What We Don’t Know About Military Innovation
It’s time to take stock of the Pentagon’s various rapid-acquisition efforts.
By Jamie Morin and Bill LaPlante
October 20, 2020 02:38 PM ET
The Pentagon’s senior leadership is determined to drag the often-lumbering Department of Defense into a new era of innovation. This is not a new idea. The effort to institutionalize peacetime defense innovation reaches back at least as far as Franklin Roosevelt’s charge to Vannevar Bush to recommend how the World War II research and development enterprise could work post-war. Bush’s report resulted in the creation of a research ecosystem that includes today’s Federally Funded Research and Development Centers, where, as it happens, both authors have worked.
But the leadership push for defense innovation has clearly intensified. Back in 2014, then Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel signed the Defense Innovation Initiative. His successor, Ash Carter, created the Defense Innovation Unit and chartered a new outside board of technology advisors. His successor, Jim Mattis, called for a national security innovation base. And his successor, Mark Esper, has said “we must out-compete, out-innovate, and out-hustle everyone else.â€
https://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2020/10/what-we-dont-know-about-military-innovation/169398/
