Diversifying Defense Tech

It’s widely known that the STEM fields have a diversity problem. While the situation is improving, we have a long way to go in recruiting more non-white males to the industry.

This lack of diversity creates several challenges for national defense. First, it excludes the relevant perspectives and insight of a large swath of the population. For example, as the number of women in uniform grows, their representation in the innovation space has not kept pace. That means the technologies developed today may not be designed for the needs of the future warfighter. One doesn’t have to look far to find examples of this: nearly half of women in the Army Special Operations Command struggle with gear fit and some resort to buying their own to ensure comfort and safety.

This lack of representation creates talent shortages across the board. With the growing demand for engineering, Artificial Intelligence and other tech-focused talent, both the Department of Defense (DOD) and civilian defense contractors struggle with diverse recruiting. Ultimately, these factors put our national defense at risk, hindering the innovation, perspectives and ingenuity we need to keep us safe and our adversaries at bay.

Getting more underrepresented individuals involved in the defense innovation space will take a collaborative effort between the DOD, education, corporations and philanthropic support. Here are five ways to entice more underrepresented talent to national defense roles.

We must do more as an industry to entice these students by promoting the excitement of building rockets out of dump trucks, designing next-generation drone technology or crafting AI solutions for battlefield applications. Perhaps that means direct outreach through engineering programs to attract them into the booth during these events.

The DOD, defense contractors and program affiliates must begin student outreach as early as middle school to plant those seeds of excitement and opportunity. Get involved in local schools by attending career days or offering one-off STEM programs.

Civilian contractors and DoD program reps can provide this kind of guidance and instruction to help fill their pipeline with ready-to-hire candidates.

For example, programs like FirePoint’s Future Innovators internship program, now in its third year, give STEM students from historically black colleges and universities applied learning experience working directly with defense contractors like the National Institute of Aviation Research (NIAR), Spirit AeroSystems and Textron Aviation. These paid summer internships not only give students hands-on experience but also networking and professional development opportunities to pursue careers with these program sponsors. This year, seven out of eight students were offered full-time employment or an opportunity to return next summer.

To achieve that, the Future Innovators program covers participants’ housing, transportation, social/networking events, and professional development through the Kansas Leadership Center and Wichita Urban Professionals. But we’ve only scratched the surface—we need to scale up to meaningfully overcome diversity deficits. Philanthropic organizations and corporate donors can help by contributing to these programs that seed their talent pipeline.

Maya Angelou has said, “In diversity, there is beauty and there is strength,” and that’s especially true when it comes to national defense and our national economy. By making the defense tech industry more inclusive to entice more people of color, women and other underrepresented groups, we’re bringing a greater diversity of experience, perspective and insight that makes us stronger—and safer—as a nation.