I'm 39 and I work in defense as an electrical engineer. I've seen the same thing: I'm pretty much the youngest engineer in the office--'cuz they didn't hire anyone in the 'defense procurement holiday' of the Bill Clinton All Boomer All the Time administration.
I'll be the junior guy by default for the next ten years, then they'll retire and I'll be promoting myself.
They won't pass the torch, you've gotta stomp it out of their boney old fingers, but at least I will be paying for their viagra and hormone replacemets as they try to cheat the reaper for a few more summers of love....
Actually, I think of 50 as the new 40. Youth -- mentally, anyway -- seems to have been prolonged by about 10 years.
If it seems like more, that's because of the Botox. ;-)
I graduated from UCSD in 1976 at age 19. I've been married since 1978 and have 3 adult sons. I've been employed full time since age 16. Hardly a dropout hippie. My #2 son has served in Iraq/Kuwait with the USMC and is a licensed CA real estate broker with 50 employees and 3 offices. He's 23.
I moved to my current employer at age 35 in 1991. Just before Clinton. I was literally in Landstuhl, Germany doing work at Ramstein when Clinton was elected. My work is half DoD, half commercial. EE/CS work pays the bills. I have much to learn in the area of DSP and acoustics from the legion of aging PhDs in my organization. The defense procurement holiday didn't hit the classified work nearly as hard as the unclassified stuff. A clearance and a good skill set is job security. Being willing to work 70 hour weeks and travel all over the world doesn't hurt either.