The research infrastructure that underpins America’s prowess in defense technology is “deteriorating,” according to a Department of Defense report released Wednesday.
One reason is that research funds are being diverted to operations.
The Pentagon’s “research, development, test, and evaluation (RDT&E) infrastructure is deteriorating and weakening the Department’s ability to maintain a technically advanced warfighting capability,” warned the report by the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering. “Authorized major military construction (MILCON) projects for modernization of critical joint-mission RDT&E infrastructure continually slip due to the services’ reprioritizing of scarce MILCON funds toward other operationally relevant priorities.”
The study examined government laboratories as well as federally funded think tanks and university research centers. Investigators visited 30 of these sites — or about one-third of total facilities — in what the report termed “unprecedented data collection.”
The report presented a mixed picture of the Pentagon’s research backbone. It found the defense research enterprise, or DRE, “is fundamentally sound.” However, it also “needs to rapidly adapt to a new environment moving at the accelerating pace of commercial technology and driven by a broader set of global security threats.”
Research has been hampered by backlogged security clearances, limited funds to build or refurbish labs and a slow and difficult hiring process that discourages younger skilled personnel.
Nor does DoD have a clear handle on its research infrastructure, including a comprehensive list of specialized facilities, such as the Triaxial Earthquake and Shock Simulator in Illinois.
Pentagon research facilities don’t even speak a common language, the report states.
“For example, a single technical domain may be variously labeled as ‘Human-Machine Teaming,’ ‘Autonomy and Teaming,’ or ‘AI Agent Development’ depending on the reporting entity,” the report noted. “This semantic variability ensures that high- level titles alone are insufficient for determining the true depth or specificity of the work being performed.”
Further, the Pentagon is not taking full advantage of its own discoveries.
DoD’s “vast intellectual property remains underutilized due to passive marketing and the lack of a centralized discovery mechanism,” said the report. “Current administrative burdens for transition agreements often exceed the funding timelines of startups, hindering innovation and collaboration.”
This results in delays in new technologies reaching the field.
“The Department’s ability to rapidly transition technologies from knowledge producers to capability fielders is severely degraded by structural and cultural barriers, specifically bureaucratic stovepipes, fragmented funding streams, and misaligned mechanisms, authorities, and incentives,” the report said.
The report took care to state that it is not calling for Pentagon research centers to be closed.
“The evidence in this report does not support consolidating or eliminating institutions: Most overlap is driven by mission need,” the report says. “The findings suggest that the way to reform the DRE is to fix the system around its institutions — how authority, money, and decisions flow, and how the institutions are funded, measured, and governed.”
The study points to China as an example for DoD’s research infrastructure, including partnering with the commercial sector.
“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 — one that advances and protects critical defense research while extending the technical reach of the DRE through industrial and academic partnerships the DRE itself does not own.”
The report made numerous recommendations, including easing budgetary limits on lab refurbishment, using AI to speed up security clearances and creating a searchable database for DoD intellectual property.
“Without a robust, agile, and properly resourced DRE, the department cannot rapidly onramp innovative capabilities or deliver the advanced capabilities the warfighter requires to deter and, if necessary, defeat emerging threats in an era of intense strategic competition,” the report concluded.
Michael Peck is a correspondent for Defense News and a columnist for the Center for European Policy Analysis. He holds an M.A. in political science from Rutgers University. Find him at theuncommondefense.com. His email is mikedefense1@gmail.com.