BUILDING STEM SKILLS Donna Bulger, associate director for operations and outreach at the Natick Soldier Research, Development and Engineering Center, watches a demonstration of a robot built by Natick High School students participating in a STEM project in 2013. STEM initiatives are foremost on the minds of many who are concerned with the Army industrial base as they consider the future of the industrial base workforce. (U.S. Army photo)


MICHAEL E. O’HANLON Senior fellow, Center for 21st Century Security and Intelligence Director of research, Foreign Policy program Brookings Institution Washington, DC


For example, we are studying our leading-edge unmanned aerial vehicles and exploring innovative ways to use and control them. Further out, we have ini- tiated tests in which drones can literally be controlled by the brain waves of Sol- diers in the field. Tis kind of technology already is being used to help wounded warriors control artificial limbs with their thoughts. Complementary to that, we are studying how a Soldier thinks in the field, how he or she responds to stress, and what he or she can and cannot handle.


Are these at the outer limits of conven- tional warfare thinking? Te answer is yes. But a lot of people thought Tomas Edison was crazy because he was ahead of his time. Smaller companies can move faster and move resources more rapidly, and they are unlikely to have resources tied up by the bureaucracies that plague some larger companies.


 Try to preserve defense employment in general, especially in a time, like the present, of national economic difficulty and need for federal fiscal stimulus. In other words, try to save jobs.


 Seek to preserve the immediate capacity of our


industrial base to


ramp up production fast in the event of a national security surprise.


 Attempt to keep key manufacturers in crucial areas of industrial capability as healthy as possible.


 Promote ongoing technological advancement by paying special heed to those parts of


In assessing the health of the national security industrial base, we can take sev- eral approaches, each of which has its own value:


industry that are


also pushing forward scientific and technological frontiers, with linkages to R&D and basic science activities.


Because these industrial base goals are quite different from one another, it is


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CRITICAL THINKING


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