The Role of the Field Engineer in a Research and Development Program

With today's weapon systems becoming more complex, the requirement for system design and development to continue throughout the field implementation (installation - test - evaluation) phase has become the rule, not the exception. This has resulted in increased demands being placed on the field engineer and to such an extent that it is imperative that he participate in the research and development program from its inception. In this participation, the subsystem knowledge to cope with the varied technical problems which will arise in the field is obtained while, at the same time, he contributes significantly to the program in the areas of maintainability and installation engineering and planning for field test and evaluation.