Spending on military research and development has increased to levels not seen since the Reagan Administration and not seen since to a certain extent World War II. At the same time, military research and development has run into cost overruns and long delays never experienced before.
The culprit, in my view, to military research and development stagnation or lack of innovation by military research and development is management related. Note, what I mean by stagnation or by innovation, is the lack of or ability to create and/or refine and/or package ideas into reality that increase intelligence and situational awareness that enhances force projection, force protection, and force survivability with greater lethality and accuracy. Even so, management is not required to operate in a framework that requires a high degree of efficient and effective interactions and actions. At the same time, individuals with geek credit will be put off by, have been put off by, and loose the innovative and creative spirit by the multi-layer management associated with defense research and development. The increasing nature of military research and development becoming more and more protracted is also a professional death sentence for individuals with geek credit and merit that want to be in sync with the latest technological advances.
Even worse, military research and development has been and is being transferred to contractors for oversight responsibility that often lack sufficient geek credit. As such, military research and development management has become a conventional business that lacks "authentic business" and spends around 80% on marketing and stagnation and around 20% on human resources and innovation. In other words, instead of military research and development resulting in ideas becoming reality based upon what the forces down range need (similar to business model of Apple,) military research and development is telling the forces down range what they need (similar to business model of Microsoft.)
Military research and development must become innovative. They must leverage existing resources (public sector, private sector, and open source sector) based upon efficient and effective interactions. At the same time, create and/or refine and/or package ideas into reality that increase intelligence and situational awareness that enhances force projection, force protection, and force survivability with greater lethality and accuracy based upon down range needs and goals. Military research and development, in the end, must be an enabler that allows the forces down range to increase intelligence and situational awareness that enhances force projection, force protection, and force survivability with greater lethality.
We have to get back to what made this military research and development great that won World War II and sent a man to the moon, and that is to have the geek credit, merit, courage, curiosity, and commitment, to do things that have not been done before.
No comments:
Post a Comment