The staggering rate of change and the unacceptable time it takes the Pentagon to introduce weapon systems is leading to “a steady erosion of U.S. technological superiority” over peer competitors and non-state actors such as the Islamic State. Those were consensus views at a Tuesday hearing on the future of warfare before the Senate Armed Services Committee.
SASC chair Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) compared private industry’s operating on an 18-month cycle of introducing innovative technologies to the Defense Department’s 18-year cycle to bring major new systems to the force.
That fast pace of technological change will produce tremendous good in warfare, health care and society overall, said retired Army Gen. Keith Alexander, former head of the National Security Agency and Cyber Command. He added that speed comes at the cost of “tremendous vulnerability” especially to the power grid and financial sector in the United States. Those are the areas that countries such as Russia and Iran would try to disrupt.
READ: US Naval Institute News