“You should realize that all
technicians are liars.”
replied: “I admit they do tell
lies, but their lies are generally found out a year or two when their technical
ideas can’t be put into concrete shape. Tacticians tell lies too, but in their
case the lies only become evident after the next war has been lost and by then
it is too late to do anything about it.”
--Colonel Heinz Guderian to Colonel
General (4 stars) Freiherr von Fritsch, Fall 1933
Apparently, Mr. Work is cultivating
friends in the defense industry for his post-2016 job.
Hitler would have loved Work’s
plan. (rockets, jets, chemicals, nuclear, giant platforms, etc..)
Stalin would have rejected the investments on the grounds that they have
little or no practical utility in the near future. He would have
drastically cut their budget in favor of more promising, near-term payoffs in
things we really need to fight and win. (T-34 tank, Sturmovik, use of multiple
rocket launchers, etc.) Ike would have cut the budget and demanded
evidence for near-term success before providing any funding. (F-86, M-60 tank,
etc.)
NationalDefenseMagazine.org
December 14, 2015
2017 Budget Proposal to Include Billions for Next-Generation
Weapons Research
By Jon Harper
The Obama administration's 2017 budget proposal will include up to $15 billion
to advance the Defense Department's “third offset strategy,” Deputy Secretary
of Defense Robert Work said December 14 in Washington, D.C.
The Pentagon’s new strategy, unveiled last year, is focused on developing new
technologies and operating concepts that will offset the growing conventional
military capabilities of potential adversaries such as Russia and China.
“It’s going to rely initially on wargaming, experimentation and demonstrations,”
Work said at a conference hosted by the Center for a New American Security. The
Defense Department will likely spend $12 billion to $15 billion in fiscal year
2017 on these activities, he said.
The administration is set to release its fiscal year 2017 budget proposal the
first week of February.
Defense Department leaders are hoping to lay the groundwork for future advances
in the third offset strategy so it will survive after Obama administration
officials leave office, Work said.
“A successful offset strategy will go from administration to administration, so
for the next year we are focused on doing the intellectual underpinning and
doing as much of the demonstration work as we possibly can so that Congress
will help us keep this going,” Work said. “I will argue that when you look back
between ’16 and ’17, there were a lot of technological bets that allow us” to
push it forward.
A key focus of the work will be proving out the five “building blocks” of
human-machine collaboration that the Pentagon hopes to exploit as the autonomy
and artificial intelligence fields advance, he said.
One of those building blocks is autonomous “deep learning systems” that can
analyze large amounts of data, improve indications and warning, and deal with
incoming threats. For example, “You cannot have a human operator operating at
human speed fighting back a determined cyber attack,” Work said. “You’re going
to have to have a learning machine that does that.”
A second pillar is “human-machine
collaboration” to improve decision-making. The cutting edge helmet for
the F-35 joint strike fighter is an example of such teaming, because it
provides “360 degrees of information” to pilots by piping images outside the
plane to their advanced helmet displays, Work said.
A third area of interest is “assisted human
operations.” One such tool could be exoskeletons similar to the “Iron Man suit”
that U.S. Special Operations Command is developing to improve the
physical capabilities of its commandos, Work said.
A fourth component being looked at is “human-machine
combat teaming,” such as having a commander direct a swarm of unmanned
aerial vehicles against enemy forces, he said.
A fifth area of investment is “network enabled
semi-autonomous weapons” that could continue to operate in the face of
cyber and electronic warfare attacks on communication systems and technologies
such as GPS, he said.
The Defense Department is preparing to flesh out these high tech concepts in
fiscal year 2017, he said.
“What you’re probably going to see is closer to the order of [$12 billion to
$15 billion spent] on wargaming, experimentation and demonstrations to verify
that our hypothesis on these five components is sound,” Work said.
Photo: Deputy Secretary of Defense
Robert Work (Center for a New American Security)
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