The United States is facing its most complex geopolitical challenges since the Cold War, and its defense is anchored in an acquisition system ill-suited to match the pace of modern technological innovation.
Fixing it will require a “software-centric” transformation, a recent report found.
The Atlantic Council’s Commission on Software-Defined Warfare released a final report in March outlining its recommendations for the Defense Department to transform into a software-centric organization better prepared to meet the demands of “deterring and combating digital age threats.”
The department must embrace the concept of “software-defined warfare,” which will allow it to increase the speed, accuracy and scale of information sharing for “dramatically faster decision-making and maneuvering compared to U.S. adversaries,” the report said.
Whitney McNamara, nonresident senior fellow in the Atlantic Council’s Forward Defense program and co-author of the report, said: “We’re really thinking about enterprise approaches that allow us to scale this, make it reproducible, scalable across silos.”
Part of that includes training to encourage better understanding of commercial software development best practices from an acquisition perspective, she told reporters during a Defense Writers Group event.
The report noted several challenges that could prevent the Defense Department from making this transformation, including the absence of enterprise processes and enablers to rapidly update software, as well as a lack of transparency and predictability with the defense companies that can provide and deploy software capabilities.
Peter Modigliani, senior advisor at Govini and co-author of the report, said speed is “paramount.”
“As we see in the current operational environment, things are changing on a daily basis. So, you better have that rapid iteration of your software,” he said during the briefing.
The department has also failed to establish best practices for developing or buying software, and there is a major shortage of talent and resources to meet the demand for it within the Pentagon, the report said.
Christine Fox, co-chair of the commission and senior fellow at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, said during the briefing to enable Defense Department teams to be more proactive and innovative, senior leaders need to accept risk. “It all starts with that very senior person … they have to say, ‘I want this,’ and ‘I empower you to try these things.’”
The authors emphasized the significance of keeping up with technology that is rapidly evolving on a global scale.
There are several constraints that “severely limit the U.S. ability to adequately deter and address … threats at speed and scale,” including relative-to-inflation flat defense budgets, military recruitment and talent shortfalls, byzantine acquisition processes and inadequate industrial capacity, the report noted.
In response to the challenges, the commission’s final report included several recommendations, the first of which was to mandate an enterprise data repository that would permit data-sharing across the Defense Department.
The commission also called on the Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office, along with relevant partners, to invest in capabilities to develop, deliver and govern AI solutions at scale.
Other recommendations included ensuring software interoperability and integration, transforming the Defense Department’s software requirements and removing all restrictions on software funding.
The report also called on the department to deepen collaboration with allies and partners to ensure efficiency.
Aspects like developmental and operational testing and the flow of data should be considered throughout the process of development, McNamara added.
“I would encourage government to demand excellence from industry, in the sense that I would engage early and often and ask difficult questions,” she said.
The commission also called for the Defense Department to leverage more commercial solutions and engage with nontraditional vendors, which can lead to cost, schedule and performance improvements, according to the report.
“America has a sustainable competitive advantage for software in the commercial space, so DoD needs to leverage that for our military advantage,” Modigliani said. There has been a resurgence of Silicon Valley technology hubs working on defense systems, and “getting some of the key talent” to develop “exciting defense solutions” will be key, he added.
The hope is that by adopting the commission’s recommendations, the Defense Department can create a “modern, agile and resilient defense infrastructure that is capable of fostering a robust software foundation that will bolster the capabilities of U.S. hardware,” the report stated.
“The rapidly shifting geopolitical landscape, marked by an axis of aggressors, demands immediate and decisive action to maintain U.S. strategic advantage,” it said.
