It’s difficult to forecast how military conflicts will unfold once they are initiated, but military realists can identify likely scenarios based upon precedent as well as current ongoing conflicts. What might future conflicts look like and what types of platforms would be utilized in these kinetic and non-kinetic environments?
In a highly informative and thought-provoking book, “Unit X—How the Pentagon and Silicon Valley are Transforming the Future of War, 2024,” authors Christopher Kirchhoff and Raj Shah attempt to map out what might occur in both defensive and offensive scenarios. Unit X refers to the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU), which was the brainchild of Raj Shah, a former F-16 pilot with the Air National Guard.
Shah came up with the idea of an experimental innovation unit after experiencing as a pilot the almost obsolete mapping and navigation capabilities of his fighter aircraft. He had a difficult time knowing for sure whether or not he had crossed a particular prohibited Middle East national border.
Moreover, there were outmoded methods of aircraft scheduling during Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan and Operation Iraqi Freedom. The Middle East aviation command center that scheduled air operations was still using markers and whiteboards instead of computers for data analysis and the scheduling of hundreds of inbound and outbound aerial missions.
After Shah left the Guard, he had a desire to find solutions to these problems by seeking answers from the Pentagon and venture capital innovators who were forward thinkers. This is where Christopher Kirchhoff entered the picture as a specialist in disruptive and emerging technologies.
Kirchhoff had advised a number of tech companies and the government on national security matters. In the beginning of the DIU venture in 2016, it was tough sledding to create an innovation unit at the Pentagon for two reasons.
First, the Pentagon already had the entrenched Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), which was formed in 1958 as a response to the Soviet Union’s Sputnik moment. DARPA had developed the ARPANET, a predecessor of the internet, as well as aerial drones, GPS, night vision goggles, and more. However, DARPA’s failure rate from design to prototype, to testing to production was more than 80 percent.
Next, according to the authors, tense relations existed between the Dept. of Defense (DOD) and California’s Silicon Valley incubator startups. Private sector innovators were impatient with the bureaucratic obstacles encountered when interacting with the Pentagon, while the Pentagon was dissatisfied with some of the innovative technologies coming out of Silicon Valley.
In the first year of the DIU, there were intense discussions, and funding was difficult to garner. However, with some assistance from former Defense Secretaries Ash Carter, Mark Esper and James Mattis, some of the bureaucratic hurdles were overcome and the DIU got off the ground. Relations with Silicon Valley gradually improved in the second and third year. Retired Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, who is a Middle East combat veteran currently at the Hoover Institution, also played a role as an adviser to the DIU.
By the second and third year, the DIU was operational and gaining speed. It would solicit future military concepts from tech firms, ideas were exchanged, and innovative experts would strive to transform realistic concepts into next-generation platforms. Funding and the staff grew in size, and the DIU was no longer merely an experimental unit. DIU staff labored to reduce the time frame from concept to testing to 12–24 months through a nimbler acquisition process that bypassed excessive red tape.
Although the authors are aware that conventional warfighting will continue to be utilized in future warfare, a mixture of conventional and unconventional hybrid warfare is already occurring in the battlespaces of the Middle East and Ukraine. Cyberattacks, drones, artificial intelligence such as machine learning and quantum computing are being applied in surveillance, reconnaissance and targeting operations.
Moreover, robotics, as well as unmanned aerial, subsurface, and surface vehicles are working their way into the arsenals of both adversaries and allies. Elon Musk’s Starlink communication system is an example of dual-use commercial and military technology.
The DIU is the sole DOD organization that streamlines the pace of design, prototype, and testing of emerging dual use technologies, then scales successful upgrades that can be applied to modern platforms, as well as in current aircraft and naval vessels. It now has branch offices around the country and at the DOD. Some of the companies that contract with the Pentagon include Coherent Logix, Kodiak, Nova Spark, Shield AI, Skydio, Zepher Flight, among others.
This DOD and tech company ecosystem is an urgent national security necessity in light of the threats posed by America’s near-peer and peer competitors, as well as non-state actors. Indeed, China (PRC) is intensifying its unrestricted (cyber, economic, informational, political, military) warfare activities around the globe. The West must get ahead of the curve in research and development to maintain readiness at the tactical, operational, and strategic levels.
Kirchhoff and Shah conclude by stating, “The ultimate goal is not to win wars but to deter them. Innovation is our asymmetric means to achieve and maintain peace. The question now is whether the Pentagon will develop at scale the battlefield innovations it has incubated. Advocates of innovation must keep pressing despite the seemingly Sisyphean task of reform. Leadership must back them to the hilt.” Sage advice indeed.
