Pentagon looking for ‘middle school kids today’ to fill critical voids in defense industrial base

CARLISLE, Pennsylvania, The Department of War is undergoing a massive transformation based largely on the evolution of artificial intelligence and autonomous systems, but it’s looking to the next generation to fill the void in the industrial base that will facilitate and sustain it.

There are jobs the department needs to fill in droves that require higher education, such as engineers, computer scientists, and robotics professionals, while there are also tremendous needs in trade opportunities, such as welders, machinists, electricians, and more, that are already in short supply. The technological advances ranging from AI to robotics will facilitate improvements in the manufacturing process, but there will still be touch labor.

“We think it’s a critical national imperative that we galvanize the next generation,” Assistant Secretary of War for the Industrial Base Michael Cadenazzi said on Tuesday. “Your middle school kids today are going to be building submarines in 10 years. We need to get them excited in elementary school, in middle school, and in high school, and thinking about these careers and these trades.”

For the trades, the department and defense companies have to make this career path an appealing one, both for those who don’t believe college is right for them and their parents who may feel differently. The Pentagon, by providing stable yearslong contracts and clear signs of future needs, can help ensure the companies that make up the defense industrial base can continue to support a growing workforce.

“Mom and dad need to understand that their kid is succeeding, even if they went to college, and they want their kid to go ahead and go to college initially,” Cadenazzi said. “Because we sort of talk about that, but a lot of what we’re trying to do is say, ‘Hey, it’s OK, it’s good, skilled trades, you can make real money. It’s real. It’s an incredible opportunity. You have a stable job, credible demand.'”

He appeared on a panel at the McCormick Defense Summit on Tuesday at the Army War College outside of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. The event, hosted by Sen. Dave McCormick (R-PA), brought together military leaders and more than 500 defense companies, the vast majority of which do business in the Keystone State.

Robot dogs walk past the reviewing stand during a military parade commemorating the Army’s 250th anniversary, Saturday, June 14, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)

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Part of this effort revolves around “reducing the barrier to entry” for trade jobs, Jake Loosararian, the co-founder and CEO of Gecko Robotics, told the Washington Examiner, adding, “It’s really easy for you and me to go get a McDonald’s job, [but it’s] really hard for me and you to go be a welder today. You go to a trade school, and that costs money, and then you’ve got to have hours.”

Gecko Robotics announced a $71 million deal with the Navy in March to cut down ship repair time using its drone program. The company uses an autonomous robot that essentially suctions on the side of a hull and is controlled by an Xbox controller to scan the metal for degradation much faster than the current system allows.

Ronn Cort, the president of Bucks County-based Dunmore, a company known for its coated, laminated, and metalized films, was also on the panel. He emphasized the importance of stressing to the new generation a sense of purpose and excitement.

“We’ve also gamified the training process. So what happens is the world I grew up in is, ‘We’ll talk about a raise in a year.’ That is a very difficult way to retain young talent. So what we’ve done is we’ve gamified skills development. As you master a skill, you get money,” he said. “What’s really important about that is that typically who we’re hiring, I’m going to loosely define as the last two rows of ninth-grade English, and they’ve not had a really good feeling of pride or purpose. They’ve been told, ‘If you don’t go to college, you’re not going to amount to much.'”

David Norquist, the president and CEO of the National Defense Industrial Association, similarly emphasized the need to get people invested in their potential contributions to national security.

“I think there’s three things that really matter when you’re trying to recruit people. The first is the mission. People want to work in jobs and careers where they can look back and say they made a difference,” he said on the panel. “Building equipment to ensure our nation’s security, making sure that the men and women of our armed forces are never in a fair fight because you gave them the best technology possible. That is a noble calling.”

Earlier this month, the Office of the Assistant Secretary of War for Industrial Base Policy launched the Build Freedom workforce development initiative to address skilled worker shortages across the industrial base. As a part of the announcement, the Pentagon awarded television host and philanthropist Mike Rowe, who leads the mikeroweWORKS Foundation Scholarship program, a $10 million investment.

“We launched a great initiative at the department in partnership with Mike Rowe from Dirty Jobs, who’s really going to help us champion the industrial base as a noble profession, like something that when you make a choice to be a part of this defense industrial base, you are a part of the national security of the United States,” Michael Duffey, Undersecretary of War for Acquisition and Sustainment, said during a different panel at the summit.

For students who want to pursue higher education and go into fields such as engineering, tech, computer programming, robotics, and more, the department and defense companies recognize that they have to offer comparable or better benefits and salaries than private-sector alternatives.

There were several Pennsylvania universities in attendance at the summit as well, many of which have established programs partnered with the Pentagon that are looking for cues about the direction the department is headed.

“We work really closely with a number of military agencies in our research center, and so we are getting hands-on, real-world experience with them, understanding what their needs are when it comes to the next generation talent that’s going to come in and take over,” Harrisburg University of Science and Technology Vice President for Strategy and External Relations Lorelee Isbell told the Washington Examiner.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has long worked with the University of Pennsylvania’s General Robotics, Automation, Sensing & Perception Lab.

One of the projects the team at GRASP is working on is DARPA’s Triage Challenge, an initiative looking to modernize how medical responders triage in mass casualty incidents by advancing scalable, timely, and accurate tools with the use of drones and uncrewed ground vehicles to get real-time intelligence to first responders much faster, which has both military and civilian uses.

“The goal there is to use teams of unmanned aerial vehicles and unmanned ground vehicles, and what we do is we do an overflight of an area with aerial vehicles, and we’re able to automatically locate and find people that are hurt on the ground, and then send robotic platforms in quadrupeds, wheeled robots to do detailed triage, and then we can report that information back to first responders,” CJ Taylor, the director of the lab, told the Washington Examiner.

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The reduction in the industrial base dates back to the 1990s, coinciding with the Pentagon’s budget reduction following the end of the Cold War.

“What you’re seeing is all these years of functioning at the drawdown level, just in time inventory, because you’re trying to get minimal cost, and speed wasn’t the priority. Now you’re looking at speed, capacity, and resilience as the priority, and a very different demand on quantity,” Nordquist told the Washington Examiner.