Dive Brief:
- A large percentage of the U.S. Department of Defense’s research facilities were built before the internet and need to be upgraded or the military risks falling behind as innovation in other countries accelerates, an internal report directed at senior department leaders says.
- The Defense Research Enterprise Review calls for a dedicated appropriation for research facility development and an increase in the amount the department can spend for facility construction projects without authorization.
- The report also calls for developing a database listing all of the department’s research infrastructure and testing facilities to improve visibility into the portfolio.
Dive Insight:
The Department of Defense has research facilities dating back to 1865, when the U.S. Army built its Electronics Design and Development Laboratory at Watervliet Arsenal in New York, the report says. Today, the average age of the department’s research facilities is 50 years.
“Today’s [Defense Research Enterprise] faces a strategic environment that has dramatically changed from the environment in which most of the enterprise was constructed,” the report says. “The pace of technological change is faster than ever with developers providing powerful capabilities on simple-to-use platforms. Adversaries access these technologies more readily than ever and provide non-traditional means for disruption, disturbance, and denial.”
The report points to the way Russia and China, among others, are leveraging technologies that could impact the United States’ security.
“China has solidified its civil-military fusion model and is investing on a scale and at a pace that requires the United States to develop a new Government-industry paradigm,” the report says.
The first of more than a dozen recommendations in the report is to obtain passage of dedicated appropriations for the construction and modernization of the department’s research infrastructure.
“Authorized [projects] continually slip due to the Services’ reprioritizing of scarce [military construction] funds toward other operationally relevant priorities,” the report says.
The report recommends an annual funding baseline of $650 million that grows to $952 million over five years.
Military research facilities would also benefit if the department could undertake construction projects worth more than $9 million without going through an authorization process, the report says. Increasing the limit to $20 million would restore “speed and agility to the facility revitalization process, ensuring the United States remains at the forefront of scientific and defense innovation,” it says.
The report makes a dozen other recommendations, including addressing a visibility gap from not having a searchable database listing all of the military’s research facilities.
