TRENDS IMPACTING MILITARY AND DEFENSE ENGINEERING

Industry leaders discussed a number of pressing issues-ranging from the need for more young engineers to significantly compressed design cycles-at the recent SAE Commercial Vehicle Engineering Congress.

“All of you older guys out there, including myself, are you on Facebook? Do you tweet? Do you have an iPad?” asked Donald Verhoff, Executive Vice President of Corporate Engineering and Technology at Oshkosh Corp. and moderator of the Global Executive Leadership Panel during the recent SAE Commercial Vehicle Engineering Congress (ComVEC). “Because that's what these younger [engineers] are doing; that's where they're coming from. And the vehicles and the interface of those kinds of equipment, that is exactly where we're going.

“As organizations, we have to support that because it radically improves the efficiency of their work and puts them in a position of, ‘This is a fun thing to do. It's not just engineering.’”