White House announces push for next generation of hi-tech weapons

The US military will pursue an ambitious programme to identify and develop new weapons systems based on cutting-edge technologies in a bid to maintain its dominance, the defence secretary, Chuck Hagel, has announced.

Hagel announced the Defence Innovation Initiative and said it would include an effort to develop and field new systems using technologies such as robotics, autonomous systems, miniaturisation, data processing and three-dimensional printing.

Noting the defence department did not dominate the technologies it hoped to exploit, Hagel said the Pentagon would turn to businesses and universities for ideas and help.

He said the Pentagon expected the push to produce systems that would offset its rivals’ advantages, as atomic weapons did in the 1950s and precision strike and stealth have done in more recent years.

“We are entering an era where American dominance in key warfighting domains is eroding and we must find new and creative ways to sustain, and in some areas expand, our advantages,” Hagel said in a memo to Pentagon leaders announcing the initiative.

While the United States had been engaged in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, powers such as Russia and China had invested heavily in military modernisation, fielding advanced aircraft, submarines, and both longer-range and more accurate missiles, Hagel said.

Technologies and weapons that were once the exclusive province of advanced nations had become available to a broad range of militaries and non-state actors, from North Korea to Hezbollah, he added.

Hagel’s remarks echoed those of other senior Pentagon officials appearing at the forum.

Frank Kendall, the Pentagon’s chief arms buyer, said the US military had been “complacent” about its superior technologies.

“We’re so used to having a dominant military power that we just took it for granted,” he said.

Hagel said the Pentagon would put “new resources” into the initiative, even as he acknowledged the constraint of shrinking budgets as the department tries to cut nearly a trillion dollars from projected spending over a decade. He did not say how much the Pentagon planned to spend.

The initiative, which will be led by the deputy defence secretary Robert Work, comes at a time when US officials have been voicing rising concern that the department is loosing its technical edge due to the spread of technologies.

Original Article
Source: theguardian.com/
Author: Reuters in Simi Valley