Raven Drone Computer Calibration

U.S. Army Sgt. Jason L. Wood starts up a computer program used to work with Raven drones at the Joint Readiness Training Center at Fort Polk, Louisiana, April 5, 2021. (U.S. Army photo by Spc. Pierre Osias).

WASHINGTON: The director in charge of the Pentagon’s emerging capabilities policy wants to move with “responsible speed” when it comes to developing and experimenting with new capabilities, while at the same time other DoD officials are pushing to more quickly adopt commercial technologies. 

Michael Horowitz, who began his role last month as the director of emerging capabilities policy in the Office of the Secretary of Defense for Policy, said during the Nexus 22 symposium Tuesday that the top priority for his office is ensuring emerging capabilities are more effectively integrated into what DoD does, especially artificial intelligence initiatives. 

“The phrase I like to use is that the US needs to act with responsible speed,” Horowitz said. “And everybody wants us to go faster, right? Everybody wants the Department of Defense to be faster in developing, experimenting and integrating emerging capabilities.”

Emerging capabilities can play a critical role in “promoting the pillars” of the National Defense Strategy — integrated deterrence and enduring advantage and campaigning, he added. 

“And this has to include thinking about issues surrounding the… ethical questions, strategic stability questions associated with emerging technologies because doing that reflects our norms, reflects our values,” he said. “It will make us stronger. We just can’t let that stop us from being faster.”

Horowitz added he’s never been more confident about DoD’s commitment to technology adoption and thinks its giving AI an appropriate amount of attention.

“I think that one of the challenges that the department has faced is… senior leaders have argued that the US military needs to be faster and better when it comes to emerging technology adoption and sometimes budgets haven’t followed that, sometimes they have,” Horowitz said. “And I think one of the things that’s really remarkable about this administration… is a really strong commitment to… DoD walking the walk. And I think that commitment makes me more confident than I’ve ever been.”

He specifically pointed to the creation of the Chief Digital and AI Office. Breaking Defense last year broke the news of the new CDAO, which will be responsible for scaling up the department’s AI and data efforts.

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The Pentagon also requested its largest ever research, development, test and evaluation budget for fiscal 2023 — $130.1 billion — reflecting the department’s increasing attention on AI. 

Horowitz’s comments come as other DoD officials push for faster speed in order to have a competitive edge and increase adoption of commercial technology.

In a recent interview with Breaking Defense, outgoing Defense Innovation Unit Director Mike Brown said that when it comes to getting commercial technologies into DoD, the incentive for program managers should change from focusing on compliance and mitigating risk and instead focusing on speed. 

Brown argued that although that would lead to more failures, those failures could become experimentations that DoD can learn from and can also prevent DoD from falling behind in the commercial technology space.

Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering Heidi Shyu made a similar point during a House Armed Services Committee cyber, innovative technologies and information systems subcommittee hearing last week. When it comes to developing programs of record, Shyu said failure should “absolutely” be expected, but the overall structure of the S&T ecosystem needs to be changed.

“Once you get into a program of record, you have the schedule you’ve laid out, you have the unit cost that you’ve laid out, you have the development cost that’s laid out… everything is basked in very conservatively,” Shyu said. “And if you fail… your career is dead…So it’s a death spiral. So if we want to fail fast and accelerate, we have to change the entire mentality.”

But in the interview with Breaking Defense, Brown also lamented what he thought was insufficient support for the Defense Innovation Unit, an office dedicated to emerging technology.

“I just don’t feel that we’re making the kind of progress that I’d like to see made. So I’m frustrated that we’re not achieving more, we’re not supported more. There’s not the agreement made by leadership that this is a priority,” Brown said. “And so if that is the case, then you can’t accomplish what you believe should be accomplished. It’s really that simple.”