[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
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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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December 6, 2023
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December 6, 2023
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