Cutting-edge weapons such as the Army’s RAH-66 Comanche take decades to develop and produce, and may be obsolete by the time they arrive on the battlefield. Is our Byzantine procurement system permitting our enemies to get ahead of us?
In 1968, Gordon Moore, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Intel, forecast that the number of transistors that could be etched onto a single silicon wafer would double every 18 months. In the intervening 30 years, that doubling period has varied between nine months and two years, but the prediction itself has remained remarkably stable. It has been extended to a wide variety of other information technology-related areas such as central processing unit speed and mass storage density. The dollar costs of these technologies also have remained quite stable: succeeding generations of leading-edge technology generally cost the same as the preceding generation. Advanced information technologies are clearly continuing a decades-long trend of exponential growth.
The rapid pace of improvement in information-processing technology means that there can be regular quantum leaps in capabilities and applications, which often involve block obsolescence and wholesale replacement of existing hardware and software. Good examples of such leaps are the transition to the Windows 95 operating system, a switch that made a decade's worth of DOS software obsolete almost overnight, or the adoption of the CDROM format, making magnetic floppies a relic of the 1980s. For the commercial sector, such periodic revolutions are expected: most high-tech organizations expect that their computing hardware will need to be completely replaced every three to five years, and software upgraded even more frequently. For flexible and dynamic organizations, such rapid changes in technology can be dealt with and integrated in relatively short order. Moore's Law is an expensive proposition, but one that is not entirely unwelcome, as it yields the promise of significantly improved productivity and efficiency.
To those charged with the management of the nation's defense establishment, however, Moore's Law has proven to be a sharp thorn in the side, one with the potential to seriously disrupt hopes of a long-term maintenance of U.S. military dominance in the Age of Information. The tempo of our military acquisition cycle has remained what some might charitably term "glacial"—the timeline from concept to production still remains on the order of ten-plus years. These long timelines apply not only to major weapon systems, but also to more mundane systems and capabilities like desktop computers. One need only visit any active-duty unit to see the hodgepodge of antiquated information processing equipment that is expected to support the administrative and operational needs of the unit. Although numerous attempts have been made over the years to streamline or otherwise jump-start the acquisition cycle, the procurement timeline for major end-items has remained stubbornly constant.
Other nations, however, may not be constrained by inefficient acquisition processes or rigorous accounting standards. BBC defense correspondent David Shukman has said "Technologies of a bewildering variety are suddenly on the loose and the competition to find new ways of putting them to military use is no longer the preserve of the most advanced industrial nations. There is now a free-for-all to acquire weapons which may allow even relatively weak countries the chance to leap-frog their way to battlefield superiority." It may be possible for potential foes unencumbered by Byzantine purchasing rules and regulations to leap ahead of the United States in critical battlefield functional areas or to field cheap countermeasures to costly U.S. weapon or sensor systems by means of advanced information technologies. Do the implications of Moore's Law suggest that the military procurement process can unintentionally lock our forces into premature obsolescence and vulnerability? If so, what measures can be taken to minimize the probability and impact of such occurrences? Although these questions are impossible to answer definitively, the balance of available evidence suggests that Moore's Law is a growing determinant, and that the risk of opening unintended "windows of vulnerability" for our forces is increasing.
Getting Inside Our Modernization Cycle?
The late Colonel John Boyd (U.S. Air Force) is generally recognized as having introduced the concept of the Observe-Orient-Decide-Act (OODA) model of the command-and-control process. If a foe is able to react faster than you can in these four processes, then he can react faster to a changing situation, forcing you into a reactive node while he seizes the initiative. The opponent is then said to be acting "inside your decision cycle." When that happens, the option for independent planning is lost and the commander is forced into the losing proposition of playing catch-up with the enemy and, barring a lucky break -or two, almost certain defeat.
Boyd's OODA concept also can be extended to the modernization quandary. The considerable size and span of the U.S. defense infrastructure means that it can take a considerable period of time to field a new system or capability completely. For example, the Army's Comanche helicopter, the RAH-66, was first proposed in 1982 as a replacement for aging scout helicopters in the Army fleet. The first "mission needs statement" for what at the time was called the LHX (or Light Helicopter Experimental) was generated 17 years ago. The Army still has not completed prototype testing and development, and the system is not expected to reach the hands of the troops for another six years—a "concept to production" lifecycle of 22 years! The Air Force's F-22 program has a similar tale to tell, albeit a much more expensive one.
Although many development efforts spend a considerable amount of time examining the means that might be used to counter a system or capability, there is no guarantee that the necessary insight will always be available in time and with sufficient detail to foresee all emergent threats. Using the OODA paradigm, the time available for "observing" and "orienting" has decreased dramatically, and will likely continue to do so in the future. An opponent with a smaller force and a more responsive acquisition cycle conceivably could observe the U.S. fielding decision, develop appropriate technological responses or counters, and then begin fielding this capability while the U.S. system is still mired in the acquisition process.
If the United States is not prudent in the manner in which new military technologies are selected and procured, this nation easily could find itself in a situation where a traditionally inferior power is able to parry an attempt to project power. A technologically advanced but aging force could be pitted against a much smaller, less well-equipped force that happens to possess a technological silver bullet. Although information technology (IT) is often touted as the enabling means to get inside an adversary's "decision loop," the reality is that a nation unencumbered by Western-style procurement regulations might easily be able to get inside our "acquisition loop" and field newer weaponry well before we finish buying already obsolete equipment. IT represents a potential double-edged sword.
Senior defense officials always have been confronted with the dilemma of balancing procurement with operations and maintenance (O&M). Fund procurement at the expense of O&M, and you will have a more capable future force, but one less capable of operating effectively in the near term. Fund O&M at the expense of procurement, and you are effectively eating your seed corn. Unfortunately, the tyranny of Moore's Law has added another complication to this conundrum, making it increasingly unlikely that the best set of information technologies will be selected for use.
COTS Muddies the Waters
To complicate the situation further, the United States and other First World nations are becoming ever more dependent upon commercial, off-the-shelf (COTS) technology. It is becoming a mantra in some quarters that government-specified technology is dead, and that if the Department of Defense is not buying commercial, then it is wasting time and money on inefficient solutions. We seem to be disregarding the fact that the military operating environment presents situations far different from those encountered in the "war" between corporate interests.
COTS obviously has its place, particularly with respect to the more administrative functions of the military, but we should recognize the potentially significant consequences of applying open-market solutions to the sometimes unique requirements of the military. The U.S. government's concept of IT amortization is significantly different from that of the private sector—when the U.S. government buys a desktop system, it expects to use it for a considerably longer period of time than the private sector. The shift of the commercial sector to the Microsoft Office environment has still not been fully incorporated into all elements of the military, some eight years and three generations of microprocessors later. Clearly, notions of technological amortization will need to be significantly revised, and with them the concurrent added costs.
Further, we should expect that our adversaries will be buying much the same technology on the open market, and that having this technology openly available will allow them the opportunity to explore in depth the manner in which vulnerabilities or weaknesses can be exploited. Although no commercial vendor deliberately releases software with obvious security flaws, recent history is replete with examples of creative hackers forcing their way into seemingly secure systems. It is an unfortunate truism that today's military runs on Powerpoint briefing slides, but it is also a clear indicator the extent to which COTS tools have infiltrated our way of doing business. If a means to insert destructive viruses into Powerpoint briefings is ever found, then U.S. military forces would truly be crippled.
Making a bad situation even worse is the potential of technological "lock-in." A concept first advanced by economists (notably Brian Arthur of the Santa Fe Institute), lock-in occurs when a specific technology manages to capture market share and dominance, not necessarily because it is the best technology, but because of the vagaries of the market. This concept was difficult for many schooled in traditional economics to accept, as it refuted the dearly held notion that the rational market always will select the best available option or technology.
In the rush to adapt the newest or most popular technology, there is always the risk that a lock-in could be a possible outcome. The chances appear to be increased by the large-scale acquisitions executed by the Department of Defense, which allow for little variance once the effort enters the formal acquisition process. Even worse, the consequences of a wrong decision concerning fundamental questions such as operating systems or technical architectures could lead to a defense-wide lock-in. Given the inertial response of the military response to institutional change, such a lock-in could greatly impede efforts to properly equip and outfit our forces.
Lessons from the Past
There is, unfortunately, historical precedent for such an adverse lock-in situation affecting a nation's military: the Royal Navy's aircraft carrier force in the inter-war years experienced an inadvertent technological lock-in that cost it its place as a leader in naval aviation innovation, and would later cost the nation dearly in the conflict with Germany and Japan. Although the British had emerged from World War I as a clear leader in the development and use of carrier-based aircraft, squabbling and budgetary pressures forced choices to be made in carrier design that would severely constrain both the type of aircraft that could be employed, as well as the operational concepts for employing them. In particular, architectural choices would greatly hamper the development of effective doctrine, such as closed hangar decks that did not permit aircraft to be warmed up. Subsequent aircraft design and development were directly influenced by the architecture of the carrier, resulting in planes that were completely outclassed by their Japanese and American contemporaries. Although the choices in this case involved naval architecture instead of software or system architecture, the lessons are clear—decisions concerning architectures can have profound and unintended consequences.
The dire situation for the British was further obfuscated by the fact that the British "templated" their views to other nations, most notably Japan and the United States. Because the British couldn't solve the problems, they presumed that other nations faced the same seemingly insurmountable difficulties. Reports of alternative approaches and new operational concepts emerging from other nations' navies were dismissed out of hand, either through arrogance or through the lack of a critical-analysis capability. From today's perspective, the most troubling aspect may be the fact that the British were convinced that they were doing the right thing, and that they had not overlooked any major factors.
Such a situation easily could arise again. U.S. military victories in the last ten years have left a feeling of moral, technological, and operational superiority in the minds of many in the U.S. military establishment, a feeling that is probably warranted, but extremely dangerous nonetheless. The lessons of the Gulf War are not the sole property of the United States, and it is easy to see how a one-sided mindset could develop that might cause us to overlook non-traditional developments that we dismiss as irrelevant, much as the Royal Navy did. The accelerating pace of technological change does not leave room for errors of judgment, particularly in the national security arena.
An Uncertain Future
Moore's Law is a real, measurable phenomenon. The accelerating pace of information technology and associated capabilities has profound implications for our future military strategy, doctrine, and procurement philosophy. Available evidence suggests that this pace of change continually overwhelms our organizational and doctrinal approaches. We must remind ourselves and our decision makers that war will remain the savage clash that it always has been. We will face adversaries who do not play by our rules, who see our values as vulnerabilities, and who are willing to exploit both our technology and our values in an effort to thwart U.S. intentions. The challenge to U.S. policy makers will be to find their way through the maze of obstacles and minefields laid down by the implications of Moore's Law, and develop both an acquisition strategy and a process that minimizes risk.
Obviously, we cannot be opposed to all new technology, but we must also exercise prudence and foresight. While there is clearly an obligation to take advantage of the latest technology and incorporate it into our military forces, we should constantly ask ourselves: what will a given technology drive our adversaries to do? Those who can answer this question will have a much greater chance of prevailing on tomorrow's battlefields.
Ensign Calpin is a doctoral candidate at George Mason University studying patterns of military innovation. He is an intelligence officer assigned to the Office of Naval Intelligence, and works full-time as an operations analyst at the MITRE Corporation.