Executive Summary
The era of US military dominance is now coming to a predictable end. The sensor, precision weapon, networking, and processing capabilities that helped the US win the Cold War are now widely proliferated and often available commercially. State and non-state actors are taking advantage of these technologies in conflicts around the world, including against US forces in places such as the Red Sea.
Given the improving capabilities of potential opponents, the US Department of Defense (DoD) is unlikely to regain the upper hand in a symmetric fires competition against major powers in their home region. Instead, it should take an asymmetric approach and degrade adversaries’ ability to understand and anticipate allied operations or to accurately target US forces.
Attacking adversary command, control, communications, computers, cyber, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (C5ISR) capabilities is already a stated objective of DoD leaders. However, counter-C5ISR operations have historically focused on defeating enemy attacks during combat, when an opponent’s capacity advantages may obviate US and allied electromagnetic warfare (EW) or cyber operations. Instead, US and allied counter-C5ISR efforts will need to center on preventing conflict.
Achieving a deep magazine of surprising non-kinetic effects to support a peacetime counter-sensing and sensemaking campaign will require the DoD to substantially strengthen military EW and cyber supply chains. It will also demand an industrial base that has incentives to build non-kinetic capabilities at scale and to innovate independently. Using existing acquisition and contracting authorities, the proposed consortium and process of this report would provide a sandbox for industry to develop and assess new approaches and effects using government-approved intel and models. By buying the most promising non-kinetic capabilities at competitive prices, the government would produce a “pull” for new effects that would incentivize further industry-led innovation.
This study proposes a six-step model to improve the scale and tempo of DoD non-kinetic capability development (see chapter 4). Although the US military services do not need to adopt all elements of that model, the DoD should embrace five primary reforms:
- Adopt the middle tier of acquisition (MTA) as the default acquisition path for non-kinetic capabilities in the DoD. It already uses MTA, or a variation on this approach, for numerous kinetic programs, but US military services continue to rely predominantly on a traditional requirements methodology to guide non-kinetic capability development. With its emphasis on near-term operational problems and expectation of program iteration, MTA is the appropriate model for pursuing EW and cyber capabilities.
- Establish a non-kinetic capability development consortium. The DoD-led consortium would recruit and vet performers and provide government-owned intelligence, models, and simulation environments to support industry efforts to create or refine cyber and EW effects. The consortium’s most important role will be to manage a federation of live-virtual- constructive (LVC) and hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) environments in which government and industry developers can build and assess new non-kinetic capabilities. As noted below, the consortium and its virtual environments could emerge from ongoing efforts to digitize the DoD’s test and evaluation (T&E) infrastructure, and would allow non-kinetic effect development and testing of fielded US electromagnetic systems to inform one another. The consortium could operate LVC environments on a subscription basis, with different levels of access and use depending on an agency’s or vendor’s needs.
- Focus non-kinetic capability development on entire effects chains rather than on the code or waveform itself. As more cyber effects depend on radio frequency (RF) access, the delivery mechanism and operational concept associated with a non-kinetic capability will rise in importance and could be a valuable way of creating surprise. The LVC environment described above would allow for assessing entire effects chains, which the DoD could prototype before adoption.
- Accelerate efforts within the DoD T&E community to bring more testing forward into capability development and prototyping. Non-kinetic capabilities are predominantly digital, and developers could assess them in LVC environments as well as or better than through open-air range events. The DoD could employ the infrastructure that the non-kinetic capability development consortium creates and manages to support developmental (DT&E) and some operational test and evaluation (OT&E), reducing the time to field new non-kinetic effects.
- Adopt commercial contracting models for non-kinetic capabilities. Rather than paying vendors for the time and materials they expend building a tool or technique on a government- led team, the DoD should buy cyber or EW effects in the same way it purchases other defense products, such as aircraft, missiles, or drones. This will provide a mechanism to compensate performers for the internal R&D they used to create an innovative solution. It will also avoid the limits of licensing models to adequately price capabilities that the DoD will purchase in very small numbers.
US and allied militaries can no longer depend on their general superiority to deter and defeat aggression. Recent events in multiple theaters highlight how regional powers, transnational organizations, and peer competitors are all gaining the ability to stress or overmatch US and allied forces in their regions.
Non-kinetic effects offer a way for the DoD to take advantage of an area of US and allied strength and regain the ability to dissuade opponents through sustained efforts to undermine their sensing and sensemaking. Exploiting these strengths, however, will require buying and delivering non-kinetic capabilities in ways more akin to their kinetic counterparts.