Tech firms seek to play role in military transformation effort

Noting that the military's ongoing "transformation" will provide new market opportunities for technology companies, the Information Technology Association of America (ITAA) on Tuesday released a new publication that could serve as a primer for firms that have never done business with the Pentagon.

"Defense transformation ... calls for new players and a new playbook," ITAA President Harris Miller said in the book's introduction. "ITAA believes that many companies heretofore focused in part or in total on the commercial sector will repurpose their products and services to bring important new options and capabilities to the national defense."

The 50-page publication, which Miller called a "first link" for high-tech companies looking to build new bridges to the Pentagon, provides perspectives on military transformation from Defense Department officials, members of Congress, and industry experts from the private and academic sectors.

Retired Adm. Arthur Cebrowski, the Pentagon's director of force transformation, called transformation the "co-evolution of technology, organizations and concepts," and compared it to the "ongoing and continuous" changes that occur in the private sector in response to evolving technologies.

"Once firms start buying high-quality information technology, they realize their organizations are not structured to take advantage of this technology, so they must restructure," Cebrowski said. "Once that process begins, a profoundly different company emerges at the end of the equation."

Cebrowski said hands-on experimentation is a crucial component of transformation, and emphasized the need to deliver transformational technologies to the battlefield, even when they are still in development.

"Injecting prototypes into the forces in the field opens the door for the emergence of new operational concepts," Cebrowski said. "This is the lifeblood of transformation."

Cebrowski added that Defense is taking steps to accelerate the delivery of experimental technologies to war-fighters.

But so far, that type of hands-on experimentation has not been a budgetary priority for the Bush administration, according to Andrew Krepinevich, executive director of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.

"Despite numerous high-level statements attesting to the value and importance of field exercises and experimentation to the transformation process, and pledges to pursue ... these activities aggressively, the fiscal 2003 Defense program and budget submitted to Congress provide for no significant changes or increases in field experimentation," Krepinevich said.

The rapid delivery of transformational technologies to warfighters could be a "valuable tool," said Pennsylvania Republican Curt Weldon, who chairs the House Armed Services Military Procurement Subcommittee. "Just as the private sector incorporates study groups to make their products appealing to the public, there exists a potential to adopt this type of method to improving our weapons systems."

But Weldon added that the Defense budget must balance transformational priorities and immediate requirements, such as fighting the war on terrorism.

"While I support the Defense Department's commitment to transform its forces to meet the future needs, we must be mindful that our current forces must still meet and defeat the current threats of today," he said.