Southland Aerospace Firms Suddenly Lack Engineers : Jobs: Amid industry’s downturn, inability to fill key posts shows erosion of U.S. technology base, experts say.

Even as one of the deepest aerospace busts in history grips Los Angeles, some contractors are facing shortages of key engineers.

The surprising scarcity may signal an erosion in the national technology base, leaving industry short of critical skills as foreign competitors sharpen their focus on the world aerospace market, experts say.

Northrop Corp., one of the few local companies with jobs to fill, said it has been unable to find 105 specialized engineers for its new F-18E/F fighter program in El Segundo. The company, which needs 150 engineers, borrowed 45 from McDonnell Douglas in Long Beach but remains stymied on the rest.

“We need help,” said Walter Solberg, Northrop’s aircraft division chief. “If you were in Chicago and you needed a military engineer, you’d figure that you would have to train your own. But in Los Angeles, you’d think you could get them.”

Indeed, Los Angeles is supposed to have the nation’s largest pool of aerospace engineers, scientists, mechanics and administrators. About 100,000 aerospace workers in Southern California--many of them engineers--have lost their jobs and the cutbacks are expected to go on for years, creating the image that a vast pool of surplus people are ready for any job openings. But in some key areas, aerospace contractors face baffling shortages.

In Northrop’s case, the firm cannot find enough structural design and stress analysis engineers, a specialty important in the early stages of aircraft and missile programs.

The Los Angeles-based firm, which wants to hire 500 workers of all types by the end of the year, has run ads in major aerospace centers around the nation and recently conducted a job fair in Dallas.

Meanwhile, recent industry trade journals have carried ads for other aerospace firms, including Lear Astronics in Santa Monica, for these and other types of engineers.

Some defense firms have also had problems locating controllers and financial officers who are familiar with government contracting, said Ronald Stahlschmidt, national director for the aerospace practice of Ernst & Young.

General Dynamics’ Ft. Worth division had to launch a nationwide advertising effort to find 100 engineers for its F-22 jet fighter program, even though the division has laid off 10,000 workers in the last two years. Last week the firm ran ads in Los Angeles, trying to find engineers here at the same time Northrop was trying to find engineers there.

“Here we are trying to hire a small number of people and we have to do it nationally,” said Mike Martin, General Dynamics’ manager of employment. “It is not a situation where you just open the doors and people flock in. You have to seek out these people and convince them to work for you.”

Boeing spokesman Jack Gamble said the commercial aircraft producer has experienced a significant shortage of engineering draftsmen, forcing the firm to advertise in Los Angeles for the workers and reassign more senior engineers to the drafting table.

“We have had a very difficult time finding them,” Gamble said.

The National Science Foundation has projected that the nation will have a shortage of 440,000 engineers within a decade because too few students are going into the profession. But to unemployed engineers, such forecasts seem nonsensical.

The American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, a technical society based in Washington, has argued for several years that the U.S. aerospace industry is facing a technology crisis in which it is rapidly losing its leadership in major areas.

That assessment is backed by the House Space and Science Committee Chairman Rep. George Brown (D-Colton), who has argued that the nation is investing too little in technology and failing to support U.S. industry with a coherent federal research policy.

The shortage of specialized engineers is attributed in part to the vast numbers of senior engineers who began their careers during the aerospace industry’s heyday in the 1950s and are now retiring in record numbers.

“There was a tremendous age gap in the ranks of engineers and we may be seeing that even though the industry is down, we don’t have a very large technology base left,” Stahlschmidt said. “The early retirement programs run by many of the companies have really cut into the talent pool.”

Stahlschmidt, among others, worries that if the commercial or military aerospace industries have a resurgence of business, the nation’s major contractors may lack the technology base to fully support it.

In addition, such potential foreign competitors as Japan, China and Taiwan are producing large surpluses of engineers that could give their nations an advantage.

After the Vietnam War, fewer students went into aerospace engineering and the industry found itself with a shortage of experienced hands who know the pitfalls of making airplanes. Many problems in aircraft programs that emerged in recent years, such as those on the McDonnell Douglas C-17 cargo jet, are blamed in large part on too many young and inexperienced engineers.

“Back in the 1950s, we were designing a plane every two years, but now it is one every decade,” said Ben Rich, a noted aircraft designer and retired chief of the Lockheed Skunk Works. “You can’t teach everything in engineering school. The old people have learned by their mistakes.”

Rich added: “We have less capability and that’s why we keep making mistakes.”