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... [+]
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.
To put the latter point in perspective, the Pentagon will spend less next year on all aspects of military research and development than Americans spend on cigarettes. At about $70 billion, the Obama Administration's fiscal 2016 request for military research and development funding represents less than two months of sales at Walmart. Add in the $108 billion requested for procurement of weapons, and the total rises to slightly over four months, still less than 1% of GDP. So it shouldn't come as a huge shock that other countries are beginning to catch up. Obama's defense team talks about the need to increase spending on military technology -- Clinton's team did too -- but the White House is more concerned about winning its fight over domestic spending with the GOP.
What makes today different from the Clinton era is that the threats are more serious and the arsenal is much older. In fact, the
In the 1950s and the 1970s, generally these advances were military capabilities that were brought along by military labs. But now with robotics, autonomous operating guidance and control systems, visualization, biotechnology, miniaturization, advanced computing and big data, and additive manufacturing like 3D printing, all of those are being driven by the commercial sector.
This language parallels the specious logic of the 1993 Bottom-Up Review, and is echoed by acquisition reform legislation pending in both chambers of Congress. The prevailing view on Capitol Hill and in the Pentagon seems to be that real innovation only happens in the private sector -- as if government hadn't played a central role in developing everything from computers to lasers to the internet. The real reason commercial companies are outpacing the Pentagon and its traditional contractors in technology breakthroughs is that the Obama Administration, like the Clinton Administration, has starved military technology accounts. Virtually all of the defense savings realized during its first term came from there, as did most of the defense savings mandated by the Budget Control Act in Obama's second term.
Rather than admitting to its role in enabling America's enemies to catch up, the administration now propounds the delusional idea that Silicon Valley can rescue the joint force from obsolescence. If we just tear down the bureaucratic barriers to tapping the products of entrepreneurial tech companies, it is said, everything can be fixed without a big increase in defense spending. To show they are serious, senior Pentagon officials have set up a liaison office in Silicon Valley and are now regularly trekking there for stimulating exchanges on how social media can help America's military win the next war. They really think that tech companies generating gross margins in the 20-60% range will want to partner with a Pentagon that strictly regulates the profits of its suppliers.
Most defense-industry executives just roll their eyes at this latest manifestation of political naivete, but at least one captain of industry has gently warned his top customer that commercial technology is no panacea for the erosion of warfighting advantage.
Bush's remarks won't come as a revelation to anybody who knows the history of military technology. Microwave ovens were developed from radar technology, but radar never would have been developed from microwave ovens without government taking the lead. The reason America's military edge is waning is that government has stopped taking the lead in funding innovation. President Obama talks a good game about investment, but his major initiatives have been mainly in the area of consumption (like Obamacare). The belief that commercial innovations can save the joint force from the consequences of under-investment in new technology is an illusion -- one that may leave military defeat as a major legacy of the Obama years.
