Bad Idea: Looking for Easy Solutions for PPBE Reform
The defense community needs to manage expectations on PPBE reform and the degree to which it can improve commercial technology adoption, writes Jonathan Wong.
Tag: Innovation
Bad Idea: Innovation Theater
DoD has recently made efforts to improve the speed of innovation in defense, creating new organizations intended to improve innovation. But continuing down this path of “innovation theater” does little to change how the defense enterprise operates and adopts innovative ideas and technologies.
Cultivating a Defense Department Workforce for the Digital Era
Among the top priorities for President Biden’s Department of Defense should be retaining and cultivating a skilled STEM workforce at all levels in the Pentagon.
Bad Idea: All Sensors, All Shooters, All the Time – a Joint All-Domain Command and Control System That Prioritizes Centralization
JADC2 is supposed to give U.S. forces a competitive advantage by connecting sensors to shooters. But centralizing data streams only makes a bigger target — one that U.S. adversaries are already planning to take down. JADC2 should instead be reenvisioned into a more flexible, bottom-up system.
Getting to Less? The Progressive Values Strategy
In this brief, the authors explore a defense approach they have labeled the Progressive Values Strategy. The strategy is grounded in a view that the military instrument is not well suited to meeting many of the security challenges facing the United States. It focuses on achieving a level of military sufficiency that deters adventurism by others—as well as itself.
Getting to Less? The Innovation Superiority Strategy
In this brief, the authors discuss a strategy they have labeled the Innovation Superiority Strategy. The strategy is guided by a focus on achieving enduring American military advantage in the U.S.-China security competition.
Getting to Less? Exploring the Press for Less in America’s Defense Commitments
This CSIS Brief is the first in a series that explores the contours and implications of strategies that might reduce the U.S. military’s mission space through greater constraints on its ends, ways, or means.
Bad Idea: Integrating Artificial Intelligence with Nuclear Command, Control, and Communications
Integrating artificial intelligence with nuclear command, control, and communications (NC3) to create an automated strategic response system underestimates AI’s potential to inadvertently precipitate a catastrophic mistake.
Bad Idea: Assuming That Small Satellites Will Solve Big Satellites’ Problems
Every few years—and usually after a big satellite program in DoD runs into trouble—the popularity of small satellites resurges. Swapping big satellites for “smallsats,” however, will not address those problems.
Acquisition of Software-Defined Hardware-Based Adaptable Systems
The increasing importance of software has created an opportunity for the Department of Defense (DoD) to harness innovation through the acquisition and modification of adaptable systems.