[House Hearing, 115 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[H.A.S.C. No. 115-102]
PROMOTING DOD'S CULTURE OF INNOVATION
__________
COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED FIFTEENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
HEARING HELD
APRIL 17, 2018
[GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
___________
U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
30-683 WASHINGTON : 2019
COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES
One Hundred Fifteenth Congress
WILLIAM M. ``MAC'' THORNBERRY, Texas, Chairman
WALTER B. JONES, North Carolina ADAM SMITH, Washington
JOE WILSON, South Carolina ROBERT A. BRADY, Pennsylvania
FRANK A. LoBIONDO, New Jersey SUSAN A. DAVIS, California
ROB BISHOP, Utah JAMES R. LANGEVIN, Rhode Island
MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio RICK LARSEN, Washington
MIKE ROGERS, Alabama JIM COOPER, Tennessee
BILL SHUSTER, Pennsylvania MADELEINE Z. BORDALLO, Guam
K. MICHAEL CONAWAY, Texas JOE COURTNEY, Connecticut
DOUG LAMBORN, Colorado NIKI TSONGAS, Massachusetts
ROBERT J. WITTMAN, Virginia JOHN GARAMENDI, California
DUNCAN HUNTER, California JACKIE SPEIER, California
MIKE COFFMAN, Colorado MARC A. VEASEY, Texas
VICKY HARTZLER, Missouri TULSI GABBARD, Hawaii
AUSTIN SCOTT, Georgia BETO O'ROURKE, Texas
MO BROOKS, Alabama DONALD NORCROSS, New Jersey
PAUL COOK, California RUBEN GALLEGO, Arizona
JIM BRIDENSTINE, Oklahoma SETH MOULTON, Massachusetts
BRAD R. WENSTRUP, Ohio COLLEEN HANABUSA, Hawaii
BRADLEY BYRNE, Alabama CAROL SHEA-PORTER, New Hampshire
SAM GRAVES, Missouri JACKY ROSEN, Nevada
ELISE M. STEFANIK, New York A. DONALD McEACHIN, Virginia
MARTHA McSALLY, Arizona SALUD O. CARBAJAL, California
STEPHEN KNIGHT, California ANTHONY G. BROWN, Maryland
STEVE RUSSELL, Oklahoma STEPHANIE N. MURPHY, Florida
SCOTT DesJARLAIS, Tennessee RO KHANNA, California
RALPH LEE ABRAHAM, Louisiana TOM O'HALLERAN, Arizona
TRENT KELLY, Mississippi THOMAS R. SUOZZI, New York
MIKE GALLAGHER, Wisconsin JIMMY PANETTA, California
MATT GAETZ, Florida
DON BACON, Nebraska
JIM BANKS, Indiana
LIZ CHENEY, Wyoming
JODY B. HICE, Georgia
Jen Stewart, Staff Director
Eric Mellinger, Professional Staff Member
William S. Johnson, Counsel
Justin Lynch, Clerk
C O N T E N T S
----------
Page
STATEMENTS PRESENTED BY MEMBERS OF CONGRESS
Davis, Hon. Susan, a Representative from California, Committee on
Armed Services................................................. 2
Thornberry, Hon. William M. ``Mac,'' a Representative from Texas,
Chairman, Committee on Armed Services.......................... 1
WITNESSES
Griffin, Hon. Michael D., Under Secretary of Defense for Research
and Engineering, Department of Defense......................... 3
Schmidt, Dr. Eric, Chairman, Defense Innovation Board, Department
of Defense..................................................... 4
APPENDIX
Prepared Statements:
Griffin, Hon. Michael D...................................... 45
Schmidt, Dr. Eric............................................ 53
Smith, Hon. Adam, a Representative from Washington, Ranking
Member, Committee on Armed Services........................ 44
Thornberry, Hon. William M. ``Mac''.......................... 43
Documents Submitted for the Record:
[There were no Documents submitted.]
Witness Responses to Questions Asked During the Hearing:
[There were no Questions submitted during the hearing.]
Questions Submitted by Members Post Hearing:
Mr. Banks.................................................... 69
Mr. Brown.................................................... 68
Mrs. Davis................................................... 67
Mr. Gallagher................................................ 67
PROMOTING DOD'S CULTURE OF INNOVATION
----------
House of Representatives,
Committee on Armed Services,
Washington, DC, Tuesday, April 17, 2018.
The committee met, pursuant to call, at 10:01 a.m., in room
2118, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. William M. ``Mac''
Thornberry (chairman of the committee) presiding.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. WILLIAM M. ``MAC'' THORNBERRY, A
REPRESENTATIVE FROM TEXAS, CHAIRMAN, COMMITTEE ON ARMED
SERVICES
The Chairman. The committee will come to order.
For the last three National Defense Authorization Acts,
reform, especially acquisition reform, has been a major
priority. The purpose is to get more value for the taxpayers
out of the money spent, but, even more importantly, to make the
Department more agile in dealing with the variety of security
challenges we face.
As Secretary Mattis has testified, our technological
position has eroded in recent years, compared with our leading
adversaries. We confront threats that do not conform to our
traditional notions of warfare. And the historical evidence
indicates that we may well be a victim of our own success. As
one writer put it, when looking at the interwar years, the
losers were forced by events to reexamine everything. Military
losers are intellectual radicals. The winners, complacent in
victory, feel the need for self-examination far less.
The answer is the Department of Defense must work to be
more innovative in technology, in policies, and in thought. One
of the many books offering advice to businesses sums it up with
a chapter title that is ``Innovate or Die.'' That has been the
goal of the reforms of recent years and of the reform proposals
for the fiscal year 2019 NDAA [National Defense Authorization
Act] that I am releasing today.
We are privileged to have two witnesses who are superbly
qualified to help guide our efforts as well as those of the
Department in the quest to develop a culture of innovation. One
of the reforms we enacted 2 years ago was to create an Under
Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering, to be the
primary driver of innovation in the Department. Dr. Michael
Griffin was confirmed in that position about 2 months ago and,
among other things, is the former administrator of NASA
[National Aeronautics and Space Administration].
Dr. Eric Schmidt is the chairman of the Defense Innovation
Board, and formerly chairman and chief executive officer of
Google and its parent Alphabet, where he remains a technical
adviser. He is here, however, only in his capacity with the
Defense Innovation Board.
We are very grateful to have both of you here. I might
alert members that immediately after this open hearing, we will
reconvene in classified session to go in greater detail about
some of these issues.
Let me at this point yield to the gentlelady from
California, who is the acting ranking member.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Thornberry can be found in
the Appendix on page 43.]
STATEMENT OF HON. SUSAN DAVIS, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM
CALIFORNIA, COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES
Mrs. Davis. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I want to ask
unanimous consent to put the ranking chair statement into the
record.
The Chairman. Without objection.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Smith can be found in the
Appendix on page 44.]
Mrs. Davis. Thank you. I certainly appreciate the
chairman's calling today's hearing on the need for more
innovation and technology development in the Department of
Defense. And we are honored to have both of you here today to
serve as witnesses on this critically important topic. We have
been talking about it for a long time, but actually addressing
it in a way that is going to continue to make a difference is
part of, really, what we want to see happen.
Maintaining a culture of innovation does matter. Innovation
ensures our service members have the technological edge they
need. Innovation has the power to win tomorrow's wars before
they are fought. We must continue to promote a culture of
openness, looking for new ways to do things, being willing to
accept prudent risk in trying something different, and
constantly looking ahead rather than behind.
But we also know that the Department of Defense cannot go
it alone. They must work with the private sector and academia.
No less important are investments in STEM [science, technology,
engineering, and math] education, programs that develop junior
talent into future tech leaders and policies that promote an
environment in which global collaboration, discovery,
innovation, public institutions, and industry can thrive.
I had an opportunity to read Dr. Schmidt's statement, and I
want to thank you, because it provides a kind of reality test
for us and how do we continue to do many of the advances that
we have been working on, and you note those in your statement
very clearly, but also, build an architecture that is going to
bring us into the future, and certainly respond to the needs of
the men and women who go to war on behalf of our country.
I look forward to hearing your testimony today. Thank you.
And I, excuse me, and I yield back.
The Chairman. Without objection, both of your written
statements will be made a part of the record.
I do want to comment, Dr. Griffin, that nobody has read
yours, because we just got it. And I think it is important--I
realize that when you are an administration official, it has
got to be cleared by all of these different levels, but
whatever the administration, it is important for those involved
in getting us written statements to get them timely, or else
there is just really no use in doing it.
And, again, nobody has read your statement, because I think
it just came at some point this morning. I am not fussing at
you, but I am fussing at all those layers that are responsible.
It is kind of a good summary of our acquisition problems. If
you got all these layers of people that have to approve
something, it takes a long time to get something, and maybe
that is an appropriate analogy for the innovation topic today.
But, without objection, your full written statements will
be made part of the record. We are grateful to both of you for
being here.
And Dr. Griffin, the floor is yours.
STATEMENT OF HON. MICHAEL D. GRIFFIN, UNDER SECRETARY OF
DEFENSE FOR RESEARCH AND ENGINEERING, DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE
Secretary Griffin. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
First of all, my apologies. The statement is late, and the
error is mine, and no other excuse is permissible.
So, moving forward, Chairman Thornberry, Ranking Member
Smith, Acting Ranking Member Davis, and members of the
committee, I do appreciate your entering my written statement
in the record and I want to thank you for the opportunity to
discuss ways that we, as the Department of Defense, can foster
a culture of innovation throughout the Research and Engineering
Enterprise.
The reality is that we live in a time of global access to
technology and global access to scientific talent. It is no
longer preeminently concentrated here in America. The air,
land, sea, space, and cyber domains have all experienced
dramatic capability advances, and have done so throughout the
world. These advances, coupled with our adversaries' commitment
to a demonstrated pace of prototyping and experimentation and
fielding that, at present, far outstrips our own pace, present
a formidable challenge to U.S. forces operating around the
globe.
It is this erosion of U.S. technological superiority that
led to the establishment of the position which I now hold as
Under Secretary for Research and Engineering. Our mission is to
ensure that we maintain our technological edge, and I am
honored to be here today to talk with you about that.
I believe that I come to this position reasonably well-
versed in the threats that face the United States today, and I
am indeed concerned. We are in a constant competition. In a
world that has now equal access to technology, innovation will
remain important always, but speed becomes the differentiating
factor. Greater speed in translating technology into fielded
capability is where we can achieve and maintain our
technological edge. We must seek innovation not only in our
technology, but in our processes. I look forward to instilling
within the Department a culture that embraces a more agile
approach to development.
Now, with that said, I would be remiss if I did not
highlight the DOD R&E [Department of Defense Research and
Engineering] Enterprise, which consists of our labs, our
engineering and warfare centers, and our partners in the FFRDCs
[federally funded research and development centers], UARCs
[university affiliated research centers], academia, and
industry, both small and large business, who have given us the
military capabilities that we enjoy today, and that will give
us the ones we will need in the future.
The Department is addressing critical technology and
capability gaps through a combination of adaptation of existing
systems and the development and introduction of innovative new
technologies through our labs and centers and DARPA [Defense
Advanced Research Projects Agency] and other entities.
The Department continues to push the envelope with research
into new technologies, such as autonomous and unmanned systems,
artificial intelligence, machine learning, biotechnology, space
technology, microelectronics, and cyber, both offense and
defense.
These technology areas are not just important to the
Department, they are the focus of global industry. And we are
focused not just upon technological innovation, but also upon
pursuing new practices and organizational structures to support
this culture of innovation. Earlier this year, Deputy Secretary
of Defense Shanahan said, and I quote: ``Everyone wants
innovation, but innovation is messy. If the Department is
really going to succeed at innovation, we are going to have to
get comfortable with people making mistakes.''
From my own background of producing experimental hardware
when I had possibly more enjoyable jobs, I can certainly say
that no progress is possible without the willingness to take
chances and make mistakes with today's hardware in order that
tomorrow's systems will be better.
We are, today, making investments across the full spectrum
of innovation. These areas include early stage research and
development, repurposing commercial and nontraditional
technologies for national security purposes, the advancement of
manufacturing technologies, red teaming to identify our own
vulnerabilities, new technology demonstrations, and
experimentation and prototyping. Our adversaries are presenting
us today with a renewed challenge of a sophisticated, evolving
threat. We are, in turn, preparing to meet that challenge and
to restore the technical overmatch of the United States Armed
Forces that we have traditionally held.
I thank you again for the opportunity to testify on this
critical issue, and I look forward to your questions. Thank
you, sir.
[The prepared statement of Secretary Griffin can be found
in the Appendix on page 45.]
The Chairman. Thank you, although I cannot imagine a job
that would be more enjoyable than the one you have now to help
the Department of Defense be more innovative.
Dr. Schmidt, thank you for being here.
STATEMENT OF DR. ERIC SCHMIDT, CHAIRMAN, DEFENSE INNOVATION
BOARD, DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE
Dr. Schmidt. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I completely agree
with----
The Chairman. I might get you to--yeah, hit the button,
please.
Dr. Schmidt. Sorry.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I completely agree with what
Dr. Griffin just said. I think it is crucial for our Nation. I
have worked with a group of volunteers over the last couple of
years to take a look at innovation in the overall military, and
my summary conclusion is that we have fantastic people who are
trapped in a very bad system. And I am concerned that you all
are not going to get what you think you are going to get,
because of the deficiencies of the system, and I want to take
you through that.
I might start with a couple of simple examples. We visited
a mine sweeper. And a mine sweeper is, obviously, important.
And there is a young sailor who is beaming. I go up to him and
say, ``what are you beaming about?'' He said, ``we just
upgraded our computer.'' They upgraded from Windows 95 to
Windows XP, which was delivered in 2001. His job, by the way,
was to watch for mines 8 hours a day on the screen of his
Windows XP computer. No one I knew, and no one I could find all
up the chain of command could fix this obvious violation of
Department policy around adopting Windows 10.
We have visited more than 100 sites, and one of the sites
we visited we had 20 officers of various kinds, all very
committed to innovation, and we had a presentation on
innovation occurring at the base. A programmer gets up and
shows us rapid development methodology, quotes from my book,
talks about how it is all done right. Sounds great. We discover
that there are only two people on the base that are doing this.
Of course, there are 20 officers in charge of these two people.
But I guess the even worse news is one of them is being
reassigned to a different base and will not be able to do any
more programming, and they cannot figure out a way to swap the
billets so this person can stay in their base.
We are at a secret briefing with the National Security
Agency on an opponent in the crypto-world by a very, very
talented young crypto-expert who says that he is being
transferred to a different base and will not be able to work on
crypto anymore. This is the state of the talent of our young
people and, frankly, why many of them are leaving for the
private sector. They want to serve.
One of our new-generation airplanes had a potential
software problem. We were asked to look at that. We went to
visit. We discovered that it has a first-generation CPU
[central processing unit], which was the processor that is in
the airplane, that had been deployed and was out of date when
it was deployed; but they are excited about a new version of
this same CPU coming out in approximately 2024, which will be
out of date when it is delivered. When questioned hard by our
team, the rules were so constraining, the engineers did not
have a choice. This is madness, in my view. I can give you
example after example of this in the details.
So my conclusion, or our conclusion, is that innovation
definitely exists, but there is no real mechanism and no
incentive for the way the current structure is sort of adopted.
And, in fact, if I can make a strong statement, the DOD
[Department of Defense] violates pretty much every rule in
modern product development. The spec is developed and is
finalized before production starts. The way you really do it is
you start iteratively and you learn from your mistakes and so
forth. That is called agile development. It is essentially
impossible to do, because of the way the rules are set.
There are no permanent software people. Software, when done
right, is essentially continuous. And the way the software is
done is the same way as hardware is procured. You write a spec
and then you wait for the software to show up, you make sure it
meets all the specs and then the contractor goes away and you
are done, which precisely delivers what you do not want now.
If you were in 2001, and you had been asked to write a spec
for the equivalent of a smartphone in 2018, none of the
technologies that are in the smartphone that you have today
were effectively available in one form or another at the time.
And yet, that is how we do almost all of our procurement, if
you go back to the way the cycles work. It is crazy.
Much better to do it more iteratively. If you cannot do it
every week, do it every month; if you cannot do it every month,
do it every year. But once a decade means that the new hardware
will mean that the new software all has to be rewritten, and,
again, that is what drives the craziness.
Once certified, a weapon system cannot be changed. We were
in a control center which had a secret classification, and they
were using a protocol that I recognized as a computer
scientist. And I said, ``well, would it not be obvious to use
this protocol, have a computer and have a military programmer
take that protocol and then expose an answer that was useful
for the air fighter?'' And the answer came back, ``that is
illegal.'' And I said, ``we are inside of a secret facility.
You have a programmer who is a military programmer, and they
are not allowed to connect a computer into your network?'' And
they said, ``absolutely, because the whole thing was certified
as unchanging.'' Again, a complete lack of understanding of how
iteration and improvement would occur.
The model that the military uses where they outsource
everything to large contractors has served us maybe well for
these large weapons programs, but does not work at all for the
kinds of stuff I am talking about. You need a completely
different model. The networking computer resources are sort of
out of the dark ages, like out of the 1970s. People wait for
hours to log in, and then networks are slow. It is a complete
violation of the concept of abundant computing resources, which
allow people to build flexible systems.
The computer scientists, which we cannot find very many of,
are not a separate track. Imagine if the way you did doctors
and nurses in the military was you would have them become a
doctor or a nurse for 6 months and then transfer them back out.
It is a separate profession. It is obvious to me that computer
science and, in particular, programming should be a separate
discipline with its appropriate training and hierarchy and so
forth.
There are many examples of systems where there are two
systems that should have been interconnected, but vendor A
built it this way and vendor B built it this way. And so we
have soldiers, literally enlisted professionals that we, in our
country, have, you know, asked to join the military, sitting
there and it is called swivel typing. They look at it and then
they read the number and then they type it over here. And then
they read the number here and they type it over here, right.
Now, this is the easiest of all computer programming
problems. And, again, a small programming team can do that in a
weekend, and yet the system is not able to do that for the
military. Enormous efficiencies out of such simple things.
Since every decision is protested, there is a risk strategy
where not much risk is taken, because whenever the military
actually makes a decision, they know that they will spend
another year or two in some kind of contest. And it just goes
on and on.
And I think this group feels strongly that this is not
okay, but let us say you thought this was like, okay, things
are fine, the country is doing well, it is important to note
how at least one potential future adversary, China, is
investing extremely heavily and rapidly in artificial
intelligence, and has announced publicly that the goal by 2030
is to actually be the leading force in the world. So, again,
there are competitive countries and competitive challenges that
we need to address.
Now, we can talk about what to do. We have a long list. Our
team produced a list of approximately 14 recommendations, which
the leadership in the DOD has generally indicated they strongly
agree with. And these are recommendations that are consistent
with the things that I have talked to you about. Things like
the COCOMs, the combatant commanders, should have 100 engineers
to go fix things, that software should be a separate process,
that there should be a program around psychological safety
where the people are encouraged to take risks without losing
their jobs. In fact, maybe people could be promoted because
they took risks as opposed to promoted because they did not
take risks, which is part of the culture. Trying to organize
around big data, collecting data. If you are going to work in
artificial intelligence, to do anything, you need the data to
train against. Construction and setting up of an AI [artificial
intelligence] center.
My personal view is that the R&E [Research and Engineering]
and AT&L [Acquisition, Technology and Logistics] split that you
all did a couple of years ago was very sharp, which brought Dr.
Griffin in and his team, which is excellent. And I can also
tell you that Secretary Mattis and Deputy Secretary Shanahan
understand this very well and they are very, very committed to
addressing these issues.
So I think we have strong leadership on the military side.
I know that you all are very concerned about this. So I think
these are problems that can be addressed.
Thank you very much.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Schmidt can be found in the
Appendix on page 53.]
The Chairman. Just very briefly, Dr. Griffin, do you
largely agree with Dr. Schmidt's diagnosis?
Secretary Griffin. It would be very difficult for me to
agree more strongly with him. The way that we, broadly
speaking, decide what we want to buy in the Department of
Defense before committing to buying it has been, I think,
broken for some years, which is, as Dr. Schmidt just said, why
you created the position that you did.
I made a couple of notes here. Eric's comments about
iterative development of software, I could not agree more. I
used to be a software developer. Software is never done. But I
would offer the following: Hardware development is done that
same way. You build a little, try a little, test a little, find
where it breaks, fix it, move on. When you have it working
about like you like it, then it is time to write the
requirements.
In the Department, we have a fixed process where we write
requirements and then develop capabilities. The way real
engineers do it is you prototype hardware, develop
capabilities, and then, based on those capabilities, now you
write the requirements for the production system that you
really want.
So iteration in the hardware world is as important as it is
in the software world. Let me stop there. We are in very high
degree of alignment.
The Chairman. Okay. Did you have something you wanted to
add, Dr. Schmidt?
Dr. Schmidt. I just wanted to add to Dr. Griffin's comment.
So this requirements-driven process makes sense if you sort of
hear it. It says, ``Hey, let us write down what we want. The
Government will procure that. We will know what the budget is,
and we will get what we want.''
The problem is that it produces outcomes that are not
learning outcomes. There is no new feedback system. And the
cycles in development in the general procurement have been
increasing up to, say, 10, 12, 15 years, which ultimately
causes us to miss the mark in the first place.
Secretary Griffin. But by the time you have the hardware,
you no longer want it, because it is out of date.
The Chairman. Let me just ask you each to address one other
issue. It has been suggested to me that to have a, not only a
culture, but an ecosystem that fosters innovation, an essential
element is small to midsize businesses that are willing to
disrupt things. And the suggestion that has been made to me is
we make it too hard for these small, disruptive businesses to
ever get into the DOD system. There is this program called SBIR
[Small Business Innovation Research], whatever that stands for,
which spends a lot of money, gets things started, but very
little of it ever gets picked up in a program of record that
goes on.
So I would appreciate each of you commenting on whether, in
the Department of Defense, we need to have these small
disruptive businesses and how well we are doing at getting them
and bringing them into the system.
Secretary Griffin. I certainly agree that most of the
disruption that occurs in our technology ecosystem comes from
small and medium-size businesses of--you know, we see the ones
that succeed, we do not see the many that fail. And then,
ultimately, they may very well get bought if they are
successful by larger contractors.
I am not one to say that we do not need our large
contractor industrial base. That is how we produce things at
scale, but they are not largely the innovators that you seek.
So I agree with your point there, sir.
Part of the difficulty--and I further agree that we are in
the Department, and in the government writ large, we are not
user-friendly for small and medium-size firms, which quite
often lack accounting systems that are compatible with DCAA,
sorry, Defense Contracting Audit Agency and Defense Contracting
Management Agency. It requires a lot of corporate overhead--and
this time last year, I was running such a company. It requires
a lot of corporate overhead to deal with what we do in
government.
Well, why do we do those things in government? We do them
so that we in the executive branch can demonstrate that we can
account for every penny. We go to so much trouble making sure
that no misspending of money is possible that we actually
create a larger mistake; we freeze out the innovators who maybe
their accounting systems are not up to snuff, but their
innovations are, and we leave those behind in an effort to make
sure our systems are perfect.
If we could find a way to do more dealing on a commercial
transaction basis, where, as a commercial entity, you know,
your accounting system is your problem. I am buying a quantity
of things from you and my interest is to make sure that you
deliver those things on time. If we had more focus on outcomes
and less focus on process, I think we in the Department could
do better.
Dr. Schmidt. The Department of Defense has created two
interesting groups. One is called DIUx [Defense Innovation Unit
Experimental], and another one is called SCO, or Special
Capabilities Office, both of which are central to solving this
problem because they focus on the small disruptive businesses
and try to use their tech to augment the larger systems.
There are groups. An example would be SOFWERX, S-O-F-W-E-R-
X, and AFWERX, A-F-W-E-R-X, which are attempts to do that for
the special operations forces as well as the Air Force. And the
other services are now looking at this to address the question
that you asked precisely.
So we are very clear, most innovation is going to come from
these small innovative companies, by definition, because that
is how they differentiate themselves. All of them complain that
the cost of compliance to the rules of procurement is
overwhelmingly difficult. They do not have the money, they do
not have the people and so forth, whereas the larger companies
do.
The Chairman. Have you had a chance, Dr. Schmidt, in your
reviews to look at this SBIR program and how successful it is
in getting small businesses into DOD mainstream?
Dr. Schmidt. I am aware of it. We have not done a deep dive
on SBIR. Everything that the DOD can do to encourage more
choices in terms of innovation is a good thing, whether it is
individual contracting.
It is possible, for example, to hire small teams of
software people who you cannot hire through the normal military
process through special consulting arrangements. All of that
should be tried.
And I want to emphasize what Dr. Griffin said about this
need to track every dollar. I will give you an example. I am
sitting with a very senior four-star general and I said, in a
very nice, polite way, ``you are a very powerful guy, why can
you not get a team of 50 people in your huge budget to do the
things you are complaining to me about?'' And he said, ``I did
and they were taken away from me.'' And I said, ``you have got
to be kidding.''
So there is something in the system that is a scavenging
function that is taking these small groups that are interesting
and innovative and under the direct control of our most senior
military leaders, and taking them away from them. That is not
smart.
The Chairman. Okay. A lot to go through, but Mrs. Davis.
Mrs. Davis. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And I think it is discouraging when we hear also that, in
fact, you were able to find two generals, I believe, who really
got it, and yet we are not able to make that happen, I think,
in other ways.
So could you talk a little bit about, and, Dr. Schmidt,
with your experience in the private sector obviously, there are
a lot of ways in which we often have exchanges, bring people
into the military, bring military into the private sector. Are
we using every advantage that we have to do that? Have you seen
ways in which we can do a far better job building that human
capital so there is a real understanding of the role that one
another plays? Because I think sometimes, you know, folks in
the military may think, well, you know, they do not have to
worry about the problems we have to worry about. And the same
is true. How can we do that better?
And I also would wonder how can we do that better when it
comes to developing that human capital at a much--prior to
people getting into the service, for that matter, that we can
try to bring some of that thinking to bear?
Dr. Schmidt. For this part of the military, I like to think
of it as a very, very large corporation, with all the problems
of a very large corporation, how do you hire people, how do you
promote people and so forth.
The Department of Defense has something called the Defense
Digital Service, which is a good example, where patriotic men
and women will take a year or two off of their current jobs.
They get permission to do so, obviously. And they come in and
they fix problems. The problem with the Defense Digital
Service, which is very, very successful, is it is very small,
20, 30, 40 people. We need 100, 200, 300. And given the way the
government, in general, does software in particular, these
kinds of programs are effective and I would encourage their
expansion.
Corporations are not going to willy-nilly hand over their
top talent, but there is enough motion in the system where,
again, patriotic people are willing to take a leave from work.
And you can imagine programs with the private sector where they
will even keep their salary as a patriotic act in order to do
this as long as it is time limited.
You emphasize in your opening comment the importance of
STEM education. It is clear to me that the most important thing
we can do to address the kinds of things I am talking about is
more emphasis on STEM education of all kinds, at the community
college level, college level, et cetera.
Mrs. Davis. Mr. Griffin, I think these are all things that
we think are good to do, and some of them, of course, are being
done. We need to scale that more. But do you see--and I know
you are in this position somewhat new under this rubric. Does
it actually transfer when people have had those experiences?
Are there things, just the requirements-based processes in
the military, does that get in the way of people taking those
good ideas and being able to deal with it, or will more people
who understand this, in the end, be the difference between how
we move forward in the future?
Secretary Griffin. Well, there are a lot of----
Mrs. Davis. What would you do?
Secretary Griffin. A lot of questions going on.
Mrs. Davis. Microphone.
Secretary Griffin. There are a lot of important questions
contained in that one question you asked. That is really quite
broad.
First of all, the individuals who come in for these
experiences and then go on to other avenues of life, they do
retain those. We get valuable transfer both ways. As Eric said
earlier, we have got fantastic people in the government and
laboratory networks, in my experience, as good as those who can
be found in commercial industry. It is, as he said, the system
in which they reside.
Eric gave an example of a four-star who wanted to do
something and the resources were taken away. Just a couple of
weeks ago, I was having a conversation with another four-star,
and we were commiserating on the swarming drone threat. And he
said to me in almost a rhetorical conversation, ``Why can I not
just have some money and buy some drones of my own and put my
guys on the problem of figuring out how to develop a
counterattack and let them try stuff out, break some drones,
and find out an approach that works?''
And I said--I will not offer his name. I said, ``General, I
could not agree with you more, but, in fact, I am an Under
Secretary and you are a four-star and neither one of us has the
power to route money to you to allow your people to do what you
just said.'' It is the system in which we are trapped.
Now, in private industry--I once ran a GPS [Global
Positioning System] company. If it had not been successful, I
probably would not be here today. If I had to go through the
kinds of permission loops to upgrade my receiver circuitry that
we have to go through in the Department to catalyze and
advance, I would not be here today. I would have been long out
of business.
It is the system in which our innovators are trapped. It is
not the quality of the innovators or the innovations.
Mrs. Davis. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. Mr. Rogers.
Mr. Rogers. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you all for being here. Dr. Griffin, as you know, I
have a very high opinion of you for a long time, and I am very
proud that you are in this position. I know it is going to be a
credit to our country.
This NDAA that we just completed gave you some pretty broad
and sweeping powers, and I know you have only been in it for 2
months now, but can you tell me how it is working?
Secretary Griffin. Well, sir, in fact, I have been in it 2
months today, 8 weeks today. And thank you for your kind
comments.
Actually, I have to say the broad and sweeping powers that
the NDAA 2017 allocated to us are more broad and sweeping
powers to offer advice. USD(R&E) [Under Secretary of Defense
for Research and Engineering] does not really have much in the
way of specific directive authority to control what is or is
not done. So it is more the power to persuade. I hope I am an
effective persuader.
Mr. Rogers. I hope you are effective too.
Conventional prompt strike hypersonic development needs to
be accelerated. Can you tell me what your thoughts--and
coordinated better. Can you tell me what your thoughts are
about that?
Secretary Griffin. You have hit my number one hot button,
sir, as I think I may have mentioned that in my confirmation
testimony a couple months back.
I will say that, in my opinion today, the most significant
advance by our adversaries has been the Chinese development of
what is now today a pretty mature system for conventional
prompt strike at multi-thousand kilometer ranges.
We will, with today's defensive systems, not see these
things coming, and they have an all-azimuth capability. They
can come from any direction. We will not see them coming beyond
several hundred kilometers of range; and once inside that range
bucket, we have very little time left to respond.
It is a tactical system that has strategic import for our
Nation because it, if employed, could have the effect of
limiting our ability to project power in the maritime domain.
And as you well know, sir, you are the subcommittee chairman
for Strategic Forces, I think you know how important our
ability to sustain carrier battle groups and other maritime
domain assets is to projection of U.S. strategic will
throughout the world. And this capability is under threat
today. We must respond with our own offensive capability, and
we must, with all deliberate speed, develop defensive
capability.
Mr. Rogers. Excellent. And I know you will.
Finally, directed energy is something I feel very strongly
about us maturing as quickly as possible. You know, it has been
5 years away forever. But, as you know, this technology is
pretty mature, but it needs some more focus and attention.
And one of the things that I am concerned about right now
is that it is being developed in three different areas, three
different programs, instead of being focused generally in
Missile Defense Agency. Can you tell me what your thoughts are
about why that development has been spread across three
different programs?
Secretary Griffin. I am not sufficiently knowledgeable of
the history to know how we got where we are. And in business
school, they teach us that some costs are irrelevant anyway.
So my mission is to go forward and unify our directed
energy development across the Department. That is what I want
to do, because right behind the hypersonic threat, I am
concerned that we are not leveraging our technical advantage in
directed energy weapons. Within a few years, I want this Nation
to have a, I will say, 100-kilowatt-class laser that can be
deployed on a Stryker. I want us to have a several-hundred-
kilowatt directed energy capability that I can put on an Air
Force tanker so that it can defend itself. By the latter part
of the next decade, I want to have a megawatt-class device that
can go in space and protect us against enemy strategic
missiles.
These things are within our grasp if we focus our efforts.
They absolutely are within our grasp.
Mr. Rogers. Well, I want what you just described, so get
after it.
Secretary Griffin. Please help me get it, sir.
Mr. Rogers. I am with you. Thank you very much.
I yield back, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. Mr. Langevin.
Mr. Langevin. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and good morning to
our witnesses. I want to thank you for being here with the
testimony. I think this is an important discussion that we are
having.
I have the privilege of serving as the ranking member of
the Emerging Threats and Capabilities Subcommittee, so we have
primary jurisdiction over all of the Department's cutting R&D
[research and development] programs, including those at DARPA
and ONR [Office of Naval Research]. And so the more we can do
to cut out the red tape and accelerate these programs, I think
the better off our Nation will be.
Dr. Schmidt, let me start with you. Of the recommendations
made to increase innovation in the Department, which is the
most imperative, and has the recommendation been adopted--I am
sorry, been adopted and actually seeing it come to fruition?
Dr. Schmidt. Thank you very much. Many of the
recommendations are in the internal reviews of the DOD. And the
military has generally said they are going to implement as many
of them as they can. The one that seems to have gotten the
greatest traction right now is the proposal around an AI
center. And we are specifically proposing that the nature of AI
is a long-term technology that will be useful for defensive and
perhaps offensive purposes as well. And so the creation of that
is under review right now and I suspect will occur.
We are also recommending, for example, that that be done in
conjunction with a university of some kind or a couple of
universities. So trying to make sure it is world class.
Mr. Langevin. How do you feel innovation can be scaled?
Dr. Schmidt. Well, this is what I have done my whole
career. And you can systematize innovation by doing essentially
reviews, quick decision cycles, and that. Remember that the
biggest mistake is not starting something that does not work,
it is continuing something that does not work. And so you want
to fast fail. And, again, Dr. Griffin has emphasized this in
his notes as well.
So I would suggest that the government spend a fair amount
of time doing reviews that are pretty rough. It is very
difficult in the DOD to cancel anything, and yet the budgets
are always fully allocated. So if you want to have room for
innovation, you are going to have to stop doing a few things.
And I am not talking about the big systems. I am talking about
lots of other things that they are also doing.
Mr. Langevin. Thank you. It is a good segue into my next
question.
Dr. Griffin, so any future conflict will undoubtedly
include advanced technologies, like directed energy or
hypersonics or railgun, and we recently had a conversation
about these topics in my office and I thank you for the
courtesy call. You came by.
So it is not just because of us pursuing these
capabilities, as you and I spoke about, our adversaries are
clearly investing heavily in these areas as well.
So do we need to be more aggressive in our pursuit of these
capabilities? And how do you believe we can better promote a
culture more accepting of failure in this pursuit within the
Department of Defense?
Secretary Griffin. Thank you, sir. The first thing that
pops into my mind when you say how can we institute a culture
that is more accepting of failure, from the heart, what I think
we need to understand is that it is not failure to learn that
something we tried did not work on the way to our major goal.
If our goal--Chairman Rogers was asking me about directed
energy weapons and I know you are interested in those as well.
If my goal a decade from now is to give the United States
dominance in missile defense in the world by means of having a
megawatt-class laser, that is my goal. Failure is failure to
reach that goal. It is not a failure to try out different
approaches to reaching that goal and have them break along the
way as long as I do not lose sight of my strategic goal that I
am going to have a megawatt-class laser in 10 years.
And breaking hardware along the way to that goal is not a
failure. In fact, breaking hardware along the way to that end
goal is often--and I am tempted to say always, but I am sure
there are exceptions--breaking hardware along the way is often
the quickest way to get to where you want to be.
And so there is a cultural mindset here that in the course
of trying to prevent small failures along the way to the grand
goal, we miss the grand goal.
Mr. Langevin. Thank you.
Secretary Griffin. Thank you, sir.
Mr. Langevin. As I mentioned, we in Congress, of course,
have to work with--we want to be supportive of these innovative
efforts. And as long as we are taking these journeys together
and we have an open line of communication, when failure occurs,
again, this is something that we can take these leaps together
and understand where we want to get to and be supportive of
your efforts.
Thank you, and I yield back.
The Chairman. Mr. Wittman.
Mr. Wittman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Dr. Griffin and Dr. Schmidt, thanks so much for joining us
today. Dr. Griffin, you have spoken repeatedly about the role
hypersonics will play in this era of great power competition
between the United States, Russia, and China. And you also
stated specifically that they are your highest priority.
You went on to state, in your words, ``I am sorry for
everybody out there who champions some other high priority,
some technical thing; it is not that I disagree with those. But
there has to be a first, and hypersonics is my first.''
Other than funding, how do you transitionally get that
redirection towards hypersonics, get us to the point where we
are not only catching up, but surpassing our adversaries? So I
wanted to get your perspective on that.
Secretary Griffin. Thank you, sir. Let me add that I have a
good-sized list of priorities that come to us out of the
National Defense Strategy [NDS] that was released in January. I
am not often a fan of government assessments, but this one was
really well done. And that gives me my--it gives me my marching
orders, if you will. And, of course, the NDS did call out
hypersonics and, as you correctly point out, I have emphasized
that.
To be honest with you, this Nation's earlier research work
in hypersonic systems development was basically what our
adversaries have used to field their own systems. It is time
for us to renew our emphasis on and funding of these areas in a
coordinated way across the Department to develop systems which
can be based on land for conventional prompt strike, can be
based at sea, and later on, can be based on aircraft.
We know how to do these things. This is a country that
produced an atom bomb under the stress of wartime in 3 years
from the day we decided to do it. This is a country that can do
anything we need to do that physics allows. We just need to get
on with it.
Mr. Wittman. Very good. Thank you.
Dr. Schmidt, let me pick your brain. In your role, you look
at a lot of different opportunities. One of the opportunities
that I think has evaded us to this point is how do we take
needs within the Department of Defense and combine that with
the innovation and creation that exists within the outside
community and look at the conduit of venture capitalists who
look to invest in those emerging technologies who normally have
not been connected with DOD? How do we make that connection?
How do we get those companies that have been innovated on the
commercial side to say, ``Hey, there is an application of what
we do and the attraction of capital to that to accelerate the
development of those technologies?'' Give me your perspective
about what we can do to better make that happen?
Dr. Schmidt. So, unlike Silicon Valley companies, the DOD
is extremely top-down. And so the NDS that Dr. Griffin
mentioned is crucial here. It has roughly 10 big buckets, and
the military is now trying to organize its activities into
these buckets. And that is a crucial signal to the venture
capital industry to say, work in this area.
Then the next thing to tie in is the notion that there is a
new approach to a problem, a faster this, a smarter that, and
so forth, often software. And that is, I think, where the
current lack of link is, that the people who are running those
parts of the DOD are not technologists, they are generalists,
and they do not have someone to say, ``Hey, you know, there is
a new way to solve this problem and all you have to do is take
a look at over here.''
I have championed having various internal bake-offs and so
forth. Dr. Griffin is central to this role and understands this
role very well, as one of the people to bring this into the
DOD. He will not be successful without the rest of the DOD
being in alignment with these 10 broad areas and calling him
and working with him, looking for these things.
Mr. Wittman. Got you. Very good.
Dr. Griffin and Dr. Schmidt, one final question. In this
era of great power competition, we are not going to be where we
were in the past, and that is to out-resource our opponents,
whether it was what we did in World War II, or we did during
the Cold War. Where we will prevail today is we must be able to
do more per our unit of currency than our adversaries do per
their unit of currency.
Give me your perspective on how do we start down the path
to be able to do that? And, Dr. Griffin, you spoke a little bit
about this, about us being the creators and innovators, but how
do we accelerate that to truly, in this era of great power
competition, prevail?
Secretary Griffin. Well, sir, as I tried to say earlier, we
are not out of innovators, we are not out of innovations, we
are out of time. And it is about pace. We must match the pace
that our adversaries are demonstrating today.
So a few weeks ago, I was fortunate to have some private
time with the chairman, and he asked me, essentially, the
question that you asked. And I often pop off with the wrong
remark, but in this case, I said, ``Sir, we can either retain
our national preeminence, or we can maintain our processes, but
you cannot have both.'' Okay? We have got to thin out our
process structure like weeds in your favorite garden, and
nothing else actually matters. If we do not thin that out,
nothing else is going to matter.
Mr. Wittman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.
The Chairman. Mr. Larsen.
Mr. Larsen. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I want to explore that last question over here that Mr.
Wittman asked a little bit more, because when we developed the
atomic bomb, we sort of controlled that process. When we
developed the space program, except for the Soviets--that is,
the government controlled it. Developed the space program, the
government controlled it. To catch up or to lead on AI, on
quantum computing and machine learning, we don't control that.
It has largely already been driven by the private sector.
And so the fundamental question I have, is there a
moneyball question here? That is, are we going to only be
hitting singles and doubles, like the DDS [Defense Digital
Service] or the SCO or DIUx, or do we get into an issue where
or get to a place where we are hitting home runs? We are
actually able to do a government investment into quantum
computing, into AI, that is big enough to set the foundation?
Otherwise, we are relying on the private sector to do that, and
the private sector may not want that big investment from the
government to help them leapfrog the foundational technologies.
Secretary Griffin. Well, sir, the private sector will, and
with the grace of God in this country, do what will do well for
them. And they should, because that is----
Mr. Larsen. I agree.
Secretary Griffin. And that is the strength of our
industrial base. So the question is, how we in the Department
can take on some of the advances that they are making and put
our money in on the tasks that we want done for us using these
new technologies.
So Dr. Schmidt, a few minutes ago, mentioned that one of
the advantages of having, say, roughly 10 buckets of priority
development, is that when venture capitalists can see the
Department putting its money there, well, they will go and do
likewise.
So I think emphasizing AI, through an AI center and other
things, we in the Department are not trying to build up AI to
solve commercial problems. We are trying to build up AI to
solve defense problems. And I believe that industry specialists
in that area will be attracted to our challenges.
Mr. Larsen. So what is the return on investment of that,
Dr. Schmidt, in the private sector, for the private sector?
Dr. Schmidt. Well, for the private sector----
Mr. Larsen. You need your microphone on, please.
Dr. Schmidt. I apologize. For the private sector, the
investments that are being made in machine learning and AI and
big data are fundamental to the future of those industries. So
I can assure you that, broadly speaking----
Mr. Larsen. The ROI [return on investment] for them is very
clear. I am talking about the ROI for them to have the DOD
either to invest in it, or for the DOD to be able to utilize
that technology, which may or may not be proprietary.
Dr. Schmidt. Well, historically, the DOD investment kick-
started many of the industries which I have been part of. You
go back to the original work that DARPA did. And DARPA today
is, for example, funding key investments in the areas that you
are describing. So we benefit from fundamental research that
the military funds.
If it is a question of a military program, then it has to
be looked at on a cost-benefit basis by that company. And,
again, to the degree that the government can make it easier for
that company to work with the government, that is a net
benefit. But my answer to all of this is more, right?
So an AI center, which we are proposing as part of my
group, that is run by the DOD, benefits the private sector as
well, because it puts more money into working on hard problems.
Mr. Larsen. So my concern is less about any one military
program. There are 1 million of them, and there will be 1
million more. It is about the foundational technology
investment, where, as a government, we do not control that like
we did when we developed the atomic bomb or developed the space
program. We were the first entry, the first in the market, if
you will, but we are not the first in the market on AI, on
quantum computing, the machine learning, and go down all this
list that we are competing with with China and Russia.
So I am trying to get past, or get through, talking about,
you know, the DDS or the SCO, where we are borrowing people and
we are borrowing technologies across services to utilize
something new, and talking more about the foundational
technologies that we have to invest in to be where you want to
be, Dr. Griffin, in 5 years on directed energy and 10 years on
directed energy and so on. Where do we want to be in 10 years
on quantum computing in use by the DOD? Well, we do not seem to
control that as much, because of a great innovative system that
we have.
And that is just a fundamental challenge I think that I
would like to hear an answer to, a better answer to. My time is
up. I apologize. Thanks.
The Chairman. But if you want to make a comment.
Dr. Schmidt. Well, again, I think that the relationship
between the tech industry and research funding that has come
over history from the government has been profound. I, as a
graduate student, was on a DARPA grant and on a National
Science Foundation grant.
So the more basic research that you all, in aggregate, can
fund across the sciences and so forth, it really does benefit
the military mission. It really does benefit the defense of our
Nation. It may be indirect, but the fact of the matter is that
every conversation, pretty much every conversation we have had
so far this morning started off with some form of government or
National Science Foundation funding for the basic research that
created it.
The Chairman. Mr. Scott.
Mr. Scott. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Dr. Griffin, I, again, respectfully want to bring up what
the chairman brought up earlier. We received the testimony at
9:20 this morning. That makes it difficult for us to do our
job. And this seems to be becoming more commonplace from the
DOD, that we do not get the testimony in a timely manner.
You gave the example of the drones and the swarm of drones
and being an Under Secretary, and that a four-star general that
you were with, that neither one of you had the authority to do
what both of you thought needed to be done with regard to the
procurement and potentially war games with drones.
My question gets back to, is that real or perceived that
you do not have the authority? Show me the language that
prohibits you from doing what you and the four-star want to do;
and I think that you would find the committee willing to, in a
bipartisan manner, remove that language from the law.
Secretary Griffin. Sir, first of all, I again apologize for
being late with the testimony and will endeavor to see that
that does not happen again. The fault is mine, and I will
remedy it.
With regard to there is no language in the law specifically
prohibiting me from doing what you suggested in the example I
cited. There is no language that specifically gives either
myself or this particular four-star the permission to do it.
And absent the documented permission to do it, it is presumed
that you cannot do it. And this is a cultural issue within the
executive branch of the government writ large----
Mr. Scott. Absolutely.
Secretary Griffin [continuing]. Not just the DOD, sir.
Mr. Scott. I agree, it is cultural. And if we as a
government are going to take the position that our DOD and the
people that run the DOD, both on the civilian side and the
uniformed personnel side, have to have the express written
permission of Congress to do anything, then we need to be
learning other languages, because at some point somebody is
going to conquer us.
And my question then gets to, how do you break that
culture? Because Congress does not prohibit you from doing what
you and the general agree need to be done. It is a culture. It
is a decision that is made inside the DOD to not do things that
need to be done.
Secretary Griffin. Well, yes, sir, but let me expand my
answer just slightly more.
Unless I can find something in authorized and appropriated
language and funding which fits the category of this
particular--say, response to swarming drones, unless I can find
money which is appropriated for that purpose and authorized for
that purpose, I do not have a documentable, if you will, chain
of permission going to the very top of the government that
allows me to do these things.
And so, absent that clear succession path for the use of
money, by definition, I am using it inappropriately. And----
Mr. Scott. I am almost out of time. If I could, though, I
mean, the pistol example with the Army. The Army took 10 years
to buy a new pistol. And, now, fortunately, they had a pistol
that worked while they were taking the 10 years to do it. But
when you ask the Army, ``why did it take 10 years?'' they
cannot answer the question.
It is a bureaucracy that is built upon a bureaucracy, and
there is a lot of blame that goes around. We all know what the
problems are. We need to know how to eliminate those problems
and remove those problems.
Dr. Schmidt, one of my concerns, as we work on these
issues, is--and I know you are very tuned into the private
sector and compensation in the private sector--whether or not
it will be uniformed personnel or civilian personnel that are
actually the best solution for us in the programming aspect of
things.
But even in the civilian personnel, a GS-7's starting pay
is $35,000 a year. That is for somebody with a college degree.
How do we compete with those pay scales? And what are your
thoughts on uniformed versus civilian personnel in the
programming fields?
Dr. Schmidt. We are fortunate that a number of people are
willing to work for very low wages out of patriotic duty to
solve these problems. And they will do so until they feel that
their ideas and innovative ideas are ignored by their bosses,
and then they leave--and I have encountered many such people--
to go to much higher-paying opportunities in the private
sector.
If we want do this long term, we have to have softer
budgets that can be sent through softer contractors, where the
contractors are being paid market wages. And that is legally
achievable; it is just not done as practice. And you all have
already given permission for this to happen.
Mr. Scott. Thank you, gentlemen.
The Chairman. Mr. Carbajal.
Mr. Carbajal. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Dr. Griffin and Dr. Schmidt, I have the honor of
representing a number of universities in my district, including
UC Santa Barbara and Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo. Both of these
institutions participate in a number of research opportunities
offered by the Department of Defense. The experience has not
only been rewarding for DOD, as they enhance their
technological edge, but also for the students, as these
partnerships allow students to pursue advanced research and
directly impact the security of our Nation.
I believe it is critical for DOD and Congress to expand
these DOD-academia partnerships as part of DOD's efforts to
foster and promote a culture of innovation.
Secretary Griffin and Dr. Schmidt, how important are these
DOD-academia partnerships in enhancing innovation? Are there
are any new initiatives within DOD to expand and create more
partnerships such as DOD educational partnership agreements and
university affiliated research centers?
Secretary Griffin. To the last part of your question, sir,
I do not at this point know if we have any new partnerships
planned or what those plans might be. I will be happy to look
into that.
With regard to history, however, I, myself, spent 11 years
in DOD and NASA FFRDCs and UARCs. I am the strongest possible
believer in the value of these laboratories and centers and
such, where the U.S. Government partners with a university to
bring a technology development focus on a particular area.
So, for example, with NASA and JPL [Jet Propulsion
Laboratory]--and, of course, the DOD has a lot of interest in
JPL as well--we hire Caltech to run JPL for the benefit of the
government and the taxpayers. It has been an extraordinarily
productive thing to do. I could repeat that same story with
regard to the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory or Los
Alamos or many others.
This is what got us where we are. And one of my goals is to
make sure that those partnerships are strengthened and
reaffirmed into the future.
Dr. Schmidt. One of the best ways to address some of the
shortfalls in innovation is to work more with America's leading
universities, which are top of class globally. And the more we
can do that, the better.
I should highlight that UC Santa Barbara is a center of
extraordinary progress on quantum computing, and some of the
major breakthroughs in quantum computing appear to be coming
through the research done there in the physics department.
Mr. Carbajal. Thank you both.
Mr. Chair, I yield back.
The Chairman. Ms. Stefanik.
Ms. Stefanik. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
In a full committee hearing last week, General Alexander,
who, as you know, is the former commander of U.S. Cyber
Command, stated, quote, ``The leader in artificial intelligence
and quantum will be the next world superpower.''
I am deeply concerned that we must be able to keep pace
with near-peer adversaries like China when it comes to their
investment in AI. As you stated, Dr. Schmidt, in your opening
statement, China has publicly stated their goal to be the
global leader when it comes to AI by 2030. That is not very far
away.
What specific steps do we need to take within the DOD, in
addition to research and development, to ensure that we are
able to keep pace and surpass near-peer adversaries?
And, Mr. Griffin, if you can specifically talk about what
we are currently doing within DOD regarding AI.
Dr. Schmidt. As we discussed earlier for Dr. Griffin,
hypersonics was his first of a number of firsts. For me, the AI
questions are first among a number of firsts.
And, in order to do AI, you need to have data for training.
And the DOD, broadly speaking, has a great deal of data which
is not stored anywhere or stored in places which, you know, the
programmers are no longer alive kind of thing. And getting all
that data in a place that is usable and discoverable and useful
for the mission at hand is crucial.
We have already highlighted the importance of having some
form of AI center, again, from my perspective, preferable if it
is done in conjunction with some universities, to take the work
at the state of the art.
The third is that the majority of the contractors that are
used by the DOD are not AI-capable at this moment, although
they are all working on it. So, again, I would encourage the
specification, and the current process, which is essentially a
requirements document, needs to actually state what problem
they want to solve.
A typical example would be, you are worried about a
swarming drone problem with autonomy, right? That is a good
example of an AI problem. Where is the research? Where are the
tools? Where are the drones? Where are the counter-drones? All
of those kinds of questions need to be asked, but they need to
be asked in the context that causes the data to be stored and
the algorithms to be invented and funded.
Secretary Griffin. The Defense Innovation Board has
recommended and Dr. Schmidt has emphasized the need for an AI
center. I believe, in his hearing recently, the Secretary
affirmed that the DOD will establish an AI center.
So that, I believe, comes under my area, and we are
looking, right now as we speak, about things like how do we
structure it, who should lead it, where it should be, how we
should structure our other departmental research to focus in
through that. So these are ongoing questions that we are
addressing this week.
Currently, I was briefed recently and told--I cannot verify
the number, but I was told that we have 592 separate AI-related
projects across the Department. We need to bring some focus to
all of that, and I think that is what you are getting at,
ma'am.
Ms. Stefanik. To follow up, Dr. Schmidt, some of the
technology companies we have talked with, and particularly
those that are contributing in the areas of AI, have expressed
a reluctance to work with DOD.
And I know you are not here today in your capacity with
Google, but you are familiar with some of the news articles
related to the workforce's questioning and concerns regarding
DOD's Project Maven.
How do we overcome this skepticism? Because I think this
private-sector workforce is critically important, to be able to
leverage their innovations, when it comes to what DOD is doing
in AI specifically.
Dr. Schmidt. So, because of my role in both organizations,
I have been deliberately kept out of the particulars here, so I
honestly cannot answer the Maven questions at all. I honestly
do not know.
My sense of the industry--the answer to your question at
the industry level--is that the industry is going to come to
some set of agreement on AI, what are called, principles--what
is appropriate use, what is not. And my guess is that there
will be some kind of consensus among key industry players on
that.
And then that process, which will take a little while, will
probably then inform how Dr. Griffin and his teams, you know,
leverage, work with, work against, what have you. I think it is
a matter of speculation, but my guess is that is the path.
Ms. Stefanik. Thank you.
My time is about to expire.
The Chairman. Mr. Panetta.
Mr. Panetta. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Gentlemen, thank you for being here and, obviously, your
preparation as well as your testimony.
Playing off Representative Carbajal's question, he talked
about outside universities. What about internal universities,
defense-related universities, Naval Postgraduate School for
example? Are they contributing to this innovation so, instead
of having a top-down, we are basically from the bottom up, from
people within the Department of Defense?
Dr. Schmidt. So one of the goals for the Naval Postgraduate
School by the Navy is, because of its location and storied
history of training top leaders in the Navy, to have it serve
as an innovation hub and, in particular, have business contacts
with the venture community and so forth. That is an objective
that they have, and we certainly support that.
In general, the educational systems within the military, as
a broad statement, could be improved by working with and
sharing abilities with the traditional public-sector
universities, et cetera. In other words, a university that is
sort of private and isolated does not serve the military well.
A university or a training program or an open innovation
program that is linked to the educational systems of America
serves both sides.
Secretary Griffin. I mean, I would agree. I am very
familiar with the Postgraduate School and somewhat familiar
with Air Force Institute of Technology, for example. And, while
they are quite good at very specific things, the more that they
can be linked with their academic cousins outside the
Department, the more that they become--I do not mean this in
any disparaging way--the more that they become just another
university that happens to have ownership in the DOD, the
better we are going to do.
Because I think there is just no argument that, taken in
total, the American system of higher education is the world's
best. And, yes, it has faults and it has problems and problems
that we need to solve, but, taken globally, it is the best. And
we ought to try to promulgate that as much as we can. We ought
to try to use it as much as we can, support it as much as we
can, and let it run free, because it has done well for us.
Dr. Schmidt. May I add something?
Mr. Panetta. Please.
Dr. Schmidt. The challenge that we face in the government
and the military is a much deeper training and education
problem than it initially appears. Because many of the
doctrinal approaches, right, are being torn asunder, right,
they are literally being turned on top of each other, by
changes in adversarial posture or technology. So an agile,
innovative leadership team is a very different training program
than the kind of leadership we are training today.
And so think about it--just simple things like there is
something called the Acquisition University, where people learn
how to do acquisition. Well, that all has to change based on
what Mike has outlined here. There are thousands of people who
go through these systems.
So it is a much deeper tautological question than it might
initially appear. Your question is exactly right.
Mr. Panetta. Thank you, gentlemen.
I yield back, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. Mr. Bacon.
Mr. Bacon. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And thank you, Dr. Griffin and Dr. Schmidt, for being here
and providing your testimony.
You have given some good updates on hypersonics, artificial
intelligence, quantum computing. There are some other areas
that also I think in the next 20, or 30, or 40 years we will
see weapons technology migrate to. One of them is
miniaturization of weapons.
Can you give us an update on how we are doing in that area?
Are we seeing progress? For example, I think eventually we will
see remote-piloted aircraft that will be very small that could
be used for ISR [intelligence, surveillance, and
reconnaissance] or for kinetic operations. But do you have any
updates in the miniaturization efforts?
Secretary Griffin. Well, I do not know that I have any
specific updates, sir. There are a number of areas where, as
you indicate, there is a driver to miniaturize. And when you
have that technological driver, you will generally get results.
Today, for example--I started in missile defense when the
best and first interceptor we could build weighed a ton. And I
do not say that as an exaggeration. It literally weighed 1 ton.
The missile defenses that we have at Fort Greely and Vandenberg
today, ground-based defenses, the interceptors weigh a couple
hundred kilograms.
Can we make them smaller and lighter? Yes. And we will,
because our next advance will be the Multi-Object Kill Vehicle,
where one bus can support several smaller interceptors. As you
point out, unmanned aerial vehicles are following this path.
Not everything needs to be Global Hawk, as wonderful as Global
Hawk is.
When we are challenged to advance our technology because of
adversarial postures, we will do that. What this hearing is as
much about as anything else today is reforming our processes--
--
Mr. Bacon. Right.
Secretary Griffin [continuing]. To allow those innovations
to come forward in a timely way. I think both Dr. Schmidt and
I--that has been our central theme.
Mr. Bacon. Dr. Schmidt, anything else to add?
Dr. Schmidt. No. I agree with Dr. Griffin.
Mr. Bacon. Uh-huh.
Another area that I read about is robotic-type warfare or
the use of robots more. And I have heard that Russia has put a
lot more emphasis on that than we are. Do you have any other
feedback on that area?
Secretary Griffin. Sir, I am unable to address that
question. I do not know the Russian posture in robotics, and I
am really only cursorily familiar with our own.
Mr. Bacon. Okay. Thank you.
Secretary Griffin. I am sorry.
Mr. Bacon. One last question. On the F-35 front, we have
had a lot of experience with that, obviously. Again, some good
progress now, but also we have had some tough times. What have
we learned out of the F-35 that you can apply?
Secretary Griffin. Well, F-35 comes under my counterpart,
Ms. Lord, for acquisition and sustainment. I would broadly
observe--so I will be very careful in my remarks, and they will
be very top-level, because it is not my program.
But I would observe that a program which has been in work
for over two decades and now performing well, but in work for
over two decades, is, frankly, late to need. It almost
automatically cannot be said to keep pace with the threat.
I think that it is well known, at least on the inside, that
the software architecture is not one that would have been
developed, say, by our leading IT [information technology]
providers. It is not the kind of software architecture that a
Google or an Apple or a Microsoft or a Cisco would have
provided.
So there are a number of systemic issues there that I hope
will be lessons learned for the next spin. And I think it would
be better for me to stop there.
Mr. Bacon. Hopefully we just keep learning with each
program like this. That is what we do.
Dr. Schmidt, anything else to add?
Dr. Schmidt. I think that Dr. Griffin's comments reflect
the fact that you think of the F-35 and these other programs as
hardware programs, but they really are software programs with
hardware attached.
And so, if you thought about it as a software project and
had designed the software in such a way, the kind that I am
describing, and as done in the industry, you would have a very
different outcome today. And that is at the root of the design,
procurement, and operational methodology for these large
systems.
So think of it as, let us get the software right in the
future, and then we will figure out what airplane to build
around that or what airborne device to build around it. That is
a much better approach going forward.
Mr. Bacon. Okay. Thank you, gentlemen.
And, Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
The Chairman. Mr. Carbajal--I am sorry. Mr. Gallego. I have
to go to the next one on the list.
Mr. Gallego. All of these Marines are the same, are they
not? Thank you, Mr. Chair.
You know, we are actually very proud in Arizona to have a
Cyber Warfare Range. And it is an incubator to train the future
cyber warriors. And it is, you know, a great place. It is a
nonprofit. By design, it is a nonprofit, not government-run.
And that is something that I think has made it be fairly
flexible in both creating its curriculum and also in terms of
outputs.
But, you know, if it was a government program, it is my
opinion and, I think, the opinion of many people that it would
be a little slow in terms of its being able to change and adapt
to environments, change the curriculum, be able to retain and
attract students. And, you know, in this environment, we need
the cyber warriors to come out as fast as possible, as strong
as possible, as smart as possible, and as trained as possible.
What can we do to encourage that type of environment,
especially, kind of, from top down in this stuffy world that we
deal with when it comes to, you know, DOD policy versus what we
need, you know, what I would say is a very aggressive cyber
warrior and cyber warfare policy?
And we will start with you, Dr. Schmidt.
Dr. Schmidt. So the great thing about cyber warriors is
that, relative to the other things we are talking about in the
military, they are very inexpensive. The salaries are
relatively low. You do not need that many. They are brilliant
people.
And I am beside myself over why we do not have a surplus of
such people. We have such a shortage. They are the cheapest and
highest, most effective part of our defensive systems. And I
think it is because we do not have a name for them. As Mike
said, he does not have a line item for doing what you just
described.
So you could imagine that, as a part of a future NDAA, you
could say, we would like to have a thousand of this kind of
person, under the command of the Secretary, doing useful
things. Right?
And I think that the only way you will get that is by doing
some form of numeric quota around the people. In the same sense
that we argue over the number of airplanes and ships and so
forth, why do we not simply say, we need this many people, and
then the system will produce the top people into that.
Mr. Gallego. And, Dr. Schmidt--before we get to you, Mr.
Griffin--I am sorry to put you on the spot, but just out of
curiosity, since you brought it up, if you had to even pinpoint
a number, just a guess out of the blue--or, do not guess, but
your best educated guess at least--what is the amount of cyber
warriors we would need in this country?
Dr. Schmidt. Well, the general answer in my industry----
Mr. Gallego. Not enough.
Mr. Schmidt [continuing]. Is a thousand.
Mr. Gallego. A thousand. Okay. Wow.
Dr. Schmidt. And in the military it is probably a small
number of multiples of that.
Mr. Gallego. Wow. That is amazing. Okay.
Mr. Griffin.
Secretary Griffin. Well, I would just offer a couple of
comments in addition to those that Eric provided.
Cyber defense is, of course, critically important to the
Department, but I am going to go out on a limb and say that it
is even more important to those who guard our economic systems
of banking and financial industry and all of that. And so the
Department is looking toward bringing in--we have a new CIO
[Chief Information Officer] who will be coming in from the
financial industry. I think we need to do everything we can to
tap into people who are, if you will, playing for their own
money in this arena. And we are doing that.
Eric mentioned, you know, my comment that, well, unless I
have an appropriated and authorized line item, I cannot spend
money on something. If you want to emphasize cybersecurity,
both offensive and defensive--and it is one of my priorities--
since we all agree that we do not really know very much about
what we are doing in this area, when you give us the
authorization to hire these thousand people, you cannot be too
specific about what I have to do with them, because I do not
know right now. You have to have a little bit of trust in us to
use the money----
Mr. Gallego. Right.
Secretary Griffin [continuing]. As the need evolves.
Because we hope to learn more about cyber defense and offense
to produce an adequate cyber warfare capability, but I cannot
sit here and tell you right now that I or anyone else we have
knows exactly what that should look like.
Mr. Gallego. So the cultural change, then, both has to be
on the DOD side as well as, what you are basically asking, on
the political side, in terms of how we appropriate money and
legislate money then. At least give the flexibility to be able
to do that and basically allow people to fail, like they
normally do in the private sector.
Dr. Schmidt. Let me help Mike out.
Mr. Gallego. And do that in 10 seconds. Go.
Dr. Schmidt. He described precisely the problem. He wants
to do something; he cannot find a budget item which allow him
to find the money to legally spend it. And the problem is we
have the Armed Services Committee, we have the appropriators,
and then we have the internal budgeting processes within the
DOD, all of whom organize to make sure that there is no wasted
individual.
Well, we cannot precisely define what these people are
going to do, but we know we need them. And they are not
expensive compared to the other things that we should be
focusing on.
So there are certainly things that you all should be
focused on that are the big-ticket items, but I would strongly
encourage you to have a small number of buckets which somebody
like yourself is taking a look at, where you say, hey, let them
try it, let them experiment. And whether it is hiring people or
money that goes to universities, these are honorable people
that are trying to do the right thing.
Mr. Gallego. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I yield back.
The Chairman. Just so I can clarify, because--so, are you
talking about X number of people in your organization, Dr.
Griffin, who you could use as a task force to go do this, that,
or the other thing? Because we have this whole Cyber Command
that does a whole variety of things, and we have been pouring
money and people into that.
Secretary Griffin. Generally speaking, sir, when I talk
about deploying people to a problem, I am not talking about
necessarily DOD civilians or military officers. There may very
well be some of those or even many of those.
But I am really talking about the necessity to engage our
laboratories, to engage our universities, to the flexibility to
stand up a cell in the Department if we feel that we need to,
or the flexibility to put work where we think it can best be
done.
But, no, I am not talking about going out and hiring
thousands of civil servants. That is not my primary goal.
The Chairman. And I am just sitting here trying to think,
okay, how do we write something that gives this sort of
flexibility as a trial? Because it will be a challenge for the
appropriators to agree to the broad flexibility. I am trying to
narrow it down, say, a pilot or something.
Dr. Schmidt. So, again, with sympathy to the problem you
are trying to solve, I can imagine you saying, here is a pot of
money, which is not a large amount relative to the amount that
you normally deal with, and that you reserve the right to
review how it has been spent every 6 months or so and that you
are open to how it be spent. Right? In other words, we are
going to trust the other side, but we are going to inspect. You
go back to ``trust, but verify.'' I think that is a completely
appropriate view that you should take.
The problem is that you do that, and then, for the next 6
months, many other people are saying yes and no, rather than
letting people come up with some new ideas, experiment, come up
with some new ideas. And then, at the end of day, the next 6
months, you would say, we got some good things and we made some
mistakes. And, again, Mike or his equivalent will come back and
say, we want to be honest with you, this worked, this did not,
and we are going to emphasize the things that worked, and we
are going to stop the things that did not.
That is how innovation works in my industry.
The Chairman. Well, it is absolutely a fair point to say we
are part of the problem by complaining when things do not work.
And I think that is one of the lessons, at least, that I have
learned in recent years.
I apologize for interrupting.
Ms. Cheney.
Ms. Cheney. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you to our witnesses.
Dr. Griffin, could you talk specifically, if hypersonics is
our number one priority here, what are the main obstacles you
see to a much more efficient, effective development of that
technology? What are we doing about those obstacles?
And address, as you are doing that, whether or not our
obligations--or, an interpretation of our obligations under the
INF [Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces] Treaty are having an
impact on the research we are doing on hypersonics.
Secretary Griffin. Let me take the last part of your
question first, if I might, ma'am.
The INF Treaty, I think, does not hinder our ability to do
research. It would color--the logical question is, why would
you do research on systems which are capable of violating the
INF Treaty? And my answer to that would have to be that our
adversaries are already in violation, so I am not quite sure
why we are observing the rules of a game that our adversaries
have abdicated. I----
Ms. Cheney. But would you say that we are observing the
rules of the game with respect to----
Secretary Griffin. So far, yes, ma'am, we have been. And I
think that is a question for the Congress to deal with.
Now, with regard to systems that we can develop and how we
can speed things up, we are on a test cycle where every few
years we do an advanced hypersonic weapons experiment. We just
did one with the Navy's Flight Experiment 1. FE-1 it is called.
It was a brilliant success. I cannot praise them enough for how
well they have done.
So, as the new Under Secretary for R&E, the question I am
asking the Navy is, how soon can I have FE-2? And why are we
talking about, you know, 18 months or 2 years or 2\1/2\ years?
Why is it not August? That kind of pace of development as we
work our way through the system problems to produce a
realizable, operational system--we need to emphasize
development pace.
These guys are doing great work. I do not have any
suggestions to them to improve their work. I want it tomorrow.
And I want to know from them, what is your impediment to
delivering the next test next August, so I can help you get
that impediment out of the way.
Ms. Cheney. And do you have a sense already of what some of
those impediments are?
Secretary Griffin. No, ma'am, other than what we have
talked about here: our general culture of process, risk-
avoidance, fear of failure. How many times do I have to analyze
the system to be as sure as I can be that, when I do a test, it
will not break, as opposed to a cultural mindset that says my
greatest enemy is time, my greatest enemy is not breaking a
piece of hardware.
I must add, ma'am, that I am often--every time I talk about
regaining the kind of pace and speed that we used to be known
for, people think I am talking about cutting out system
engineering or testing or things like that. No, I am not. What
I want to cut out is layers of bureaucratic decision making,
where way too many people think that their opinion matters in
the decision process.
I do not want to cut out engineering tests. I want to cut
out the number of people who think they have a right to an
opinion. Because that is how we are going to shorten the
process. And if that sounds cruel, I am sorry, but that is what
needs to go.
Ms. Cheney. And do you have a sense, Dr. Griffin, that you
have a willing audience in terms of the leadership of the
Department? How will the process work from here in terms of
making this kind of change that is a difficult one because it
is a cultural change but, as you said, our greatest enemy is
time?
Secretary Griffin. I believe strongly that I have the
unequivocal support of both the Deputy Secretary, whose
experience in industry I much admire, and the Secretary, whose
thought leadership in these areas is unparalleled. I cannot
recall a better team.
Ms. Cheney. And then, Dr. Schmidt, when you find a problem
like, you know, the scavenger function you talked about, what
is the system that is in place for you to be able to say, look,
here is a problem, here is how we need to fix the overall
process to address that?
Dr. Schmidt. So, by law, my group is called a FACA [Federal
Advisory Committee Act] committee, so we are not allowed, by
law, to implement anything. We are required to hold public
hearings so we discuss it in public, and then we obviously want
to speak to you. We have very good working relationships with
the senior leadership in the DOD, who are listening to us. But
we cannot cross the implementation line.
Ms. Cheney. All right. Thank you. My time has expired.
The Chairman. Mrs. Davis.
Mrs. Davis. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Can I just clarify, Dr. Griffin, for a second--because I
think you mentioned that people want to be heard. And they do.
They believe their opinion is important. But there is also fear
of accountability there, fear of, if I do not do this right, if
I do not cross the t's, dot the i's--I mean, how can you smooth
that process, which is, you know, we have to check all these
boxes in order for me to be able to move this along? Is that
something that can be done, can be changed?
Secretary Griffin. Well, ma'am----
Mrs. Davis. How is it done?
Secretary Griffin [continuing]. It can be done. We are,
first of all, a sovereign nation, and the Department operates
within that. We Americans make our own rules.
Mrs. Davis. Right.
Secretary Griffin. So it is my best professional judgment
that I can give you that, as regards engineering development,
we have too many boxes to check.
Mrs. Davis. Yeah.
Secretary Griffin. If we do not reduce the box checking,
then we are never going to change the time.
Now, most of my career has been in government service one
way or another, through laboratories and such, but I have about
a decade, rounding off, in industry. And I can only tell you
that there is a fundamentally different mindset. When you are
in commercial industry, you are responsible for outcome. You
are not responsible for process. Companies that become too
bound up in process fail, and others win.
If we cannot in government--not just the Department of
Defense--if we cannot in government become more focused on
producing the outcomes we seek----
Mrs. Davis. Solving the problem.
Secretary Griffin. Right, solving the actual problem, as
opposed to proving that you went through the required process
on your way to the failure, if we cannot change that mindset,
then whichever member said earlier we had better learn to speak
another language, I guess I am with him.
Mrs. Davis. Yeah.
Dr. Schmidt.
Dr. Schmidt. I have never seen it work any other way, that
you get a group of people in a room with a whiteboard, or a
blackboard in the old days, and you have a big food fight, and
you balance all the various interests to achieve a clear
outcome. That is how development is done. That is how it is
done, slowly and quickly and with a sense of pressure and with
creativity.
The military does not operate that way. That kind of
behavior is in some cases illegal and is certainly frowned upon
culturally. Indeed, what happens is there is a requirements
process, and then there is a bidding process, and then there is
a winner and a loser and a challenge, and then people are
checking boxes and so forth. This is guaranteed to slow
everything down. It is predictable that it would slow it down.
All you would have to do would be to allow the meeting that
I am describing to occur. That is how innovation works.
When I talk to the military, they talk about what they view
as a golden era, which, roughly speaking, think of it as the
skunkworks period, where you would have--they describe a world,
perhaps apocryphal, where in the 1970s you would have this
plant and these people, and you would try this airplane and you
would try that airplane, and this one crashed and this one
worked, and they kept iterating very quickly.
That should be the mantra. And if that is not happening,
there better be a good reason why we cannot develop in that
model. And it seems to have been lost today.
Mrs. Davis. Uh-huh. So we have to try and fix it, Mr.
Chairman.
The Chairman. You are right.
Mrs. Murphy.
Mrs. Murphy. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you, gentlemen, for your testimony today.
I represent a district in Central Florida that is home to
what is called Team Orlando. It is a public-private partnership
from modeling, simulation, and training [MS&T] that is co-
located with the University of Central Florida, which is the
second-largest university in the country and a major R&D
institution.
Additionally, a key part of that ecosystem are a lot of
these small businesses that are drivers of innovation in the
MS&T and cyber industry. What I hear from them all the time is
how hard it is to survive the long contracting lead time, not
to mention CRs [continuing resolutions] and the impacts of
those.
Recently, the Army just stood up a consortium called the
Training and Readiness Accelerator, where we affectionately
call it TReX, and it basically uses a flexible, alternative
contract instrument called OTAs, or other transactional
authorities, to field innovative research and prototypes. And
they are trying to focus those fielding prototypes in areas
where we need the most innovation--cyber training, artificial
intelligence, medical modeling and simulation, those types of
things.
Can you talk a little bit about how you think the
Department of Defense should utilize OTAs and other
unconventional acquisition methods to jump-start innovation?
And, then, how can we ensure that these contract instruments
are used to their greatest effect and managed properly?
Dr. Schmidt. So these OTAs have been around for a long
time, and, indeed, the Congress has recently increased the
number of OTAs. And yet the system that you are giving the OTAs
is not using them very much compared to the opportunity before
them.
So our team has recommended that, in fact, the military
measure the use of OTAs and encourage the use in a measurement
sense. If you set an objective, like if we are doing them a
thousand times it needs to be doubled, I think that would make
some progress to achieve the objective you laid out, which we
agree with.
Mrs. Murphy. Uh-huh.
Secretary Griffin. Well, I certainly agree with all that.
As to how they can be managed properly, I know of no better
approach than to hire people that you trust to carry out a
given development, put them in charge, and hold them
accountable for the result. The whole purpose of an OTA is to
reduce the box checking that Ranking Member Davis commented on
earlier.
Mrs. Murphy. Uh-huh.
Secretary Griffin. So, again, measuring--the Congress gave
us, the Department, enhanced permission to use OTAs. I think
you should require us to use them and measure us on that.
Let me, however, add a parenthetical comment. The whole
purpose of an OTA is to get around the system. Maybe we should
just fix the system. I will leave you with that.
Mrs. Murphy. Do you think there is a personnel element to
why the OTAs are not being used to the full potential?
Dr. Schmidt. So, again, I would go back to this
psychological problem, that the psychology of risk is set--the
bid is set to ``wrong.'' People should be promoted because they
took risks. People should be promoted because they took risks,
some of which failed, but enough of them won that the cause of
whatever they care about was advanced greatly, right? And that
is not in the language, in the military, in the HR [human
resources] policies today.
Mrs. Murphy. Uh-huh.
On another contracting personnel issue, you know, earlier
this year, my colleagues and I were briefed on the F-35's
continued sustainment problems, which are accumulating at such
a rapid pace that the Air Force may be forced to reduce their
plan by a third if sustainment costs do not fall significantly.
One of key issues that was highlighted in the F-35
sustainment report was a severe quality difference between
industry contracting experts and those in the DOD that led to a
contract that the Department still does not quite understand.
How can the Department of Defense develop the contracting
experts necessary to negotiate better with the industry? And
how important is this expertise in the future of U.S. defense
innovation?
Secretary Griffin. Well, Ms. Murphy, as I mentioned
earlier, I do not have F-35 under me and have really very
little knowledge of the program, so I----
Mrs. Murphy. But I think this disparity is not just unique
to the F-35. Could you speak about it more broadly, the
disparity between the quality of contracting experts on the
other side of the negotiating table from our DOD contracting?
Secretary Griffin. I can only say that industry has a lot
more money that they are allowed to spend on hiring lawyers and
contracting officers than does the DOD. And it will always be a
challenge for us to get people willing to work for civil
service wages to go up against their corporate counterparts.
Eric mentioned earlier--and it is true--there are many,
many, many very patriotic individuals who will take a salary
cut to a small--that is, in effect, a small percentage of what
they could earn in industry and come to work on behalf of the
taxpayer to help retain the greatness that we have in this
country. But not everyone will, and it is a difficult
challenge. I cannot say more than that. It is a very difficult
challenge.
Mrs. Murphy. Great. Thank you.
And my time has expired. Thank you.
The Chairman. Dr. Wenstrup.
Dr. Wenstrup. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you, gentlemen.
We talked a lot today about increasing speed, as far as
innovation. And one of things that you had said, if I heard you
correctly, is one of the problems and challenges that we face
is that so much technology is available to everybody; it is not
really just ours.
And, to me, that is part of the problem that we face,
whether it is intellectual property that is stolen, whether it
is intellectual property that happens to be shared, whether it
is property that comes from the commercial side rather than out
of, say, the Department of Defense or wherever.
So those are some of the challenges we face. So increasing
speed, I guess that helps, but it does not help a whole lot if
it is immediately available to everybody else, including your
adversaries.
So, in this process, what recommendations do you have of
how we protect ourselves with what we do come up with? And
where do you see the pitfalls today?
Secretary Griffin. Well, I guess I can go first.
There are certain technologies that are and should be
highly classified and certain programs that we do that are and
should be highly classified that we should try to wall off from
others, and we should make sure that we are successful at that.
But I will offer--you are asking for a conclusion of the
witness, and I will offer my opinion that the way to get ahead
and stay ahead is to work harder and run faster. Even if we
have a technological edge in a particular area--you can name
the area--even if we have an edge, once an adversary knows that
a certain thing is possible to do, even if they do not have
exactly the same intellectual property that we used to do it,
they will figure out a way. If they are intent on dominating
us, our only recourse--our only recourse--is to work harder and
run faster and stay ahead.
And that is best enhanced by a free and open interchange of
market technologies, the unhindered flow of capital and people
to businesses that are successful and DOD enterprises that are
successful, and, as Eric mentioned earlier, stopping those
things that are not working. If we cannot be more agile than
our adversaries, then in the long run they will win. I cannot
say it another way.
Dr. Wenstrup. No, I get that completely. I guess my
question is, are we doing enough to slow down their speed, our
adversary's speed, I guess? You know, you called it walling
off. Is it really walled off, or is everything just getting
out?
Secretary Griffin. You cannot wall things off, sir, not
permanently.
Now, there are some things--there are a few more
progressive news magazines than The Economist which championed,
as I well remember, China's admission to the World Trade
Organization a couple of decades ago. They now, just a few
months ago, had an extensive article on Chinese practices of
holding corporate IP [intellectual property] hostage if a
corporation wants to manufacture in China. This is an unfair
practice. Until and unless the United States and our allies are
willing to push back on such practices, we will be handing IP
over to an adversary.
So there are some things we can do, but, broadly speaking,
if we are not prepared to work harder, run faster----
Dr. Wenstrup. Right. Right.
Secretary Griffin [continuing]. And compete at the
technological edge, then we will not win.
Dr. Wenstrup. And I understand what you are saying, that
they are going to catch up at some point anyway. But the point
is to stay ahead. And so I think you were, in a way, making a
recommendation there that we do not allow this to happen so
readily and so quickly and so easily, for, say, China to
inherit our information and technology.
Secretary Griffin. Yes, sir, that is correct. I certainly
think we should be not doing deals in which giving up our IP is
contingent to the deal. That does seem remarkably shortsighted.
Dr. Wenstrup. Thank you.
I yield back.
The Chairman. Mr. O'Halleran.
Mr. O'Halleran. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And thank you----
The Chairman. Is your microphone on?
Mr. O'Halleran. There we go.
I would like to echo the ranking member's comments about
the importance of developing tomorrow's technology and defense
leaders through investments in STEM education and other
programs that promote innovation.
During your testimony today, you made some observations
that I found extremely interesting. One of the issues we have
talked about today is workforce and that it not only addresses
the current issues but the future issues as we move forward;
and the needs, additionally, for the DOD in areas like AI,
which, you know, I was using consultants on AI in the late
1980s, so I do not understand why we have not moved ahead
faster on this area; cyber, where we have had people in here
this year to address us, and they have indicated that by 2025
we need another million people, both private and government, in
that area; and other things that we have not even thought of
right now.
And you have mentioned about the universities. And our
universities are great universities, but they are only going to
be as good for us as the people that we send to them. And I
believe that we cannot afford, as a country, to leave people
behind that have the knowledge potential but lose it because of
inability to get the type of education they need.
And then we have talked here in committee, time and time
again, about the all-of-government approach. And we do not seem
to have the all-of-America approach to issues.
So we have critical barriers in developing a high-tech
workforce. Nearly 20 million Americans and one-quarter of rural
communities do not have access to broadband. Lack of broadband
access affects the ability of meaningfully expanding STEM
initiatives in those areas and impacts businesses across the
industrial base in rural areas. I believe without addressing
this key infrastructure priority, our shared goal of sharing
defense-related innovation among nontraditional and small
businesses will not achieve its full potential.
I also believe that if we do not clearly identify that
our--whether it is preschool and to high school, that this
transition is not--right now, it is not working for America,
and we need to find a way to get that to work.
I would like to ask the witnesses how the digital divide
and lack of broadband impacts the culture of innovation at the
Department of Defense and believes that it is necessary for
today and tomorrow's national security.
Thank you.
Dr. Schmidt. No, thank you.
The issue of broadband is crucial to economic growth in our
country, to educational growth, to societal growth. There are
groups still left behind.
There is tremendous work in using licensed and unlicensed
radio waves to achieve the last-mile problem in rural areas. So
I have good news, that I think that in the next some number of
years we will overcome even those challenges. It started in
1996 with NetDay, when we wired up the schools; 20 years later,
I think we are getting very close to it.
I agree with your comment. Part of the reason that
broadband is so important is that, on the educational side,
which is what really affects the military, there are new tools
and techniques being developed using AI for direct and personal
learning which are available over broadband networks that are
interactive and interesting and game-ified and so forth.
So there is a possibility of reaching the most isolated and
most disadvantaged person, you know, citizen who can really
benefit from this in a way that can materially affect their
careers, their quality of life, their education, and their
suitability for military service.
Mr. O'Halleran. Mr. Griffin.
Secretary Griffin. Well, if there is anyone more in love
with education than I, you would have to struggle to find him.
So I agree with everything that has been said.
You know, we need to do a better job of preparing our high
school students to go to college. I have spent time as a
college professor, and I would agree with the observation that
our high school students are not coming to college as well-
prepared as they once were and that we should fix it. And one
of the ways to fix that does involve broadband access for
everybody. That is the modern world.
Mr. O'Halleran. Thank you.
And I yield.
Secretary Griffin. And I do not know what the Department
can do specifically, but I support your goals.
The Chairman. Mr. Khanna.
Mr. Khanna. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you, Dr. Griffin, Dr. Schmidt, for being here, for
your service to our country. It is heartening to see a
physicist, a technologist, answering the Nation's call to
public service.
Dr. Schmidt, in your book ``The New Digital Age,'' you and
Jared Cohen anticipated a lot of the issues that we face today.
You talked about data permanence and the problem with data
permanence. You talked about the need for internet privacy.
I agreed with your statement, Dr. Schmidt, about the
technology competence in the Department of Defense, and I think
Dr. Griffin cited the same thing. But I wonder, candidly, what
both of you thought and whether you shared the dismay and,
frankly, embarrassment that most Americans had, as they watched
the Senate hearings and some of the Senators questioning Mark
Zuckerberg, about the technology gap in the United States
Congress and whether there are things we could do to help
improve that.
Secretary Griffin. I did not see the hearing and was not
aware of it, and so I cannot offer you a useful comment, sir. I
am sorry.
Dr. Schmidt. I, too, did not watch the hearing. I am sorry.
Mr. Khanna. Are there things, you think, that--do you think
the United States Congress could improve our knowledge about
technology?
I mean, just to give you a sample, one of the Senators
asked Mark Zuckerberg how does he make money on Facebook when
he does not charge for the services. Another Senator did not
know what cookies were. I mean, I can go through it.
And I am not saying this in a disparaging way. I am just
wondering, do you think--you have talked about the education.
Do you think the United States Congress, to be able to deal
with matters of defense and artificial intelligence, could use
a better education?
Dr. Schmidt. Well, I can say that the areas that we are
describing now are pretty technical, and I would not expect an
average citizen in good standing to understand them a priori. I
do think that more briefings, for the benefit of the Congress,
of the impact--I will pick my favorite area, artificial
intelligence--would be helpful so that the leaders of our
Nation can understand the good, the bad, the restrictions, what
they are good for, what they are bad for, and their
implications.
My industry, as you know very well because you represent
us, is gaga over AI and the application of it in our
businesses. And it is important that our leaders understand the
implications of all of that.
Secretary Griffin. I mean, broadly speaking, I think most
of us are aware that having educational and cultural and all
kinds of diversity in decision-making groups aids the decision
making. The more disparate points of view you can bring to a
task before you have to actually make a decision, generally the
better you will do. And so, if more working scientists and
engineers and medical doctors and such ran for Congress, I
think that would broadly be a good thing.
But, you know, when--and I have had many years now of
working with the Congress, and I do not generally find that the
issues confronting us are caused by a failure of the Congress
to understand what we are saying. The issues seem to be more
systemic, as Dr. Schmidt was pointing out earlier. I could not
choose better words, and so I will just try to quote him as
best I can. We have great innovators in the Department that are
trapped within a system that really does not work.
As Winston Churchill famously said about democracy, it is
the worst of all systems except for all the others we have
tried. Some of these things seem to be just endemic to the
nature of representational democracy, and we struggle on to do
the best we can.
Mr. Khanna. If I could ask one final question, and then I
will give you both the last word.
Dr. Schmidt, in your book, you did talk about privacy and
regulation of privacy. And that is probably, as we are dealing
with artificial intelligence and all the positives, probably
more important than ever.
Congresswomen Anna Eshoo, Zoe Lofgren, and I have been
thinking about what an internet bill of rights would look like,
something maybe not as expansive as the GDRP [General Data
Protection Regulation] but within the American context.
I wonder if you and Dr. Griffin have thoughts about how to
get technology leaders part of that conversation and behind an
idea that would assure the American public that the Congress
can protect their privacy around some internet bill of rights
in a bipartisan way.
Dr. Schmidt. So there have been a number of attempts at
doing this. And I think many people are sympathetic to the idea
that you are proposing. The devil is in the details, as you
know from being a legislator. And so I would encourage the
three of you to work hard--you all know our industry very well,
and you try to represent the Nation as strongly as you can--to
try to find that balance.
In our book, which was some years ago, we said you need to
fight for your privacy or you will lose it. And I remember
writing that sentence because it is so easy for the public
information about you--or the private information about you to
become available to the public without your knowledge. And I
think there must be a way to enshrine that principle with the
right balance between interests.
Mr. Khanna. Thank you.
The Chairman. Dr. Schmidt, let me ask one other question
that occurs to me. We have talked about much of the innovation
in the country occurs in the private sector. Especially for
small businesses, it is hard to do business with DOD.
But since you have a foot in both camps, what is the
willingness of, say, the IT industry to do business with the
Department of Defense? Is there a reluctance?
Dr. Schmidt. Well, there is a general interest in doing
business with the DOD. There is a general fear that the
overhead costs will kill the startup.
And it would be very helpful if we had a number of
companies that had started with an idea, had help from the DOD
to get through the process, and had ultimately become hugely
successful in the new paradigm. And if we had a couple
companies like that that we could point to in our narrative, I
think that would encourage more of that.
You know, the venture industry is a hits business, and so
we need a couple of hits of companies that are good businesses
that have also served the DOD in the things that it cares
about. DIUx is an attempt at that. There are other initiatives
within the DOD to do that. But we need a couple big wins.
May I add, I wanted to say something to all of you, that it
is important not to feel helpless when you are in our situation
but, rather, be clear and assertive that this is a system, as
Mike said, that operates under the laws of our Nation; we can
change it.
So we have highlighted a couple of examples of things which
do not make any sense when you are in the middle of a system--
right? If I could paraphrase you, it just does not make any
sense.
Secretary Griffin. Exactly.
Dr. Schmidt. Why do all of us not collectively engage in a
discussion as to how we could eliminate some of those
nonsensical behaviors, right, and at least have that debate?
It feels like that debate is not occurring, to me. As a
private citizen, it feels like everybody is sort of repeating
the old criticisms--well, this contractor screwed up, or this
procedure was a problem--rather than saying, this system was
not architected. How would we architect a system to address at
least the stupid stuff?
I assume you are okay with that.
Secretary Griffin. Again, I could not agree more. Eric and
I have a remarkably consistent alignment.
I simply know that, when developing new things that have
not been done before, it is hard to get it right, it is easy to
make mistakes along the way, and when you are doing it, you are
guided by a single-minded focus on the end goal. But when I am
doing that, I cannot tell you up front what the requirements
ought to be, exactly how it is going to come out in the long
run, what contractors I need, what people I need, what system
practices I am going to use. It depends.
And so, if in the advanced development stage--which I will
say includes things up through operational prototype so that
real operators can have some experience with the thing before
deciding to go into production--if up through the operational
prototyping phase you can give the Department as much
flexibility as possible to not know exactly how we are going to
get to the goals we all share, give us the flexibility to not
know how we are going to get there, and hold us accountable for
outcomes instead of processes, that is the best thing that you
can do.
Thank you, sir.
The Chairman. That is helpful.
The only thing I would quibble with you a bit about is, I
do not think it is business as usual at this point. My sense is
we have a combination of leadership at the Department that is
committed to reforms. We have more bipartisan interest in
Congress committed to reforms. And I have this sense of
urgency, that you all have described in another sense, that
this is a chance to improve our processes. Now, none of us will
be satisfied, it will not go far enough, but we have an
opportunity here that, with you-all's guidance and a little
willpower, we can make significant improvements.
And so that is one of the reasons that I wanted to have
this hearing in public today. I appreciate very much both of
you being here. And in about 5 minutes or so, we will continue
our discussion in classified session upstairs.
The hearing stands adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 12:05 p.m., the committee proceeded in
closed session.]
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A P P E N D I X
April 17, 2018
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PREPARED STATEMENTS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD
April 17, 2018
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[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
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QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MEMBERS POST HEARING
April 17, 2018
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QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MRS. DAVIS
Mrs. Davis. In your view, would Congress be better able to engage
with important defense issues if it had access to comprehensive and
forward-looking technology assessments?
Secretary Griffin. Yes, I believe that, in order to make informed
decisions in this arena, the R&E enterprise should maintain open and
thorough communications with Congress regarding the path forward for
not only emerging technologies, but also emerging threats that drive
our technical priorities. It is easier to understand the gravity of
these challenges with comprehensive technology assessments that are
both qualitative and quantitative in nature. In addition, technology
assessments that are specific to existing and emerging priority areas
such as hypersonics and directed energy can help scope the support
needed from Congress, and ensure a common understanding of the most
critical defense issues.
Mrs. Davis. On which defense issues would it be helpful for Members
of Congress to have comprehensive and forward-looking technology
assessments?
Secretary Griffin. Missile defense, space, nuclear modernization,
hypersonics, directed energy, artificial intelligence, cybersecurity,
quantum science, microelectronics, and fully networked command,
control, and communications are all areas of needed technological
advancement. These areas also require an understanding of the
international competitive landscape at present and in the future to
maintain a military edge. The Department and Congress would benefit
greatly from an understanding of the future direction of technologies
supporting these different areas as well as the Department's plans to
mitigate any challenges to technological superiority in these areas.
Mrs. Davis. How would you expect the OTA would be able to inform
Congress' conversations on defense technologies?
Secretary Griffin. I believe the DOD should continue to pursue
collaboration with commercial entities using streamlined mechanisms
such as Other Transaction Authority (OTA) to assess, evaluate and
capitalize on the potential of new technologies and capabilities in
order to provide a cost-effective warfighting advantage. We must
continue to utilize non-traditional mechanisms to accelerate
development and, ultimately, to deliver technologies more quickly and
efficiently to the warfighter in the field. The OTA is a powerful tool,
and I believe, when used properly, it is an important model for
Congress to consider in the emerging conversation of current and future
acquisition reform.
______
QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MR. GALLAGHER
Mr. Gallagher. When it comes to funding defense-relevant
innovation, the private sector plays a key role--but market incentives
aren't always aligned with defense interests. When it comes to defense
innovation, U.S. venture capital often tends to focus on software, not
hardware, given shorter return horizons and lower capital barriers.
What, if any, concerns do you have about ``hard,'' non-software
technologies being underfunded?
Given the past success of organizations like In-Q-Tel, could a U.S.
government-supported investment vehicle, focused on the non-software
technologies in greatest demand to military leaders with the highest
potential impact from investment, be of use to better capture
innovation and leverage it in support of DOD objectives?
Secretary Griffin. In-Q-Tel has been a valuable asset for the
communities it serves, particularly with regards to leveraging American
venture capital efforts in ways that provide critical innovation to the
warfighter while allowing those private businesses to maintain their
non-DOD business and products. I would support exploring options for
DOD to partner with venture capital firms and investors to leverage
hardware and software alike in a way that is beneficial to all parties.
One challenge facing the Department and the Nation is that hardware
vice software technology development underpins some of the desired
defense capabilities. The longer time horizons (8-12 years) associated
with hardware development provide challenges to some innovation funding
mechanisms in use today such as venture capital funding. For example,
the percentage of venture capital funding invested in software rose
from 55% in 2006 to 92% in 2017. Anecdotally, this trend may be
changing but the data is not yet compiled to verify this. I am
exploring multiple approaches to address appropriate hardware
technology development in partnership with private industry. The
Microelectronics Initiative for National Security and Economic
Competiveness is one example of an effort that is investing in creating
state of the art hardware technology for the next generation of DOD
capability. DARPA is providing its Program Managers with mentoring and
support to help them navigate the venture capital world and increase
the likelihood of transitioning ideas into commercially viable product.
I am committed to pursuing opportunities to fully leverage partnerships
with venture capital and industry that apply the nation's best
expertise, creativity and innovation to advance our technology and
improve our edge in warfare.
Mr. Gallagher. When it comes to funding defense-relevant
innovation, the private sector plays a key role--but market incentives
aren't always aligned with defense interests. When it comes to defense
innovation, U.S. venture capital often tends to focus on software, not
hardware, given shorter return horizons and lower capital barriers.
What, if any, concerns do you have about ``hard,'' non-software
technologies being underfunded?
Given the past success of organizations like In-Q-Tel, could a U.S.
government-supported investment vehicle, focused on the non-software
technologies in greatest demand to military leaders with the highest
potential impact from investment, be of use to better capture
innovation and leverage it in support of DOD objectives?
Dr. Schmidt. I am concerned that key non-software technologies
important to the Department of Defense are being underfunded. With the
U.S. venture capital community focused primarily on software, due to
the market incentives you reference, China is aiming to replace the
U.S. as the global leader in these technologies, such as
supercomputing, batteries and microelectronics, drone swarms, and more.
This is concerning not only because it is important for the U.S. to
maintain its technological edge over all adversaries, but also because
if these technologies come to be dominated by China, their supply chain
that leads to U.S. usage could become compromised, putting the U.S. in
a permanently-precarious position. I believe an investment vehicle
focused on non-software technologies could be one of numerous ways to
address the funding gap in this area.
______
QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MR. BROWN
Mr. Brown. Considering the framework of the ``three P's'' for
innovation culture--Proximity, how to properly position common areas
and shared resources to encourage collaborative problem solving;
Privacy, how to create spaces that facilitate private conversations and
help people control interactions; and Permissions, how to encourage
informal interactions with staff from different backgrounds and with
different perspectives.
Secretary Griffin, how is the Department releasing the innovation
potential of its people?
Secretary Griffin. The Department strives to foster an innovation
culture by protecting stable science and technology funding, pursuing
technical talent with a drive for innovation, encouraging creativity
and appropriate risk taking, and recognizing and rewarding results
achieved through innovation. We must prepare for an uncertain future
with rapidly evolving and adaptive threats with innovative and
disruptive technologies and the continued pursuit of opportunities for
change. The Department has located several offices in proximity to
major innovation hubs around the country to enable collaborative
research and shared resources for efficiency. These offices include the
Army Research Laboratory open campus offices in Adelphi, Maryland,
Southern California, Austin, Texas, and Boston, Massachusetts as well
as the Defense Innovation Unit Experimental (DIUx) in Silicon Valley.
Additionally, we protect our most innovative concepts and facilitate
collaborative work in controlled areas through our joint program
offices and tri-service projects in high-visibility technologies. By
leveraging the communities of interest and conducting outreach
activities to industry and academia, the Department's top technical
talent is empowered to interact with staff that have a range of
backgrounds, expertise, and perspectives. Ultimately, the Department
must be able to drive its military innovation cycle faster than any
adversary to sustain technological superiority. Our competitors are
closing the gap because of our processes, not our talent. The
Department's research and engineering enterprise is committed to
working with our partners across the DOD to ensure our workforce will
leverage the full range of authorities granted from Congress to enable
innovative business practices. In addition, the research and
engineering enterprise will focus on engaging non-traditional partners
in shaping our processes, technical focus/roadmaps, and understanding
our comparative advantage.
______
QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MR. BANKS
Mr. Banks. NSWC Crane has been successful at fostering the
development of a robust and rapidly expanding innovation ecosystem.
This nationally recognized model of regional collaboration has
propelled NSWC Crane along with its partners to the forefront of
technology development through its utilization of resources from
industry, academia, and the public sector. This partnership has
embarked on solving some of nation's toughest problems such as (but not
limited to) trusted/assured microelectronics, hypersonic and artificial
intelligence/machine learning.
The Navy serves as the DOD's Executive Agent (EA) for Printed
Circuit Board (PrCB) and Interconnect Technology which has the
responsibility to ensure the DOD has trusted access to those
technologies. From circuit cards to the microelectronics that populate
them. Our DOD must have ``trusted assemblies'' to complete their
mission.
Dr. Griffin, Do you support an active oversight role in partnership
with OSD within the Trusted and Assured Microelectronics Efforts/
Microelectronics Innovation for National Security and Economic
Competitiveness (MINSEC) to fulfill the congressional mandate for DOD's
EA to ensure the DOD has trusted access to those technologies?
Secretary Griffin. One of my top priorities as Undersecretary of
Research and Engineering is Microelectronics, which includes ensuring
access to Trusted and Assured Microelectronics. As you recognize, NSWC
Crane is an integral partner in this collaborative effort and provides
important leadership and capabilities to achieve this priority. NSWC
Crane specifically has a number of lead roles in Trusted and Assured
Microelectronics, the Joint Federated Assurance Centers (JFAC), and
Strategic Radiation Hardened Materials and Printed Circuit Boards
(PrCB). We see them as a critical partner in the Microelectronics
Innovation for National Security and Economic Competitiveness (MINSEC).
Mr. Banks. NSWC Crane was major contributor to OSD and Strategic
Systems Program's (SSP) recent successful FE1 Conventional Prompt
Strike Flight Test. NSWC Crane exercised their innovation eco system to
reach out to their university and industry partners to provide rapid
solutions. As the program transition from OSD to the Navy, NSWC Crane
role will grow and the innovation ecosystem will continue to be
leveraged. Dr. Griffin, as the Undersecretary for Defense Research and
Engineering, how can you work with the labs to ensure they have
resources, authorities and facilities to execute their mission?
Secretary Griffin. Strong and stable resources, along with existing
authorities, greatly enhance the laboratories' abilities to operate
more efficiently and effectively. Therefore, I will continue to
advocate for and support proper resourcing for our laboratories and
work to remove institutional barriers that hinder their use of flexible
authorities. A severely aging infrastructure presents a significant
challenge to our ability to maintain our technological edge over our
adversaries. Laboratories must compete against other military
construction projects for limited resources and have not fared well in
this process. In the past, labs have had to rely on Congressionally-
granted authorities, such as Section 219, to largely sustain themselves
and make much-needed upgrades through minor military construction
funding. It is also vital the Lab Directors have the necessary hiring
flexibilities, as well as good lab facilities, to entice a strong
workforce. Our scientists and engineers play a prominent role in
developing technologies that benefit the Nation as a whole and their
subject matter expertise is essential for the Department to meet the
needs of the Warfighter.
Mr. Banks. Dr. Schmidt, how can the EA work closely with the DIB to
accelerate solutions to the warfighter?
Dr. Schmidt. In my capacity as Chair of the DIB, I've learned of
NSWC Crane's important contributions and their unique role as both a
research and development facility. The DIB has publicly stated AI's
central importance to the Department of Defense, and accordingly, AI is
a key area where DIB and Crane can work closely together on developing
solutions, including in cybersecurity, logistics, training,
communications, and many other critical domains. The DIB stands ready
to partner with Crane in these ways.
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