1. Against the Odds Driving Defense Innovation in a Change-Resistant Ecosystem
- Author:
- Jeffrey P. Bialos, Christine E. Fisher, and Stuart L. Koehl
- Publication Date:
- 02-2017
- Content Type:
- Special Report
- Institution:
- Center for Transatlantic Relations
- Abstract:
- Generating the innovation to sustain the United States’ technology-based military superiority will, of necessity, be a core element of defense strategy for the Trump Administration. This paper identifies the challenges faced by the DoD’s large, multi-faceted research and development ecosystem in meeting that national security goal, and proposes a holistic and balanced strategy for addressing them. Fundamentally, the outgoing Obama Administration concluded that the U.S. military dominance against our near-peer adversaries is eroding in a globalized environment where commercial innovation is not only being rapidly generated through agile and fast-paced processes but is being rapidly disseminated globally and therefore available to potential adversaries. In contrast, the DoD faces the challenge of building a future force that is second to none while using internal processes that generally are overly cumbersome, somewhat antiquated and slower—processes which constrain its ability to access all available innovation, commercial and otherwise, and to rapidly transition that technology to the war fighter in order to produce robust effects on the battlefield. Notwithstanding years of studies that have highlighted well known institutional obstacles to change in both our defense R&D ecosystem and the Department more broadly, these challenges still largely remain. Numerous DoD initiatives to address these issues and incentivize change unfortunately have not moved the needle.
- Topic:
- Defense Policy, Economics, Military Strategy, Military Affairs, Cybersecurity, and Military Spending
- Political Geography:
- United States of America, North America, Washington, and D.C.