Department of Defense (DOD) officials and military leaders argue that the United States is facing the most complex and volatile security environment since World War II. Facing a lack of desired funding, and with potential enemies of the United States investing heavily in precision weaponry and technology, the DOD has rolled out its plan to stay globally dominant: the Third Offset Strategy.
Put simply, the Third Offset Strategy is intended to, “invest in innovative ways to sustain and advance America’s military dominance for the 21st century.” As my colleague Matthew Fay has pointed out, however, innovation does not just stem from technological innovation—it requires conceptual and organizational change as well. While the DOD has acknowledged the need for deeper changes, it may instead be doubling down on the rigid, sclerotic organizational approaches of the past.
Speaking in front of the Air Force Association, Deputy Secretary of Defense Robert Work argued that, “offset strategies are not about technology per se.” Instead, he said, offset strategies are about operational and organizational constructs. Going through some military and technological history—which nations had access to railroad and telegraphs versus which incorporated that technology into warfare—Work highlighted that, “who gets the technology to field faster doesn’t matter.” What matters is how that technology is implemented.
So far, so good. The U.S. military has a long history of absorbing new technology, but struggles to adapt its organizational constructs for the best application of that technology. One of the areas Deputy Secretary Work discussed at the Air Force Association was the military’s lack of focus on electromagnetic warfare. A report late last year from the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA) argued that the DOD has the technology needed to restore electromagnetic dominance to the U.S. military, but lacks a coherent strategy for using the technology. The focus on organizational reform, then, appears at first glance to be a good thing.
Problematically, however, the reformed approach seems to be based on centralization. Deputy Secretary Work set up an Electronic Warfare Executive Committee in March 2015 to consolidate DOD electromagnetic investments. Work admitted that the “enterprise-level” perspective would likely make the individual services a “little uncomfortable.”
But organizational innovation, especially in an organization the size of the DOD, isn’t best served by centralized planning. Each service, and perhaps even units facing different domains within each service, will likely have different needs for new technology. These needs will require different organizational structures to best utilize the new technology—even if the technology is implemented across all of the services.
For example, the Army uses drones for counter-terrorism and air support, the Marines want minidrones to serve as expeditionary scouts, and the Navy has pursued an unmanned tanker to extend the range of manned planes like the F-35. These varying focuses force each service to utilize drones in a unique way, meaning that the likelihood of new organizational approaches increases across the military as a whole. If one service’s particular approach—a method of integrating drone swarms with manned units, for example—produces a successful and innovative way of using drones, that approach can be exported across the other services as needed. On the other hand, services are not constrained to a DOD-wide structure that may not benefit them.
That is not to say that enterprise-wide problems cannot be proposed or pursued by the DOD. Electromagnetic warfare is, and will be very important in future conflict, and the DOD should encourage the services to improve their capabilities. But the danger with a DOD-wide approach is that it risks a one-size-fits-all solution.
Instead, the services should be encouraged to pursue high-priority issues, but also be allowed to come to solutions fit for their individual missions. Giving the services authority over their acquisition decisions, along with increased accountability for those decisions, would reduce logrolling and possibly some cost overruns and delays. This has been part of recent efforts to reform the acquisition process, but those reforms would fail if the DOD simply dictated what the services would need to purchase.
To be fair, it is unclear how dictatorial the DOD wishes to be over the electromagnetic warfare part of the third offset strategy. The services themselves have also struggled to introduce new solutions for the military’s new problems. But the Department should be mindful of the risks involved with a top-down solution. One approach to a problem means either one success or one failure. Encouraging multiple solutions might mean multiple failures, but also increases the chances of producing real innovation. Without allowing that risk, and supporting some of the more entrepreneurial ideas that are generated within the military services, the DOD’s strategy may wind up only offsetting innovation.