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Check Six, America
The US military’s technology advantage is slipping fast in many areas, and forecast research and development budgets hold little hope of restoring it, Pentagon acquisition, technology, and logistics chief Frank Kendall said last week. Speaking at a Center for New American Security event in Washington, DC, on Jan. 16, Kendall said DOD has “big problems” with R&D due to sequester cuts. R&D spending will be down in Fiscal 2014 and the Fiscal 2015 budget “is much worse than ’14,” he noted. Modernization and R&D are getting hit “disproportionately” because force structure and personnel can’t be cut fast enough to meet mandated spending targets, he said. Having a technology lead is “not assured” unless the Pentagon pays to keep its edge, Kendall warned, and the longer budgets are held down, the more competitors will catch up. The US is only “several years ahead” of China and Russia’s fifth-generation fighter projects, but he sees parity in ballistic and cruise missiles, where competitors are “doing quite well compared to us.” Kendall said electronic warfare, “I think, is a close race right now,” and while the US has a clear lead in submarines, “our space systems are vulnerable.” There are “some areas where I’m much more concerned than with others,” he said. “I don’t think we should be complacent.”
Timed Out
Military technology is “not a variable cost” and shouldn’t be treated as one, said Pentagon acquisition, technology, and logistics chief Frank Kendall. Research and development “drives the rate of modernization. R&D is really not dependent on the size of the force structure. It doesn’t matter how many tanks you buy; if you want a new tank every 20 years, you have to do the R&D…And yet we have a tendency to treat it like a variable cost. And cut it…more” than other elements of defense, said Kendall during a Jan. 16 Center for New American Security event in Washington, DC. He warned that with technology, “Time is not a recoverable asset and R&D really buys you time. If you give up time, you do not get that back.” He explained that, “I can buy back readiness. I can increase force structure. (But) We have no way of buying back the time it takes to get a new product...(and) that timeline is relatively long.” It usually takes two years from stating a need to getting a budget, “then we have two…to four years of risk reduction, where we develop the technology…then we have five or six years of development…into production, and then we have few years of building up numbers to be of significance.” Cutting the early years—the R&D period—creates a delay that will exact a cost down the road, he warned
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So what do the members here think? The US is the only country that basically produces the broadest range of weapons and technologies required for a truly global force. Is the current budget environment making this problematic? Should we curtail our far flung military base system? Cut our ocean presence? Move to a more defensive 'continental' defense structure?
The US military’s technology advantage is slipping fast in many areas, and forecast research and development budgets hold little hope of restoring it, Pentagon acquisition, technology, and logistics chief Frank Kendall said last week. Speaking at a Center for New American Security event in Washington, DC, on Jan. 16, Kendall said DOD has “big problems” with R&D due to sequester cuts. R&D spending will be down in Fiscal 2014 and the Fiscal 2015 budget “is much worse than ’14,” he noted. Modernization and R&D are getting hit “disproportionately” because force structure and personnel can’t be cut fast enough to meet mandated spending targets, he said. Having a technology lead is “not assured” unless the Pentagon pays to keep its edge, Kendall warned, and the longer budgets are held down, the more competitors will catch up. The US is only “several years ahead” of China and Russia’s fifth-generation fighter projects, but he sees parity in ballistic and cruise missiles, where competitors are “doing quite well compared to us.” Kendall said electronic warfare, “I think, is a close race right now,” and while the US has a clear lead in submarines, “our space systems are vulnerable.” There are “some areas where I’m much more concerned than with others,” he said. “I don’t think we should be complacent.”
Timed Out
Military technology is “not a variable cost” and shouldn’t be treated as one, said Pentagon acquisition, technology, and logistics chief Frank Kendall. Research and development “drives the rate of modernization. R&D is really not dependent on the size of the force structure. It doesn’t matter how many tanks you buy; if you want a new tank every 20 years, you have to do the R&D…And yet we have a tendency to treat it like a variable cost. And cut it…more” than other elements of defense, said Kendall during a Jan. 16 Center for New American Security event in Washington, DC. He warned that with technology, “Time is not a recoverable asset and R&D really buys you time. If you give up time, you do not get that back.” He explained that, “I can buy back readiness. I can increase force structure. (But) We have no way of buying back the time it takes to get a new product...(and) that timeline is relatively long.” It usually takes two years from stating a need to getting a budget, “then we have two…to four years of risk reduction, where we develop the technology…then we have five or six years of development…into production, and then we have few years of building up numbers to be of significance.” Cutting the early years—the R&D period—creates a delay that will exact a cost down the road, he warned
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
So what do the members here think? The US is the only country that basically produces the broadest range of weapons and technologies required for a truly global force. Is the current budget environment making this problematic? Should we curtail our far flung military base system? Cut our ocean presence? Move to a more defensive 'continental' defense structure?
