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Dive brief:
- A large percentage of the U.S. Defense Department’s research facilities were built before the Internet and must be upgraded or the military risks being left behind as innovation in other countries accelerates, says an internal report to the department’s top leaders.
- The Defense Research Enterprise Review calls for an appropriation dedicated to the development of research facilities and an increase in the amount the department can spend on unauthorized facility construction projects.
- The report also calls for developing a database listing all of the department’s research infrastructure and testing facilities to improve portfolio visibility.
Diving knowledge:
The Defense Department has research facilities dating back to 1865, when the US military built its electronics design and development laboratory at New York’s Watervliet Arsenal, the report says. Currently, the average age of the department’s research facilities is 50 years.
“Today’s [Defense Research Enterprise] faces a strategic environment that has changed dramatically from the environment in which most of the enterprise was built,” the report says. “The pace of technology change is faster than ever with developers delivering powerful capabilities on simple-to-use platforms. Adversaries access these technologies more easily than ever before and provide non-traditional means for disruption, disruption and denial.”
The report notes how Russia and China, among others, are leveraging technologies that could affect U.S. security.
“China has consolidated its civil-military fusion model and is investing at a scale and pace that requires the United States to develop a new paradigm of government and industry,” the report said.
The first of more than a dozen recommendations in the report is to secure the approval of credits dedicated to the construction and modernization of the department’s research infrastructure.
“Authorized [projects] continuously fall due to the reprioritization of scarce services [military construction] funds for other operationally relevant priorities,” the report says.
The report recommends an annual funding line of $650 million to grow to $952 million over five years.
Military research facilities would also benefit if the department could undertake more than $9 million worth of construction projects without going through a permit process, the report said. Raising the cap to $20 million would restore “speed and agility to the facility revitalization process, ensuring America remains at the forefront of science and defense innovation,” he says.
The report makes a dozen other recommendations, including addressing a visibility gap of not having a searchable database listing all of the military’s research facilities.
