Research called key to staying ahead of tech-savvy terrorists
A robust federal investment in science and technology research is crucial to the Defense Department's ability to stay one step ahead of the nation's technology-savvy enemies, officials from the Pentagon and the defense industry said Wednesday.
"We live in a different world today," Assistant Defense Secretary Dale Klein said during a conference sponsored by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics. Klein said defense-related technologies must be deployed more quickly now than they were during the Cold War, "when we only had one enemy and we knew who it was."
Noting that many of the Pentagon's most elaborate weapons systems took up to two decades to develop, Defense officials stressed the need to reduce that cycle time in order to combat 21st-century terrorists with access to rapidly evolving commercial technology.
"We must expect the unexpected at any moment," said Rudy De Leon, who served as the Defense's chief operating officer from March 2000 to March 2001, and who is now senior vice president of Washington operations for Boeing.
The Sept. 11 terrorist attacks prompted the Pentagon to put some high-tech gadgets on the fast track, including a "thermobaric" warhead that can penetrate underground targets and explode with a massive amount of pressure. U.S. troops used the warhead to fight al Qaeda forces hiding in Afghanistan's caves.
Ronald Sega, the Pentagon's director of defense research and engineering, said that before Sept. 11, the thermobaric weapon system was in the "basic chemistry" phase, but Defense officials accelerated its development after consulting with a team of military and industry experts.
"We went from basic chemistry to a weapons system in less than 90 days," Sega said of the warhead, which was deployed to Afghanistan in December.
Sega said the warhead could not have been produced so quickly if Defense scientists had not been able to draw from a strong base of existing technological research. He said that research base would not have been possible without a sustained federal investment in the Pentagon's science and technology programs.
Defense must continue to use its science and technology funds "very wisely" to ensure that U.S. military capabilities remain technologically superior to those of enemy forces, he said.
De Leon noted that the Pentagon aims to eventually devote 3 percent of the total Defense budget to science and technology programs. "They're making good progress in the current budget," he said.
President Bush's fiscal 2003 request earmarks $9.9 billion--2.68 percent of the total defense budget--for science and technology programs that are not related to missile defense.
"We have a healthy system," de Leon said of Defense's transformation into the information age. "Things aren't perfect, but they're moving in the right direction."