10 min read
A workforce transition that cannot be treated as normal turnover
The aerospace and defense (A&D) workforce is changing shape. Experienced engineers, technicians, production managers, maintainers, and operators are approaching retirement, while younger workers are entering the sector with different expectations, shorter job tenures, and less exposure to the assets and programs they are expected to support.
McKinsey describes this as the shift from a “gray” to “green” workforce. Its analysis points to a sector moving from older to younger employees while also competing with technology companies, start-ups, and other advanced industries for the same technical talent. The pressure cuts across skilled trades, traditional engineering, software engineering, and program roles.
For A&D organizations, this is not a routine generational handover. Assets are long-lived. Programs can run for decades. Certification, compliance, maintenance, and sustainment knowledge is built slowly and tested under real operational conditions. PwC notes that naval shipbuilding programs can span up to 80 years, aircraft development and certification can take 15 to 20 years, and fully training a skilled aircraft mechanic or avionics technician can take five to seven years or more.
When experienced people leave, the organization loses more than headcount. It loses context. As explored in our article on the Workforce and Knowledge Continuity Crisis in Asset-Heavy Industries, organizations often underestimate how much operational knowledge is tied to experienced individuals rather than documented systems and processes.
Hiring more people will not solve the problem on its own
The A&D sector is already investing in talent attraction and retention. The 2025 AIA and McKinsey workforce study found that companies are increasing compensation, improving employee experience, expanding training, and working harder to attract critical skills. Yet attrition remained near 15 percent in 2024, and the report argues that A&D companies need 30 to 40 percent greater productivity from the existing workforce to meet rising demand.
That makes the grey-to-green transition a productivity problem as much as a recruitment problem. A new worker may be hired into the organization, but that does not mean they are ready to operate independently in a regulated production line, depot, maintenance hangar, or sustainment program.
The gap is especially visible in skilled trades. Skills England identifies three major skills gaps in defense: craft skills such as welders and electrical engineers, specialist skills such as nuclear engineering and naval architecture, and new skills such as digital, cyber, and green. It also reports that craft roles, including welders, aircraft maintenance technicians, and electricians, are among the hardest to fill.
GAO’s 2025 report on the U.S. Department of Defense blue-collar workforce adds a defense sustainment lens. DOD relies on Federal Wage System employees to maintain and repair weapons, aircraft, electronics, air and space weapons systems, nuclear aircraft carriers, and submarines. Selected services and installations reported recruitment and retention challenges driven by private-sector competition, wage constraints, and lengthy federal onboarding.
The result is a difficult equation: organizations need more skilled people, but they also need existing and incoming workers to reach useful proficiency faster. As explored in our article on why skilled trades are the bottleneck in defence modernization, shortages in critical hands-on roles can slow production, maintenance, and readiness even when demand and investment continue to grow.
The hidden risk is operating memory
A&D knowledge is often described in terms of skills, but many of the most valuable skills are tied to operating memory. That includes knowing how a specific asset behaves after years in service, which configuration details tend to cause problems, how a recurring fault usually appears, which documentation is reliable, and when a minor deviation should be escalated.
Much of this knowledge is never fully captured in formal systems. It lives in experienced people, local routines, paper files, spreadsheets, old databases, and informal handovers. PwC frames the loss of experienced workers as a loss of vital, often unwritten knowledge, not simply a staffing issue.
This is where the grey-to-green transition becomes operationally risky. A new worker may be trained on the official process but still lack the context that makes the process work in practice. In maintenance, that context can be the difference between recognizing a pattern early and treating each issue as a new problem, a challenge explored further in Why Maintenance Knowledge Walks Out the Door. In assembly, it can be the difference between following a work instruction and understanding where quality risks usually appear.
From our experience working with defense and complex asset organizations, we see the same pattern repeatedly. Teams often rely on email, Excel, SharePoint, fragmented databases, and paper-based processes to manage work. People generally know what needs to happen, but the evidence, ownership, reminders, and operational history are spread across multiple systems and locations.
When experienced workers retire from that environment, the organization does not only lose expertise. It loses the map for finding the expertise.
Green workers need workflows they can actually learn from
The next generation of workers can learn the work. The problem is that many organizations still expect them to learn through systems that were never designed for learning.
A maintenance technician should not have to reverse-engineer asset history from old spreadsheets, email threads, and a hard-to-use ERP interface. A fitter should not have to search through disconnected documents to understand the latest instruction. A supervisor should not have to carry the whole workflow in their head because the system only records the work after it is done.
RAND’s work on defense knowledge workers offers a useful way to think about the response.
- Build and organize the workforce
- Train and develop employees
- Motivate and manage performance
- Promote and retain the right talent
That framework is relevant because the grey-to-green transition cannot be solved by one intervention. Workforce planning, training and development, retention, and day-to-day work execution all play a role. If the workflow is fragmented, training becomes slower. If task ownership is unclear, supervision becomes heavier. If evidence is captured inconsistently, future workers inherit a weaker knowledge base.
A&D organizations need to make the work easier to learn without making the work less rigorous. That means clearer steps, embedded instructions, visible ownership, role-based access, traceable evidence, and task history that can be searched and reused.
Read more about the The Hidden Workforce Crisis Behind Defence Digital Transformation here.
Knowledge transfer has to happen at the point of work
Traditional knowledge transfer often happens too late. A retiring expert is asked to document what they know, record a few sessions, or mentor a successor in the final months before leaving. Those activities can help, but they are not enough when the knowledge has been built over decades. Organizations looking for a more systematic approach can start with How to Capture Tacit Knowledge Before Experienced Workers Retire.
A stronger approach is to capture knowledge as part of the workflow itself. When a technician records a deviation, when a fitter validates a step, when a planner updates a job plan, when a supervisor approves a change, that information should strengthen the next execution of the work.
PwC recommends structured knowledge transfer through mentorship, knowledge-sharing programs, knowledge-capture sessions, and digital knowledge platforms. In operational environments, that idea becomes even more powerful when knowledge capture is tied directly to execution.
This means the organization should not only ask, “What does our expert know?” It should ask, “Where does that knowledge show up in the work, and how do we make it reusable?”
That shift changes knowledge continuity from a documentation project into an operating discipline.
Redesign the work before adding more technology
A&D organizations are investing in automation, AI, and digital tools to improve productivity. The 2025 AIA and McKinsey study argues that companies need to reimagine how work is designed and executed, not simply add technology on top of existing processes.
That point is critical. If the underlying workflow is unclear, automation will only accelerate confusion. If the process depends on informal knowledge, a new digital layer may make the reporting cleaner while leaving the real execution problem untouched.
The practical starting point is workflow design. What does the maintainer need at the moment of execution? What does the fitter need before signing off a step? What should the supervisor see before approving work? What information should follow the asset into future maintenance, sustainment, and customer support?
Platforms such as Empact Asset Maintenance and Empact Asset Assembly are relevant in this context because they focus on structured execution: turning maintenance and assembly work into guided, traceable workflows that teams can follow and improve over time. Empact Connect can also support the secure movement of asset data where OEMs, operators, and internal systems need to collaborate without losing control over sensitive information.
The point is not to replace experienced people with software. The point is to make their knowledge easier for the organization to use after they move on.
From workforce transition to operational continuity
The grey-to-green transition will shape aerospace and defense performance for years. Some organizations will treat it mainly as a labor shortage. Others will recognize it as a deeper continuity challenge.
The difference will show up in execution. Organizations that rely on informal handovers will keep asking newer workers to learn from scattered evidence and incomplete context. Organizations that structure work more clearly will give those workers a faster path to competence.
The best response combines workforce planning, skilled-trade development, structured training, knowledge capture, and better operational workflows. It does not remove the need for experienced people. It makes their experience part of the way the organization works.
A&D organizations cannot stop the demographic shift. They can decide how much knowledge leaves with it.
Ready to assess how prepared your organization is for the grey-to-green transition? Explore practical strategies for preserving operational knowledge, reducing time-to-proficiency, and building long-term workforce resilience in our article The Knowledge Continuity Playbook for Asset-Heavy Organizations.
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