BACKGROUND MEMO: THE DEFENSE TECHNOLOGY INITIATIVE

-- TOWARDS A NEW OFFSETS STRATEGY

Bryan M. Rupprecht, Intern, MIT Washington Office

May 20, 2015

On November 15th, of 2014 former Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel announced the Department of Defense’s new Defense Innovation Initiative. Hagel emphasized the growing threat environment, stating that America’s potential antagonists are continuing to update their militaries, and push their tactical capabilities. In the face of this growing threat he stated the importance of undertaking this initiative, “We must take the initiative to ensure that we do not lose the military-technological superiority that we have long taken for granted.”[1] Hagel announced several key areas that would be part of the initiative, including a “long-range research and development planning program”, which would look at ways to develop the next generation of defense technologies, aimed to sustain the militaries technological edge.

This Long Range Research and Development Plan (LRRDP), which was announced, by Undersecretary Frank Kendalla few weeks earlier on October29th, is focused specifically on “high-payoff enabling technology investments that could provide an opportunity to shape key future US materiel investments [and] offer opportunities to shape the trajectory of future competition for technical superiority.” The LRRDP contains five working groups tasked with identifying key technology opportunities in their specific areas; these include:

  • Space Technology
  • Undersea Technology
  • Air Dominance and Strike Technology
  • Air and Missile Defense
  • Technology-Driven

The goal is for these working groups to be able to identify key technology areas, and then be able to move this into technology development programs within five years. Ideally, DOD hopes that this initiative will lead to the R&D opportunities that will push defense technologies into the future, while responding to the new threat environment of the 21st century.[2]

The Initial Offsets Strategy

The LRRDP is based on a DOD technology push that took place in the 1970’s and 1980’s, often know as the “Offsets Strategy,” which Kendellnoted in his announcement of the program.[3] This program was launched under the Carter administration by Defense Secretary Harold Brown and Undersecretary for Defense Research and Engineering William Perry. At the time, the United States had just ended its war in Vietnam, which had led to a sharp decline in the Army’s overall fighting force capabilities. Concurrently, the United States was in the later stages of the Cold War, with the Soviet Union posing the main threat to U.S. and security tensions between co-superpowers running high. The leading problem was that the USSR had built up a large conventional force advantage in Europe, and if conflict were to break out between the two powers, would have been able to mobilize its much larger forces much faster than the U.S. and its NATO allies. Giventhe U.S. Army’s then weakness, the advantage in a ground war in Europe had seemingly tilted strongly to the Soviets, which would force the U.S. into an early decision after the outbreak of conflict to deploy nuclear weapons. Obviously this was an unacceptable scenario

In order to counter Soviet ground force advantages Brown, Perry, and other defense department officials came up with the “offsets” theory. The approach looks at what strategic advantages that a potential adversary may have and then seeks to understand how these advantages can be offset by technological developments in your own military strength. In this case, because the U.S. could not practically match Soviet manpower advantage, the Defense Department asked what technological advances the U.S. military could undertake to offset this advantage. Thus DOD would apply its innovation system edge: rather than try to counter the Soviets with an equal or larger conventional military force the U.S. military would look for technology offsets to counter the Soviets.

This technology-offsetprogram was primarily led by DARPA, which was the driver for most of the defense breakthrough technology advancements of the era. Out of this initiative, which would later be known as the Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA),[4] came three key technological advancements: stealth aircraft, precision strike capability, and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). Stealth aircraft, such as the F-117 and the B-2, which came out of this program, allowed the U.S. Air Force to exercise strike campaigns with limited detection from radar and other tracking devices. This offered the U.S. a major advantage in air dominance, and the results of this project were displayed in the U.S. bombing campaigns during Desert Storm. The battlefield monitoring and precision missiles and weapons that came out of the precision strike program allowed the U.S. military to make on target strikes on key targets all over the battlefield, and at the same time limit friendly and civilian casualties. Finally, the Predator and Global Hawk UAVs that came out of DARPA initiatives have been central in U.S. air dominance in subsequent years.

It is clear that the DOD and DARPA initiatives to develop technological offsets to Soviet ground strengthen in Europe in the 1970’s and 1980’s were critical in establishing the defense capabilitiesthat led to increased U.S. military dominance and technological edge. These technologies were instrumental in conflicts and missions in the later part of the 20th century, into the 21st century, through today. At the same time, potential adversaries have been making their own technological advancements, challenging U.S. military superiority and creating a new threat environment. The DOD announcements of this fall reflect a conclusion that if the U.S. wishes to maintain its military superiority and address this new threat environment it needs to undertake a development process similar to the offsets approach previously described. Defense leaders hope the newly announced Defense Innovation Initiative and the LRRDP can fill this innovation gap.

Part of what made the earlier offsets strategy a success was that DOD took a careful look atthe most important global security threats at the time – the threatenvironment - and based innovation on that assessment. It is likely that this new innovation strategy will function in a very similar way. Furthermore, it appears that current DOD leadership for this plan will see China, and it’s emerging economic and military power, as the biggest emerging future threat and requiring stronger deterrence. Part of this new threat picture will play outin cyber space.As cyber networks become increasingly more important, each side will look to exploit holes in enemy cyber networks, and look for ways to protect their own. It is likely that any military conflict between China and the U.S. would also play out on the South China Sea, making control of the sea and airspace there particularly important. A new offsets strategy will likely seek ways to deter such events. This is not to say that China is the only threat that the U.S. must respond toto assure deterrence; other potential threats include Middle East, and Russia. Looking at the full threat environments DOD is likely to encounteris essential in determining what this technology initiative will look like.

With the need for new defense technologies there is also a need for research and development forthesetechnologies. There is hope that many of these advancements could also have significant civilian applications as well; dual use development, of course, has historically served DOD well by driving down technology costs and leveraging incremental advances undertaken through the civilian economy. This paper will look at several case studies of areas with potential for defense technological advancements. It will look at the threat environment that currently exists in the particular area, the research and development opportunities in the area, and the applications of these possible developments. Areas that this paper will explore includecyber defense, air dominance, and undersea warfare. While these are not the only areas that the military is looking at for technology advances,(and there is certainly the possibility that new defense technology opportunities will arise), these are areas that will certainly be important to the immediate future of U.S. defense technology.

While this paper will explore three technology areas below, another worth briefly notingis the space domain. The United States no longer enjoys unchallenged dominance in space, as other countries have developed space and satellite programs. One of the main threats in space is the growing vulnerability of satellites, especially key military satellites, which could be taken down by a space-capable enemy almost as soon as they are put up. On top of this, space is getting increasingly more littered with satellites and space junk, creating the potential for satellite accidents. In order to address this threat DOD will likely be looking for new satellite systems that are more resilient than old systems, protecting them from disruption by enemies. It will also likely be looking for satellites with increased automation and robotic abilities so a satellite can fix itself, and self-adjust to avoid accidents. Any developments that can reestablish American space dominance and increase the resiliency of satellites and related communications systems (such as GPS) will likely be of interest to DOD.[5]

In the past few years there have been numerous reports outlining what defense technology futures might look like, from both organizations within DOD and independent bodies. These are sources for the case studies below. Most of the reports coming out of DOD organizations (DARPA, DOD S&T) do not spell out specific technologies that they are looking to develop, but rather identify areas of technological need. Independent organizations (CBSA) or other independent organizations however have the opportunity to look at these areas of need and speculate on the technologies that DOD might be looking to develop in these fields. These reports have the additional insight on what defense technology futures might look like, so are also relied on in the case studies.(A summary of key reports is contained in the Appendix following the case studies.)

Case Studies:

1) Cyber Security:

Threat:

It is no secret that cyber insecurity poses a threat to not only the Defense Department, but also to industries and systems in the country as a whole. In recent years there have been numerous high profile cyber attacks on companies operating in the U.S., for example the recent Sony hack.[6] These attacks can from a variety of sources, large or small, from low-level individual hackers to other countries, as was the case in the Sony attack by North Korea. The nation’s infrastructure is not safe from cyber attacks and, a mass attack that could shut down power grids or financial systems could pose a significant national security and defense threat.[7] The military’s own cyber systems are at risk as well, and face hackers who either want to shut down military systems, or steal military secrets. If other nations obtain military secrets this poses a scenario in which cyber insecurity could raise threat levels in other areas, as well. There is evidence that China has been stealing U.S. military secrets, such as military technology plans, which could potentially be used to duplicate technology, or exploit weakness in it.[8]

There are a host of issues with the country’s cyber security that leave cyber networks of all typesvulnerable. Computer code is inherently prone to mistakes, creating built in security holes for hackers in essentially every computer system. On top of this the ease of identifying passwords makes it easy for hackers to get into computers, with one computer giving access to entire networks.[9] Another challenge is the lackof ability to identify sources, to track and to locate attacks. Currently cyber networks have difficulty identifying when an attack is happening, and where this attack is coming from. Without this knowledge it is difficult to stop the attack before it is too late, or to retaliate or to deter. In recent years the U.S. military and computing at large have been making the transition to using the cloud. While the cloudhas the potential to be more secure than conventional data centers, the transition to cloud computing presents new cyber security issues for DOD.[10]

Potential R&D Opportunities:

Attack Identification

One of the main technology opportunities that exists in the cyber security field is increased ability to identify attacks. If a system could be developed that could immediately identify when a computer is being attacked then it would easier to stop the attack. Moreover, if thethreatened system could isolate the attacked computer from the rest of the cyber network then it would greatly limit the damage that an attack would cause, as the attacker would only have access to the information on one computer and not the whole network.[11] DARPAhas undertaking a significant amount of research in this field and has made some significant advances, although significant work remains to be done to fully realize this capability.[12]

Secure Computing Systems

There is also a need to develop new, fundamentally more secure computer systems. These would be systems that are built without some of the architecture of our current computing systems, such as memory buffers, that make attacking these structures easier. Secondly, computing systems need fundamentally more secure identification methods; it is too easy for hackers to figure out simple passwords. What is needed is either a second form of user identification such as a physical pass card, or biometric signatory, such as a fingerprint, or passwords sent to the users phone at the time of login. While these changes may seem easy, implementing a new computing system on a mass scale is quite complicated and itself would require a significant R&D project.[13]

Cloud Security

Furthermore, with a continuing transition to the cloud there is a need to increase cloud security. While the cloud has the potential to be more secure, since the cloud tends to be a massive data storage unit, breaking into the cloud presents a situation in which hackers can steal massive amounts of data. It is extremely important that DOD continues to make developments in cloud software, since software is often the most vulnerable part of the cloud. Identifying weaknesses in current cloud software and developing software that fixes these issues will likely be a priority for DOD. On top of this, DOD is likely looking to develop hardware for the cloud with built in security features. DOD will need cloud experts who are willing to help DOD by attacking its cloud systems in order to determine what vulnerabilities exist.[14] With any big computing transition there is a need for new security developments; this is certainly true for the cloud. DOD will be looking for opportunities to improve cloud security.[15]

Attack Deterrence

One of the most important steps that DOD can take in order to preventdamaging cyber attacks is to create some type of deterrent against them. It is likely that cyber systems will always remain vulnerable to attack, so creating significant deterrence to attacksmay beimportant in limiting them. Improving attacker identification ability would be an important step in this process.Currently, it can be hard to track where highly sophisticated attacks are coming from, making it hard to take action against these attackers. In addition to attacker identification, in order to increase deterrence DOD will likely look to increase ability to make counter-offensive attacks. If the U.S. has the ability to shut down the cyber systems of adversaries, it will lessen the likelihood of future attacks, for fear of retribution.[16] This deterrence capability may end up as an important means to limit cyber attacks.

Despite the fact that DOD is working on many of these developments, society more broadly stands to gain from advances in cyber security. Many of these technologies would have applications for cyber systems held by civilians, financial institutions and multinational corporations. Just as DOD, through DARPA, made the key developments that brought us many of today’s information technologies including the Internet,it has the potential to reinvent a more secure Internet.

Due to the growing cyber threat and the importance of cyber security the LRRDP will likely attempt to make advances in this area. However, cyber security does not have its own separate working group in the LRRDP, sowill likely be undertaken by the “Technology-Driven Working Group”.[17] It should be noted that cyber security issues are of interest of the other Defense Innovation Initiative technology areas, since weak cybersecurity poses a threat in the other areas as well.

Defense Secretary Ashton Carter indicated DOD’s intent to work on cyber issues in a speech, on April 23, 2015 at Stanford University, where he called for an increase in partnerships with cyber industry leaders to solve the cybersecurity issues.[18] At the same time the Department of Defense launched a new Cyber Strategy, with the three core objectives of defending DOD systems, defending the nation from cyber attacks, and providing forces with cyber support. By 2018 DOD is looking to establish 133 teams to work to achieve these objectives.[19]