The US Military Has a Pretty Good Plan to Keep Its Advantage. Trump Shouldn’t Mess With It
An Air Force officer completes a flight in the first newly upgraded operational B1-B Lancer Jan. 21, 2014, at Dyess Air Force Base, Texas.
By Theodore R. Johnson Adjunct professor at Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Polic, The Atlantic Read bio
November 29, 2016
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The Third Offset needs help, not replacement, to secure the long-term competitive advantage of the U.S. armed forces.
In less than two months, President-elect Donald Trump will assume the role of commander-in-chief. His selections for top posts in the White House and the Department of Defense will signal the focus of his national-security apparatus and the means by which it could address the numerous challenges facing the country.
One of the most pressing questions for this next administration is the fate of the Third Offset, a strategy geared to ensure the long-term competitive advantage of the United States’ military. Much of the present discussion around the strategy centers on building futurist technologies—from swarming drones and hypersonic weapons to artificial intelligence and human-machine pairing in combat—and which combination of them can help maintain U.S. military preeminence for years to come. But as the Trump administration determines the strategy’s future, it should consider history’s lesson that offsets also hinge on the evolution of military institutions and their warriors—not just the sophistication of their technologies.
http://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2016/11/trump-third-offset-pentagon-military-technology/133469/?oref=d-river
