Defense Department Previews New Future-Facing Technology Aims

The Protection Division launched a broad strategy to grow and make sure its technological edge on the shifting world conflict stage—equipped with a record of much more than a dozen systems it is prioritizing in the around term—via a six-website page memorandum released on Thursday.

Penned by Protection Undersecretary for Research and Engineering and DOD Main Technological innovation Officer Heidi Shyu, the USD(R&E) Technological know-how Eyesight for an Era of Competitiveness previews the impending National Defense Science and Technologies System and its progress. Shyu’s workplace will also steer the producing of that upcoming-experiencing blueprint.

President Joe Biden’s administration is putting a sharp aim on strategic opposition, specifically with Russia and China, as it crafts the hottest Nationwide Defense Method that’s envisioned to be launched early this year.

A DOD spokesperson advised Nextgov on Thursday that the S&T strategy’s launch will count on that of the Countrywide Protection Approach, as the latter is deemed the “guiding document.”

In the new memo, Shyu wrote that the United States’ “strategic competitors” have higher accessibility to ultramodern business systems “than at any time right before,” which can be used to disrupt The us.

“The difficulties dealing with our country are both equally various and elaborate, ranging from advanced cyber-attacks to provide chain threats, and from defending in opposition to hypersonic missiles to responding to biological threats,” she wrote, afterwards including that it is “imperative for the office to nurture early analysis and explore new scientific breakthroughs to protect against technological shock.”

Three pillars that will “anchor” the Pentagon’s forthcoming engineering strategy are comprehensive in this memo. They are mentioned as:

Mission Aim: Leverage the United States’ remarkable technology innovation prospective to clear up the department’s tricky operational, engineering and mission-targeted problems.
Foundation Setting up: Established the foundation to attract and develop a sturdy, proficient upcoming technological workforce that functions in modernized laboratories and take a look at facilities.
Triumph by way of Teamwork: Maximize asymmetric pros by partnering with the much larger innovation ecosystem, from sector to universities and to laboratories, allies and companions.

The undersecretary more emphasized that this “era of strategic levels of competition needs collective cooperation.” Amongst many others, DOD will need to function with the defense industrial base, academia, startups, international partners and “even with our competition,” she wrote, to confront the difficulties of this century.

Also in the memo are 14 “critical know-how regions,” that DOD considers “vital to maintaining” U.S. nationwide protection. They are distribute throughout three groups. The listing will be current as abilities and the defense procedures evolve, but for now, it involves:

Seed locations of rising possibility: biotechnology, quantum science, long run era wi-fi tech—or FutureG—and advanced products
Powerful adoption locations: trusted artificial intelligence and autonomy, built-in network system-of-methods, microelectronics, place engineering, renewable generation and storage, sophisticated computing and application, and human-device interfaces
Defense-particular regions: directed electrical power weapons and programs, hypersonics, and integrated sensing and cyber.

In the memo, Shyu verified that her office environment intends to develop new operational principles, swiftly prototype the referenced technologies and help joint experimentation strategies with partners to drive them forward. She extra that her group will go after refreshing pathways and reforms to accelerate the fielding of those capabilities.

“Successful opposition demands imagining our military services functionality as an ever-evolving collective, not a static inventory of weapons in development or sustainment,” Shyu wrote. “In many cases, powerful opposition gains from sidestepping symmetric arms races and as a substitute comes from the resourceful software of new concepts with emerging science and engineering.”