and blah blah blah- we’ve been here before. If Asia produce one true innovation it will be a shocker.
http://www.airpower.au.af.mil/airchronicles/aureview/1979/jul-aug/heuer.html
Document created: 9 September 02
Air University Review, July-August 1979
Soviet Professional Scientific and
Engineering Manpower
Jill E. Heuer
The scientific potential of a nation, its ability to solve future scientific and technological (S&T) development problems, is an important measure of its industrial and military strength. This scientific potential depends largely on the degree to which a nation has developed four aspects of its scientific and technical community.
A nation must have enough research and development (R&D) institutions and the specialized equipment required for the performance of research.
The research establishment must be manned by adequate numbers of qualified professional R&D scientists and engineers in the critical areas of research endeavor.
The research and development programs of the nation and the efforts of individual R&D personnel must be organized and managed in the most effective and efficient manner and focused on the most important problems.
The scientists and engineers must be kept informed of the S&T achievements of the rest of the world through a highly developed scientific and technological information system.
Underlying these parameters are those original ideas, the amount of scientific creativity possessed by scientists and engineers, which ultimately determine the extent to which a nation’s scientific potential is realized.
Concern has been expressed repeatedly that the Soviet Union is exceeding the United States in scientific and engineering manpower and, hence, may eventually surpass us in R&D achievements. There is no difficulty in finding statistics that support such concerns. The number of full-time-equivalent scientists and engineers employed in R&D in the Soviet Union surpassed the analogous figure for the U.S. in 1969-70 and stood well above the U.S. total in 1976 (755,000 versus 566,000) The number of kandidat nauk degrees (roughly equivalent to the U.S. Ph.D.) conferred in the Soviet Union reached a record level in 1976, while awards of Ph.D. degrees in the U.S., though exceeding the Soviet figure (about 33,000 versus 31,000), were on the decline from a peak in 1973. In the field of engineering, the comparisons are striking. In 1972 the Soviet Union employed 2,820,000 diploma engineers, while the U.S. employed only 1,243,000. This gap will probably widen, given relative numbers of first-level degrees being awarded in this field (275,500 in the U.S.S.R. versus 39,100 in the U.S. in .1976).