Fed up with Pentagon resources being drained by the spiraling costs of weapons systems, Defense Secretary Robert Gates is aiming to bring 20,000 acquisition overseers into the government workforce. But finding enough employees equipped with the skills to manage multibillion-dollar procurement programs could be a monumental headache.

As part of a broader effort to reshape the U.S. defense budget starting in Fiscal 2010, Gates plans to increase the size of the acquisition force by shifting 11,000 contractor employees to the government payroll and hiring an additional 9,000 government acquisition professionals by 2015, starting with 4,100 in the fiscal year that starts Oct. 1. Among the skills being sought: systems engineers, logistics specialists, contracting officers and project managers.

But the kind of expertise needed to oversee complicated defense acquisition programs is not easy to come by, or cheap. Defense industry analysts and former government officials warn that if the acquisition workforce surge is not properly handled it could lead to even more costs and less efficiency.

"Twenty thousand people with one year of experience is not the same as 2,000 people with 10 years of experience," says former Lockheed Martin CEO Norman Augustine, who recently chaired a Business Executives for National Security (BENS) task force on acquisition reform.

The government will not be hiring engineers and business managers straight out of college. "It takes 5 to 10 years to become an experienced acquisition officer--not 5 to 10 weeks," notes Jacques Gansler, who served as undersecretary of Defense for acquisition, technology and logistics in the Clinton administration from November 1997 until January 2001. "For this kind of work, experience does matter."

Cord Sterling, vice president for legislative affairs at the Aerospace Industries Assn. (AIA), echoes Gansler's warning. "The workforce needs to be grown, not acquired," he says. While AIA supports building up the Pentagon's acquisition workforce, he worries that the hiring surge will have unintended consequences if it is not carefully thought out and executed.

Sterling, Gansler and others are concerned that a rush to fill quotas could touch off competition among the armed services and lead to less-experienced civilian experts being hired.

"You can't assume the economy is going to give you a better cadre of prospective employees lined up outside the door," says Jerry Cox, a former Senate staff acquisition specialist now working as a policy analyst at the Forerunner Foundation. "Good economy or bad, I don't think it makes a difference."

There are also worries about a brain drain from the private sector if the government boosts pay incentives high enough to woo aerospace and defense workers from their current employers. Industry veterans say they've heard accounts of programs losing experienced acquisition personnel to another project in the same service. And they are concerned that pushing the services to hire a set number of staff could cause them to bring on inexperienced workers or pay inflated salaries. "The scary part is if it becomes a quota game, because that's not really going to improve the system," Gansler says.

He adds that when government employees filled those jobs before the Pentagon's acquisition workforce was downsized in the 1990s, "we still had overruns."