Aviation Week & Space Technology - January 15, 2015

COMMENTARY

The Defense Department plans to
fi nalize its Long-Range Research and
Development Plan (LRRDP) by mid-
year. This is also called the Third Of set,
a reference to two previous ef orts to
focus investment on of setting threats
to U.S. military superiority. But where
President Eisenhower’s New Look de-
fense policy of the 1950s set out to deter
the Soviet Union with superior nuclear
forces and the Pentagon’s of set strat-
egy of the 1970s aimed to counter the
Soviet conventional buildup in Europe,
the Third Of set must tackle security
challenges ranging from Islamic radi-
cals to a resurgent Russia.
“In 1973 there was a clear unipolar
concern—Russian armor in Central
Europe. Versus any given threat, the
real concern today is the evolution of
technology,” says Steve Welby, deputy
assistant secretary of defense for
systems engineering. As a result, the
LRRDP report due mid-2015 is not
expected to produce any “silver bullet”
answers, or even to have as lasting an
ef ect as the two previous of sets.
“The 1973 report was a remarkable
document; their crystal ball worked
pretty well, but they had a unitary

A

s the Pentagon draws up a list of technologies it hopes will

guarantee U.S. military superiority beyond 2030, the threat

to be addressed this time is not Soviet forces but technology

itself, and its pace of development and global proliferation.

Fire with Fire

When fast-changing technology is the

challenge, a fast-adapting answer is needed

adversary and a clear technology

story,” says Welby. The resulting

technologies—precision-guided muni-

tions, intelligence, surveillance and

reconnaissance (ISR), stealth aircraft

(photo), and space-based communica-

tions, navigation and ISR—“have had a

40-year run, which is remarkable,” he

says. “We are unlikely to get 40 years

out of any future technology because

the pace of technological change has

accelerated.”

Since the last reset of the Pentagon’s

R&D priorities, commercial technol-

ogy development has outpaced the

military, and the global availability of

those commercial technologies has

allowed adversaries—real or poten-

tial—to challenge, and in some cases

overtake, U.S. capabilities. An example

is electronic warfare, where globaliza-

tion of commercial technology com-

bined with a lack of Pentagon attention

has seriously eroded the U.S. edge over

peer and near-peer forces.

The technologies that make it into

the LRRDP therefore need to be

“robust, fl exible and extendable.” The

plan is being drawn up by fi ve working

groups focused on space, undersea,

air dominance and strike, and air and

missile defense technologies. The fi fth

panel is looking at emerging military

and commercial technologies and will

“mine the technology space and imag-

ine future capabilities the technologies

could enable,” Welby says.

The goal of the report is to identify

and prioritize concepts and technolo-

gies that can be accelerated, prototyped

and moved into development programs

within the next fi ve years to fi eld new

capabilities in the 2025-30 time frame.

The plan will be used to shape Pentagon

investment in R&D programs beginning

with the fi scal 2017 budget.

The technologies identifi ed are un-

likely to be entirely new or surprising.

Instead, Welby says, the intent is to

“harvest things we can see the outlines

of today.” Publicly, Pentagon leaders

have identifi ed candidate technolo-

gies only generically, citing “robotics,

autonomous systems, miniaturization,

big data and advanced manufacturing.”

Rather than focusing on specifi c areas

such as electronic warfare and low ob-

servability, Welby says, the panels are

looking more widely for new architec-

tures, concepts and technologies that

could allow the U.S. to project force

into denied areas.

Minaturization, for example, does

not mean just making things smaller.

It also means moving away from large,

expensive platforms and putting capa-

bilities into subsystems that are disag-

gregated rather than fully integrated,

he says. This recognizes that the

Pentagon practice of specifying highly

capable “exquisite” platforms has led

to increasing schedule delays and cost

overruns that have forced reductions

and even cancellations of procurement

programs and weakened U.S. forces.

But when the principal threat to

security is global technology devel-

opment, the biggest challenge the

Pentagon faces is the glacial pace of

its procurement system. The LRRDP

will come to naught if the U.S. cannot

fi eld the identifi ed technologies fast

enough and adapt them to evolving

threats quickly enough. Welby says the

Defense Department has to become “a

fast follower of commercial technol-

ogy.” If the Pentagon cannot keep pace

with the commercial world, its Third

Of set will fail. c

Leading Edge

16 AVIATION WEEK & SPACE TECHNOLOGY/JANUARY 15-FEBRUARY 1, 2015 AviationWeek.com/awst

By Graham Warwick

Managing Editor-Technology

Graham Warwick blogs at:

AviationWeek.com

[email protected]

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