Defense Department unveils science and technology strategy to combat adversaries
Mike Brest
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The Department of Defense released its science and technology strategy on Tuesday, which is an outline for how it will attempt to maintain a technological advantage over its adversaries for years to come.
The DOD’s 2023 “National Defense Science and Technology Strategy” builds off last year’s national defense strategy, which drove home the argument that the Pentagon is in the midst of a decisive period of geopolitical competition in which the current world order could be solidified or altered drastically.
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There are three aspects to the new policy: focusing on the joint mission by ensuring the DOD is developing the right technological investments, fostering a more innovative ecosystem and accelerating the transition of new technology, and ensuring the foundations for research and development are strong for both their physical and digital infrastructure, in addition to that for its personnel.
The policy “articulates the fundamental steps the department will take to sharpen our competitive edge in science and technology in order to ensure enduring advantages,” Nina Kollars, an adviser to the undersecretary of defense for research and engineering, told reporters a day earlier. “The strategy itself identifies pathways to enable alignment across stakeholders, both domestic and international.”
The strategy acknowledges that while the U.S. and allies had “unmatched capabilities,” that is now not the case because “advanced science and technology are now available worldwide,” and as a result, “these changes in commercial markets have altered the dynamics for who creates cutting-edge knowledge and tools for the military and how countries access them.”
A follow-up implementation plan is due to Congress 90 days after the announcement of the strategy, Kollars said, which will likely fall in early August.
“The challenges we face modernizing our defense science and technology enterprise have been decades in the making. Moreover, we now face in the People’s Republic of China a strategic competitor with access to cutting-edge research and development and the will to mount a sustained challenge to a stable and open international system,” it continued. “This represents a clear challenge to the DOD’s technological edge. Wherever the Joint Force operates in the future, we should expect that the environment will be contested.”
The department’s national defense strategy, which was released in late October last year, labeled China the “most comprehensive and serious challenge to U.S. national security” given the government’s “coercive and increasingly aggressive endeavor to refashion the Indo-Pacific region and the international system to suit its interests and authoritarian preferences.” It also described Beijing as the U.S.’s “pacing challenge.”
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Beijing has been rapidly modernizing and expanding its military for years now, having closed the gap between its abilities and those of the United States. The Chinese military has also gotten more aggressive in routine maneuvers or training exercises in the South China Sea and in the skies in recent months.
U.S. Chairman to the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley said in late March that he believes “that at least their military, and perhaps others, have come to some sort of conclusion that war with the United States is inevitable,” though he disagrees.