  This invited white paper, submitted to the National Science Foundation in
January of 2020, discusses the current challenges faced by the United States
astronomical instrumentation community in the era of extremely large
telescopes. Some details may have changed since submission, but the basic
tenets are still very much valid. The paper summarizes the technical, funding,
and personnel challenges the US community faces, provides an informal census of
current instrumentation groups in the US, and compares the state-of-affairs in
the US with that of the European community, which builds astronomical
instruments from consortia of large hard-money funded instrument centers in a
coordinated fashion. With the recent release of the Decadal Survey on Astronomy
and Astrophysics 2020 (Astro2020), it is clear that strong community support
exists for this next generation of large telescopes in the US. Is the US ready?
Is there sufficient talent, facilities, and resources in the community today to
meet the challenge of developing the complex suite of instruments envisioned
for two US ELTs? These questions are addressed, along with thoughts on how the
National Science Foundation can help build a more viable and stable
instrumentation program in the US. These thoughts are intended to serve as a
starting point for a broader discussion, with the end goal being a plan that
puts the US astronomical instrumentation community on solid footing and poised
to take on the challenges presented by the ambitious goals we have set in the
era of ELTs.
