conflict with China or Russia.
* The report examines the time required to rebuild space assets after an attack, specifically within 12 to 24 months.
* Space-based systems are relied upon in modern warfare.
* Demand for highly-skilled experts in software development, data analytics, and artificial intelligence is growing.
* There are approximately 30,000 job openings annually for technicians and technologists, but only 11,000 individuals are credentialed annually.
* The space industrial base accounts for about 5 percent of the annual openings for assemblers.
* Security clearance delays can add six months or more to hiring processes.
* Foreign nationals hold 70 percent of electrical and computer engineering doctorates, limiting the pool of qualified experts available for national security work.
* Building new launch infrastructure requires skilled workers, with current U.S. launches at about 200 per year.
Executive Summary
The defense industry faces a significant shortage of skilled engineering personnel, which poses a risk to rebuilding space assets in the event of a future war with China or Russia. Currently, space-focused defense companies employ only about 3 percent of the country's engineers, leading to unfilled positions due to competition for talent. If space-based intelligence, targeting, and communications systems are destroyed, this labor shortfall could impede rapid restoration efforts.
The report emphasizes that rebuilding space capabilities after an attack within a short timeframe, such as 12 to 24 months, would require more engineers than the nation currently possesses. While initiatives exist to improve system resilience, the focus has been less on rapid reconstruction timelines. The projected demand for specialized skills, including software development, data analytics, and AI expertise, suggests that developing these highly-skilled experts could take at least fifteen years.
Challenges in workforce growth are compounded by security clearance delays and a limited pool of qualified experts, as foreign nationals hold a significant portion of necessary engineering doctorates. While new initiatives aim to address the talent gap through education and scholarships, the current pace does not match the demands placed on the space industry. Furthermore, recommendations suggest that automation and process tools should be integrated alongside hiring strategies to manage labor intensity in manufacturing and assembly.
Full Take
The narrative highlights a structural misalignment between the stated strategic necessity of space superiority and the current capacity to generate the necessary human capital. The core tension lies between the speed required for wartime reconstitution—measured in months—and the slow, long-term process required for developing high-level engineering expertise—measured in years. This creates a temporal gap where future vulnerability is ignored in favor of present operational needs.
The focus on volume hiring and training, while necessary, appears insufficient against the complexity of the skills required. The observation that stakeholders prioritize volume-based strategies over incorporating automation, robotics, or AI to reduce labor intensity suggests an adherence to familiar, linear models of industrial scaling rather than a recognition of exponential productivity potential. This framing implies that addressing scarcity is about increasing the supply rate rather than fundamentally changing the nature of the work itself.
The recommendation for workforce development funding and career promotion in the space sector points toward a necessary paradigm shift: viewing workforce capacity not as an external variable to be filled, but as an intrinsic part of strategic resilience planning. The underrepresentation of automation in this discussion suggests a potential inertia where existing structures resist innovation that could decouple productivity gains from sheer labor input, which has profound implications for both national security and economic velocity. What happens if the definition of "rebuilding" shifts from restoring physical assets to leveraging automated systems immediately? What costs are incurred by prioritizing short-term hiring over long-term systemic cognitive scaling?