<p>My son is very interested in Engineering. I have helped him explore possible college majors, however, it seems his ultimate goal is somewhat of a hybrid. His ultimate goal is to be a weapons engineer. He has a great fascination with weapons systems, particularly those of Navy ships and planes. Any suggestions on what his undergraduate major should be? From what we have learned, it seems Mechanical is broad enough that it covers this field but we wanted to be sure. I think he could be happy in Mechanical, Aeronautical, Ocean, Nuclear, or Systems Engineering, but it seems that the first two would best address his area of interest. Do we have this right or can anyone give him further advice on fields to explore.</p>
<p>Well, I think that any of your electrical, systems, nuclear, or mechanical engineering fields could lead to a successful career as a weapons designer. </p>
<p>The Webb Institute of Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering is one school I gotta throw out. It only offers one degree: a bachelor's in Marine Engineering. The school is ranked #2 on Princeton's list of schools "Where students never stop studying". </p>
<p>Also of importance, the school only has 80 students, and because of its large endowment charges no tuition, and costs less than 8k per year to attend.</p>
<p>michigan also has mech e as well as naval architecture and marine engineering. one thing i wud advise is working for the defense department (somewhat of an aspiration for myself as well) can be a roller coaster ride and is not always the most stable market for engineers</p>
<p>Plus, Computer Science is a pretty math-intensive degree, so that might make it easier to go into a different direction at grad-school. And the computing experience will always be useful.</p>
<p>I believe that MechE and EE would be the most useful if his goal is to design weapons systems. Thing with most new technologies now a days is that it requires engineers from a sorts of backgrounds.</p>
<p>Anyway, MechE's would obviously design mechanical parts of weapons and to a small degree, controls. EE's would be much more focused on the electronics (duh) of more advance weapons such as precision bombs, etc. EE's would also probably (not sure though) do a lot with weapons control. Controls is a sort of a hybrid sub-field in MechE and EE that utilizes feedback from the environment (ie: sensors) to adjust outputs (ie: motors). Examples of controls would be an auto-hovering RC helicopter or precision bombs.</p>
<p>I'm not sure what aeronautical engineering is, but I'm assuming (maybe wrongly) that it's similar to aerospace engineering, which is usually coupled with MechE. Systems engineering is taking various separate parts and trying to create an optimal solution using those parts based on desired criterion. For example, if you were building a car, what kind of (off the shelf) motors would you use in combination with a particular frame if the most important criterion were performance and cost?</p>
<p>As for ocean and nuclear engineering, I have no clue about the former and I'm not 100% on the latter so I'm not going to comment on them.</p>