US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel recently announced the launch of a Defense Department-wide effort to pursue innovation. Despite his departure, the formidable Defense Department bureaucracy has now been aligned in pursuit of the so-called "third offset strategy."
Like the first two versions, (nuclear weapons and the development of stealth, precision strike and surveillance capabilities), this third iteration is aimed at putting "the competitive advantage firmly in the hands of American power projection over the coming decades."
The strategy has intuitive appeal. America has a cultural affinity for technology and self-identifies as a nation of innovators. But there is ample room for skepticism. Even more troubling, absent adjustment, its improbable success would leave dangerous vulnerabilities.
Four main hurdles await producing the major technological advances envisioned in "Offset 3.0."
■ Unlike its predecessors, this attempt to propel US technological superiority forward will require leveraging commercial, rather than government-produced, innovation. This presents a plethora of problems, and at a minimum will require substantial changes to government acquisition processes.
■Meaningful acquisition reform will not be enough. Better ways of buying only make a difference if the Pentagon is buying the right things, and if it internally develops what commercial markets will not. The Defense Department has repeatedly shown its research establishment lacks a clear understanding of private sector advances as well as where it can add the most useful scientific value.
A recent interim report by the Defense Business Board, for example, found that the Pentagon "frequently fails" to exploit the most relevant and critical commercial technologies, and that it lacks a process to set and fund science and technology priorities.
■ Actually fielding these technologies will rely on the development of supporting policy and obtaining buy-in from the military services. Both may prove difficult.
Take, for example, the desire to better leverage autonomous systems. While the advantages of autonomy are legion, its greater adoption for military purposes will likely raise ethical and policy issues. Robotics will likely continue to face some cultural resistance. Widespread employment of machines could threaten the size or composition of a military service, creating strong headwinds. Many of the technologies in the second offset strategy were much better aligned with the services' interests.
■ The innovation initiative has major elements that Hagel characterized as "linked," but that may in fact pull in opposite directions. One of the most prevalent themes surrounding innovation is the importance of tolerating, and even encouraging, failure. Such failures imply some level of inefficiency. Resources must be put toward things whose application may be unclear or prospects for success unknown.
But the innovation initiative explicitly calls for a continued focus on ways to make the Pentagon "more efficient and effective." The ability of DoD's massive bureaucracy to strike the appropriate balance between informed risk and wastefulness is questionable.
To date, much of the focus on the initiative has been around development of advanced technologies, particularly those that can overcome advances in anti-access/area-denial or A2/AD capabilities. These advances have vastly increased the vulnerability of fixed bases, large naval platforms, non-stealthy aircraft and space systems.
There is also growing evidence that US adversaries are pursuing an equally it not more vexing asymmetrical approach to which we have no coherent response. Indeed, there is not even an agreed-upon lexicon to capture elements of what some have termed "lawfare," or "new generation," "gray," "ambiguous," or (for traditionalists) "unconventional" warfare.
China is exploiting its cyber capabilities to conduct espionage and possibly attacks in the face of continued Western legal and policy equivocation. Russian military doctrine rests on phases that include not only psychological operations but intimidation and bribery of officials, activities which the West is unprepared to counter.
The actions of Iran's proxy and paramilitary forces during combat in Iraq and now in Syria continue to confound Western legal structures, and the Islamic State has proved its ability to adeptly employ social media while largely avoiding the associated vulnerabilities that can enable Western forces to target them.
State and non-state actors have recognized they can pursue strategic objectives in ways that avoid US conventional military superiority. Paradoxically, the determination of US defense leaders to put effort into countering A2/AD challenges may push even greater adoption of these "gray warfare" approaches.
This does not mean efforts to maintain a technological edge are unnecessary. But if a broad conception of the strategic environment is not incorporated into innovative activities, strategic risks may simply shift rather than decline. The Defense Department should ensure that its articulation of the future threat environment explicitly considers the types of military concepts, capabilities and technologies that might be most relevant to "gray wars" in particular.
The new defense secretary and Deputy Secretary Bob Work can set conditions for the offset strategy to truly restore firm footing to our national defense posture.
First, they should resist the temptation to direct innovation from above. Instead, they should establish "top cover" and ensure the supply of enabling capabilities (time, people and funding) for military operators to explore new ways of doing business. This should be done in parallel with technological development by operators simultaneously developing ideas for the types of technology they could employ.
Second, as Work has noted, the key to the innovation effort will be the people. This means hand-selecting the individuals who will play vital roles in new thinking, a practice that will upset the natural order but will be crucial to the innovation initiative's success.
Third, one of the promised "focused internal reviews" should examine ways to immediately reduce obstacles to buying commercial technologies, and to better focus internal research and development in areas that add the most comparative advantage. In the latter instance, R&D priorities should be expressed as capability outcomes rather than as specific technological approaches to allow the broadest intellectual pursuit.
Most important, the next secretary, in conjunction with Work, should immediately clarify that the scope of the offset strategy extends beyond countering A2/AD capabilities and acknowledge the asymmetrical gray war approaches being effectively employed against us. If the "innovation problem" is either implicitly perceived or explicitly defined solely as A2/AD challenges, the US will continue to struggle and be further ill-prepared for the future. ■
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Leed is the Harold Brown Chair in Defense Policy Studies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
