Shaped charges from coffee grounds? Pentagon science chief describes future of war
Joseph Jewell sees AI, biotech, new ways of production, as key to military capability.
Bradley Peniston | June 16, 2026
Pentagon Science Ukraine Tech Summit
When the Pentagon’s science and technology chief looks at Ukraine, he sees a war fought with weapons invented, produced, and fielded since the conflict erupted.
“The fact that you can bring relevant capability to the fight, as the Ukrainians and allies have done in the conflict with Russia, that essentially didn't exist at the beginning of the fight,” Joseph Jewell, assistant defense secretary for science and technology, said Tuesday at the Defense One Tech Summit in Arlington, Virginia. “That's the new thing here.”
It’s a thing the United States must learn to do, Jewell said.
Ukraine’s homegrown drone industry “to a large extent, sprung up almost overnight because of urgency. I think with our industrial resources, we certainly could do things at that scale and even in a more sophisticated way. And we need to do it,” he said.
Jewell noted that Ukraine has taken the Russian Navy out of the fight without much of a navy of its own.
https://www.defenseone.com/technology/2026/06/pentagon-science-chief-future-war/414214/?oref=d1-skybox-hp
