Mark J. Lewis: Emerging Technologies and the Future of National Defense

technologies that are critical to the future of national defense the epi provides research and analyses to inform the development integration of emerging technologies into the defense industrial base so prior to this current position many of dr lewis was the director of defense research and engineering in the department of defense where he oversaw technology modernization for all the services at dod agencies he was also the acting deputy under secretary of defense for research and engineering so when he was in that role he was the pentagon's senior most scientist he managed a 17 billion dollar budget that included agencies like darpa the missile defense agency the defense innovation unit space development agency the ffrdc the federally funded research and development centers and the department's basic and applied research portfolio so he really was highly ranked here which is one of the reasons we've invited him to be the pedals speaker here today he's got a large number of rewards and things but i want to make sure i give him a chance to talk so it's okay with mark i'll skip some of his details here other than to say he was also one of us he spent 25 years at maryland as a faculty member so he's got government experience he's worked for think tanks and support organizations he's also served as in the dod he attended the massachusetts vinstead institute of technology where he got his bachelor's degree in aeronautics and astronautics and earth and atmosphere earth and planetary science sorry i almost gave you our department's name got his master of science at mit and his doctor of science at mit and the ms and doctor are in aeronautics and astronautics so with that mark let me go ahead and turn it over to you i will shut off my video and i'll be back when you finish up with your part of the lecture so great thank you mark it's really quite a privilege to be here i i'll start by saying i don't know of a university that so understands the intersection of technology and engineering and national defense as uh quite quite like purdue university and and you know i've tremendous admirer of purdue over the many years many friends and colleagues of the faculty i've had i've had many of our undergraduates from maryland come to purdue for graduate studies and we've we've brought many undergraduates from purdue to maryland for into our graduate program um so again really really quite an honor to be able to address this audience and also i see some some some some friends and colleagues from from the much broader indiana community um when i was in the pentagon we we did some incredible work with with indiana uh including industry but as as well though the military installations such as the nswc crane facility so so thanks again so what i want to talk about today is uh emerging technologies for national defense and i want to give a kind of a broad overview of where i think we are um what the imperatives are and then what are some of the challenges that we're facing in introducing modernizing technology for national defense so let me see if i can advance all right so let me start off uh if i can being a little bit philosophical about about the american way of war right how we fight wars and really comes down to a colleague in the pentagon once said that really there there are two ways that you there are two coins if you will involved in warfare one is blood and the other is money blood is we fight wars and unfortunately we sometimes expand the lives of our of our young men and women the other is we can spend money to develop technologies uh in most cases the aim of that is to reduce the loss of light but among our people and also uh with our adversaries so so that is really very much um our the focus why we why we want the most advanced technology in our department of defense because we want to minimize the loss of life to our people and also to our opponents um i i will submit to you i'm not a historian but i spent a lot of time hanging out with historians i recommend it they always have the last word so you always want to have friends who are historians but one of my historian friends likes to point out that that really um our defense technology is has always always been a fundamental part of the way americans spawn explorers and this goes back to the origins of our nation even before the urge of internation so during the revolutionary war there was a famous cry at the battle of bunker hill which really took place on breed's hill but battle of bunker hill don't shoot until you see the whites of their eyes it was more than just a feel-good statement it was an understanding of the importance of precision sprite you make every bullet count you make your effects as precise as possible i think it set us up for a history uh within the the united states military of emphasizing precision and frankly technology lots of examples of that through history um the beginnings of the american navy um when the united states finally saturday needed the navy to fight the barbary pirates um we began building a series of ships including the early american frigates that were a generation beyond anything else that was on the water right so uh today if you go to boston harbor you can view the uss constitution it's the oldest uh floating commissioned uh warship uh in the world um when the constitution was built it was a generation beyond the incorporated technologies that were far in advance of any other ship of its type on on sailing the oceans um look for the war to the civil war um one of my favorite examples there was the introduction of iron clad tips you notice by the way i'm an aerospace engineer but i'm choosing some nautical examples from from the pre-aviation days but you know when when the uh when the the confederate navy decided to cover one of its ships and iron came the uss merrimack became the the the the virginia um that was an amazing revolution right it was dispensing with sales and robe and and and mass and focusing on propulsion focusing on steam engine and then focusing on uh thick iron for defense and of course the the union immediately responded with the ship that you see pictured in the upper right hand corner of your screen the uss monitor um an amazing story there that ship was built in a record 90 days there were 65 separate patents on that ship it changed the nature of warfare entirely after the monitor was built the united states stopped building uh massive sailing ships all right it was it had completely changed the nature of war um more recently in the 1990s we saw the introduction of stealth technology uh for those those of us who remember the uh the the gulf wars the united states air force prosecuted its uh uh first days over baghdad they unleashed this new technology stealth technology that made our aircraft essentially invisible to radar um the whole world took a took a step back was gasping at the capabilities of this technology um really quite a revolution and then you know since then the introduction of precision munitions um uh weapons that are guided precisely to their target uh again has been a major revolution and and and i don't have to and i don't think i even have to mention space i'm sure you all recognize the importance of a space as part of the american way of war it's become our tremendous advantage we use space for just about everything communications for sensing um where where it's part of our defense network the gps system that we all rely upon on our iphone call that was developed as part of the us military space infrastructure so that's kind of the good news we in the united states we understand the importance of technology we understand how to use technology and and it's incorporated in our national defense posture but there are also some other lessons that we need to take from history that kind of inform the current the current discussion right we have missed a number of technological advances over the years in the in the center of the screen i show a picture of a world war one airplane that's a newport 28 it was flown by america's foremost uh uh air ace of world war one a gentleman named eddie rickenbacker rickenbacker is flying at newport 28 which is interestingly not an american airplane it's a french airplane and that's because when the united states entered world war one we had very few airplanes of our road we essentially didn't have an aviation industry we had to rely on other people's airplanes it's a technology that we invented we invented it by you know the wright brothers uh flew the first airplane in 1903. and by the time world war one broke out we had essentially taken our foot off the gap now lots of reasons why that happened not all technological some was some was political someone's actually attributed directly to the wright brothers by the way they they after they built their first airplanes they basically sued anyone else who tried to build something similar so they they set the us industry back but regardless it's an example of a technology that we invented we developed we perfected and then other people carried into into the military a lot of other examples of that of that happening radar for example is one of the drop oh gas turbine engines so the lower right hand corner um i have a report that was written by the national academy of sciences in 1940 that concluded that the gas turbine engine could not be considered a feasible application for aircraft propulsion they decided that the power to weight requirements uh meant that a gas turbine engine would no no would never be feasible for airplane propulsion at the same time they wrote this report britain and germany were close to first developing their their their jet powered aircraft so we have dropped the ball and i also kind of like the smile about that um what what in a series of influential national academy of science reports not all of them do it and then finally of course rockets um you know robert goddard for the first liquid fuel rockets uh up in massachusetts but it was the germans who once again uh introduced the rockets as a meaningful weapon of war now we can debate how effective it was uh the v2 rocket was an amazing technological achievement with some limited uh strategic effects but but still it shows that once again we have had this propensity for for for dropping the ball fuel well taking our foot off the gas um the bottom line is that you know defense technology it's always moving quickly it's always advanced so just because you have an advantage today doesn't mean you'll have an advantage tomorrow that means we're constantly in a race we're constantly we're constantly looking over our shoulders as we develop technology and if we skip a beat if we don't continue to press and pursue we can very quickly find ourselves um uh uh lagging behind all right so let me now call your attention to a defining document that those of us in the pentagon cited quite often this is the national defense strategy that was released released in 2018. every four years the department of defense releases this major document known as the national defense strategy um it includes the work of many many folks working across the national defense infrastructure it's authored in the pentagon but it draws from across the government it's input from industry think tanks um 2018 was a landmark year for a national defense strategy let me first point out that as i said the national event strategy is a four year exercise so the 2018 national defense strategy was begun in 20 well actually uh as early as 2014 and really started coming in you know was really most of the work of something it was the 2016-2017 time frame so it transcended administrations it wasn't a product of a single administration and the defense secretary who advocated for this who basically owned this strategy who signed the cover page when it was released was secretary mattis who was very much seen as a bipartisan bipartisan leader and the strategy had a couple of key elements first and foremost many of us would argue was the first national defense strategy in quite some time that was truly a strategy right most previous national defense strategies very candidly had been more tactical they've been more reactive this was the was the first strategy in quite some time that planted some real strategic flats and i want to quote a couple of lines from this strategy because it's quite significant right first uh early on the strategy it states that we're emerging we the united states are emerging from a period of strategic atrophy aware that our competitive military advantage has been eroding in other words other people have been investing and they are catching up to us the incredible advantage that we had is starting to slip away now i'll sight back to that release of stealth technology during the gulf war well that was 30 years ago now and more the whole world has had an opportunity to study what we did how we did it the technologies that we employed ways that you might counter that technology that advantage is already slipping it's already slipping away second the national defense strategy also named names it called people out right it enlisted china as a strategic competitor that's investing heavily using what the report calls predatory economics uh investing you know building up its military across the south china sea and beyond it also called out russia or bad behavior violating borders of its nearby nations but also continuing to invest building on you know its cold war legacy of technology but all using all the levers of power now the strategy cited other countries north korea gets a shout out iran gets a shout out but the key feature is that this this document made was that while other nations obviously posed a threat to the united states it was china and russia that were true from strategic competitors and that was the existential threat that the united states needed to address um very candidly in the pentagon by the time i arrived back in 2019 we used to say all china all the time that's the country we were focused on as investing heavily trying to catch up to us now at the same time the national defense strategy wasn't naive about other threats right pointed out that homeland the united states is no longer a sanctuary we through most of our history could rely on the fact that we were separated from the rest of the world by two large oceans we had friendly neighbors in the north friendly neighbor on the south so really in a in a blessed situation compare that to to europe where where friends and enemies are in close proximity to each other really quite a quite an advantageous geographic location and now of course in the modern era that geographic advantage is no longer so pronounced um it also points out that in order to meet these these uh threats well we need to modernize key capabilities report explicitly says we cannot expect success if we fight tomorrow's conflicts with yesterday's weapons right a very important message again echoing that theme that technology is constantly advancing and and then dear near and dear to the hearts of those of us who spent our careers looking at the intersection of technology and defense the report explicitly says we anticipate the implications of new technologies on the battlefield rigorously define the military problems anticipated in future conflict and foster a culture of experimentation and calculated risk-taking and that echoes in a number of us have been saying over many years that we need to be willing to take risks we need to be willing to accept risk we need to be willing to fail as we develop the technologies that will be part of our future department defense all right so if you go through that national defense strategy document in more detail and with its emphasis on the importance of technology a number of technology areas immediately jump out they're cited uh their their reference and i've got those technology areas listed here in this slide um and i put them in in several specific categories and by way of explanation i will tell you that again when i when i showed up in the pentagon in in november of 2019 um as bill mentioned as a director of defense research and engineering i was basically handed this list right my my boss at the time the under secretary of defense uh handed me this list and said this is what you need to focus on these are the modernization priorities for the national defense strategy now i will tell you it's not a list that i came up with but if i were to come up with my own list this is pretty much the list i would have come up with right i i dare say that if i asked almost anyone in this in in this audience to come up with a list of technologies that they think are vital to national defense well i think you come up with a pretty comparable list right these are the things that we know today are important not only for the nation as a whole but specifically for the defense sector and i tend to put them in in in three specific categories underlying capabilities those are the capabilities that are kind of at the core of what we do in defense right it could be components it could be uh it could be functionalities versus microelectronics absolutely key right microelectronics is at the heart of pretty much everything we do in the department well it's at the heart of always everything we do in modern life you know i i joke that short of buying a hammer at home depot almost anything you buy today has some micro electronic um i components tell you right now we're in a very serious situation microelectronics we face some significant challenges there and i'll elaborate on those in a moment um autonomy artificial intelligence cyber three different areas but obviously overlapping right autonomy i think of is as the use of machine systems in place of human beings or any unmanned airplane any any uncrewed watercraft any robotic system um we've all seen the tremendous advances in in unmanned aircraft for example uavs drones as they're called popularly the way they become integral to the battlefield it's often been said that the military has been dragged kicking and screaming into the adoption of autonomous systems i'm here to tell you that's actually not true that that that's absolutely absolutely absolutely the opposite is the case the military has really stepped up to the plate in adopting autonomous systems in unmanned systems it's it's becoming more increasingly uh part of the american way of work artificial intelligence right really important area obviously artificial intelligence is using almost everything we do in technology i can think of very very few more important applications in in the defense sector and then cyber and especially cyber defense you know referencing those comments from the national defense strategy that pointed out that homeland is is no longer secure and one of the reasons is cyber people people can now use cyber to reach us um um um as easily as they can their next door neighbors and then put that all together fully fmcq that stands for fully networked command control communication we've come to understand that the battlefield of the future is a network battlefield it's a battlefield where sensors are interacting with each other where sensors are connecting to different different weapon systems where operators have a site picture that greatly enhances their effectiveness now as will probably not surprise anyone in this audience we haven't done a particularly good job in this area so up to now we tend to have siloed systems we have services that don't always talk well to each other we have systems that often communicate well with each other you know whole aircraft systems don't communicate well with other whole aircraft systems sometimes by design so breaking those those stove pipes using those sensors for combined advantage is is is going to be key to success in the future that's category one second category guy kind of put in the broad area of delivered effects that's hardware things that i can hold my hand or things that i can see deliver you know specific weapons and there are a couple that we focus on um space obviously one all right space is already as i mentioned earlier integral to the way we communicate the way we sense the way we interact with our systems the way we navigate right absolutely critical to the american way of war in 2008 as i was winding down my time as the chief scientist at the air force i kicked off a study that became known as the day without space study we asked the question what would happen in the us military if we were suddenly deprived of all of our space capabilities now that's a bit of a farfetched scenario all right no one's going to be able to deprive us all at once however we do realize that our space capabilities are ever more at risk other people have realized how much we rely on them and they've come up with ways to neutralize those capabilities the data today would have space uh study came to a very straightforward conclusion um we would have a very hard time fighting a war if we didn't have our space assets it was fascinating because and we talked to people in the military what would you do without space they said oh we don't need space we have all these backup systems and then you start diving in and you say okay how do we use those backup systems well those backup systems ultimately at some point depend on space so quite quite a quite a vulnerability previous secretary of the air force heather wilson um they made the observation that we built a lot of our space systems um like a glass house and we never took into account the fact that the neighbors could throw stones at us but that's the situation that we're in today direct energy that includes lasers microwaves high-powered systems um this is an area that that the the joke is that that directive energy is is the future and it always will be except we're at the point now we're seeing breakthroughs threatened energy we're seeing lasers reaching power levels and suddenly they become viable weapons viable uh uh systems we've also begun to understand that directed energy wouldn't just replace kinetic systems right you you don't simply replace a gun with a laser instead you use a laser or a microwave system in ways that you couldn't use the gun you know one obvious example is a laser gives you an almost infinite magazine with a gun i can run out of bullets with a laser as long as i've got electric power i can keep on going so if i'm defending say against an attack of swarming weapons lasers can be very attractive lasers also can can factor into a cost card all right right now if i'm being attacked with a relatively low-cost uav um one of my weapons of choice might be a much more expensive missile you don't want to shoot down a thousand dollar drone with a million dollar missile that doesn't that doesn't stack well into the cost card if i can shoot down that thousand dollar drone with a laser that cost me five cents worth of electricity that's a really good cost exchange so that's another reason direct energy is very important for the future benefits my own personal favorite hypersonics all right that's high-speed high-speed systems systems that operate in excess of about five times the speed of sound hypersonics is more than just speed though it's a combination of speed and maneuverability operating in on trajectories and in realms where um where where uh basically uh it makes them extreme extraordinarily survivable right and um um and and really has has a can have a profound impact on the battlefield of the future i i will tell you that when we did warfighting exercises in the pentagon in some of our scenarios if we didn't have hypersonic systems available we the united states didn't win because we knew our adversaries were investing very heavily in this area and then third category certain category future promise these are areas where we know there will be significant significant uh future engagement right that's the area of quantum science biotechnology um and and um you know we're not in many cases sure exactly what those mean for the for the future battlefield but we know they're important and we know that they have significant significant uh promise for the way we we uh the way we operate quantum for example paul's potential of giving us substantially substantially improved sensors uh replacements for some space assets for precision navigation timing biotechnology can change the way we manufacture things um whole new avenues for producing jet fuels or structural materials are producing new materials so again really promising technology all right let me move to our next which is among those which are the ones that we're most concerned about and let me suggest to you that there are a number of technologies right um are those 11 topic areas if you count in there 11.

um yeah they will immediately emerge hypersonics as i mentioned really important one because we don't have it in the future we won't win lots of technology she's assisted with hypersonics what's the right propulsion system how do we use these systems how do we deliver them at scale it's fine to do a prototype i can build a hypersonic you know weapon fly at once high five and congratulate myself myself for an engineering accomplishment what we really want to do is be able to deliver hypersonic systems that scales can have that can have significant impact on the future battlefield frankly there have been some recent studies looking at hypersonic weapons in the role of battlefield that have been quite bad all right they've missed some important points and some more important elements on what hypersonics can mean for the for for the future of combat and so we're at kind of a turning point where we're investing we've got solid road maps we need to be continuing to advance the case for this technology microelectronics another really important one when i was in the pentagon i said it was my number one priority and that's because we have gotten ourselves into what are described as a bit of a pickle we are reliant on foreign sources today for our state-of-the-art microelectronics if you wish to buy a state-of-the-art component microelectronic component you're almost certainly buying it from a farm manufacturer uh taiwan semiconductor manufacturing corporation uh is is is one of the largest manufacturers for example of our our semiconductor components so big push for how do we unshore microelectronics how do we bring that industry back to the united states more importantly the department of defense right now is incapable of buying state-of-the-art microelectronics we're not on what is called the commercial curve right that's because of decisions that were made policy decisions that remain investment decisions that were made but essentially today precludes us from buying state of the art so if you pick up a department of defense system today if you pick up a uh any component that uses microelectronics in the dod you will find that it is using microelectronics it could be a generation behind or two generations behind that's bad from several standpoints one it leads to obsolescence very quickly right people stop manufacturing parts and you've got a problem you don't know where to get those future parts so if you find out that someone's going to stop manufacturing you need to do a big investment on a legacy buy which means you're trent you're buying lots of parts you're putting a lot of money into a purchase for something that's about to become obsolete and of course there are some dod unique needs in microelectronics um in the dod we need things that are radiation hard right things that can survive in a very harsh radiation environment and uh we're the only ones who really need that there are some space applications for radiation part as well that's an area that you need to really focus on directed energy right i mentioned the importance of direct energy and what that could mean for the future battlefield um that's still very much an area that requires significant risk-taking right it's an area that um that the services have really been a bit slow to incorporate but they're not placing bets in what happens if all those demonstrations laboratory experiments actually work and so there are some programmatic challenges there are also some technical challenges it's not enough to have a really good laser you have to have a way to steer it and point it and control the beef quality then of course we need an industrial base that can produce the the the systems that that ultimately will be fielded and that's an industrial base that includes not only prime manufacturers but also elements right down the spike chain including the use of some rare earth elements that are integral to the design and manufacture of lasers and then finally another key area of biotechnology i mentioned the importance of biotechnology got an important role in the industrial base uh it can play a key role in in manufacturing new ways of manufacturing um sorry but i discovered when i when i when i came back to the pentagon in 2019 when i would talk to people about biotechnology i would often be faced with a response from the services along the lines of yeah that's really important but it's not what we do we don't we're not a biotechnology service you know the u.s army would say we don't do biotechnology the air force said we don't do biotechnology the navy would say we don't do biotechnology then the pandemic hit and everyone realized the importance of investments in biotechnology um i think one of the good news stories that's going to emerge from from from this pandemic was that a lot of the work that went into developing those coveted 19 vaccines can be traced back to investments that were made by the department of defense darpa played a very big role in the initial investments in development uh messenger rna vaccines in in many cases because darpa was willing to take risks that other organizations weren't so i think that was an eye-opening experience really changed the nature of the conversations surrounding biotechnology all right next so a little bit of uh shameless self-promotion here uh as as uh bill mentioned beginning of the my talk um i'm now at the emerging technologies institute we're a brand new technology institute that's really focused on these emerging technologies so we set this up it's we're we're all of about a month into establishing this institute but as a non-partisan institute focused on that list of technologies those critical modernization technologies will be a part of national defense research and analysis will be part of what we're doing um engaging with national leaders informing uh not only government but also in industry partners and relying on the vast resources of national defense industrial association not only the governance structure but members and companies all that help us provide the information the reports the analysis have the conversations that we think are going to be important in this whole issue of national defense and technology all right so let me let me finish up by talking about i talked i've talked about the importance of emerging technologies i talked to you about the the area i've talked about why each of those areas each of those individual areas is important let me focus now what are the challenges that we face and there are many all right first acquisition it's not enough just to research develop and engineer the system in order to be useful for national defense you have to get it into the hands of the combatants sometimes the pentagon will refer to it as the pointy end of the spear means you need to acquire it means you need to have someone who who purchase it purchases that technology who maintains it who sustains it who trains personnel with that technology we know those timelines can be really long our frontline fighters the f-22 and the f-35 have taken more than two decades to go from concept to deployment the f-35 is still in the process of being deployed right other systems we've seen take a very long time well unfortunately we no longer have that luxury but countries like china you're breathing down our neck investing very very quickly um we've seen them be uh able to acquire new technologies acquire new systems frankly at a pace that that puts hours to shame so trying to trim down those acquisition timelines that's a big challenge a lot of effort going under what underway right now within the department creating organizations uh such as diu and afworks space development agency all of which are really designed to shrink those acquisition timelines take lessons learned from industry and introduce those into the defense ecosystem another part of that is what's called the acquisition valley of death that's a term you hear very commonly in defense s t circles what does that refer to but that value of death is that wide gap that we often encounter between the development of a technology and its incorporation lots of people talk about why there is a valley bed i i argue it isn't really a value that it's a mountain of death and that there's a tremendous amount of money that's available within the department to go from the laboratory to prototype the trick is to convince people to accept that prototype and incorporate it into their system and why is that such a challenge well the next bulb points that out within the department we've got a lot of legacy systems often systems we have invested in into which we've invested a lot of money right um aircraft carriers are incredibly expensive you don't build an aircraft carrier this week and decide next week you're no longer going to be using it right once you've made that investment yes stick with it right a new airplane is a very expensive investment space systems are expensive investments it's not only the initial investment but it's the training it's the backup it's the supplies all the everything that goes into sustainment so whenever you incorporate a new technology you have to convince someone to frankly give up something something older all right give up a legacy capability and lots of people get a vote in that so i've got a picture in the middle of the screen of an airplane called the a10 given the the rather unfluttering unflattering name the warthog because some people consider it an ugly airplane though others of us would argue that part of its ugliness is in its beauty the warthog was designed as a close air combat support airplane this is a tank killer this is an airplane operated by the us air force to fly low and slow and protect protect our troops it's an old airplane the company that built this airplane is no longer in business um the air force has tried been trying to decommission this airplane because they it has argued it has newer systems that can do the same mission but yet congress has not allowed the air force to do that because they've argued that the newer systems are not as capable and not as readily available as this unique airplane and so even when you want to decommission a system you don't you are always allowed to do that other challenge industrial based vulnerabilities i've mentioned this throughout my top all right um what is the industrial base it's the total lineup of companies that are involved in supplying the national defense infrastructure with various various technologies various capabilities um the covet pandemic brought this message home that we have points in our industrial base that truly are vulnerable right individual suppliers individual companies which if they're no longer able to function will put at risk other pieces of national defense we saw that for example in the aerospace industry as the commercial sector stopped buying airplanes that had rippling implications to aircraft propulsion and the department of defense buys engines from the same people that build engines where the commercials said right we even saw it in such things mundane uh uh things as uniforms so the department of defense is required to buy its uniforms from american suppliers that includes american sources american manufacturers sources of american uh material we found that as epidemic pandemic kicked in the people who make the uniforms the department defense weren't well equipped to operate through the pandemic you think about how you how you sew together uniform you got people sitting on top of each other hovered over sewing machines and those companies started cutting down and department was afraid that it wouldn't be able to continue buying uniforms wouldn't have enough uniforms for its soldiers sailors marines airmen so now think about you know other parts of the industrial base and what that might mean especially in the higher technology areas so again vulnerabilities to the investor base really key issue another challenge we've got test and evaluation right this is always a controversy how much money do you put into test and evaluation versus how much money did you put in actually building the thing um as a guy who grew up on wind tunnels i'll be the first to tell you that you know wind tunnel wind tunnels are absolutely a critical tool in aerospace engineering if you want to buy down the risk of anything that you're ultimately going to fly now there are there's an uh some school of thought that says hey as we develop modeling simulation has become more and more a tool to trade there's less and less need for wind tunnels i have not to buy that i think modeling and simulation goes hand in hand with the role of the wind tunnel i think it changes the way we use the wind tunnel but doesn't eliminate the need for the wind tunnel but that's certainly attention you know attention that you see we put more money building up those test capabilities or we invest that those dollars in the actual system and and i can tell you i i've been on a number of recent uh uh uh committees i was on some review boards for things that failed often held in spectacularly expensive ways at the end of the day it came down to you they failed because there wasn't enough tests there wasn't enough enough evaluation done before these systems were fielded workforce another big challenge um how do we make sure that the best and the brightest are working on the problems that are critical importance national defense all right that's at the undergraduate level at the master's level at the phd level how do we make sure that the smartest minds are working in our in the air force research lab in the army research lab in the naval research lab at university labs that are supporting the work of national events we're working in the industry but it goes even beyond that right we need a skilled technical workforce you know the the pipe fitters the plumbers even even in in such sectors as test and evaluation you know it takes a certain skill set to put a gauge on a wind tunnel model it takes a certain degree of training to be able to build a model be able to instrument it properly the network force is at risk and something that we were putting a lot of paying a lot of attention to in the department of defense um you know um i will tell you that we saw our peer competitors focusing on that issue as well making sure that their universities were incorporated with the work of their industry industry and work in their government and and we were ramping that up uh uh quite a bit in response and finally there's the issue of bad ideas right and and and and i highlight that because there's a certain scroll of thought that says all right let's just keep dumping money at any problem right if we if we've got a if we've got a technology issue we'll just spend more money we'll invest more we'll invest more technology x right space is vulnerable just put a lot more money into space hypersonics just dump a lot more money into hypersonics turns out that's not the best approach right you can waste a lot of money doing that you have to filter out the bad ideas from the good ideas you have to figure out how do i make those investment decisions that i'm getting the best bang for my taxpayer dollars that's why i know how to do that is with a skilled workforce so see the bullet point above and we need to have the best and brightest people making these decisions in order that we can stay at the forefront and i will tell you as someone who's worked on you know worked in in academia working government sometimes the most valuable skill set that we bring is the ability to see past a bad idea to recognize a truly good idea from something that just flat out won't work right and then the last point which is how do we pursue these emerging technologies how do we respond to these threats and especially how do we respond to these threats without doing more harm to ourselves than good but what do i mean by that well i'll cite up an example perhaps my least favorite example example out of the aerospace industry so some decades back there were some significant concerns being raised about other countries infiltrating and frankly exfiltrating uh information from our industrial base in a series of rules and laws were put into place are collectively known as international traffic and arms regulations and itar puts significant restrictions on our ability to share technology with foreign partners now itar is not classified right a technology on the itar list isn't necessarily on the classified list it doesn't have to be secret top secret but be in a it can be in a category of technology such that we will not discuss it share it or more importantly sell it to another nation when icar rules kicked in they had a initially they had a a positive attack right they prevented some of our adversaries from getting a hold of technologies that we didn't want to have in the long run many of us would argue it had a negative effect because those other nations are sponsored by building their own indigenous capabilities right whole industries are equated overseas um china especially responded by stepping up to the plate in key technology areas especially in space and then by the way using that as a leverage art to partner with nations that we would not partner with we face that today we have some folks who looked at some of the threats that we face and they've said things like you know close the gates right if we're worried about pure competitors uh uh stealing from us then let's keep their researchers from coming to the united states let's keep their students from coming to the united states and i would argue adamantly that that's the wrong the wrong thing to do because we do that we wind up hurting ourselves more than anyone else but if we close our gates to the best and brightest from around the world and ultimately we don't get that infusion of talent we know that then that that incredible skill set coming to the united states participating in our community contributing to our ideas and ultimately helping our own industrial base some of us have even advocated that that every phd uh diploma that that is awarded to to uh a non-us citizen should come with a green card staple to it to encourage encourage uh those individuals to stay in the united states um and and and really to contribute to to to our amazing uh s t enterprise um i'll i'll i'll leave with that note and and i'll i'll close out with that note of optimism which is that you know how do i think we're doing how do i how do i how do i view our our relative success in emerging technologies first i think we're doing quite well um the department defense has stepped up to the plate um the creation of the under secretary of defense for research engineering was in fact a major uh was a milestone in addressing those emerging technologies the whole office in the pentagon focused on emerging technologies uh second we were very successful in creating a series of road maps getting the services working together enemy agencies working together all on these these uh emerging technologies um one of the last things that i did in the pentagon was kind of a report card with how how the department of defense was doing and it was a very promising report card indeed you know we had a lot to we had a lot left to do we had a you know we were making progress but we weren't there yet but across the board we saw the department taking these technologies very very seriously um i think we also saw a recognition of the great strengths that we have in our system right we have many inefficiencies a country like china can can move more quickly than we can um dictatorships can be very very efficient they don't have to abide by acquisition rules they don't have long timelines they they aren't burdened if you will with with with this focus on fairness and equal opportunity they can make unilateral decisions and it allows them to move very quickly but what they don't have they don't have the diversity of a scientific enterprise a diversity of ideas and diversity of sources a diverse is a diversity of opportunities they don't have allies and partners your countries who bring new perspectives different research focus areas who will team with us who will teach us new ideas um they don't have that at their back and fall and and we do and i think that's the essential strength of our system and why ultimately i think um where we are although we have to be mindful of our threats we have to be cognizant of the fact that we're in a race i think at the end of the day we're actually very well positioned to meet these challenges that we are facing so that let me thank everyone for your attention um if there are any questions that you have i'd be delighted to uh to answer what what what whatever is whatever is on your mind hey great thank you mark really really appreciate the uh the discussion so we're gonna do something special for the for the questions and answers um what i'm going to do is i'm going to introduce lieutenant colonel joshua stefacia he's going to moderate the question answer session with dr lewis and as many have already been doing in the audience you can type in questions in the q a window if you're on the webex there should be a chat window and there should be a q a window we prefer you use the q a window you can type in a question and josh will ask dr lewis and so it'll kind of look like a discussion between josh and mark but that'll be a way for the audience to be able to ask questions quick reminder to everybody all of the discussion today is approved for public release and so it needs to stay in that domain so it's entirely possible that mark will have to say i can't answer that question yeah heads up for everybody let me introduce josh real quick josh is one of several active military do active duty military officers here at purdue participating in something we call the purdue military research initiative so this is a program that provides no-cost graduate education to these active duty officers we have eight of these students right now in aeronautics and astronautics there's a little more than 20 i believe at purdue in all kinds of different departments across campus and they range from near the end of their phd studies like josh's to several second lieutenants just getting started with this lieutenant colonel stefania is a active duty uasf test pilot he graduated from the testbot school he's been assigned to purdue as his as the phd student as his assignment currently he's a bs in physics and math from the air force academy he's got a master of science in aerospace engineering from the university of alabama and an ms in flight test engineering from the area university he's logged 2200 hours flying in 32 different military aircraft and 521 combat hours and so if we get stuck here he's going to go back and be an instructor pilot for the usf test school so with that let me turn things over to josh so josh why don't you take over from here all right thank you sir uh like uh dr carson you just just mentioned my name is lieutenant colonel joster fascia and um first i just want to say thank you to dr lewis for um i would say a very relevant uh topic to come out and talk to us about um and uh and also thank you to the panel for uh for including me to uh to be part of the uh the question and answer session um real quick um the reminder of the uh this is an unsecure uh venue so i won't go over that again just make sure we don't get in trouble um keep it in the public domain uh and uh or in the uh the unclass domain we won't have any issues um first off uh we're still having some questions come in so uh while those are coming in i'm gonna ask one uh kind of selfish question uh as a dt test pilot yeah i uh i i'm curious you mentioned some of the issues just with the acquisition times with timelines uh being so drawn out uh in your opinion do you see any any opportunities um you know especially me going back and uh and starting to to work with with tesla school again any uh low-hanging fruit or easy opportunities to compress the acquisition timeline um you know in in any of the stages uh to do it both safely so that we're not missing things in the the the test and evaluation um but getting these technologies uh to the point where we're caught up again and and pushing forward and getting ahead uh in something like like hypersonics so so i love that question so so i would argue that the limitations are more cultural than anything else right every time someone asks me hey does the department need new authorities that can acquire you know speed of action no we've actually got all the authorities that we need just a matter of using them now the good news is we've seen some clear examples of of how to do that i mentioned the space development agency so that was an organization that we stood up specifically to acquire space systems in an incredibly short period of time and they did it all right the space development agency for example they're doing a a series of of space systems that are all focused on building survivable space platforms what we call proliferated leo constellations lots of small satellites and low earth orbit they went from an industry day in spring to contract award in late summer just by moving quickly because that's their mantra all right hypersonics you've got it you've got a good example there i mean that's one where that's a very frustrating story because that's a field that the united states invented i mean we we developed it we created it now we're playing a catch-up game in part i would argue that's because of our own mindsets we're kind of doing a leisurely pace right we're taking our own sweet time we would test once and at work we test the neck again maybe a year later and then we do another flight test we need to be testing early and often we've seen examples how to do this i i often cite the x-15 rocket plane program it was flown out of edwards air force base in 1960s right that's a program that did 199 test flights they were flying on average once every 18 days so we've seen how to do this it's a matter of having the right mindset and it's more cultural than anything else so the more that when you know what uh depending on when you when you when you're when you're back and act when you're when you're back full time the more you can pound your piss in the table and on the desk and say do it faster do it more quickly the the better you'll be advancing this [Music] all right perfect that's that's what i'd like to hear um uh real quick uh one of the questions that came through kind of a an easy one uh what what's a typical day like for you what are your your uh responsibilities tasks uh that you know maybe in your current job uh which i know you've only been a short period of time but then also your previous job so you know i would argue that in in each of my previous jobs in my car i've never had a typical day there's no such thing as a typical day so my current job we're setting up a whole new institute i'm working with you know colleagues here at the defense industrial association um an incredible team here uh partners in history partners in government uh partners in academia um the pentagon i mean i mean the pentagon okay so i will tell you there there are some people in the group in the military who design their careers to avoid spending time in the pentagon i thought that was insane i loved every second i was in the pentagon it's it's imperial room it's where all decisions are being made when you're in the pentagon apparently when you're on the e-ring you you never know what any day is going to be like oh uh you know on a monday you could be sitting across the table from the secretary of defense providing him advice on uh hypersonic weapons on tuesday you could be sitting with the under secretary of defense for policy discussing you know the role of technology and international engagement you know on wednesday you could be getting an intelligence brief that's going to scare the crap out of you informing you what our adversaries are doing in a given area and on and on and on it's really it's a really exciting thing very cool uh yeah i might be one of those people that's been avoiding trying to get out there don't do that we need people uh real quick um kind of a follow-up to the previous question one of the the considerations that always gets talked to us in the in the developmental test world is um making sure that when we're we're getting all these new technologies uh making sure that that while we're focused on the emerging technology itself that we're also developing the infrastructure required in order to test them um and you were mentioning that you know at least in some recent examples that you've seen where we've we've either missed things or not tested enough and so i'm curious if you've seen over the past couple years that uh we've been making the appropriate investments in in uh tesla evaluation infrastructure whether it's ranges you know targets upgraded telemetry type things um you know those kind of investments so that when when we do get that new technology we don't go oh well in order to test this thing we need a b and c and then we're waiting and delaying that timeline for you know potentially months to to get the infrastructure in place to test it so the simple answer is no we don't have an adequate test infrastructure and you're right we're not we've made some investments so in the department there's a test resource management center they actually used to report to me uh in my previous job and they have oversight over all the dod tests and evaluation facilities but the simple answer is no we don't have adequate facilities we have good facilities but but but in many cases uh they're they're they're too few and far between i'll give you one perfect example so you mentioned hypersonics um we don't have enough hypersonic ground test facilities in the nation um there are key areas of the uh key aspects of the hypersonic flight envelope that we have difficulty simulating on the ground the facilities that can simulate them can't meet the need of the various programs that we want to field um hyper center propulsion perfect example um if you want to test a an air breathing hypersonic engine what we call a supersonic combustion ramjet today you basically got two choices you're going in that's a langley eight foot tunnel you're going to the arnold engineering development center aptitude facility um at one point last year the aptitude facility was down it was down for maintenance we've got to turn a valve on a cooling system and the langley facility was almost at risk because it had a nozzle that was beyond its uh uh lifespan so we almost lost all of our capability to do so um other things that you know uh uh right now we're talking about uh reusable hypersonic technologies reusable hypersonic systems we don't have a really good way to test propulsion plant for such a hypersonic vehicle and so having that infrastructure i think is absolutely critical and then there are other elements to it so so we saw in the test range i'll keep using hypersonic examples because it's the one that's near and dear to my heart um our our plan right now the department defense plan was to have up to 40 flight tests of hypersonic systems in the next four years scheduling that on our existing ranges is is really quite a challenge i would imagine um one of the questions uh that that i don't know if you'll have insight into um the secretary of defense had mentioned that the 2022 national defense strategy is going to be or there'll be some significant changes in that compared to the 2018. i didn't know if you have any insight into maybe what some of those changes might be and whether or not they would affect uh some of the stuff that you talked about in today's speech so you know the the the 2022 um national event strategy was already wrapping up and we were already working on writing elements of it uh while i was still in the building but of course you know every new team's gonna put their own focus their own uh new new view onto that document so the simple answer is i don't know how it's actually going to shape out um i would be surprised if you saw significant deviation in the technology list you might see a shift in focus um but you know certainly the things that i that i think we were working on that i was working on um i don't expect to see a significant change because the list we're working on is kind of the common sense list okay um one of the questions that uh i'm curious uh from from your end of of the acquisition you know kind of timeline uh and and your perspective what what have you seen as far as uh requirements development because that gets talked about a lot in our career field is that a lot of the issues we run into when we're trying to design build acquire new weapon systems or capabilities is uh we you know we write down a bunch of requirements and then the contractors turn around they build something for us and it actually meets all of the requirements but it's a horrible product and and you know and then that that ends up coming to us and we end up having to deal with it and tell them that they've got the you know the ugly baby um so i'm curious uh if you've got any you know advice or insights or where where that tends to fall apart um as far as you know who's designing those requirements and and uh and the ways to maybe mitigate that well i uh yeah that also that's that's that's an outstanding question um a lot of the problems are caused because of our long acquisition timeline so one of the reasons that the requirements go awry is that by the time we actually fill the system that we first envisioned the needs have changed um our best weapon systems have been the ones that were very that were uh very adaptable i mean look at the b-52 bomber it was the design in the cold war is a house to long-range nuclear bomber now we're using it for for uh close air support um so so it was a very flexible system and i think part of that is you know exactly as you allude to it's building the requirements process so that we we create flexibility there's another element to it which is there's always this balance between requirements uh pull and technology push um the pendulum tends to swing between those two those two sides of the coin it's important to remember that some of our most important technologies never came out of a requirement stop right there's never a requirements document for the computer never requirements documented for nuclear device never requirements document for uh the light bulb for that matter all right so there has to be a marriage of technology push and requirements pull to inform the the the products that go to the warfighter and then another element of that is prototyping i'm a huge fan of prototyping that is you build it you test it you fly it you kick the tires you try it out before you get to the acquisition stage and and probably the largest piece of our budget in uh when i was when i was uh acting deputy under secretary wasn't prototyping for just that reason trying to play with things before we actually uh uh committed to buying them sounds uh sounds fun um a couple of co-op questions popped up uh i want to make sure i get to some of these uh there's a student who's curious what uh if for any individuals interested in contributing to national defense uh post their their graduation um specifically this is this student's a mechanical engineer uh do you have any specific industries companies or recommendations on how he goes about uh making an impact sure so so the answer is look we we truly have a very diverse snt enterprise in support of the national defense um there are a lot of ways to do that i mean you can go down the list of all the defense industries um so many ways to contribute from there you got the primes you've got the you know the the second tier you get you've got the small companies um some of our most innovative ideas coming from the small companies sometimes the mom and pop shops people working out of their their garages their basements coming up with really clever ideas we're doing our best to get those ideas into the department through various programs i'm a strong believer in contributing through academia i mean the united states department of defense funds research across academia the air force office of scientific research office of naval research navy the army research officer of the army research office all fund extensive research programs um when when we were stepping up in hypersonics one of the first things we did was step up our investments in academia and hypersonics because we we recognize that's that's an important part so you know for me a faculty member in a department of mechanical engineering faculty member in the department of aerospace engineering in electri

2021-03-20 12:26

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