After six years of using military technology accounts as a bill-payer for other things, the Obama Administration has discovered that America’s enemies are catching up. Senior Pentagon leaders are expressing alarm at how rapidly the joint force’s lead in warfighting technology is eroding. They have launched a Defense Innovation Initiative that, to quote deputy defense secretary Robert Work, “will sharpen our military edge even as we have to contend with fewer resources” — partly by making greater use of commercial breakthroughs. The officials say most of the innovation that matters today is happening in places like Silicon Valley, so the military must turn to “non-traditional” suppliers for the war-winning tools of tomorrow.
Against that backdrop, the following prescription set forth in a Pentagon report for how to stay ahead is instructive:
In order to stay on the cutting edge of technology, we must look beyond our traditional defense contractors and sub-contractors. Modern weaponry relies heavily on advanced electronics, software, telecommunications, flexible manufacturing techniques, and other advanced technologies where commercial companies are often making the most significant advances.
What’s instructive about this passage is that it appeared 22 years ago, during the first year of the Clinton presidency, in a report called the Bottom-Up Review. The Soviet Union, America’s main enemy for many years, had collapsed and in response defense secretary Dick Cheney gutted the Pentagon’s modernization plan. A hundred major programs were terminated, from the Seawolf submarine to the B-2 bomber to the Abrams tank. So now the Clinton Administration had to articulate what its military investment priorities would be, having missed out on the fun of slashing every big-ticket weapon program in sight.
Smart phones are a good example of the kind of commercial technology that might be applied to military operations. However, the phones are easily jammed or hacked, they depend on a network of vulnerable fixed nodes, and they break if you drop them on a hard surface. Also, they aren’t made in America. (Image: Pixabay)
I’m using the term “priorities” loosely here, because the Clinton Administration didn’t want to spend much money on warfighting technology. It wanted to reap a “peace dividend” that could be applied to domestic needs and reducing the federal budget deficit. So it crafted a handful of next-generation military systems like the Joint Strike Fighter and Future Imagery Architecture (a constellation of spy satellites) that were supposed to be much more capable than anything previously seen, but wouldn’t cost much until after Clinton left office. And it talked a lot about leveraging commercial innovations to maintain America’s lead in military technology without returning to Cold War levels of defense spending.
Fortunately for President Clinton, the Reagan Administration had invested heavily in defense technology, so the arsenal he inherited was still relatively new. With few threats on the horizon, the Clinton-era military could just coast along using the equipment it already had, while each year Pentagon officials would once again apologize for the depressed level of modernization funding reflected in their budget request. The idea of turning to non-traditional suppliers for warfighting technology didn’t come to much, but nobody seemed to care. The world was at peace. By the end of Clinton’s second term, military spending had fallen below 3% of GDP for the first time in generations — with technology accounts leading the decline.
Now fast forward to the waning days of the Obama Administration. Like Clinton, Obama inherited a defense budget that was averaging well over 4% of GDP, and has set it on a vector that will fall below 3% of GDP in the near future (the White House budget office estimates 2.8% in 2018). Like Clinton, Obama has accomplished this reduction mainly by slashing military technology accounts. And like Clinton, the Obama Administration talks about turning to non-traditional suppliers, meaning commercial companies, to keep U.S. military forces on the cutting edge despite low levels of investment in new technology
No comments:
Post a Comment