While the National Security Strategy has a strong focus on the Western Hemisphere, the undersecretary for research and engineering said, "I am focused much more on other parts of the world.”
Renamed the Defense Autonomous Working Group, the drone initiative is now conducting wargames and working on larger, longer-ranged attack drones, Adm. Sam Paparo and Pentagon CTO Emil Michael said.
Knowing when to build on commercial systems and when to develop something new can be the difference between parity and information dominance.
Under Secretary for Research & Engineering Emil Michael pruned a sprawling list of “critical technology areas” down from 14 to just six: AI, quantum, biomanufacturing, contested logistics, directed energy (lasers, microwave weapons, et al), and hypersonics. His aim: “deliver capabilities” in three years or less.
“When you pull an organization that was a direct report to the deputy secretary or secretary and move it somewhere else…the message to the force is loud and clear: This isn’t a priority,” said retired Lt. Gen. Jack Shanahan, who founded the predecessor to the current Chief Digital & AI Office (CDAO).
“At this next T-REX [Technology Readiness Experimentation exercise], we’ll be starting to host TOPGUN school,” said prototyping & experimentation director Alex Lovett. “We’re going to be playing Red versus Blue, their best [offense] coming after our best defense.”
In written testimony from March, Michael indicated he would look to review the structure of the R&E office, while pushing to shift a culture he described as “overly risk adverse.”
The GPS network continues to prove its unmatched reliability, and it’s only getting stronger.
“We really don’t have … the in-house capabilities to answer all the questions,” the Pentagon’s deputy director for advanced computing, Roy Campbell, told Breaking Defense. “We’re really going to have to ‘phone out’ to all these assets” that the private sector plans to build.
The US is still great at designing chips but has offshored the ability to build prototypes, which slows innovation and risks IP theft, said OSD’s Dev Shenoy.
DIB member Charles Phillips said the DIB should recombine AT&L because the DoD “need[s] integrated designs, we need integrated manufacturing capacity around the world. It’s hard to do that in separate organizations."
The Joint Fires Network, meant to match weapons to targets across a theater of war, is a crucial pillar of the Pentagon's nascent global command system, CJADC2.
Reducing cognitive overload on warfighters while improving “time to trust” for autonomous systems is a matter of design.
“The establishment of these roles within Research & Engineering better positions our team to execute upon our mission of preserving our nation’s technological edge, now and into the future,” Heidi Shyu, under secretary of defense for research and engineering, said.
In addition to Heidi Shyu's expanded role, lawmakers have tasked the undersecretary of research and engineering to develop a strategy on how the Pentagon can leverage intellectual property to "enhance" its ability to procure emerging technologies and outpace adversaries.
The new laser will take part in the Army's demonstration of its Indirect Fires Protection Capability-High Energy Laser later this year.
The company is developing the Open Systems Interoperable and Reconfigurable Infrastructure Solution for the office of the undersecretary of defense for research and engineering through September 2024.