How Much is a Hubcap Removal Tool Worth? Measuring The Value of Tactical Innovation
Chris Aliperti, Eden Elizabeth Lawson and Chris Flournoy | 05.06.25
How Much is a Hubcap Removal Tool Worth? Measuring The Value of Tactical Innovation
AI-enabled spectrum reconnaissance, 3D printed drones, and autonomous combat vehicles. These are no longer the dream ventures of Silicon Valley startups; these are products being created by soldiers at Army bases across the country thanks to the explosion of tactical innovation throughout the service. What started as a few soldiers with simple prototypes in ad hoc makerspaces has transformed into formal innovation cells operating out of research and development labs embedded within operational units. A handful of creative inventions has grown to multimillion-dollar portfolios of products scaling across the Army. As the grassroots efforts grow, kudos and accolades from senior leaders have shifted to calls for accountability and apprehension about these disruptive teams’ breaks from bureaucracy. With every success of tactical innovation, the demand signal for increased resourcing grows louder, but matching its crescendo is the question from the bill payers: What is the ROI—the specific return on this investment?
Impactful tactical innovation requires investing money, people, and space—and most importantly underwriting of risk—into an inherently entrepreneurial venture that is uncommon in the Department of Defense. The return on these investments has been disproportionately high, but difficult to quantify. Understandably, this gives leaders at every echelon hesitation about further investing in these efforts. Much of this concern comes from a discrepancy in expectations. We have had the opportunity to explain tactical innovation, and the expected return on an investment in it, to countless leaders by framing it in terms of three outcomes.
Outcome 1: Talent Development and Management
The Army is a people business. The next war will undoubtedly be won by the military force that can develop and integrate technological solutions at the tactical edge and scale solutions from the bottom up. To do this, the US Army needs soldiers at every rank who are capable of analyzing complex undefined problems and comfortable with using cutting-edge technology to produce solutions. These are not considered basic warfighting skills and therefore are not being taught during the Army’s share of the nearly $14 billion DoD spends annually on institutional training. They are, however, being practiced every day inside tactical innovation labs. Within these labs, soldiers are collaborating with DoD contractors, academia, and industry to learn and implement skills in coding, additive manufacturing, computer-aided engineering, and agile design thinking by solving real problems. In addition to developing new skills, these labs serve as an excellent recruiting and retention tool for those who already possess technology and innovation skills. An investment in tactical innovation recruits, trains, and retains the unique talent required to win on tomorrow’s battlefield. As a result, an important way of measuring ROI is in terms of technically skilled soldiers in operational formations, equipped for the complexities of the modern battlefield.
https://mwi.westpoint.edu/how-much-is-a-hubcap-removal-tool-worth-measuring-the-value-of-tactical-innovation/
