thinking much more about how we pre- pare for future threats and how we create the opportunities to ensure that we’ll have the decisive advantage.”
Tat will require fundamental changes in thinking, and not just in the Army, said Welby. It will require more than multiple initiatives called “innovation,” which he acknowledged is “a big buzzword” in the federal government these days.
“Innovation is about change,” he told the summit audience. Te Better Buying Power (BBP) initiative is an important part of it, he added, as it frees up resources to make it possible to explore more capa- bilities. (See Figure 4, Page 70.)
“I’m very encouraged that we’re meeting here today. I encourage you not to be sim- ply thinking about preparing material to support Innovation Summit 3 but that you’re thinking about things that you can do to help change what you’re doing today.”
TARGETING CHANGE Te concept of change itself covers an even wider universe than innovation, and it poses a much bigger challenge for insti- tutions as big and complex as DOD, the defense industry, Congress and segments of academia with long-standing ties to
DOD. Leaders in DOD, industry and academia agree that a cultural change is necessary in the defense world to create the freedom to innovate. While BBP has made some inroads to changing the way people think about acquisition, culture change within DOD or any of its insti- tutional stakeholders may be significantly more difficult than innovation.
From Welby’s perspective, DOD needs to “regrow some of the muscle tone that we had” during the global competition of the Cold War era, shaping future efforts to best our potential military adversaries so as to create a long-term, disruptive, i.e., game-changing advantage for the United States.
In an interview with Army AL&T, the Hon. Jacques S. Gansler, former under- secretary of defense for acquisition, technology and logistics and now chair- man and CEO of the ARGIS Group (Analytical Research for Government and Industry Solutions), pointed out a number of areas where the U.S. military is no longer ahead:
• Night vision. Te French have cap- tured the world market in part because France does not restrict the export of night vision devices (as the U.S. does),
and it has reinvested the earnings from international sales to advance the technology.
• Supercomputing. Te Chinese have the world’s leading supercomputer; it was developed by the National Univer- sity of Defense Technology, run by the People’s Liberation Army. It is worth noting, Gansler said, that a large per- centage of the parts come from U.S. manufacturers.
• Vehicle armor. Israel leads in this area, as the U.S. military has found in seeking to armor the next generation of infantry fighting vehicles. With encouragement from U.S. military leaders, Plasan North America—a branch of an Israeli company—now operates a factory in Michigan, satisfying the congressional mandate that DOD “buy American.” Gansler is on Plasan North America’s board of directors.
Other countries are also pushing for inno- vation, Gansler noted—among them China, India,
Israel and Singapore—primarily
with a “top-down,” government-driven approach.
Te United States can and should take maximum advantage of innovative
FOREIGN TECH
The Tianhe-2 at the National Supercomputer Center in Guangzhou, China, is ranked as the world’s fastest supercomputer. Developed at the military-operated National University of Defense Technology, the system represents one of several areas in which U.S. military technology is no longer dominant. (Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)
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