[House Hearing, 118 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]


.                                     
                         [H.A.S.C. No. 118-47]

                           BACK TO THE FUTURE

                               __________

                                HEARING

                               BEFORE THE

                  SUBCOMMITTEE ON CYBER, INFORMATION 
                      TECHNOLOGIES, AND INNOVATION

                                 OF THE

                      COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES
                        HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                    ONE HUNDRED EIGHTEENTH CONGRESS

                             FIRST SESSION

                               __________

                              HEARING HELD

                            DECEMBER 6, 2023


 [GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
 
                              __________

                   U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE                    
55-573                     WASHINGTON : 2024                    
          
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------  

    SUBCOMMITTEE ON CYBER, INFORMATION TECHNOLOGIES, AND INNOVATION

                  MIKE GALLAGHER, Wisconsin, Chairman

MATT GAETZ, Florida                  RO KHANNA, California
LISA C. McCLAIN, Michigan            SETH MOULTON, Massachusetts
PAT FALLON, Texas                    WILLIAM R. KEATING, Massachusetts
DALE W. STRONG, Alabama              ANDY KIM, New Jersey
MORGAN LUTTRELL, Texas               ELISSA SLOTKIN, Michigan
JENNIFER A. KIGGANS, Virginia        JARED F. GOLDEN, Maine
NICK LaLOTA, New York                PATRICK RYAN, New York
RICHARD McCORMICK, Georgia           CHRISTOPHER R. DELUZIO, 
                                         Pennsylvania

                Sarah Moxley, Professional Staff Member
               Michael Hermann, Professional Staff Member
                    Brooke Alred, Research Assistant
                            
                            
                            C O N T E N T S

                              ----------                              
                                                                   Page

              STATEMENTS PRESENTED BY MEMBERS OF CONGRESS

Gallagher, Hon. Mike, a Representative from Wisconsin, Chairman, 
  Subcommittee on Cyber, Information Technologies, and Innovation     1
Khanna, Hon. Ro, a Representative from California, Ranking 
  Member, Subcommittee on Cyber, Information Technologies, and 
  Innovation.....................................................     2

                               WITNESSES

Gunzinger, Col Mark, USAF (Ret.), Director, Future Concepts and 
  Capability Assessments, Mitchell Institute for Aerospace 
  Studies........................................................     6
Herman, Arthur, Senior Fellow, Hudson Institute..................     5
Krepinevich, Andrew F., Jr., Senior Fellow and Adjunct Senior 
  Fellow, Hudson Institute and Center for a New American Security     3

                                APPENDIX

Prepared Statements:

    Gunzinger, Col Mark..........................................    70
    Herman, Arthur...............................................    57
    Krepinevich, Andrew F., Jr...................................    31

Documents Submitted for the Record:

    [There were no Documents submitted.]

Witness Responses to Questions Asked During the Hearing:

    [There were no Questions submitted during the hearing.]

Questions Submitted by Members Post Hearing:

    [There were no Questions submitted post hearing.]
                           
                           
                           BACK TO THE FUTURE

                              ----------                              

                  House of Representatives,
                       Committee on Armed Services,
      Subcommittee on Cyber, Information Technologies, and 
                                                Innovation,
                       Washington, DC, Wednesday, December 6, 2023.
    The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 2:00 p.m., in 
room 2118, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Mike Gallagher 
(chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. MIKE GALLAGHER, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM 
    WISCONSIN, CHAIRMAN, SUBCOMMITTEE ON CYBER, INFORMATION 
                  TECHNOLOGIES, AND INNOVATION

    Mr. Gallagher. The subcommittee will come to order. We are 
really lucky to have three incredible witnesses today to talk 
about a very important topic, military innovation, and how we 
can learn from the lessons of the past.
    The ranking member will forgive me if I have already told 
this story, but it always is in my mind which is there is this 
famous scene in William Manchester's biography of MacArthur, no 
offense, Dr. Herman, I know you wrote a MacArthur book, too, 
that was great. But in the Manchester book, there is this scene 
where he is in the Philippines prior to World War II and he is 
having this debate with his staffers about whether in the midst 
of war one should suspend democracy. And it becomes this debate 
about whether dictatorships or democracies are better. And 
MacArthur, maybe against sort of the caricature of him, argued 
for democracy and said that the dictator may start off well, 
but once they encounter friction, they slow down whereas 
democracy starts slowly, but they activate thousands of 
flexible and free-thinking minds and over time, ultimately 
prevail. And I think this is the story we tend to tell 
ourselves as how America wins and does crisis management. 
Perhaps in some sense this is the story of ``Freedom's Forge.''
    I wonder though if there are not two problems with that 
story or whether what I call the MacArthur curve is 
fundamentally broken when we think about innovation. The first 
is that in light of the most stressing national security 
challenge we are trying to solve, which is a PLA [People's 
Liberation Army] invasion of Taiwan, we might not have time to 
turn car factories into bomber factories. If they pursue a 
rapid fait accompli strategy, we may not have time to activate 
freedom's forge.
    And the second thing is and perhaps more obviously is that 
the defense industrial base and the defense innovation base 
looks much different than it did at that period of time. We 
have discovered many single points of failure. Right now, I 
think the war in Ukraine has revealed the brittleness of our 
munitions industrial base and the list goes on and on.
    So today, I hope if nothing else, our incredibly impressive 
witnesses can help us sort of learn the right lessons from past 
cases of military innovation or even the right lessons from 
cases where powers failed to innovate and what that meant for 
their geopolitical position. And as I said at the start, I 
can't think of three better people to help us think through 
that.
    Oh, one other final note. I think the tendency when you go 
to one of these defense conferences is there is always like a 
bunch of panels on the new shiny thing, right? It is AI 
[artificial intelligence], it is quantum, it is JADC2 [Joint 
All-Domain Command and Control]. That is all well and good, but 
I think in light of that, it is incredibly important that we 
have a conversation like this about looking backward with an 
eye to preparing ourself for the future because while the sort 
of essence or nature of war does not change, its character does 
seem to be changing in light of new technology.
    So I want to thank Dr. Andrew Krepinevich, who is the 
author of a great new book called ``The Origins of Victory,'' 
many other books, including a book on Marshall and a great 
study on archipelagic defense. The 2.0 version was just 
released in September. And then, of course, Dr. Arthur Herman, 
who as I alluded to, not only wrote a book on the great 
Wisconsinite Douglas MacArthur, but one of my favorite books, 
``Freedom's Forge,'' has written more books than I have time to 
list.
    And then Colonel Mark Gunzinger, who has too many titles to 
list and wrote the Department of Defense's first transformation 
strategy. So we have a wealth of knowledge here in front of us 
and we are looking forward to this discussion.
    With that, I yield to the ranking member.

STATEMENT OF HON. RO KHANNA, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM CALIFORNIA, 
      RANKING MEMBER, SUBCOMMITTEE ON CYBER, INFORMATION 
                  TECHNOLOGIES, AND INNOVATION

    Mr. Khanna. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman, for convening 
these experts on disruptive innovation and ensuring that our 
military remains the most innovative in the world. As a 
Representative from Silicon Valley, I can attest that the most 
disruptive innovations of the past 50 years have come from the 
Department of Defense. I mean it is DARPA's [Defense Advanced 
Research Projects Agency's] innovations and others in GPS 
[Global Positioning System], in the internet, in drones that 
really led to the commercialization of these technologies in 
Silicon Valley. So the idea that our Department of Defense and 
military have not been innovative is just historically 
inaccurate. They have been incredibly innovative.
    But now that we see so much disruptive innovation taking 
place in the commercial sector, we need a strategy to make sure 
that the Department of Defense remains the most innovative and 
also that these technologies are accurately and fully deployed 
for us in the case of war or combat. And so I appreciate your 
leadership, Mr. Chairman, on trying to ensure that we integrate 
and adopt these technologies and use them to make sure that we 
remain the world's strongest, most innovative military, and I 
am looking forward to hearing the experts' testimony.
    Mr. Gallagher. Thank you to the ranking member. Your 
written testimony, all three of your written testimony is 
exceptional. I recognize it is unfair for us to ask you to 
summarize it in 5 minutes which is not a lot of time. The good 
news is we will have plenty of time for multiple rounds of 
questions and the ranking member loves it when I entertain 
multiple rounds of questions.
    So with that, we will start with you, Dr. Krepinevich.

  STATEMENT OF ANDREW F. KREPINEVICH, JR., SENIOR FELLOW AND 
 ADJUNCT SENIOR FELLOW, HUDSON INSTITUTE AND CENTER FOR A NEW 
                       AMERICAN SECURITY

    Dr. Krepinevich. Thank you, Chairman Gallagher, Ranking 
Member Khanna, members of the subcommittee.
    By way of background, let me start out by saying I agree 
with both of you. We are in a period of disruptive change in 
terms of the military competition and it demands disruptive 
innovation, as you mentioned, Ranking Member Khanna.
    In terms of disruptive change, we are looking at really a 
geopolitical change that has put us into a period of great 
power competition that has been absent for about 30 years. But 
also, in particular the Chinese have caught up to us in what 
the U.S. military sometimes refers to as precision warfare. We 
have lost our monopoly, if you will, in the ability to do 
precision kind of operations of the kind that we demonstrated 
in the two Gulf wars and in various unconventional warfare 
operations.
    The second aspect of disruptive change is the broad advance 
of military-related technologies, everything from additive 
manufacturing, artificial intelligence, drones, quantum 
computing, directed energy, and so on. That's offering 
militaries the opportunity to operate in very different and far 
more effective ways. And historically speaking, typically the 
military that figures out how to do that first enjoys an 
enormous advantage over its rivals.
    And so one question is how well is the U.S. military 
prepared and positioned to engage and pursue in disruptive 
innovation? And to answer this question, as Congressman 
Gallagher mentioned, Chairman Gallagher, the book that I wrote 
looks at the histories of four militaries in the industrial 
information age that engaged in disruptive innovation. They 
were the first to do so and they realized enormous benefits in 
adapting and transitioning to a new way of warfare.
    And fortunately, when I looked at these four militaries, 
otherwise there would not have been much of a book, they do 
demonstrate some common characteristics. So you can sort of 
look at a military and look at these characteristics and say 
how well are they positioned to undertake disruptive 
innovation?
    And I will briefly summarize some of these characteristics. 
One is a guiding vision. What is the new vision of warfare? 
After we get through this transition period, what dominates 
warfare? What are its new characteristics? Oh, I should mention 
that the four militaries were the Royal Navy, the first decade 
of the 20th century, the transition to the so-called 
Dreadnought revolution, submarines and so on; the German 
development of blitzkrieg warfare in the period between the 
World Wars; the American Navy shift from a battleship-based 
Navy to a carrier-based Navy between the World Wars; and the 
transformation of the American Air Force between the Vietnam 
war and the first Gulf war where they introduced what the 
Russians called a reconnaissance-strike complex.
    So, getting back to the characteristics, one is that 
guiding vision. Second is identifying the key operational 
challenges that a military confronts. You can look at this as a 
diagnosis. What are the problems we are trying to solve? What 
are the key threats? Since we only have limited resources, we 
have to be very careful about what we choose to focus our 
efforts on.
    Next would be developing an operational concept. How do we 
plan to address these new challenges? Then there is changes in 
measures of effectiveness. What worked before, what we valued 
before, probably we are not going to value in the same set of 
priorities now as we did before we engaged in our innovation 
efforts.
    Then there is exercises at the operational level of war. 
And the point here is we are not going to be sure whether our 
new way of war is valid. And so we conduct operational 
exercises to try and reduce uncertainty as much as we can 
wherever we can. There is extended tenure. Some of the key 
military leaders that guide this effort serve for extended 
periods of time because typically disruptive innovation takes a 
decade or more and yet, a lot of senior military leaders 
typically last 2 or 3 or 4 years in an assignment. This does 
not occur in periods of disruptive innovation in the four cases 
that I studied.
    Then there is the issue of time-based competition. If you 
have a military that is world class, a time-based competition 
that can adapt quickly, they can pursue what I call the first 
and second move advantages, but they can also adapt very 
readily and much more quickly than their rivals. And this turns 
out to be quite an important factor.
    This concludes my remarks, Mr. Chairman, although I will 
say one final point. We are thinking about two things with 
respect to disruptive innovation. One is we have to get the 
operational concept, say if we are looking at the Chinese as a 
threat, how do we plan to defend the first island chain if that 
is the critical operational challenge. And second, we know we 
are going to be wrong because there are so many variables. And 
so if we ever go to war with China, how quickly can we adapt in 
order to be able to sustain not only the operations, but also 
adapt to reduce the flaws and eliminate the flaws that our 
concept has revealed--that is revealed in our concept in 
conflict. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    [The prepared statement of Dr. Krepinevich can be found in 
the Appendix on page 31.]
    Mr. Gallagher. Dr. Herman, you are recognized for 5 
minutes. Is your microphone on? And make sure that it is close 
to your mouth. It is very formal here. Very far away.
    Dr. Herman. All set to go?
    Mr. Gallagher. I think so. Yes.

  STATEMENT OF ARTHUR HERMAN, SENIOR FELLOW, HUDSON INSTITUTE

    Dr. Herman. Great. Our defense industrial base is in 
crisis. This is certainly the conclusion that our first-ever 
national defense industrial strategy report has just reached. 
According to its most recent draft, that industrial base ``does 
not possess the capacity, capability, responsiveness, or 
resilience required to satisfy the full range of military 
production needs at speed and scale.''
    What some of us have been warning about for a decade is now 
apparent to everyone. One reason I wrote my book, ``Freedom's 
Forge,'' more than 10 years ago, was to call attention to 
structural deficiencies in how we arm and equip our military 
compared to World War II and the Cold War. Now, thanks to the 
war in Ukraine, the problem has been made obvious and urgent.
    The question is how to better incorporate the innovations 
taking place in our private sector, from AI and robotics to 
cyber and quantum, into our defense industrial base. Now the 
industrial base consists of many things: production facilities; 
supply chains; research and development of new technologies and 
systems like AI and quantum, hypersonics, UAVs [unmanned aerial 
vehicles]; industrial and cyber security; and workforce. And we 
urgently need a strategy for incorporating innovation in all of 
these areas as part of an overall national security strategy.
    But the role of the innovation I think is misunderstood. It 
shouldn't be treated as if it were a stand-alone category, but 
instead, as an integral part of the production and productivity 
process. It is through making things that we learn how they can 
be made better which is why the most productive companies also 
tend to be the most innovative. And that is why in creating, 
for example, the arsenal of democracy in World War II, 
Washington turned first to the commercial automobile and 
electronics companies because they had the most engineers and 
therefore could be counted on to do things and make things 
better, even if they had never made them before.
    For example, when engineers at Pontiac turned their 
attention to producing the 20-millimeter Oerlikon anti-aircraft 
gun, they completely redesigned the product to make it faster 
and also better. And as a result, they managed to cut 
production time per gun from 3\1/2\ hours to 15 minutes. Now 
there are other examples that are contained in my written 
testimony. The point is innovation follows productivity, not 
the other way around.
    Another principle that animated the arsenal of democracy 
was that it was threat-based, not capability-based. The Germans 
and Japanese made it very plain what was needed from the 
beginning: the tools to beat the U-boat, the Japanese Zero, and 
the ME 109, and the German panzer.
    One of the problems I think we face today is that the focus 
has been on the capabilities of high-end technologies like AI 
and quantum, rather than on the enemy they are supposed to deal 
with. One could argue that hypersonics is an exception, but 
this is largely because we sense that we have fallen behind 
Russia and China in that technology, just as we were behind 
Germany and Japan when we entered World War II. In short, by 
focusing on the threat, first and foremost, we make for a 
better and more innovative industrial base.
    Two points in conclusion. Given the themes of my book and 
all of the issues and problems confronting our defense 
industrial base today, people constantly ask me could we do it 
again? My answer is yes, but not alone. Instead, in addition to 
restoring our base whenever and wherever possible, we need to 
build a global industrial network with trusted allies, the U.K. 
[United Kingdom] and the Five Eyes, NATO [North Atlantic Treaty 
Organization] members, Japan and South Korea, especially in the 
advanced technologies like AI, quantum, and space, but also in 
the traditional and conventional technologies like shipbuilding 
and like energetics, in other words, the next-generation 
munitions in which the Chinese are already surging ahead.
    I call this the arsenal of democracies for the 21 century 
and like its 20th century predecessor, it can also overwhelm 
what I have been identifying as the new axis since 2015--China, 
Russia, and Iran--and overwhelm them with democracy's 
innovative output.
    Consider this. Today, the United States and the world's 
most advanced tech countries, 18 of them, 18 of the top 20 are 
democracies. China, by contrast, ranks 32nd on the list, while 
Russia and Iran don't even score. All this indicates that if 
the U.S. and democracies band together, they can overpower 
China and the new axis with the kind of high-tech focus that is 
the core of a winning and innovative arsenal of democracies.
    Thank you for your attention and I am looking forward to 
answering any questions you may have.
    [The prepared statement of Dr. Herman can be found in the 
Appendix on page 57.]
    Mr. Gallagher. Thank you. And I forgot to mention that 
Colonel Gunzinger has more than 3,000 hours in the B-52. I just 
try not to give too much credit to West Pointers and Air Force 
guys, so that is my bias, but I apologize.
    Colonel Gunzinger, you are recognized for 5 minutes.

STATEMENT OF COL MARK GUNZINGER, USAF (RET.), DIRECTOR, FUTURE 
  CONCEPTS AND CAPABILITY ASSESSMENTS, MITCHELL INSTITUTE FOR 
                       AEROSPACE STUDIES

    Colonel Gunzinger. Thank you, Chairman, and thank you very 
much for asking us to come testify today.
    We are now at a point where urgent action is needed to 
ensure our Armed Forces will have the technological advantage 
over the pacing threat. I agree that history should inform this 
effort and I am going to offer six lessons that I learned and 
used as a force development planner in the Air Force and in OSD 
[Office of the Secretary of Defense] as a DASD [Deputy 
Assistant Secretary of Defense].
    My first point is maintaining a technological advantage is 
a marathon, not a destination. By that I mean we should treat 
defense innovation as a series of sustained competitions. 
History teaches us it is a mistake to think that technological 
breakthroughs will give our military an enduring advantage. 
Technologies we developed during the late Cold War period like 
PGMs [precision-guided munitions], stealth, information 
networks, leapfrogged our military over adversaries and we saw 
that during Operation Desert Storm.
    However, China and other competitors have studied our 
military successes and have developed capabilities and 
operating concepts to offset them. So technological inferiority 
is a very real possibility if our military does not 
continuously modernize and we cannot treat innovation as 
episodic and driven by crises.
    Second, we should seek asymmetric advantages rather than 
parity. And that means DOD [Department of Defense] should 
prioritize new capabilities that will disrupt and impose costs 
on enemies instead of simply fighting a better war of 
attrition. Now that is exactly what DOD's Assault Breaker 
initiative did when it created a reconnaissance-strike complex 
Andy referred to in the 1980s, to counter a Warsaw Pact threat 
that could field more combat capacity in Central Europe than 
NATO.
    So today, we are facing a similar challenge with the PLA 
forces that will have time, distance, and combat mass 
advantages over our military in a Western Pacific conflict. So 
our services must pursue breakthrough technologies that will 
finally change the rules of the game, instead of trying to 
match the PLA warship for warship, aircraft for aircraft, and 
weapon for weapon.
    Third, new technologies are only as effective as the way 
they are used. History has shown us that groundbreaking 
technologies are most effective when they are matched with 
operational concepts that are designed to take advantage of 
their attributes. When Predator drones first joined the force 
in the 1990s, they were restricted to ISR [intelligence, 
surveillance, and reconnaissance] missions. They were glorified 
artillery spotters. But when they were modified to carry 
weapons, it opened up an entirely new approach to using sensor-
shooters for precision strikes. So as new technologies like 
uncrewed CCAs [collaborative combat aircraft] are fielded, our 
military should develop concepts for using them in ways that 
will disrupt and degrade the operations of opposing forces 
instead of simply improving how we plan to operate today.
    My fourth and fifth points are capacity matters. Innovation 
will only make a difference if you procure new technologies at 
scale. So even as we invest in technologies to offset China's 
combat mass advantage, numbers matter. An aircraft, ship, tank, 
you name it, can only be at one place at one time. So in the 
1990s and 2000s, many in DOD saw increases in weapon system 
effectiveness as justification to slash force structure which 
is part of the reason why our forces are now too small to meet 
their global requirements. So the solution really is to acquire 
new technologies at the scale needed to deter and defeat our 
Nation's enemies and that will require sustained, predictable, 
budget growth.
    And finally, new technologies require trained and 
experienced personnel in volume to use them. DOD must have 
enough personnel with adequate levels of training to fully 
exploit the advantages that new technologies will offer. 
History has taught us that when two opposing forces have 
relatively equal technologies, the side with the best trained 
personnel often has the advantage. It is common sense. So 
fielding new technologies and training personnel to use them, 
that goes hand in hand. And this is incredibly important today 
given that it now takes years to develop highly trained, 
experienced airmen, sailors, soldiers, and Marines. And like 
new technologies, we are not going to have the time to surge 
their training and give them the kind of experience they need 
in the midst of a peer-on-peer conflict.
    And with that, I thank you again. And I look forward to 
your questions.
    [The prepared statement of Colonel Gunzinger can be found 
in the Appendix on page 70.]
    Mr. Gallagher. Great. Thank you, all. I am an unabashed fan 
of military reading lists and a lot of your books have appeared 
on military reading lists and it is Christmastime and we are 
all looking for books to give. Imagine you are able to assign 
holiday reading to the Secretary of Defense and--or rather just 
assign a case study of military innovation that you think it is 
particularly important for the Secretary of Defense to 
understand, what would that be and why?
    We will start with you, Dr. Krepinevich.
    Dr. Krepinevich. At the----
    Mr. Gallagher. You can't assign your own books, sorry.
    Dr. Krepinevich. You can't assign your own books?
    Mr. Gallagher. That is why I said case study.
    Dr. Krepinevich. I would, I guess, one of the books I would 
assign would be Dr. Herman's book on freedom's forge, because 
you can really, in reading that book, get a clear understanding 
of just how different things were then relative to the way they 
are now and just how much effort and what kind of organization 
went into creating the arsenal of democracy or freedom's forge. 
So that would be a book I would recommend.
    A case study I would recommend would be Nick Lambert's 
book, ``Sir John Fisher's Naval Revolution.'' Basically, it 
talked about how the world's global power at the turn of the 
20th century, Great Britain, was challenged by a rising power 
in the form of Germany, so there is a similarity there. We are 
the dominant power. China is the rising power. And Britain 
faced a number of what I would call operational challenges. So 
it was how to protect the empire, how to protect commerce 
throughout the empire, commerce to an island. There were 
military technologies that were advancing at a rapid rate. 
Submarines were being introduced, torpedoes, undersea 
communications, cables, wireless. So you have this combination 
of a country that has lost its lead in some critical areas of 
the military competition, as we have done, we have experienced, 
but also this raft of new technologies, global commitments. So 
I think the Fisher Revolution, as Lambert calls it, ``Sir John 
Fisher's Naval Revolution'' would be a good case study.
    Mr. Gallagher. Dr. Herman. And you are not allowed to 
recommend one of his books. No, you are not allowed to, sorry. 
We will just assume you would have in the interest of time.
    Dr. Herman. If that is so, then what I will do is mention, 
I think, two titles that I think bear on the long view with 
regard to these issues, particularly if you like on the 
political and economic background within which these sort of 
patterns of disruptive innovation take place. Andy mentioned 
Nick Lambert's book. I will mention another Lambert, Andrew 
Lambert, and his book on maritime states which is about the 
evolution of sea power over the centuries and the way in which 
economic factors and economies and societies become seedbeds 
for innovation, not just in the military, but also innovation 
in broader developments of technological progress, of 
democracy, of a whole range of other areas that I think needs 
to be part of the wider context in which we think of them.
    Then I am going to recommend another book and this is by an 
economist by the name of Adam Tooze. It is called the ``Wages 
of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy.'' 
And I mention this because that book, too, is about disruptive 
innovation, in this case of how Germany's or Hitler's grand 
designs for dominating Europe and for creating a Europe 
dominated by a master race had the disruptive effects on the 
economy and made it really impossible for Germany to sustain 
the kind of war effort that it eventually found itself drawn 
into. And some of the statistics and the discussion there about 
the impact of military strategy on the German economy on the 
one hand and then on the limitations of that German economy on 
the way in which the Nazis were able to wage war here is, I 
think, has a lot of great insights that I would recommend it 
for reading.
    Mr. Gallagher. Colonel Gunzinger, in less than 30 seconds.
    Colonel Gunzinger. Absolutely. I hesitate to offer one 
book, Andrew's ``Second Deadly Scenarios'' is pretty good. You 
didn't say I couldn't mention him. But there are a number of 
books written about the interwar period between World War I and 
World War II. There was a great ferment of generation of new 
ideas for amphibious warfare, island hopping, strategic 
bombing, mechanized warfare, written not just by U.S. authors, 
of course, but by German authors as well. And that was a 
fantastic period that reshaped how we conducted warfare for 
decades. So I think it is well worth investigating some of 
those.
    Mr. Gallagher. I will wrap all these up and send them to 
Lloyd Austin.
    Mr. Khanna.
    Mr. Khanna. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I am curious about how we 
think about the innovation of DARPA versus innovation in 
battle. So obviously, DARPA gave us Siri, the drones, GPS, 
internet, the mouse, that all propelled a lot of the Silicon 
Valley innovation. Is that--has that, have those innovations 
significantly helped us also in our military capability? And is 
there something about DARPA that has allowed disruptive 
innovation in a way that we aren't doing the disruptive 
innovation militarily when it comes to fighting? Or are we 
doing it in the same way?
    Dr. Krepinevich.
    Dr. Krepinevich. Dr. Krepinevich. Thank you. I have done 
some work with DARPA. One of the great advantages that DARPA 
has is it is unfettered in the sense that it has a lot of 
freedom to maneuver. I would say that from my perspective one 
of the challenges that you have with any innovation is whether 
a military service will adopt it in terms of a new technology 
or a new technique. A lot of times that will rise or fall on 
whether or not it sort of fits what a military considers to be 
its institutional needs. And so if DARPA is offering to the 
military something that will enable it to do something that it 
likes to do, enable it to do it better, enable it to increase 
its budget share, that is something I think that will increase 
the odds of DARPA having a success.
    The question is is whether the military, its institutional 
preferences, are actually well aligned with the country's 
strategic and security needs. And so, for example, I will give 
an example from history. The U.S. Army trying to introduce 
tanks and armor units in the 1930s, still had its cavalry arm 
arguing that horses could do just as good a job and in fact, in 
some of the field exercises they actually moved horses around 
the battlefield on trucks and then unloaded them off the trucks 
and then they went about their business. So a lot of times it 
is whether there is a receptive home and a lot of times it is 
whether the military has figured out how they are going to 
fight. Again, what is their operational concept?
    Another example would be the Germans and blitzkrieg. The 
Germans figured out that they not only needed tanks, but they 
needed tanks with certain design parameters. So they wanted 
tanks that had long range and could move fast and they were 
willing to trade defense in terms of armor plate and gunnery, 
fire power, in order to get that, because their vision of war 
was not to go back to World War I and fight trench warfare. It 
was to break through the trench lines and get so far beyond the 
trenches, speed, and range, that the allies couldn't re-form 
that trench line, that they would break into their rear. So 
again, a lot depends on this relationship between how--what 
kind of technology is emerging and the extent to which it fits 
the military's vision about what is the future of warfare.
    Mr. Khanna. I guess the paradox for me is that when it 
comes to spawning disruptive innovation the military has been 
way ahead of the commercial sector. I mean, the reality is--I 
mean, Steve Jobs, all these folks, they went and they saw the 
technology that DARPA and NSF [National Science Foundation] had 
created, and yet when it comes to the adoption of that very 
technology, it seems like they are slower than the private 
sector.
    Dr. Krepinevich. Well, it's--okay. Very quickly, if you 
look at the period between the World Wars, as Colonel Gunzinger 
was saying, it's been called the aviation mechanization radio 
revolution because that--those were the sinews of the carrier 
task force and blitzkrieg. Those were all developed--the 
leading arm of that was in the commercial sector, and the 
militaries adopted it or failed to adopt it based upon how they 
viewed these technologies supporting their vision of how they 
wanted to fight wars. Some were very innovative; some were--
like the French, for example, always our favorite example, 
basically sought to improve how they fought at--in a sense 
marginally as opposed to looking at an entirely new way of 
waging war on a much more effective level.
    And you can see this in the commercial sector where you 
have these big innovations, as you pointed out, which really 
lead to a different kind of product. And if there's a book to 
be recommended there, it is Clay Christensen's ``The 
Innovator's Dilemma.''
    Mr. Khanna. Thank you.
    Mr. Gallagher. Mr. LaLota.
    Mr. LaLota. Thank you, Chairman.
    Thank you to our witnesses for being with us here today. I 
represent New York's First Congressional District, the eastern 
end of Long Island, a couple of hours outside of Manhattan. My 
district includes Hauppauge, the Nation's second largest 
industrial park outside of Silicon Valley, and more broadly 
Long Island. The greater region is home to 167 defense and 
aerospace companies comprising over 3 million square feet of 
industrial and commercial space with over 10,000 full-time 
employees and $3 billion of economic activity.
    And as was noted in some of your opening testimony, with 
the decline of domestic industrial defense contractors it is 
important to recognize and promote the existing ones, 
specifically where I am from, Long Island's industrial defense 
industry, whose contributions help to keep our Nation's 
military the greatest the world has ever known.
    With that in mind and for any or all three of you, from a 
warfighting capability development perspective what can our 
government learn from our partners in the private sector who 
are constantly working on the next generation of machinery and 
technology?
    Colonel, you seem like you might want to lean into that 
one.
    Colonel Gunzinger. Yes, I think we can--our military can 
learn quite a bit. I've noticed in my time when I was on the 
Air Staff, then OSD--when a chief of service or a senior 
leader, military or civilian, wanted to know about next-
generation technologies, they usually called their own labs. 
Oftentimes I found there was a better answer out in the defense 
industry, out in the commercial world. And having the ability 
to reach out and understand what is being developed, what is 
the maturity of that technology and how that could be adapted 
to address many of the challenges our military faces is 
critically important.
    It's both a push-pull. Industry needs to be--have pathways 
to the government to inform, hey, this is what we've done. We 
think this can help. But our military needs to pull as well. 
They've got to be open to asking instead of just looking at 
their own labs. That's critically important.
    Mr. LaLota. In your mind is that communication, is that 
collaboration happening at the right level right now?
    Colonel Gunzinger. Increasingly? Yes. Enough? No. And 
that's why I'm a huge fan of things like war games, which will 
bring in industry along with operators and planners and 
strategists, maybe even a couple budget people, and get them 
together to deal with kind of an operational problem and say--
and hear people say, hey, you know, we have a new technology 
that can do this. We didn't know that. Can you produce that at 
our next--yes, we can. It's that kind of a dialogue that can 
really help inform our planners and lead to the creation of 
requirements which will then lead to actual combat 
capabilities.
    Dr. Herman. And I think I would add this, too, that I think 
one of the other important ingredients for this kind of 
interaction is including more of the warfighters directly into 
the discussion instead of having--instead of treating--well, 
either senior command or the offices of the Secretary or other 
agencies to be intermediaries between industry and warfighters, 
bring the warfighters in. Show them what the capabilities are. 
Let them see. Let them make suggestions. And I think a lot of 
very interesting and exciting things will start to happen even 
with very small companies as well as with the largest.
    Dr. Krepinevich. I think one thing certainly that I would 
suggest the military learn from the private sector is the 
ability to compete based on time. Another book you might check 
into is George Stalk's book ``Time-Based Competition.'' If you 
can move faster than your competition, you can adapt more 
quickly. I think it was--Colonel Boyd mentioned it as getting 
inside their decision loop.
    But look at the--if you want to look at time-based 
competition, look at the American Navy in the period leading up 
to World War II. They created the industrial base that enabled 
them to outproduce the Japanese basically more quickly because 
you had a bigger base and a more adaptive base.
    If you look at the British, they pursued what was called 
the first and the second move advantage. If you can let your 
adversary move first, which is what the British did in the 19th 
century, because you can move faster than they can, then you 
see all their plans exposed. You know what direction they're 
going in. So your uncertainty about how to respond to them is 
much, much lower if you can move faster than they can.
    And that's why the British, even though they had the 
world's best navy, let the French go first in developing steam 
propulsion and first in terms of ironclad ships, two major 
innovations. And the British said go first. We're not going to 
obsolete our own wooden ships until you go first. And once they 
did, the British out-built them.
    Dr. Herman. And what we're seeing now is the Chinese have 
learned how to do that, taking technologies that we developed 
and using them and scaling them in ways that will make them 
incredibly effective militarily. We need to reverse that 
process.
    Mr. LaLota. Thank you. I yield.
    Mr. Gallagher. Mr. Keating.
    Mr. Keating. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    As I sit here thinking back to the future and advanced 
research and the technology that is involved, a disturbing 
thought I have always had--and I don't know what we could do. 
Are we missing things? But let's assume some of the greatest 
threats we have are small terrorist threats. They could be non-
state actors or they could be proxies for major competition 
actors. And with AI they can take biochemicals at very limited 
cost with only a handful of people doing it and kill millions 
of people.
    So as we are looking at all the technological things that 
have to happen, technology working at some more basic types of 
threats that we have present a real problem. Do you see us 
concentrating and researching what we can do around something 
like that, just AI to biochemical warfare, millions of people 
are dead, it cost may be hundreds of thousands of dollars and 
only a few people. It is an awful thought I have, but as we are 
looking at our greatest threats, sometimes are we missing some 
of these things because we are in race, a technological race?
    Dr. Krepinevich. In my book ``The Origins of Destruction,'' 
looking at the various technologies, there are oftentimes 
sections called the Democratization of Destruction. And it 
relates to your point, Congressman.
    So for example, we see today in the Middle East Hezbollah, 
Hamas--they have rockets. They have rockets that can fire at 
extended ranges. If you want to talk about a disruptive shift 
in the character of the competition, what happens when these 
rockets and missiles get precision guidance? Again, it's--the 
cost equation is not in favor of the Israelis when it comes to 
missile defense against precision weapons. They can use AI and 
algorithms to detect when these missiles are going to land in 
an area that they're concerned about or whether they're going 
to end up--land out in the middle of nowhere.
    If you look at the biosciences, a group of Canadian 
scientists from scratch and $100,000 engineered horsepox, just 
sort of resurrected it. With $100,000, that's not a lot, and 
you get a few intelligent scientists, you can do some 
terrifying things arguably these days.
    Look at additive manufacturing. We worry about additive 
manufacturing, people printing handguns. What will additive 
manufacturing allow these kinds of groups and organizations to 
print out in another 10 or 15 years?
    And certainly in terms of artificial intelligence there are 
arguments to be made that spear phishing in terms of basically 
malware and so on is going to be much more easier to generate 
using artificial intelligence. And the question is well, are 
defenses against that going to be enabled by artificial 
intelligence?
    So in a number of ways it looks as though the trends in 
technology are not only going to enable militaries, standing 
militaries to operate more effectively, but non-state groups to 
pose more challenging problems for us as well.
    Colonel Gunzinger. Let me add that back during the 2006 
Quadrennial Defense Review, which I helped lead a team for the 
Secretary of Defense that performed that review, we looked at a 
number of disruptive threats: bioterror, cruise missile attacks 
on the continental United States from cargo ships. We didn't 
really look at AI and so forth at the time. But the problem was 
people are willing to say this is a challenge. We must do 
something. We need to invest in analyses to figure out what's 
the best approach to dealing with this challenge should it ever 
happen. But when it comes to actually spending resources to 
counter them or prepare for them, they're not there because 
there are other requirements that the militaries have 
established that frankly eat up the trade space, eat up the 
budget.
    And they're valid requirements. I'm not criticizing that. 
But when it comes to resources my point is it's often not 
available to deal with those kinds of threats which could kick 
off the next conflict. And we might not even have thought about 
what that threat could be yet.
    Mr. Keating. Yes, just in closing I think that sometimes we 
are caught up in the major power competition to the extent that 
we are not looking at what some of the more realistic threats 
could be in that regard. And I think that is a mistake. I think 
if we are taking away from our ability in the intelligence area 
to try and scope out some of these things, get the information, 
be able to prevent it, perhaps so much of our resources go into 
this competition, we might miss what was the most realistic and 
dangerous threat of all.
    I yield back.
    Mr. Gallagher. Thank you. Dr. McCormick.
    Dr. McCormick. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
    Mr. Herman, in your witness testimony you described the 
decline of the U.S. domestic industrial capacity and workforce, 
both defense and non-defense, over the decades. You described 
the defense industrial base workforce as neglected in terms of 
national security strategy. Could you elaborate on the neglect 
and provide the recommendations you may have on how to 
incorporate workforce as part of our national strategy? And 
this may be as comprehensive as contracting versus 
appropriations versus all the inefficiencies that we as 
Congress are a big part of. How could we streamline that and 
make it better?
    Dr. Herman. I think that's an excellent question. It's one 
that I've been spending a good deal of my time more and more. 
In fact, right now I'm heading up a commission on workforce 
development for the space industry, which I think has enormous 
implications for--not only for our future economy, but also for 
future national security issues.
    And I think that the challenge that we face with regard to 
workforce--which by the way we faced in World War II as well. 
There was a lot more plants and shipyards opening during World 
War II than there were workers available. And this became a 
major problem of how to recruit and how to train and how to 
retain workers in that environment, particularly when you had a 
free market wage environment where if you were working in a 
defense plant in Detroit and you heard that in the Kaiser 
shipyards they were paying a lot more, plus you had health 
benefits, you could just pack up and go. There was no one that 
was going to say no, you have to stay and keep working on what 
you've been doing here with regard to producing tank treads or 
whatever else came up.
    So you've got the training and development. You've got 
workforce. You've got education issues, which we always keep 
coming back to the question about K-12 and STEM [science, 
technology, engineering, and mathematics] education and the 
constant shortfall that we have in terms of both development of 
skill sets, but also in updating the curriculum in those areas 
here. We've been talking about this for decades, and yet the 
trend is still downhill.
    So what I'm hoping we'll be able to do with the work that 
we're doing on the Space Workforce Commission at Hudson is to 
come up with some answers, to come up with a paradigm about 
ways in which we can expand workforce in ways that could be a 
paradigm for talking about it with the rest of the defense 
industrial base, but then also for our own manufacturing 
economy as a whole.
    But I think part of the issue has been that this has always 
been an afterthought, particularly on the part of military 
planners and strategists. And I think there are a number of 
reasons for that. I think part of it is, if you like--I'm going 
to say this--I think part of it too is a class issue. I think 
there's a--there was always been a reluctance to think about 
the blue-collar aspects of our defense industrial base, of our 
manufacturing base as a whole, and to think about it as a--as 
something which will always be there when it's needed instead 
of something that needs to be revivified and has to be taking a 
new direction for the 21st century. And that includes of course 
our work with foreign countries and with foreign workers as 
well.
    And part of my vision for an arsenal of democracies will be 
to think about the issue of workforce and the ways in which 
U.S. workers, workers from our leading democracies can in fact 
find a way to work together and to become part of a productive 
whole with those systems which are going to be most important 
to the future of our national defense.
    Dr. McCormick. Thank you. In regards, I only have a short 
amount of time, but, Mr.--I hope I don't mispronounce your 
name--Krepenivich----
    Dr. Krepinevich. Close.
    Dr. McCormick. Good. As far as lessons learned from the war 
in Ukraine with Russia and innovating for the future, do you 
think it is more important to focus on innovations in 
technologies versus tactics and surge capabilities when we are 
talking about not just any war, but looking into the future for 
lessons learned?
    Dr. Krepinevich. I think the answer is both. I think we 
need to look at how both sides are using technologies. There's 
of course a lot of discussion about the use of drones in that 
environment and how they've used them. I think in terms of 
operations though you look at what the Russians have done in 
particular recently in terms of defenses. And a lot of these 
defenses are very formidable against even modern weapons, and 
they aren't especially sophisticated when you just put in 
enormous numbers of land mines to stop someone.
    So a strong lesson.
    And that's been a characteristic of military innovation 
over time. After World War I the Germans lost and they spent 
several years looking at what went wrong, both from a 
technological perspective and an operational perspective.
    Dr. Herman. If I may say something quickly about----
    Mr. Gallagher. Go ahead.
    Dr. Herman [continuing]. Can I----
    Mr. Gallagher. Go for it.
    Dr. Herman [continuing]. About the Russian industrial base, 
defense industrial base. What is amazing is is that as an 
industrial base it's probably one of the least innovative of 
the major powers. It has been one which has really depended 
upon foreign export sales in order to sustain itself. And yet 
what's interesting is that you have a very un-innovative 
defense base which has managed to sustain this war effort for 
over these last 2 years. I mean, it's an incredible story of 
how being able to outlast your enemy and outproduce them even 
when your resources there aren't really cutting-edge and aren't 
really sort of moving the military technology paradigm forward.
    Mr. Gallagher. Mr. Golden.
    Mr. Golden. Thank you. You spoke a little bit about the 
British approach with the French and shipbuilding and alluded 
to China following this similar tactic more recently. I guess a 
two-part question for any of you. Are there, part 1, examples 
where the U.S. has either willfully or out of necessity taken a 
similar approach? And part 2, would you advocate that the U.S. 
look at a similar approach today in any instances, or do you 
think that would assume too much risk?
    Dr. Krepinevich. Just a couple of general observations. 
Since the mid-19th century warfare has moved from two domains 
to eight. Speed, range, and accuracy have enabled forces 
operating in each of these eight domains to influence 
operations in the other seven. So when you sit down and you try 
and figure out how am I going to defend the first island chain, 
you have a lot of choices, but you also have a lot of 
uncertainty because you don't know what is just the exact right 
mix of these kinds of capabilities and what attributes they 
have to enable you to maximize your effectiveness.
    So because this level of uncertainty is so high, the 
ability to experiment and exercise what a wide range of 
capabilities becomes very important to find out, again, to 
reduce uncertainty at the margins. What capabilities work? What 
don't? What attributes should they have? And the ability to 
adapt quickly as you find out what works and what doesn't, this 
issue of time-based competition--time is a resource. Budgets 
are resources, technologies are resources, people are 
resources. Well, so is time.
    And the side that figures out first how to operate most 
effectively, knowing that they're not going to get it perfect, 
that there's going to be some error, but that does it better 
than the other side--and then once the balloon goes up, as they 
say, and you start to see what works and what doesn't, who can 
move more quickly than the other to field those capabilities 
that actually matter more, that's the side that's going to have 
an innovative advantage.
    Dr. Herman. And can I say something here with regard to 
those range of choices and the range of domains? This is 
another role for artificial intelligence, by the way, is in the 
area of what we call strategic reasoning. In other words, 
helping planners and strategists work out what's the best 
combination of priorities involved in a multi-domain conflict, 
which we're going to have more and more of that as a 
possibility, but also a multi-front. What happens if you're 
involved in a conflict in the Middle East, in the Taiwan 
Straits, and in Central or Eastern Europe all at once? Well, 
artificial intelligence, and I would also add quantum 
computing, provide the kind of modeling and the kind of 
analysis, optimization analysis that will allow planners to get 
through and understand and have a range of feasible choices as 
opposed to being--having to sort of grope their way through the 
possibilities that go with it. Yet another example where again 
innovative--the disruptive innovation in this case can be 
really important at the very top, as well as what happens on 
the battlefield or what happens in an industrial base.
    Colonel Gunzinger. I would caution because we can do 
something technologically doesn't mean we should. And because 
an adversary is doing something doesn't necessarily mean we 
should follow suit.
    When I was in OSD Policy as a DASD I often heard Policy 
people, very smart individuals, talk about, well, look, China 
is imposing costs on us because they're fielding these medium-
range, intermediate-range ballistic missiles that can attack 
our bases along the first island, et cetera, et cetera, et 
cetera. We should do the same to them. Well, not necessarily.
    They have a very different target set than we would. 
They're attacking bases, our bases and our allies' bases that 
are undefended. They're not hardened. We can't disperse yet 
because we don't have the resources to do it. We lack kinetic 
and non-kinetic defenses, whereas China has the PLA air force. 
Very different kinds of targets. Very different--their bases 
are hardened. They're ready to disperse. They have decoys, et 
cetera. That takes a different mix of weapons and a different 
mix of capabilities to attack effectively.
    So as an operator you have to think through those 
differences to establish requirements that will make us the 
most effective against them rather than just say, well, we 
should do what they're doing.
    Mr. Gallagher. Mr. Luttrell.
    Mr. Luttrell. Dr. Herman, you mentioned artificial 
intelligence, strategic advantages, machine learning and how 
that gives us an operational strategic advantage over our 
enemies. I got to tell you I don't know an AI computer that's 
ever been shot at. And when a round goes downrange that has 
your name on it and is hollering at you, things change.
    I think my question is as we push for this industrial 
footprint, Colonel, you rattled off about a half-dozen issues 
that we are facing in the country that push us way, way to the 
rear. And I don't know if I could--it may be a fair assessment 
to say the Iraq and Afghani war may have pushed us to the rear 
because we were front sight focused on that engagement while 
our adversaries took our inventions and ran with them. And now 
they are that far ahead of us.
    The majority of my colleagues sitting on this panel with me 
served in combat and the one thing that you can't argue is a 
fighter on the ground with his or her finger on the trigger, 
period. I mean, one of the most formidable forces I fought 
against was the Afghanis and they have been fighting their 
whole lives. They love every second of it and I don't think 
they have ever lost a war, if I remember correctly.
    We hear in the committees up here all the time about how we 
need to advance the technological space in order to defeat our 
adversaries. Doctor, you mentioned that there needs to be--it 
needs to be weighed accordingly. Does the Hudson Institute--is 
their stance more in the technological space in order to combat 
China, Iran, or do you have an opinion on are we losing our 
footprint with the forces and how does that play out? Anybody.
    Dr. Herman. Well, I think that's one of the key issues that 
we're not empaneled right now to talk about, but it's the big 
question, isn't it? I mean, you can equip your people with all 
the advanced technologies you want and back them up with those 
technologies, the whole works--unmanned systems, AI, space, and 
all that--but are they ready to go into combat? Are they ready 
and are they dedicated enough and are they willing to risk 
their lives for what is coming?
    And one of the things that concerns me is that our--is that 
the cost of being--the cost of the United States being the 
leading superpower of the free world is a heavy one. It's a 
heavy one in human terms as well as economic terms and 
technology terms.
    And all of this--in my view all of this discussion that 
we've been having here is moot if we don't have a commitment on 
the part of Americans, and our allies--but particularly 
Americans because people look to America to lead--we don't have 
a commitment to defend freedom to the last measure. And that is 
still going to be the most fundamental, the most fundamental 
advantage we have against any opponent we face, against any 
scenario, war or--warfighting scenario, deterrence scenario we 
have. We need to make the sacrifice that those and you and 
others made and were willing to make, otherwise we're just 
wasting our time.
    Mr. Luttrell. The forces that we fought alongside the 
biggest--one of the largest statements they ever made is like 
you SOBs, you all volunteer to fight. It is in your blood. We 
don't have to do that where we are from. They make us do it. 
But you guys----
    Dr. Krepinevich. At one of the hearings after the first 
Gulf war I think it was General Powell was asked would you have 
basically traded your troops for the Iraqi troops or your 
equipment for the Iraqi equipment? And Powell said I'd trade my 
equipment, take theirs, but I'm not going to trade my troops 
for theirs. And there's an old saying about Bear Bryant that 
he'd ``take his'n and beat your'n, and then he'd take your'n 
and beat his'n.'' And so leadership, the quality of troops, 
counts for an enormous amount.
    That said, technology counts, too, because----
    Ms. Luttrell. It does, but there comes a point in time--and 
I am not arguing. In fact, I am a tech guy. But there was a 
point in time later in the war that couldn't drop a bomb, 
couldn't fly the plane over the top of us to help us out, 
couldn't do none of that. And I know that with the advances in 
AI, a push of a button is a very valuable threat to everybody 
that has the advancements ahead of us. I just wanted to get 
your opinion on that.
    Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
    Dr. Krepinevich. Well, two quick points about AI. I've 
worked a lot in missile defense and there's a point at which--
if you're say an air defense battery, you're going to be 
overrun and you can't figure out--and same thing if you're in a 
carrier strike group. How do you defend against all the stuff 
coming in? How do you prioritize it? And how do you sustain it? 
If it's a sustained attack over 10 or 15 or 20 minutes, a human 
being's mind starts to go to Jell-O.
    Same thing with a pilot that had to be tanked twice to get 
from the Arabian Gulf to Afghanistan on these 8, 10, 12 hours. 
After about 8 hours a pilot's mind starts to go to Jell-O. You 
can only keep your keen sense of being on the fighting edge for 
so long. And in those cases artificial intelligence in the form 
of a drone might be the answer.
    Mr. Gallagher. Mr. Deluzio.
    Mr. Deluzio. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Hello, everyone. Focus my questions on defense industrial 
base, consolidation there, and impacts on innovation. And so, 
look, the consolidation that has happened since the 1990s is 
obvious. It is pretty drastic. The primes have gone from 51 to 
5 in that timeframe. We have seen consolidation impact the 
number of bids from everything from weapon systems, components, 
parts, you name it. Senior leadership at the Pentagon, civilian 
and uniform, has raised the alarm. I think my colleagues in 
both parties on this committee--subcommittee have expressed 
different concerns around the impact of consolidation on 
readiness and otherwise.
    Oftentimes we focus on, and I have talked about us, as the 
public, overpaying for weapon systems, the industrial base's 
ability to deliver on time. The Wall Street Journal today or 
yesterday talked about the inability to surge excess and extra 
capacity.
    My question though is about the impact on innovation. Has 
this decrease in competition hurt the industrial base's ability 
to innovate? Is it too hard for smaller newer entrants to come 
in and compete? So I open the floor to all three of you.
    Dr. Krepinevich, start with you. How are you seeing this 
decrease in competition impact innovation?
    Dr. Krepinevich. Well, obviously the more primes you have, 
the more opportunity you have for competitive bidding and for 
different ideas as to how to meet a particular need of the 
military's.
    I would also say that when it comes to innovation a big 
part of what the industrial base can also do is respond to a 
military sense of how it--again how it plans to fight. I keep 
coming back to this. Until we decide how we're going to defend 
the first island chain, it becomes very difficult to know what 
we're going to ask of the industrial base.
    And the other point is not just with respect to innovation, 
but in this context--and I'll go back to the--some of the 
lessons of previous periods of disruptive innovation. The 
British were very keen to maintain an industrial base that 
could outproduce its rivals and do it more quickly. So that was 
a key metric for the British when they looked at their 
industrial base. Can we produce at scale more quickly than our 
rivals?
    The other issue that came out in one of the cases was with 
respect to the American Navy prior to World War II. Didn't 
quite know whether carriers were doing to be the answer. Didn't 
even know what kind of carriers. So they built different 
classes of carriers. They built small carriers, big carriers, 
Goldilocks carriers.
    Same thing. We didn't quite know what the best form of air 
attack was going to be. What was the best form of strike? They 
built horizontal bombers that again dropped bombs vertically. 
They built dive bombers. They built torpedo bombers. And then 
they had the industrial base--and again you had to have a 
fairly broad industrial base--be able to produce that faster 
and larger quantities than our adversaries could do in order to 
keep up with us.
    Dr. Herman. I would say that, from my point of view and 
from what I--and also from a World War II point of view by 
comparison, yes, there are certainly lost opportunities when 
you have reduced competition and when you have fewer numbers of 
primes, as Andrew was just saying.
    But I think it operates--the issue operates in a slightly 
more subtle way, and that is is that what I would see as even 
bigger obstacle, both to innovation but also to a productive, 
really productive and scalable industrial base is FARC [Federal 
Acquisition Regulatory Council], is just the Federal regulation 
and the enormous labyrinth and the hoops that companies have to 
jump through in order to negotiate that.
    And what you've ended up with then with regard to the big 
contractors are the ones who can negotiate that labyrinth and 
who have become--know how to work the system in ways in which 
so many other companies, including midsize and startup, and 
even commercial companies who would love to be involved, love 
to help out and bring their technology and their ideas and 
their products to our national defense, who simply take a look 
at the size of the Federal regulations and say there's no 
possible way.
    But we've been here before. In 1940, summer of 1940 the 
U.S. Army decided they need a light utility vehicle, right, a 
new one. And they sent out--with a range of specifications they 
sent out a request for proposals to 286 companies in America. 
Two of them answered. None of the big companies, not Ford, not 
Packard, not--none of them, General Motors, none of them 
answered because none of them wanted to do any business with 
the Federal Government. They knew it was a loss leader. They 
didn't want to get involved with it.
    The two who answered, one of them, Bantam, was about to go 
bankrupt. And it was like we'll just roll the dice one last 
time. We've never made anything like this, but what the hell. 
The other one was Willys. And it was of course the Willys Jeep 
model that came out of that. It was almost by happenstance 
because those two companies were thinking like we haven't got--
we don't want to get involved with the Federal Government, but 
we have to. Their backs were to the wall and that's why they 
involved--that's why they did it.
    What we really need and what we're working on, what is 
happening in places like the PPBE [Planning, Programming, 
Budgeting, and Execution] Reform Commission, with which I've 
been working over this last year--one of the things we need to 
do is to find ways to ease in and continue the involvement of 
small companies, of startup companies with great ideas and 
great technologies and to enable them to reach the point where 
they become part of programs of record and part of the 
mainstream with it. There I think even more than trying to 
change the balance between the big primes and the smaller 
players and the competition issue that's where the thrust is 
going to have to come.
    Mr. Gallagher. Thank you. Mr. Fallon.
    Mr. Fallon. Thank you, Chairman.
    Well [inaudible] just piggybacking on what you were saying 
before, invention sometimes comes to pass because it is 
necessary. Like World War I and we saw a lot of the things that 
came out of that, and how to use the airplane. We didn't really 
know how to use it. It was there, but it was in its infancy. 
And then same thing with World War II.
    I wonder how long it would have taken to develop nuclear 
weapons if World War II had never--it is kind of counterfactual 
history and alternate history, but it was kind of a necessity 
at the time and the race was on between us and the Germans 
and--then Yom Kippur in 1973. You see a lot of what the Soviets 
were fielding and then what we were fielding and then what came 
out of that: the Abrams, Bradley, Apache, Black Hawk, Patriot 
Systems.
    So the question really becomes does DOD want to innovate? 
And I'm of the humble opinion that nothing will change unless 
really everything does. So I wanted to ask the three of you on 
the panel what do you think the role of venture capital can 
play in the future of innovation? And we'll go with Dr. K. 
first.
    Dr. Krepinevich. Well, actually there is a--I think a room 
for venture capital. If you look at--and I think this 
particular period is similar to the interwar period between the 
World Wars because then most of the technology that was being 
pulled into military capabilities--aviation, mechanization, 
radio--was from the commercial sector. If you look at some of 
the technologies today--artificial intelligence, additive 
manufacturing, synthetic biology, right on down the line with 
some exceptions, for example, like directed energy and 
hypersonics--a lot of that is in the commercial sector.
    And I'm familiar with one organization, Shield Capital, 
that has set its mission to identify in the commercial sector 
those gaps that it sees in the commercial sector that would be 
useful to the military and to fund business in those gaps 
because they think down the road the military's--not only will 
this be useful in a commercial sense, but ultimately it will be 
in demand by the military.
    So I do think there is a role and historically there has 
been a role as well.
    Dr. Herman. The process that you were just talking about, 
that phenomenon is what I call emergence through emergency, and 
where you suddenly find yourself in a situation where your back 
is to the wall and you have to think innovatively and 
differently and come up with a new paradigm. But as our 
chairman was just saying earlier, we may not have such a time 
for that kind of reflection and retooling if we find ourselves 
in a conflict in the Taiwan Straits.
    This issue about venture capital is one I've thought about 
a great deal because I think it is a missing advantage that the 
United States have all of that private capital, equity capital 
which is looking for opportunities for investment in 
innovation. And a lot of it is--and I think we'll agree a lot 
of it is people who are involved not just in terms of making a 
profit, but also who do want to support our national security, 
who become involved in these technologies for patriotic 
reasons, as well as for return.
    The challenge is I think that we have two different 
cultures with what happens at DOD and what happens in the 
venture capital realm. And I think DOD, the Department has been 
looking at ways to encourage more venture capital and bring it 
on board, setting up offices, et cetera.
    But I think in some ways they think of venture capital as 
substitute capital. In other words, this is money we don't have 
to spend from our budget because we'll find private investors 
who will do it. But of course that's not the case. Venture 
capitalists are looking for something else. They're looking for 
return on their investment. They're looking for a long-term 
fostering of a growth from the technology or product that has 
national security uses, but which will ultimately pay off in 
the commercial realm and is commercializable as well as a 
national security asset.
    So I think finding a way in which to bring those two 
communities together involves bringing a mindset shift on DOD 
on the one hand, which is venture capitalists are very--can be 
a useful ally, but they're not thinking the way you do about 
money and about investment. And on the other side, on the other 
side of making venture capital feel like this is a--we're going 
to create an investment and an acquisition environment which 
will be conducive to bringing on your best ideas and your best 
company.
    Colonel Gunzinger. Let me jump in very quickly, if I could. 
Yes, DOD must innovate. It knows it must innovate. And to 
answer the last three questions on a point, but there have to 
be programs to offer VCs [venture capitalists] opportunities. 
There has to be opportunities for different companies to 
actually fund development of technologies that will lead to 
innovation.
    During the Cold War period our Air Force bought a new type 
combat aircraft, one every 2 years. After the Cold War it was 
one new aircraft every decade. Now that's not the kind of 
promise that VCs are going to pony up money for to fund 
technologies that can lead to new aircraft. That also hurts the 
workforce because they want to work on programs that are going 
to succeed and actually end up in the field, in warfighters' 
hands.
    So VCs have a role, but they must have some promise on 
return, and that's going to take new capabilities like CCAs, 
collaborative combat aircraft, which more--we see VC money 
pouring into different companies coming up with new ideas for 
this family of CCAs because there's some promise of actual 
programs and actual return.
    Mr. Fallon. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. There's a lot of 
difference between SpaceX and NASA [National Aeronautics and 
Space Administration] I think in a lot of ways, too, but 
necessity. All right. Thank you very much. I yield back.
    Mr. Gallagher. Thank you. I want to ask another question, 
which means you all will have an opportunity to ask another 
round, if you want. Just let us know. You can get in the queue.
    Dr. K., describe to me your recommendation for a national 
training center, potentially in collaboration with some of our 
closest allies.
    Dr. Krepinevich. To put this in context, I think if I were 
Defense Secretary one of the short list of questions I would 
ask is tell me how you're going to defend the first island 
chain.
    And during the Cold War we had a set of operational 
concepts that said this is how we're going to defend NATO. The 
Army and the Air Force developed something called AirLand 
Battle that described not only to stop the Soviet advance, but 
also how to conduct deep-strike operations to break up the 
second and third wave coming out of Eastern Europe.
    The Navy said we're going to keep Soviet submarines north 
of the Greenland-Iceland-U.K. gap. This is how we're going to 
do it. We're going to send our submarines up there. We're very 
good at submarine warfare. We're going to keep their bombers 
from coming down and bombing our transport ships trying to get 
across the Atlantic by something called the outer air battle. 
And there was this chainsaw concept they had as part of that.
    The Marines said we're not going to let them flank our 
troops in Germany by coming into Norway. And so the Marines 
pre-positioned equipment in Norway, they moved in very--the 
plan was to move in very quickly, seize the airfields, keep the 
Russians from getting to the airfields. We have nothing like 
that with respect to how you're going to defend the first 
island chain.
    When I was the special assistant to the Defense Secretary 
for Special Projects during the Cold War we had multiple 
mobilization scenarios. What is our mobilization scenario for 
Chinese military buildup in the Western Pacific? We looked at 
at least three different contingencies with the Soviets and we 
learned lessons from that. One of the lessons was we put four 
entire division sets of equipment in West Germany because we 
knew we could only--we couldn't match them unless we flew the 
troops in and not all the equipment with them.
    So the idea is what are the operational concepts for 
defending the Western Pacific, the first island chain? When I 
wrote ``Archipelagic Defense,'' to give you an example to set 
up the issue of exercises, I said, well, one way we might 
defend some of these islands is what I call turtle defenses, 
basically taking the lessons of what the Japanese did in World 
War II, basically going underground. In fact, when the Marines 
hit Iwo Jima in World War II, one Marine said the Japanese 
aren't on--they're under Iwo Jima.
    So would that work? Is that a viable concept? And this is 
where you get to the issue of exercises. In the 1970s we 
pioneered high-fidelity training, getting back to the earlier 
question about how well trained are your troops, and we 
established an opposing force. Back then it was the Soviets. 
Where is that kind of training center today? Where is the 
training center that says here comes the People's Liberation 
Army. They're waging systems destruction warfare. They're 
invading your island. How are you going to defend it 
successfully?
    Until you come up with an answer to that how do you 
establish defense priorities? How can you say this is what we 
ought to buy? And this is a wasting asset here. This might have 
been good in counterinsurgency or Desert Storm, but it's not 
going to be very helpful against the Chinese in defending an 
island along the chain.
    And so this--I've talked to, for example, Australians. The 
Australians say we've got a lot of land in Australia. We could 
develop a combined training center in Australia. You can 
instrument it. We could develop a combined Chinese opposing 
force just the way we did during the Cold War. Where is this?
    Exercises not only reduce uncertainty by helping you find 
out what works and what doesn't. It also builds up support. So 
for example, the Brits, their big problem around the turn of 
the century were submarines and torpedoes. The way they went to 
war was they would blockade the enemy's naval base. Well, now 
you can't do that because these people are firing torpedoes at 
you. Well, what's the answer? Part of the answer was conducting 
these kinds of exercises. So the Brits--the British naval 
officers and establishment realized they couldn't operate that 
way anymore. That's the first step to realizing innovation.
    And the other example I'll mention would be the German 
field exercises in the fall of 1937 where they actually had a 
panzer division for the first time, this armored division. And 
it just blew everybody's socks off. I mean, they just couldn't 
believe what this division was doing in the field. And that's 
not something you can replicate with a war game or with a 
study. It's visceral. And so the need for these kinds of 
exercises I think is crucial.
    Mr. Gallagher. Yes. I am out of time.
    Ranking Member, you have any more questions?
    Mr. Khanna. Thank you, no.
    Mr. Gallagher. Anybody?
    I have one more then. Sorry. Hey, rank has its privileges.
    Dr. Herman, your comments about--I don't want to 
mischaracterize it, but it seemed to be that like innovation 
can't be its own separate thing. It needs to be part of like 
everything going on. It made me think of Elting Morison's 
famous book ``Men, Machines, and Modern Time,'' where she talks 
about innovation is often just iterative. But it also involves 
like unique human beings with unique personalities. At times 
these are like very--the type of human beings that would not 
necessarily get promoted in the military, right? John Boyd was 
mentioned earlier, right? I mean, that is probably a great 
example of it.
    I guess what I am driving at is we talk about innovation, 
we talk about like the org [organization] chart of DOD, we talk 
about funding, but ultimately I think it comes down to like a 
cultural issue of do we have--are we promoting and empowering 
humans that can take intelligent risk and rewarding them for 
taking intelligent risk? I don't know what the precise question 
is there, but maybe you can comment on that, even if it is just 
to push back on my analysis.
    Dr. Herman. Sure. I think you can probably get excellent 
comments from everybody here----
    Mr. Gallagher. Yes.
    Dr. Herman [continuing]. On the panel on that one. I guess 
my view would be when I'm thinking about innovation and 
productivity and production is that you have a--you have on the 
one hand you have the commercial sector in which innovation is 
a necessity in order to compete in the marketplace. You always 
have to make things better and make things faster and make them 
cheaper. It's the nature of the business you're in.
    In the military I think confronting the issue of innovation 
is when things go wrong, right? It's when you're in the field 
and suddenly you realize something is not working and you've 
got to try something else, maybe a new technology, maybe a new 
tactics, maybe an entire new strategic rethink. This is why so 
often the winner of the last war becomes the loser of the next, 
right? World War I, the French and the British; World War II, 
the French were looking forward. They were actually looking 
forward to the German invasion, you know?
    Mr. Gallagher. Yes.
    Dr. Herman. General Gamelin was rubbing his hands with glee 
when he learned that the Germans were going to attack because 
he had thought he had figured out exactly how to beat them 
based on the experience of the first war, right?
    Mr. Gallagher. Yes.
    Dr. Herman. This is how innovation comes in. So in both 
cases you just put your finger on the common factor for both: 
risk taking.
    Mr. Gallagher. Yes.
    Dr. Herman. Risk in business, which sometimes leads to 
failure. Your business goes under and you start a new one. In 
the military or in--I'm not going to--I going say the 
military--defense industrial base, there is risks.
    Mr. Gallagher. Yes.
    Dr. Herman. Projects will fail. One of the great virtues I 
think with DARPA is precisely that. They do know that a lot of 
their projects are going to fail. And it's understood from the 
beginning that some of these are just not going to work out.
    I think the challenge is is to bring a similar mindset, an 
openness to risk, a willingness to embrace failure on the small 
scale in order to bring about success on the large scale that 
remains the next big cultural cliff to climb at our current 
Department of Defense.
    Mr. Gallagher. Well, let me put a finer point on it and 
invite your comment, Colonel Gunzinger. I just wonder if John 
Boyd, who is as much of a Marine Corps hero as an Air Force 
hero--whether he would have made it past the rank of captain in 
today's military.
    Colonel Gunzinger. Probably not.
    Mr. Gallagher. Yes.
    Colonel Gunzinger. Although I hear it's pretty easy to make 
major these days.
    Mr. Gallagher. Is your microphone on?
    Colonel Gunzinger. I apologize. It is now. One of the 
things we cannot do is turn innovation over to a bureaucracy. 
We've seen that in the past. We saw DOD establish the 
Transformation Office during the time Secretary Rumsfeld was in 
charge. And actually I took over that office as a DASD.
    But you put--you turn bureaucracy loose on innovation and 
you get anything but more often than not. That's why we have 
Rapid Capability Offices, a Strategic Capabilities Office. 
That's why we have DARPAs. Because they work outside the 
current processes to bring good ideas to the fore to the 
operators and planners who hold the money.
    But there has to be resources and a promise of some 
transition. And that requires leadership. You have to have 
leaders saying I agree we must take that risk. This is 
transformational. We need to break through the resistance of 
current programs and actually put money behind this and fund 
it. If it doesn't work, I'll take the hit, but I think we need 
to do this. And that takes leadership.
    Mr. Gallagher. Final comments on the human dimension from 
Dr. K.
    Dr. Krepinevich. One is at each of the four studies key 
figures that are leading the innovation have extended tenure. 
So I'll give you--I was on the Joint Forces Command Advisory 
Board. Typical tenure for a commander there was a year, maybe 
two. You can't give somebody a tenured job and give them 2 
years to do it.
    Mr. Gallagher. Yes.
    Dr. Krepinevich. And when General Mattis--he called me in 
around 2008 and said, you know, Andy, I'm thinking of shutting 
this down. And part of the conversation was to really get this 
to work what you'd want to do is find a Jim Mattis, give him 3 
years at Joint Forces Command. If he was making progress, give 
him another 3 years. And then fleet him up to Vice Chairman of 
the Joint Chiefs for a 4-year tour. That's 10 years to see 
something through.
    Mr. Gallagher. Yes.
    Dr. Krepinevich. And so it's--part of it is identifying 
these people.
    Mr. Gallagher. I'm thinking Naval Reactors.
    Dr. Krepinevich. Naval Reactors. Yes, certainly Rickover's. 
General Creech, who headed TACAIR [Tactical Air Command] during 
the revolution in basically the Air Force, headed TACAIR for 6 
years, from 1978 to 1984. And General Dixon before him was 
like-minded. Jackie Fisher in the Royal Navy had something 
called the Fish Pond because they were all trying to 
institutionalize. They realized that after they left, if they 
hadn't done that, there was going to be a backfill. And in each 
case there's this--if you want to know if a military is really 
engaged in disruptive innovation, there's going to be blood on 
the streets. Okay?
    Look at the Marine Corps. General Berger. Whether he had 
the right idea or not, you knew he was trying to do something.
    If you look at for example Fisher--I'll just give you the 
best example--he ends up defending himself in a session, in a 
series of hearings at the Committee on Imperial Defense, headed 
by the prime minister, because the syndicate of discontent has 
come out against him: admirals, politicians, and so on.
    Same thing with the American Navy in the period between the 
World Wars. Knife fights going on basically between the gun 
club, the battleship admirals, and the aviation advocates.
    So people matter. People matter a great deal.
    Mr. Gallagher. Thank you, all. This has been phenomenal. I 
guess more than anything else we need our warriors to read and 
write so that our fighting isn't done by fools, as the old 
saying goes. And they have a good place to start with all of 
your testimony and the books you have written that informs it. 
And this has been a really enriching conversation, so thank you 
for joining us.
    Thanks to the ranking member.
    And with that, the subcommittee hearing is adjourned.
    [Whereupon, at 3:26 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]    
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