Potomac Officers Club’s 10th Annual Defense R&D Summit

Potomac Officers Club Defense R&D Summit 

31 Jan 2024 

Keynote 

Heidi Shyu, Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering, DOD 

Threats 
-We must remain clear valued. We’re living in highly unstable times. 

-Our challenge is to maintain our military advantage across a very wide spectrum of conflicts. 

-The breadth of threats is concerning. PRC is our only rival with the intent and capacity to reshape world order. Hypersonics, shipbuilding, their space-based capabilities, their desire to dominate AI sector. PRC is attempting to offer an alternative to the international rules-based order. 

RDER 

-We must invest in advanced capabilities and ideas. We need to propel pathways across the Valley of Death. 

-Quickly delivering the best technology requires a suite of tools to address problems that companies face. This tool kit involves RDER.  

-The ability to rapidly adopt emerging technologies is essential. Commercial systems, often they need tweaks to meet military utility. This is something we’re using RDER for. We collaborate with the joint services and industry to accelerate prototypes and to pull them through to active experimentation.  

-We started this two years ago but I didn’t have a budget. We funded capabilities with our own money and the early items are demonstrating success. We’re working closely with AQ sustainment.  

APFIT 

-Accelerating the Procurement and Fielding of Innovative Technologies. The purpose is to help accelerate capabilities by two years and avoiding POMing challenges.  

-What we have funded is sensors, anti-jam, vertical takeoff, unmanned surface vehicles, deployable satellite redundancy for milsatcom.  

-This has accelerated technology by two years.  

MII 

-MII Manufacturing Innovation Institutes, game changing catalyst for the joint force. Connects the industrial ecosystem, emerging technologies, and domestic environments. Bridging the gap and transitioning capabilities. Very successful.  

Office of Strategic Capital 

-This year’s NDAA will authorize us to provide loans and do loan guarantees for small businesses. 

-Over 130 institutes already have a mechanism to guarantee loans. DOD doesn’t. This will be huge.  

-I’m looking to the Office to help small companies and secure the supply chain. 

CHIPS Act 

-We’ve received $2B across five years to establish microelectronic capabilities. We funded right hubs composed of around 30 participants. 

-We’re very focused on not just 5G and 6G but also some of the military capabilities for electronic war and quantum.   

Foreign Comparative Tests 

-We have 98 active projects ongoing with 23 countries. We have a team that finds out what our allies and partners are doing. We take what they’ve already developed, test it out and see if it meets our needs.  

AI 

-We are looking at AI and working closely with industry and key allies. We’re looking at experimentations and what they have developed that we can demonstrate.  

-We’re looking at how we can leverage autonomy and get capabilities to interoperate. 

[End]  

Keynote 

Steve Welby, Deputy Director for National Security, OSTP 

Competition 

-We use a lens of competition to guide our work. We ask how we can maximize the impact of our investments.    

Priorities for FY25 

-AI is at the top of the list. Advanced trustworthy AI technology that protects people’s rights and safety and harnesses it to accelerate the nation’s progress. The potential of AI is very broad and the risks are also broad. There’s risk to information integrity, fraud, jobs in the economy, safety and security.  

-Presidential Executive Order on AI, he established a cabinet for AI and they met Monday and there’s a list on the WH website of activities that have been kicked off and completed since the EO.  

-Second priority, lead the world in maintaining global security and stability in the face of immense geopolitical changes and evolving risks. 

-Seventh, strengthen, advance, and use America’s unparalleled research to achieve our nation’s great aspirations. 

-Objectives are to help ensure we sustain America’s leadership as well as our bold and innovative goals to advance capacity, the economy, and security.  

[End] 

Great Power Competition 

Maj. Gen. Scott Cain, Commander, AFRL, AF Material Command, USAF 

CAPT Jesse Black, Commanding Officer, NRL, USN 

Dr. Patrick Baker, Director, DEVOM Army Research Lab, USA 

Dr. Randy Yamada, Vice President, Booz Allen 

Cross Collaboration 

Black: 

-We need to increase channels of communication. We need to be purposeful in our connections.  

-There are stovepipes we need to get through and open some doors so we can all make sure we’re working on what’s relevant and getting after the gaps. 

Cain: 

-What projects and programs are we pursuing that are common?  

-We all have an interest in autonomy and AI and technology that connects the human and machine. There’s domain specificity to the problem but there are common themes and threads that we can work on together. 

-JADC2, we have service efforts but we’re all working towards C2, battle management, orchestration technologies. It starts with the common problems. 

NDS 

Cain: 

-Workforce and digital competency, that’s major. National programs like microelectronics and effort on going for that, we’re really focused on workforce for this because we don’t have all the competency that we need. 

-Partnerships, we need to not only be looking domestically but internationally as well.  

-We also want to bolster the economic strength. 

Promising Areas for Power Projection 

Cain: 

-There are only joint domains. I think there’s promising technology that can help orchestrate this. I see a lot of promises. The orchestration piece is where we’ll see large gains.  

-Human decision makers, the information they’ll get from these technologies will be a huge game changer. It’s a systems fight and if we can make decisions faster that’s major but we need the support of the machines.    

Black: 

-What’s the so-what for AI and quantum? We have had so many projects come forward for the basic sciences and how they’re using it. Ex. A chemistry team has been using AI to help solve an equation that they once viewed as unsolvable.  

Collaboration Across Allies 

Cain: 

-To win we’re going to go together with allies and partners. 

-From my seat, we’re going after projects and partnerships with allies and partnerships more aggressively. Not only bilateral but sometimes trilateral. 

-There’s a lot of focus on expanding the scale and scope through partnerships. 

[End]