The article of record as published may be found at https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/07/28/america-needs-a-new-dreadnought-strategy-military-technology-rd/Why slow-rolling technology R&D can help the U.S. military prevent the rise of dangerous rivals

Blanken, Leo

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Calhoun, Institutional Archive of the Naval Postgraduate School

Calhoun: The NPS Institutional ArchiveDSpace RepositoryFaculty and Researchers Faculty and Researchers' Publications2017-07-28America Needs a New Dreadnought StrategyBlanken, Leoforeignpolicy.comhttp://hdl.handle.net/10945/59399This publication is a work of the U.S. Government as defined in Title 17, UnitedStates Code, Section 101. Copyright protection is not available for this work in theUnited States.Downloaded from NPS Archive: CalhounAmerica Needs a New ‘Dreadnought Strategy’foreignpolicy.com/2017/07/28/america-needs-a-new-dreadnought-strategy-military-technology-rd/ArgumentWhy slow-rolling technology R&D can help the U.S. militaryprevent the rise of dangerous rivals.NEW YORK, NY - JUNE 12: Members of the U.S. Army Drill Team perform in Times Square inNew York City in honor of the Army's 240th birthday on June 12, 2015 in New York City.Soldiers from the 3rd U.S. Infantry Regiment, the U.S. Army Old Guard Fife and Drum Corps,Soldier-musicians from The U.S. Army Band "Pershing's Own" Downrange, and the U.S.Military Academy West Point Band entertained and gave demonstrations to the crowds in thehistoric center of Manhattan. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)At the end of the Cold War, China did not appear poised to threaten America’s unipolarmoment. The country was a nuclear power but largely impoverished. It had a large military; itsforces were ill-equipped and not prepared for a major war. The People’s Liberation Army’smain battle tank was a first-generation T-55, first produced in 1949, and the army possessedalmost no mechanized forces. Even as late as 2000, the entire Chinese helicopter forceconsisted of a mere 24 Mi-17s amid a mix of light- to medium-duty transport aircraft.Fast-forward to present day. Beijing is a force to be reckoned with. Its anti-access and area-denial capabilities, operations in cyberspace, and its missile force keep defense leaders fromTokyo to Washington up at night. And as China’s military becomes ever more powerful, itlooks as if the United States has made poor choices in how it has equipped its own military.1/6But this is not just about missiles and ships. Over the past 10 years, Chinese governmentinvestment has included everything from Alibaba to Uber. This strategy has helped it testmilitary-grade capabilities in the commercial market. As a result, Chinese military technologiesoften exhibit shorter times to market than comparable American defense programs. Beijingalso capitalizes on these investments in ways that are missed opportunities for the Americandefense industrial base.It is time for the United States to consider the creation of a “comprehensive technologydeployment strategy” because — quite frankly — it doesn’t have one. This strategy considersthe opportunities of and threats to American research technology, weighs the context of thestrategic threat environment, and evaluates whether it is prudent to develop or delay officialrelease of a technology in the face of adversaries eager to incorporate these advances intotheir own defense systems.As the world’s leader in technologies that shape the security environment, Americans need tothink hard about what they can do to maintain their increasingly fragile lead in technology.What would such a strategy look like? It sounds counterintuitive, but in an era of rapidtechnological advances, sometimes it pays big dividends to actually slow the pace ofdevelopment.Take the example of 19th-century British naval technology. Could the United States take apage from the Victorian navy’s playbook and gain by shielding its technology advances until atime of its choosing?In the second half of the 19th century, Great Britain was still the master of the seas. This wascrucial, as Britain was an island nation that needed to maintain a global empire and itspowerful navy was key to its security. Maintaining a lead in naval mastery was a trickybusiness, however, in the decades preceding World War I. In the span of roughly 50 years,ships had gone from wooden-hulled sailing vessels with muzzle-loading, smooth-boredcannons that fired solid shot for a few hundred yards to massive turbine-driven hulks withsteel, compartmentalized hulls, armed with breech-loading rifled guns that could hurl explosiveshells for miles. Technology was changing so rapidly in this era that British Prime MinisterWilliam Gladstone complained that battleship design changed as quickly as the “[fashion] ofladies’ hats.” Given that it sought to maintain naval supremacy over its rivals while technologywas rapidly changing, Britain needed to think about creating a strategy for its management oftechnology. In other words, carefully choosing what technologies to develop, implement,discourage, or withhold in light of how and when those technologies might diffuse to rivals.Britain was a leader in researching and understanding the technologies surroundingsubmarines, mines, and torpedoes throughout the 19th century, but given the fact that thediffusion of such technologies would allow other nations to cheaply counter the Brits’ ownsurface fleet (and specifically its ability to conduct naval blockades) they conducted a decades-long strategy to discourage the implementation and diffusion of such technologies. NavyController Sir Arthur Wilson revealed the essence of a comprehensive technologymanagement strategy in a 1901 internal memorandum, and it is worth quoting at length:2/6We cannot stop invention in this direction [submarine warfare], but we can avoid doinganything to encourage it. [We successfully] delayed the introduction of submarine mines forhalf a century … [and the] question of submarine boats is taking a very similar course. A verywell thought design for a submarine boat was brought to my notice … about 1879.…Experiments were carried out which proved the practibility … [and then] the inventor was givenno further encouragement. A very similar course has been adopted with all the varioussubmarine boats that have been brought forward since. Each design has been carefullyexamined and … then it has been quietly dropped with the result of delaying the developmentof the submarine boat for about 20 years.In other words, the British were aware that they could achieve short-term gains out ofdeveloping and fielding new technologies but in doing so would also shorten the time in whichsuch technologies would diffuse to rivals. The key takeaway of the British case is that it makessense to “push the envelope” in technology when competition is intense, but it also makessense to withhold or discourage the development of technology when such conditions arelacking. Britain’s policy matched such logic. The policy of retardation of submarine technologyended right after the beginning of the Anglo-German naval race (marked by the German NavalLaws of 1898 and 1900). In 1901, Admiralty Secretary H.O. Arnold-Forster signaled thischange:I concur with the Naval Lords that the Controllers policy [of stifling submarine technology] wascertainly the right one.… [But] that is no longer possible … [and we should] abandon our policyof discouragement and … adopt one of unostentatious progress.In fact, by the beginning of World War I, Britain had a larger submarine fleet than Germany.This fact is surprising to many, given the central role that submarines played in Germany’sstrategy during the war, but it shows that Britain was not inherently opposed to submarinetechnologies. Rather, the British hindered or accelerated the development of suchtechnologies with strategic acumen. Given their leadership role in driving naval technology, it isnot unreasonable to assume that they faced cruder German subs in 1914 than they wouldhave if they had not slow-rolled submarine technology for decades.We can compare the British case of carefully considered technology deployment to the case ofcurrent fifth-generation U.S. aircraft: the F-22 Raptor and the multirole F-35 Lightning. Theseprograms were developed during the 1990s (the F-22 program began in 1986 and the F-35program in 1994), a period during which China was completely flabbergasted by the U.S.performance in the Gulf War and Russia was a mess. These programs pushed the envelopeon fighter technology to a huge degree (incorporating stealth, advanced sensors and avionics,supersonic cruise), and in that time no one dared to challenge American air-superioritycapabilities. But they also cost a fortune. The F-35 is fantastically over budget, beset by myriadproblems that have delayed deployment, and “will be the most expensive weapons system inworld history.” Only a handful of the projected F-22s will actually be produced (due to fiscalconstraints), and the F-35 (years behind schedule) is still not fully operational (and, due to its“jack of all trades” design, may not be as capable as Cold War-era aircraft).3/6What the United States has done, however, is allow rivals to quickly achieve near-peer statusin fifth-generation aircraft. The Chinese J-31, for example, is likely based on stolen F-22 and F-35 technology, and while the Chinese plane is marginally inferior, the prototypes are capableenough to offer a serious counter to American air power in East Asia. Further, the Chinesehave shown the capacity to acquire emerging technologies and get them into the field faster.Once again, this does not bode well for the technology leader that pays the painful researchand development costs. In the private sector, this practice is well studied. Business coursesnow use the term “fast follower” for someone who benefits from others’ technologyinvestments; Thorstein Veblen was writing about it as far back as 1915. Despite this, Americanmilitary planners seem to be oblivious to how one should leverage such a technological lead.Can this pathology be remedied? It will be challenging for several reasons. First, in contrast tothe “easy” questions such as air-superiority aircraft, other emerging technologies arethreatening to create strategic impacts that are very poorly understood. Artificial intelligence,biotechnology, and additive manufacturing represent only a handful of vibrant technology fieldsthat may have unforeseen impacts on the national security environment of tomorrow. Second,the cutting edge of such technology fields are occurring outside the control of the state. TheVictorian navy could largely control the output of the royal shipyards, and Lockheed Martin andNorthrop Grumman remain very cozy partners with the U.S. Defense Department. Yet thestart-ups and innovators of the emerging tech markets are the Wild West; it will be significantlyharder to influence, and challenging to control, what comes out of these ventures.The third and most serious challenge are nation-state competitors such as China that areworking hard to more closely integrate their foreign investment with their defense industrialbase in order to expedite the “time to deployment” of their research technologies. This washighlighted by a recent Defense Innovation Unit Experimental report and associated New YorkTimes reporting on focused Chinese investment in American advanced technology start-ups.Two more industrial examples are China Electronics Technology Group Corporation (CETC)and Beijing Teamsun Technology. CETC is a state-owned, R&D-focused organization pushingChina’s emphasis on dual-use electronics and civil-military integration. It conducts much of itswork through the 55 semiautonomous research institutes that it oversees. CETC subsidiarieshave entered into joint ventures with companies like IBM, Sun, HP, Oracle, and Cisco andpartnered with the U.S. defense contractor Harris Corp., which, according to its website,provides tactical communications, intelligence, and satellite services to the U.S. military,National Security Agency, and National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency. According to aDefense Group Inc. report, Teamsun runs IT networks and information security for largecompanies and government organizations. It’s a registered end-use supplier to China’smilitary, “offering computer, software, network, communication, and satellite applicationproducts” to the Second Artillery Equipment Academy, the People’s Armed Police Force, andthe Ministry of Public Security.So what can be done? First, the United States can start by adopting strategic pragmatism inpicking its areas of technology deployment. Military acquisition authorities need to think harderabout second- and third-order diffusion effects (like armed Islamic State drones in Mosul). Of4/6course, technology will inexorably evolve, and no one is going to be able to stop bad guys frombuying a drone on Amazon or something worse, but the degree to which the national securityapparatus can shape such evolution, it should do so with purpose. The days of dreamingabout “full-spectrum dominance” (overmatching opponents across the board in all operationalsettings) are long over — today’s American national security apparatus needs to be smarterthan that. The United States can’t and shouldn’t stop advancing technology, but it must do sowith a plan in mind and stop doing all the heavy lifting on R&D for rivals and enemies. Putsimply: Invest in mission-critical technology but implement it in a way that imposes fixedresearch costs on rivals that they cannot recover.Second, the United States should partner with industry to better understand a fast-changingglobal supply chain and the industrial base that supports it. Bolstering coordination betweenprivate-sector investment and defense-industrial base objectives is especially important. TheCommittee on Foreign Investment in the United States is a good starting point to level theplaying field by focusing on its review process for acquisitions of U.S. firms by foreign ones.However, this committee can only examine national security issues involved in an acquisition.While the vast majority of the more than 100 transactions reviewed annually proceed, the newadministration will have to take a serious look at the committee process and the enablinglegislation and consider what combination of carrots and sticks would accelerate the openingof China’s markets. One example would be to include an amendment to foreign-investmentlegislation that limits acquisitions by state enterprises from countries with which the UnitedStates does not have a bilateral investment treaty. This could force countries like China to altertheir investment practices and increase the openness of their markets out of fear for theiraccess elsewhere. Getting China to open up its protected markets is high on the policy agendaof the United States and other major economies. The United States has been negotiating withChina over a bilateral investment treaty that would be based on a small negative list; that is,there would be a small number of agreed sectors that remain closed on each side, butotherwise investment would be open in both directions.Finally, the Pentagon needs to rethink the “valley of death” — the gap between technologyinnovation and implementation. Many lament this gap, arguing that too many technologiesmake it through the basic R&D phase but don’t survive the acquisition/integration process. Wepropose turning this model on its head and advocate more selectively developing cutting-edgeresearch, and then choosing to deploy the results strategically, versus simply being driven byinertia or the vagaries of bureaucracy. Just as the British mapped emerging technology tomaintaining control of strategic sea lanes for the purpose of managing a global empire,Washington needs to take a minute (or two) to finally plot a grand strategy. After doing so, theshape and tenor of a comprehensive technology deployment strategy should becomeapparent. By simply taking into consideration what the United States wants to achieve, whatthe threat environment looks like, and what technologies would be needed to succeed in sucha scenario — recognizing that today’s American “widget” will end up in rivals’ hands tomorrow— will go a long way in taming the technological revolutions we face.Photo credit: Spencer Platt/Getty Images5/6Stephen Rodriguez is the founder of One Defense, a senior fellow at New America, and avisiting professor at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, CaliforniaLeo Blanken is an associate professor of defense analysis at the Naval Postgraduate Schoolin Monterey, California.Jason Lepore is an associate professor in the Economics Department of the Orfalea Collegeof Business at California Polytechnic State University.Trending Now Sponsored Links by TaboolaBy TaboolaMore from Foreign PolicyBy Taboola6/6

America Needs a New ‘Dreadnought Strategy’

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America Needs a New ‘Dreadnought Strategy’

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Calhoun, Institutional Archive of the Naval Postgraduate School