These two groups [military operators and lab technologists] have different cultures and values, and frequently speak different languages. To operators, risks are to be minimized and failures are a stigma. To inventors, a lack of failure signals a serious concern: timidity in exploring the possible.
Despite the extraordinary investment in both sides, there is no dedicated group specialized in the difficult skill of translating between operators and inventors. A car needs pistons and it needs wheels, but without high-quality oil, it will not run at high speeds.
In response to threats from emerging technologies, as in the past, the Department of Defense has announced more wheels: new innovation labs. In the private sector, announcing a new innovation lab is a common response to a perceived technology gap. Those labs, however, routinely fail, occasionally taking their companies with them (such as Kodak and Xerox PARC). In the public sector, with a few notable exceptions, the track record is equally dismal.
Innovation labs rarely fail due to a lack of ideas; they fail in the transfer. For example, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, leaders at Xerox recognized the strategic threat from competitors to their dominant copier franchise. In response, those leaders established Xerox PARC, a legendary research lab. The engineers recruited to PARC produced many of the earliest, most important personal computer breakthroughs, including the first graphics-enabled PC, the first laser printer system, and the first local networking technology (ethernet). Xerox did not fail in foreseeing threats. It did not fail in creating a top-tier lab. Xerox failed in the transfer: underestimating internal barriers between the core and the new, between its massive force dedicated to the old and the small team that invented the future.
That was a remarkable article from Safi Bachall — author of the popular Loonshots book — at War on the Rocks, “The Case for a Unified Future Warfare Command.” Read the whole thing.
He recommends that there should be a dedicated command for taking new technologies out of the S&T labs and experimenting/scaling them for use in operations. It would sit in between the “valley of death.” That’s an interesting proposal.
However, would that command still have to go through the usual programming process to get funding allocated, which will take 2 or 3 years? Or, would the command have an organizational/mission budget which allows it to quickly scale promising projects in a timely fashion? Bachall addresses this point briefly:
Finally, key to achieving the command’s mission, as with the Special Operations and Cyber Commands, is independent (though limited) budget authority, which can allow for faster contracting and acquisition. That authority is critical for smaller budget, rapidly evolving technologies or missions (as is the case for special or cyber operations). The authority is less necessary for bigger budget, slower velocity purchases — for example, the large engineering projects managed by the services.
Even for SOCOM, which I think has slightly more budget flexibility than CyberCOM, it has to outline specific project line items in advance for Congressional approval. I’m not so sure you need a new transition command if wider budget flexibility was provided to the services.
Certainly we’ve had enough re-orging at the OSD and service levels lately. But a hard look at the budget process is a daunting prospect in itself.
Leave a Reply