SEVEN DEFENSE PRIORITIES 

FOR THE NEW ADMINISTRATION

Report of the Defense Science Board

DECEMBER 2016

SEVEN DEFENSE PRIORITIES 

FOR THE NEW ADMINISTRATION

The United States has the most powerful, precise, and professional armed forces in the 

world. Nevertheless our military is challenged: Russia, China, Iran, and the Democratic 

People’s Republic of Korea roil the World Order. Terrorists operate by global franchise, and 

groups like the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) attempt to establish caliphates. 

Deterring nuclear war, arguably the highest priority for the Department of Defense (DoD), is 

complicated by new potential routes to nuclear escalation. States deterred by U.S. military 

might are pursuing asymmetric strategies of “gray zone” conflict: war short of all-out war. 

Long-term commitments to missions of stabilization, reconstruction, peacekeeping and 

nation building consume human and financial military resources for decades. New weapons 

like cyber and autonomous systems are aimed at the heart of the U.S. military strategy 

predicated on technological superiority; but also offer the U.S. an opportunity to grasp. 

The Defense Science Board (DSB), an advisory 

body for the Secretary of Defense and other 

senior DoD officials, is chartered to address 

such challenges, including the most irksome 

problems and potent opportunities, unstructured 

and consequential, that involve science and 

technology; and almost always touch on 

policy, strategy, acquisition, manufacturing, 

operational concepts, and rules of engagement.

This report summarizes the main findings and 

recommendations of reports published by the 

Defense Science Board for the Secretary of Defense 

during the last dozen years. The purpose of this 

effort is to aid the incoming Administration to 

make a fast start in addressing pressing national 

security issues and opportunities. While the topics 

that have been addressed span a wide range, seven 

major themes dominated the Board’s considerations. 

This report summarizes the main findings and 

recommendations of reports published by the Defense 

Science Board for the Secretary of Defense during the 

last dozen years. The purpose of this effort is to aid the 

incoming Administration to make a fast start in addressing 

pressing national security issues and opportunities.

1
1. Protecting the homeland against non-state 

actors; against enemy states in time of war; and 

against weapons of mass destruction and cyber; 

2. Deterring the use of nuclear 

weapons to prevent nuclear war; 

3. Preparing for gray zone conflicts as war 

short of all-out war becomes the norm;

4. Maintaining information superiority

and what the information infrastructure 

enables for adversaries and for the U.S.; 

5. Anticipating intelligent systems 

and autonomy including numbers and 

disaggregation, range, and danger on and above 

the sea surface that drives warfare undersea;

6. Supporting stabilization, 

reconstruction, peacekeeping, and 

nation building to win the peace; and

7. Preparing for surprise to 

the U.S. and by the U.S.

The themes are elaborated as defense 

priorities in the seven chapters that follow. 

Each chapter references the in-depth reports 

underlying those seven themes. Note that 

the seven themes are not, and could not be, 

fully independent of each other, and the first 

is no more or less imperative than the last.

The Board prepared its last summation at 

the beginning of the Obama Administration: 

Defense Imperatives for a new Administration 

(2008) and Creating a DoD Strategic Acquisition 

Platform (2009). Some things have changed, 

some things have not changed. 

2
LEADERSHIP OF THE 

DEFENSE SCIENCE BOARD SC

2001–2009

Honorable William Schneider, Jr., Chairman

Mr. Vincent Vitto, Vice Chairman

2009–2014

Honorable Paul G. Kaminski, Chairman

General Lester Lyles, U.S. Air Force (retired), Vice Chairman

2014–present

Dr. Craig Fields, Chairman

Dr. Eric Evans, Vice Chairman

3
CONTRIBUTORS

Dr. Michael Anastasio

Mr. Christopher Day

Dr. Eric Evans

Dr. Craig Fields

Mr. James Gosler

Dr. Miriam John

Honorable Anita Jones

Dr. Ronald Kerber

Honorable William LaPlante

Honorable Judith Miller

Honorable William Schneider

Mr. James Shields

Dr. Ralph Semmel

Mr. Robert Stein

Dr. James Tegnelia

4
TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction ....................................................................................................................8

1. Protecting the Homeland..................................................................................................14

9/11 catalyzed the nation to address serious attacks on the homeland—for a while ..............................................14

The DoD’s priorities in homeland defense have emphasized taking the fight to the enemy................................15

Individuals—inspired by terrorists—remain a threat............................................................................................................17

We must prepare for the worst of attacks.................................................................................................................................17

The new, ubiquitous, and complicating threat is cyber .......................................................................................................19

Managing risks and achieving resiliency will be key for the DoD in its homeland defense mission...................19

2. Deterring the Use of Nuclear Weapons.............................................................................. 22

Nuclear weapons are a steadily evolving threat—in both familiar and new dimensions.......................................22

Nuclear deterrence remains a cornerstone of our national security ..............................................................................23

Monitoring to achieve early warning of nuclear proliferation should be improved .................................................26

Nuclear survivability is necessary for credible deterrence..................................................................................................26

U.S. nuclear modernization has been put off too long.........................................................................................................28

3. Preparing for Gray Zone Conflicts ..................................................................................... 30

The U.S. has responded to gray zone confrontations in the past.....................................................................................31

The U.S. must respond to a new form of war............................................................................................................................32

Lessons are taught but not learned .............................................................................................................................................33

5
4. Maintaining Information Superiority ............................................................................... 36

Information superiority is challenging in a complex electromagnetic environment ...............................................37

Space and the global positioning system play a central role .............................................................................................38

Military microelectronic and software systems must be protected................................................................................38

Defense acquisition of information technology is more difficult than ever .................................................................39

Resilient and effective cyber protection will require a systems approach................................................................... 40

The DoD must protect the information enterprise ............................................................................................................... 40

Information technology routinely delivers advantages and vulnerabilities.................................................................42

5. Anticipating Intelligent Systems and Autonomy................................................................ 46

Building trust in autonomous systems is challenging yet achievable ........................................................................... 46

Development of low-cost platforms requires a new acquisition mindset ................................................................... 48

Experimentation and learning are required to validate proposed concepts...............................................................50

New infrastructure is required to support low-cost systems.............................................................................................50

U.S. must prepare for adversary use of low-cost unmanned systems............................................................................52

6. Supporting Stabilization, Reconstruction, Peacekeeping, and Nation Building ................... 54

The DoD must plan for stabilization and reconstruction operations............................................................................. 54

The DoD needs investments to adequately prepare for stabilization ............................................................................55

The DoD needs broad organizational changes.......................................................................................................................58

DoD must be prepared to win the peace...................................................................................................................................59

7. Preparing for Surprise...................................................................................................... 62

Military forces must be able to adapt..........................................................................................................................................62

Red teaming..........................................................................................................................................................................................62

Training and exercising in stressing environments ...............................................................................................................63

Encouraging alternative viewpoints........................................................................................................................................... 64

Military systems must be able to adapt..................................................................................................................................... 64

Characteristics of adaptable systems..........................................................................................................................................65

Rapid acquisition................................................................................................................................................................................ 66

Open and modular systems........................................................................................................................................................... 66

Real-time adaptability is needed throughout the DoD........................................................................................................67

Technology surprise is inevitable in a globalized world.......................................................................................................67

Rekindling a culture of innovation is a necessary step........................................................................................................ 68

Planning for surprise is no mystery ..............................................................................................................................................70

A Call to Action ..............................................................................................................73

6 « Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION

7
8 « Introduction

INTRODUCTION

The Defense Science Board (DSB) provides the Secretary of Defense, the Deputy Secretary of 

Defense, the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics (USD(AT&L)), 

the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and other senior officials including the Secretaries of 

the Military Departments and the Commanders of the Combatant Commands with independent 

advice and recommendations on critical national security issues involving science and technology. 

The DSB addresses the Secretary’s most irksome 

problems and potent opportunities, unstructured 

and consequential, that involve science and 

technology; and almost always also involve to a 

degree policy, strategy, acquisition, manufacturing, 

operational concepts and rules of engagement.

All members of the DSB have strong science 

and technology backgrounds, and are either 

former senior military officers, senior 

executives from defense and commercial 

industry, university professors, former senior 

officials from the Department of Defense 

and the intelligence community, national 

laboratories, and leaders from Federally Funded 

Research and Development Centers. DSB 

began in 1956: 2016 is its 60th anniversary.

During the last dozen years the DSB published 

a number of reports for the Secretary, and 

this report summarizes the main findings and 

recommendations of those efforts. The purpose of 

the report is to assist the incoming Administration 

to make a fast start in addressing pressing 

national security issues and opportunities.

While the topics that have been addressed span 

a wide range, seven major themes dominated 

the DSB’s considerations. They are listed 

below, and elaborated in the seven chapters 

that follow, which also reference the in-depth 

reports underlying those seven themes.

The DSB’s prepared its last summation at 

the beginning of the Obama Administration: 

Defense Imperatives for a New Administration 

(2008) and Creating a DoD Strategic Acquisition 

Platform (2009). Some things have changed, 

some things have not changed.

8 « Introduction
Introduction « 9

These are the seven major themes of the 

DSB’s work during the last dozen years. 

Note that they are not, and could not 

be, fully independent of each other.

1. Protecting the Homeland 

Against non-state actors

Against enemy states in time of war

Against weapons of mass destruction and cyber

Since 9/11, the U.S. can no longer be considered a 

sanctuary. The DoD’s highest priority is protection 

of the homeland. The DSB published a number 

of reports to clarify DoD’s roles and to assess its 

posture for defending the homeland and protecting 

it from new forms of threats that evolved since 

the Cold War. This chapter highlights DoD’s 

dependence on critical domestic infrastructure, the 

supporting capabilities the Department will need to 

provide to civil authorities in times of disaster, and 

opportunities for improvement in the interagency. 

The DSB has published reports characterizing 

how the threat to the homeland evolved since 

the end of the Cold War. Actors—and their 

tools—have proliferated beyond nation states. 

More nations will have missiles with range or 

delivery mechanisms that threaten the U.S. 

homeland. The cyber threat grows exponentially 

and can be promulgated with serious harm by 

individuals. Advances in technology can place even 

weapons of mass destruction—nuclear, chemical, 

and biological—in the hands of any state or nonstate actor who desires them. DSB continually 

investigates what to do about these threats, 

defensively and offensively, at home and abroad. 

The DSB is particularly concerned with the 

apparent belief that armed combat will always 

occur in somebody else’s backyard and will never 

spread to the homeland. That is unlikely to be true.

2. Deterring the Use of 

Nuclear Weapons

Preventing nuclear war

Despite the “peace dividend” at the end of the Cold 

War, the DSB remains uncertain that downgrading 

the nation’s nuclear deterrent would lead other 

nations to do the same, even as advances in the 

U.S.’ non-nuclear warfighting capabilities proved 

their effectiveness. In fact, U.S. conventional 

dominance demonstrated in Bosnia, Iraq, and 

Afghanistan appears to have catalyzed a greater 

interest in nuclear weapons by others who do not 

have the resources to overmatch the U.S. otherwise.

For two decades, the DSB has maintained 

steady attention to the health of the U.S. nuclear 

enterprise, the advances and modernization 

efforts undertaken by Russia and China, nuclear 

weapons proliferation to other nation states, and 

advances in technology that could detect or hide 

proliferation. DoD leadership is renewing its 

commitment to the nation’s nuclear deterrent, 

given the relatively recent recognition of the 

pervasive threat of adversaries’ nuclear capabilities 

and doctrines. The DSB’s history in nuclear 

deterrence helps the Department re-establish a 

knowledge base, now largely atrophied, to support 

modernization of our forces and operational 

readiness to deter nuclear aggression.

In short, “nuclear” still matters, nuclear is in a 

class of its own, and nuclear cannot be wished 

away. The nuclear threshold may decrease owing 

to the stated doctrine and weapons developments 

of some states, e.g., “escalate to de-escalate,” and 

the introduction of new technology. Further 

aggravating the situation, the lead time for 

nuclear modernization and response is very long.

3. Preparing for Gray Zone Conflicts

Constrained military operations, short of all-out 

war, are becoming the norm 

As nations have realized they cannot match the 

U.S. with conventional military might, many 

adopted strategies and tactics designed to stay 

below the threshold of a major international 

armed response; witness Russia in the Crimea, 

China’s island building in the South China Sea, 

and North Korean provocations. Their tools and 

techniques include information operations, using 

disinformation and strategic communication 

aimed at their populace, neighbors, and the 

world; ambiguity of forces (“little green men,” 
10 « Introduction

proxies, and naval forces labeled “Coast Guard”); 

and coercion involving economics, energy, and 

political corruption. The DSB has identified 

DoD’s options in addressing this “new normal” 

category of threats and to highlight the role 

of other parts of the government critical to 

successfully countering such strategies.

4. Maintaining Information 

Superiority

What the information infrastructure is enabling—

for adversaries and for us 

Information has become a decisive and 

discriminating enabler of modern warfare, and 

information superiority a potent deterrent. The 

DSB has published a number of reports highlighting 

how the DoD can achieve and maintain information 

superiority, focusing on intelligence collection 

and analysis, the use of unclassified “big data,” 

and the rapidly advancing technologies of 

information and communication infrastructures. 

The U.S. and its adversaries realize the criticality of 

information: its assured availability and integrity, 

and the vulnerabilities in providing it. The DSB 

advised on offense and defense in this domain, 

including the growing threats and opportunities 

in electronic warfare and cyber. As an example, 

the Board’s cyber efforts addressed: matching 

our defenses to the sophistication of the threats 

and criticality of the target; managing cyber 

defense to make optimal use of funding and of 

scarce technical human resources; determining 

the challenges and opportunities of cyber 

relative to new technologies, including cloud 

computing; identifying strategies to mitigate 

cyber corruption of the supply chain, particularly 

foreign supplied microelectronics; and how to 

deter cyberattacks when defenses are inadequate.

Information remains a critical differentiator 

for the U.S. and for its adversaries; cyber, cyber 

corruption of the microelectronics and software 

supply chain, and electronic warfare offer threats 

and opportunities vis-a-vis information; and 

acquiring enabling information technology, 

particularly software, has its own unique quirks.

5. Anticipating More Intelligent 

Systems and Autonomy

Numbers and disaggregation

Range

Danger on and above sea surface drive combat 

undersea 

The unmatched capabilities of U.S. joint forces 

depend on relatively small numbers of extremely 

capable, high value assets; e.g., the world’s most 

potent aircraft carriers. Predictably, those unique 

assets became lucrative targets of adversary states, 

calling into question some foundational operational 

tenets such as air dominance. DSB’s work in this 

area has advocated ways to operate at greater range 

from the adversary to increase safety; use of large 

numbers of inexpensive assets to augment small 

numbers of costly assets (“quantity has a quality 

all its own”); and use of carefully managed and 

controlled autonomous systems to keep Military 

Service personnel out of harm’s way. In addition, 

capitalizing on U.S. undersea dominance, the DSB 

has identified ways to maintain that superiority for 

the near future through the use of large numbers of 

inexpensive unmanned undersea vehicles to conduct 

operations that would otherwise be undertaken 

with greater risk from the air, sea or land.

Intelligent systems, at rest or in motion, will be a 

differentiator for the U.S. and for its adversaries. 

The technology lends itself well to disaggregation, 

numbers, and long range both as an advantage and 

danger to the nation. Currently, and for the near 

future, the U.S. owns the undersea domain, where 

intelligent systems, disaggregation, quantity, and 

long range can offset the cruise and ballistic missile 

and the electronic warfare threats to conducting 

missions from the sea surface and the air.

6. Supporting Stabilization, 

Reconstruction, Peacekeeping, 

and Nation Building

Winning the peace

Taking lessons from history, the DSB 

highlighted the importance of comprehensive 

planning and preparation before, during, and 
Introduction « 11

after conflict to secure short- and longer-term 

stability once hostilities cease. The DSB has 

addressed issues including: identification of the 

information and intelligence required to conduct 

stabilization and reconstruction operations 

successfully; the best use of the National Guard 

and Reserves with their civilian sector skills; 

language and cultural training; and campaign 

planning and exercising for stabilization and 

reconstruction missions on par with what the 

Military Services do for combat missions.

Many stabilization, reconstruction, peacekeeping, 

and nation-building missions are regrettably 

challenged by insurgency as in Iraq and 

Afghanistan. While there is no foolproof way to 

avoid and eliminate insurgency any more than there 

is a way to avoid and eliminate crime, the DSB has 

addressed ways to mitigate and manage insurgency 

to enable the emergence of peaceful societies.

7. Preparing for Surprise

To the U.S. and by the U.S. 

The world is an unpredictable place, particularly 

with the galloping advance of technology. No 

matter how well the DoD plans and prepares there 

will be surprises, and there is the ever present 

value of inflicting surprise on adversaries. The 

DSB has published reports advising the DoD 

on how the Department can be better poised to 

respond to surprise with agility, adaptability, and 

resilience, e.g., having a technology infrastructure 

that can be swiftly and inexpensively re-vectored 

to meet changing needs and threats, using 

more red teaming and free play in training and 

exercises. The DSB has also identified potential 

technological surprises and advised on hedging 

strategies should those occasions arise.

An agile and responsive acquisition system will 

enable the U.S. to prepare for surprise, particularly 

with a requirements regime based on rational 

analysis of “what to buy” and “how to buy it.” 

This encourages creativity from the scientists and 

engineers in U.S. industry and universities. The 

DSB has published a series of reports on acquisition 

reform meant to underpin a culture of innovation.

In the Board’s view, an innovative DoD should 

introduce change in to the field: new potent 

systems, creative strategies and tactics, powerful 

operational concepts, and outstanding Military 

Service personnel performance at such a 

dizzying rate than no adversary has hope of 

developing countermeasures fast enough. 

A strong technology base, including knowledge 

of emerging science and technology, dedicated 

scientists and engineers, and infrastructure 

and facilities, acts as a solid foundation in 

the preparation for surprise. It provides 

the DoD both strategic differentiators and 

strategic necessities. The DSB has addressed 

the need for a healthy technology base in a 

series of reports, and recommended actions to 

maintain a U.S. lead in the face of increasing 

globalization of science and technology.

In sum

The seven chapters that follow point to a 

blueprint and agenda for the new Administration 

to enable a fast start in addressing pressing 

national security issues and opportunities.
1212 « Chapter 1
Protecting the Homeland « 13

CHAPTER ONE

Protecting the Homeland

13
14 « Chapter 1

9/11 catalyzed the nation to 

address serious attacks on the 

homeland—for a while

The decade between the end of the Cold War 

and 9/11 saw technical advances, most notably in 

information, biology, and microsystems, which 

rapidly went into widespread, commercial use. 

While countless positive outcomes were (and 

indeed still are) the result, the affordability and 

availability of the technologies globally also 

introduced new threats, made more serious 

by the limited resources in both people and 

money required to do great harm. A number 

of events offered warnings; for example, 

§ The rise of radical terrorist groups as evidenced 

by the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and 

Al Qaeda’s bombings aimed at U.S. related 

targets in Yemen, Nairobi and Kenya; 

§ Aum Shinrikyo’s crossing a threshold 

for terrorist attacks with its sarin 

release in the Tokyo subway; and

§ The Democratic People’s Republic of 

Korea’s non-compliance with its obligations 

under the Nonproliferation Treaty.

The prevailing view in the U.S., however, 

was that with the Cold War ending and the 

sanctuary afforded by geography, the nation 

was safer than it had been in decades.

1. PROTECTING THE HOMELAND

AGAINST NON-STATE ACTORS § AGAINST ENEMY STATES IN TIME OF WAR § AGAINST WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION AND CYBER

The DoD’s highest priority remains the protection of the homeland, and since 9/11, the 

nation can no longer consider the homeland as a sanctuary. Even prior to 9/11, the DSB 

was concerned about the asymmetric evolution of the post-Cold War threat and potential 

for attacks within the United States. The DSB has focused on clarifying the DoD’s roles and 

assessing its posture for defending the homeland and anticipating these new forms of threats 

as they become more widespread. Of particular concern is the Department’s dependence on 

critical infrastructure, the supporting capabilities it will need to provide to civil authorities, 

and shortcomings in the interagency, in broad and more specific contexts, ranging from the 

violent behavior of individuals to cyber and weapons of mass destruction (WMD) attacks.

14 « Chapter 1
Protecting the Homeland « 15

The events of 9/11 changed that complacency. The 

following decade saw high profile efforts by the 

government to address threats to the homeland, 

focused principally on non-state terrorism and 

their potential for executing “unconventional” 

attacks. The DoD’s major contribution was 

“the away game,” a decade-plus commitment of 

military forces in Iraq and Afghanistan to disrupt 

or destroy adversary networks and enable local 

government forces to protect their populace. 

More recently, the nation began pulling back 

from its military deployments and operations, 

and rebalanced efforts at the Department of 

Homeland Security (DHS) to improve emergency 

response and consequence management for natural 

disasters. Emphasis related to national security 

now rests on the rise of provocative actions by 

nation-states, such as Russia and China, and on 

the breeding grounds for instability, such as Syria, 

northern Iraq, and Ukraine. Again the emphasis 

is on “the away game” roles for the DoD.

Despite the rise of provocations abroad, threats to 

the homeland must regain attention as a serious 

concern, as evidenced by the alarming increase in 

terrorist or terrorist-inspired attacks in Europe, 

and the incidents at home in San Bernardino, 

Chattanooga, and Orlando. Overt motives for 

attacking the U.S. homeland, besides terrorism, 

include delaying and disrupting global projection 

of U.S. armed forces to give an adversary time to 

solidify gains elsewhere, or the mistaken belief 

that the U.S. can be dissuaded or deterred and its 

will to fight eroded. More covert motives may be 

to influence or cast doubts on political agendas, 

or wreak havoc in financial networks. Adversaries 

may be “composites” of states and proxies. With 

advances and availability of key technologies, their 

means of attack are broader and may vary; and 

targets have become increasingly interdependent 

as reliance on information technologies has 

grown. Weapons of mass destruction—nuclear, 

chemical, and biological—may be accessed by 

almost any state or non-state actor that desires 

them more easily than a decade or two ago. 

The DoD’s priorities in homeland 

defense have emphasized taking 

the fight to the enemy

The events of 9/11 resulted in a shift in the nation’s 

approach to defending the homeland from one that 

relied principally on offense and assured response 

to one that added preparedness for dealing with 

an attack within the borders of the U.S. From 

the start, the DoD viewed its role in this strategy 

Weapons of mass destruction—nuclear, chemical, 

and biological—may be accessed by almost 

any state or non-state actor that desires them 

more easily than a decade or two ago.
16 « Chapter 1

as the principal in prosecuting the “away game,” 

confirmed by the military commitment to the 

prolonged engagements in Afghanistan and Iraq, 

as well as the legal restrictions of posse comitatus

and the Insurrection Act of 1807. As such, the 

DoD has tended to limit its attention and resource 

commitments to the activities related to homeland 

defense for which it is directly responsible; e.g., 

force and installation protection, protection of 

the defense industrial base infrastructure, special 

support for domestic nuclear events, NORAD, 

anti-submarine and anti-surface warfare and 

patrols, and state-assigned National Guard units. 

The most visible and enduring change since 

9/11 has been the creation of the U.S. Northern 

Command (NORTHCOM). This unified a number 

of command elements in the Department to 

provide support to civil authorities in those cases 

where the capabilities of domestic authorities 

when the local, state, or federal level authorities’ 

capabilities are exceeded, and when directed by the 

President to do so. NORTHCOM has matured 

considerably since it was stood up in 2002, both 

organizationally and in its partnership in the 

interagency. For example, the improvements 

by the National Guard, Coast Guard, the U.S. 

Transportation Command (TRANSCOM) and 

selected Military Service elements in response to 

Hurricane Sandy compared to Hurricane Katrina 

illustrate the responsiveness to lessons learned 

by both the DoD and the interagency. Through 

NORTHCOM, the DoD became a major player 

in interagency exercises and overcame most 

concerns about its mission to support rather 

than assume command in a domestic event. 

However, in spite of these steps forward, the 

DSB repeatedly found that the attention to 

homeland defense is at best episodic when threat 

levels increase, and priority demands for action 

and preparedness to engage outside the U.S. 

overwhelms leadership attention to the problem. 

As no event as serious as the events of 9/11 have 

occurred since then, an attitude that “it will not 

happen here” has returned. Stated more fairly, 

the risk of another major attack on the homeland 

has declined significantly in the minds of many. 

The DSB has argued that attention to the 

homeland defense mission must be persistent 

and engage top leadership in the Department for 

several reasons. NORTHCOM addresses one 

major reason, namely the fact that the DoD will 

be called on to help in the event of a catastrophe 

that overwhelms civil authorities. However, the 

Department’s preparedness for a widely varying 

attack menu is not what it needs to be. For example, 

the DoD appears to have learned important 

lessons for natural physical disasters with some 

minimal level of warning, but the Ebola response, 

in spite of it being principally overseas, highlighted 

shortcomings for dealing with a biological attack. 

A second, “closer to home” reason for the 

DoD’s persistence in attending to the mission 

is that a major catastrophe will almost certainly 

affect the Department’s ability to prosecute 

any military action overseas. For example,

§ DoD ports or major installations 

could be a/the target;

§ Infrastructure critical to the DoD 

launching and sustaining an operation, 

be it the defense industrial base, 

telecommunications, the electrical grid, and 

transportation nodes could be targets;

§ Cyber attacks most certainly will 

complicate any preparations stateside 

for military operations; and

§ Some attack modalities, such as biological, will 

not distinguish civilian from military targets.

The final reason is that technology has moved 

forward in ways that are simultaneously 

sophisticated, accessible, and affordable. 

Schemes of the type orchestrated on 9/11 need 

not require the same degree of preparation 

or coordination to do harm on a scale even 

greater than what we experienced on 9/11.

The DSB recommended that the DoD sustain 

its involvement with other agencies in improving 

capabilities and operations within its homeland 

defense mission responsibilities. The DoD should 

also plan and operate based on a risk and resiliency 
Protecting the Homeland « 17

driven paradigm, e.g., to lessen vulnerabilities 

to single point failures, to remember how to 

operate in an unconnected world, and to develop 

and train to less optimal, but robust “Plan Bs.”

Individuals—inspired by 

terrorists—remain a threat

Individuals may seek to disrupt operations or 

catalyze others to act, despite not likely posing 

a debilitating threat to civilians or the military 

using conventional means. In the aftermath 

of the 2009 Fort Hood shootings, the DSB 

studied ways to predict violent behavior as one 

of several DoD initiatives aimed at root causes, 

lessons learned, or opportunities for avoiding or 

interdicting such incidents going forward. The 

DSB’s first conclusion was that preventing rather 

than “predicting” targeted violence should be 

the Department’s goal. While the report did 

not identify reliable predictive approaches, it did 

find that good options now exist for mitigating 

violence by intervening in the progression 

from violent ideation to violent behavior.

Specifically, professional threat management, 

as practiced by law enforcement-led threat 

management units, offers an effective means to 

help prevent targeted violence. These units are 

widely used in the private sector and elsewhere 

in government, but not at the DoD. That should 

change. In addition, improved information 

sharing is a vital enabler of effective threat 

management, and the report also recommended 

that the Department improve clarity on 

appropriate sharing of information about 

worrisome or “red flag” behavior, including 

developing a collaborative DoD-wide investigative 

database, with benchmarks to assess progress.

Finally, science and technology initiatives show 

some promise over the long term as an aid to threat 

management. The Department should focus on 

rigorous case studies to aid in the identification of 

valid behavioral indicators, and should implement 

and evaluate resilience training. Monitoring 

of overseas research on screening technologies 

related to biomarkers should also be pursued.

We must prepare for the 

worst of attacks

Because the DoD expects to support the U.S. 

response to a major attack on the homeland, 

the DSB endeavored to improve understanding 

and recommend paths to address the worst of 

them, namely a nuclear or biological attack. 

Nuclear Attack. An “unconventional” nuclear 

attack on the homeland has been a subject of much 

interest. Initially the fall of the Soviet Union and 

later instability in Pakistan caused great concern 

with the “loose nuke” problem. Nation-state 

proliferation and modernization now garners 

more attention, and while long-time nuclear 

powers continue to act in familiar deterrence 

patterns, proliferators such as the Democratic 

People’s Republic of Korea are not abiding by 

those norms. Longer-term worries relate to the 

proliferation of unconventional delivery means 

(e.g., unmanned platforms and semi-submersibles), 

and technologies that could enable key steps 

in weapon acquisition. The DSB has noted the 

following issues, along with some progress:

§ Most of the special nuclear material and 

weapons reside in the custody of militaries 

around the world that do not necessarily have 

the same security principles and practices as 

the U.S. Programs like the DoD’s Cooperative 

Threat Reduction Program can best mitigate 

the risk of loss of control; through advancing 

cooperative monitoring technologies such as 

the Department of Energy (DOE)’s support 

of the International Atomic Energy Agency 

(IAEA); and through military-to-military 

engagements to build trust and transparency.

§ If material or a weapon gets loose and 

the U.S. has sufficient information to 

interdict, then the Department will need 

special capabilities and trained personnel 

to act. The DoD has made improvements 

on capabilities and trained operators.

§ The initial organization at DHS placed the 

unconventional nuclear delivery problem 

among all other research efforts. The DSB’s 
18 « Chapter 1

work highlighted the magnitude of need 

and gaps in capabilities for detection and 

response, and influenced the establishment 

of a dedicated office within DHS, the 

Domestic Nuclear Detection Office 

(DNDO), to focus on the “worst of the 

worst” homeland security problems.

§ A major DSB assessment of the nation’s ability 

to provide the earliest possible warning of 

attempts to acquire special nuclear material 

or a nuclear weapon indicated a need for 

revamping the decades-long approach to 

nuclear activity monitoring. The assessment 

catalyzed interagency and cross-intelligence 

community activities to reorient efforts in 

directions that make use of new data analytics 

and all-source data management tools.

§ For an attack in the making, reliance on 

radiation detection alone is unlikely to succeed. 

Sensor and processing architectures that utilize 

multiple indicators and reach back to suspect 

behaviors in the early warning (“strategic 

intelligence”) community will be needed.

§ The DSB also highlighted the impact of 

advancing technologies for producing weapons, 

and with that, the new types of signatures that 

will need to be monitored for proliferation.

§ Studies, programs, and operations associated 

with the unconventional nuclear problem 

tend to focus on the pre-detonation phase 

under the implicit assumption that the U.S. 

has “lost” if a nuclear weapon is detonated in 

the homeland. The DSB reminded the DoD 

and the larger community that it explored 

many aspects of the post-detonation, “right of 

boom” phase in the early days of the Cold War. 

Much of the civil defense guidance to mitigate 

exposures and consequences remain valid for 

a limited nuclear attack. The Department 

can still improve the dispersion models and 

sensor algorithms to address false alarms, 

which offer hope for effective consequence 

management in high population areas, and 

if in close enough proximity, for detection 

pre-detonation. The Department continues 

to seriously neglect research and development 

on radiological medical countermeasures.

§ If an attack occurs, forensics to identify 

the source of the material will be critically 

important. The DSB has highlighted 

the orphaned nature of some important 

aspects of DoD capabilities in this area 

on which the nation is reliant.

Biological Attack. The rapid advances in 

biotechnology in the 1990s, paired with the 

revelations of the massive Soviet bio weapons 

program during the Cold War and evidence of 

Aum Shinrikyo’s aborted efforts to promulgate 

a biological attack, raised calls from the DSB 

that the DoD had to pay more attention to 

potential opportunities and threats in this 

area. The Defense Advanced Research Projects 

Agency (DARPA) began investments that have 

been ongoing since to investigate new medical 

countermeasures and diagnostics, and detection 

schemes, especially coupled to control systems 

for mitigating exposures in enclosed spaces. The 

anthrax letters followed within a week of the 9/11 

attacks and led to a strong push for improved 

biodefense capabilities domestically. Over the next 

decade, DHS’ flagship program placed detection 

networks for a limited set of potential agents in 

major cities. The DoD rebalanced its Chemical 

and Biological Defense Program to place a greater 

emphasis on biological threat countermeasures. 

The DSB observed that biodefense maintains an 

innate advantage in that preparedness requires 

most of the same factors as public health responses 

to naturally occurring infectious diseases. 

Concerns about pandemic flu gave impetus to the 

2006 national strategy, and more recently, the 

U.S. under the lead of the Centers for Disease 

Control (CDC) engaged in the global health 

security agenda to rapidly detect and respond to 

an outbreak anywhere in the world. Yet the DSB 

and other commissioned or independent reports 

found that a coordinated domestic response 

system, as recommended consistently, has yet to 

be realized. This was evident in the numerous 

initial missteps in the Ebola response; some were 

across the government, and a number within 
Protecting the Homeland « 19

the DoD itself, and based largely on confusion 

about authorities, roles, and responsibilities. 

Serious policy and technical issues remain, e.g., 

recognizing that an attack has indeed occurred; 

quarantine enforcement; screening the “worried 

well” at the expense of those more likely exposed; 

and approved medical countermeasures for all 

but a few known agents. At a smaller scale, the 

same problems pertain to the DoD, but it is faced 

with other complications such as who would 

have priority in receiving protective gear or 

treatment should an attack occur within a mixed 

military-civilian population, and with the fact that 

mainstream medical professionals in the military 

are not trained to question symptoms of a disease 

as anything other than naturally occurring.

The Chemical and Biological Defense Program at 

the DoD has provided basic protection for military 

personnel for the threat as the U.S. understood it 

in the Cold War, but the program has had difficulty 

keeping up with rapid changes in technology 

since then, even with DARPA’s investments. 

The DSB believes that the major reason is that 

commercial pharma and biotech investments 

have swamped the DoD’s investment, such that 

the Department could be making more progress 

if it could create a viable partnering arrangement 

with the private sector. The latest challenge in the 

biodefense community is the advent of synthetic 

biology with the implications of gene editing 

for both beneficial and threatening products.

The new, ubiquitous, and 

complicating threat is cyber

In almost any scenario, from overseas military 

operations to physical attacks on the homeland, 

cyber attacks on infrastructure or military 

networks should be expected, as the principal 

or supporting attack mode. In spite of decades 

of the DSB’s and others’ warnings to this effect, 

the DoD largely ignored the possibilities until 

recently. The U.S. has always enjoyed a formidable 

offensive capability in cyber operations, but 

defensive measures have seemed unnecessary or 

untenable because of cost or the rapid advances in 

threat. Chapter 4 of this report covers this topic 

more thoroughly; but in the context of homeland 

defense, the tenets of a risk based approach, 

resiliency to outages or compromises, and fall 

back options hold even more for cyber than 

almost any other domain of homeland defense. 

Managing risks and achieving 

resiliency will be key for the DoD 

in its homeland defense mission

The DoD has taken important, but incomplete, 

steps since 9/11 to improve its ability to execute 

the homeland defense mission. Legislative and 

policy restrictions that cede the lead domestically 

to other parts of the government complicates 

progress, but no one questions that the DoD will 

be a major, if not dominant, player in the event 

of a catastrophe for which civilian authorities 

are overwhelmed. In parallel, the DoD must be 

able to deploy anywhere in the world, while also 

potentially being the target of attacks on the 

homeland. Both aspects require a level of vigilance 

and sustained effort regarding the “home game,” 

on which the DoD does not strongly focus. 

Moreover, the advances in the threat that 

have made potential crises more complex (e.g., 

“with cyber”) or yet more serious (e.g., “with 

WMD”) jeopardizes the progress made since 

9/11. While the Department cannot address all 

imaginable threats and scenarios, it can lead 

the nation in what it does best in warfighting, 

namely judging risks and building-in resiliency 

to planning, capabilities, and operations.
20 « Chapter 1

Supporting DSB reports

DoD Responses to Transnational 

Threats (1997 summer study)

Protecting the Homeland (2000 summer study)

DoD Roles and Missions in Homeland 

Security (2003 summer study)

Preventing and Defending Against 

Clandestine Nuclear Attack (2004)

Reducing Vulnerabilities to Weapons of Mass 

Destruction (2005 summer study)

Deployment of Members of the National Guard and 

Reserve in the Global War on Terrorism (2007)

Critical Homeland Infrastructure Protection (2007)

Unconventional Operational Concepts and the 

Homeland (panel report of the 2007 summer study)

Science and Technology Issues of Early Intercept 

Ballistic Missile Defense Feasibility (2011)

Predicting Violent Behavior (2013)

Deterring, Preventing and Responding to Threat or Use 

for Weapons of Mass Destruction (final report in process)

Cyber Deterrence (final report in process)
Protecting the Homeland « 21

CHAPTER TWO

Deterring the Use of Nuclear Weapons

21
22 « Chapter 2

2. DETERRING THE USE OF 

NUCLEAR WEAPONS

PREVENTING NUCLEAR WAR

Despite the “peace dividend” at the end of the Cold War, the DSB remains unconvinced that 

downplaying the nation’s nuclear deterrent would lead other nations to do the same, even 

as advances in the U.S.’ non-nuclear warfighting capabilities proved their effectiveness. 

In fact, U.S. conventional dominance demonstrated in Bosnia, Iraq, and Afghanistan, 

as well as regional imperatives, appears to have catalyzed a greater interest in nuclear 

weapons by others who do not have the resources to overmatch the U.S. otherwise.

The DSB has therefore maintained steady attention 

on the health of the U.S. nuclear enterprise, Russian 

and Chinese efforts to advance and modernize, 

nuclear weapons, proliferation to other nation 

states, and advances in technology that could 

both detect and hide proliferation. The collection 

of findings point to a worrisome conclusion: the 

nuclear threshold may be decreasing owing to the 

stated doctrines and weapons developments of some 

states, and with introduction of new technology. 

The looming end-of-life of the Triad components 

and aging production infrastructure forces both the 

DoD and the DOE to commit substantial resources 

to nuclear modernization. The lead time for 

obtaining a modernized force is long and the U.S. 

is starting well behind Russia and China’s efforts. 

Even more importantly, the Department must 

re-establish the knowledge base in nuclear matters 

and the art of deterrence among both civilian and 

military leadership, which has largely atrophied. 

In short, “nuclear” still matters, nuclear is in a class 

of its own, and nuclear cannot be wished away.

Nuclear weapons are a steadily 

evolving threat—in both 

familiar and new dimensions

The threat from nuclear weapons grew in ways 

not experienced during the Cold War. Established 

nuclear powers modernized and expanded their 

capabilities in both traditional and non-traditional 

22 « Chapter 2
Deterring the Use of Nuclear Weapons « 23

The Department must re-establish the 

knowledge base in nuclear matters and the art 

of deterrence among both civilian and military 

leadership, which has largely atrophied. 

ways. Both China and Russia began modernizing 

their strategic forces well ahead of the U.S.’ 

commitment to do the same, while also integrating 

additional elements such as intermediate range 

missiles, into their force structure. China’s nuclear 

efforts focus on a survivable second strike force, 

complemented by non-nuclear capabilities that 

match or offset U.S. non-nuclear forces and 

networked operations. In addition to its strategic 

force modernization, Russia embarked on a 

steady path since the late 1990s of conventional 

improvements in precision, stealth, and speed, and 

development and deployment of theater nuclear 

weapons with a range of tailored effects as a foil to 

U.S. conventional superiority. Russian doctrine is 

publicly stated as “escalate to de-escalate” based on 

the assumption that its first use of low yield nuclear 

weapons against a conventionally superior NATO 

force would engender a halt to further aggression. 

The Department has seen the relentless pursuit 

of nuclear capabilities to threaten the homeland 

by the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, 

the proliferation of theater weapons in Pakistan, 

the recently halted march to acquisition by Iran, 

and the talk of proliferation by some non-nuclear 

allies and partners who are questioning the U.S.’ 

commitment to extended deterrence and security 

guarantees. Commerce in the sale or sharing of 

nuclear materials and weapons design appeared, 

and advances in technologies readily accessible even 

to terrorists introduce new pathways to acquisition.

Nuclear deterrence remains a 

cornerstone of our national security 

Although the threat of nuclear Armageddon has 

subsided, the nation must still hedge against such 

an existential possibility, no matter how slim. 

However, the threats of proliferation, the potential 

for the U.S. weakening assurance guarantees of 

its allies, and the emerging scenarios of limited 

use in regional conflicts or limited strike against 

the U.S. homeland—with the potential for 

escalation—introduce complexities not seen since 

the early days of the Cold War. To address both 

instances, U.S. policy evolved to seek to raise the 

threshold for nuclear use, at least by the U.S., by 

relying less on nuclear forces and more on our 

advanced non-nuclear capabilities, while also 

committing to modernizing those nuclear force 

elements deemed critical for deterrence against 

a massive exchange. Such complexity called for 

new reviews of the requirements for a modernized
24 « Chapter 2

Triad that includes the weapons themselves 

and the enterprise for design, production and 

operations. It also brings to the fore important 

related topics, such as early warning of proliferation 

that would allow for rollback options long before a 

proliferated capability were deployed, and nuclear 

survivability to ensure credibility of all force 

elements, nuclear and non-nuclear alike, that the 

U.S. would like to include in its deterrent arsenal. 

Strategic force capabilities. The DSB, as early 

as 2004 and again in 2006, recommended a shift 

in U.S. deterrent posture to a broader set of nonnuclear options for strategic strike, and in parallel, 

research in nuclear weapons to meet emerging 

needs for ease of manufacture, higher margins, 

lower collateral damage, and special effects. The 

near exclusive focus on life extension of existing 

U.S. nuclear weapons was thought, even at that 

point, to be limiting flexibility for addressing an 

uncertain future. With respect to the force mix, 

the 2010 Nuclear Posture Review made clear that 

such a shift to greater reliance on non-nuclear 

capabilities for strategic deterrence was a priority, 

but it also called for nuclear modernization while 

reducing the numbers of deployed weapons. The 

notion of “cross-domain deterrence,” in which 

non-nuclear capabilities can be readily integrated to 

meet unique adversary challenges as they present 

themselves, has emerged as a policy concept. 

Observing that in the six years since the 2010 

Nuclear Posture Review, there has been little proof 

testing of the cross-domain proposition, the DSB 

has outlined a path forward to do so. That path 

includes red teaming, gaming, and exercising to 

test the DoD’s abilities to integrate and achieve 

desired effects; much earlier warning to provide 

many more options in stemming proliferation or 

escalation; and a more flexible nuclear enterprise 

that could produce, if needed, a rapid, tailored 

nuclear option for limited use should existing 

non-nuclear or nuclear options prove insufficient. 

A balanced program to support the nuclear force 

would consist of three elements for maintaining 

deterrent force capabilities: (1) certification and 

maintenance of current systems; (2) life extension 

of current systems, and replacement of those 

systems that can no longer be maintained to the 

required levels of reliability, safety, and security; 

and (3) a hedging thrust for responding to future 

uncertainties. For the first two decades after the 

end of the Cold War, the U.S. remained unbalanced 

among the three as the DoD laid its attention 

almost exclusively to sustaining the existing 

stockpile. Attention to the second element only 

grew with the “impossible to ignore” reality in the 

last few years of end-of-life of critical platforms 

and exhaustion of some warhead replacement 

components, where the DoD and DOE made 

substantial commitments of resources to replace, 

in whole or in part, platforms and warheads. 

Yet there is no clearly identifiable set of activities 

that address the third element, a convincing 

hedge to future uncertainties, nor has there been 

since the early 1990s.1

 The DSB has assessed that 

a robust program should consist of two major 

components: tailoring of current or planned 

capabilities and threat anticipation. Regarding 

the existing or already planned capabilities, 

efforts should address features such as:

§ Enhanced platform survivability; 

§ Open architectures for upgrades to address 

technological advances, changing threat 

environment, and mission confidence;

§ Lower yield, primary-only options; and

§ Advanced manufacturing to 

support timely modifications.

Threat anticipation would rely on red teaming 

1. The DSB observed that there appear to be several 

reasons, starting with 1993 legislation that forbid the 

development of new nuclear military capabilities. The 

legislation was modified later to allow research and 

development on new capabilities, but any transition to 

production would require Congressional approval. Both 

the DoD and DOE, having stopped all exploratory 

and advanced development with the 1993 legislation, 

never reversed course after the modification. Congress 

recently became aware of the situation and purposely 

included a call for research and development in 2016 

authorization language. 
Deterring the Use of Nuclear Weapons « 25

informed by trends surfaced through early warning 

to focus concept and advanced development 

and prototyping, placing options “on-the-shelf” 

should they be needed rapidly. Already the 

DoD can anticipate the need for capabilities 

such as hardening or maneuvering for defense 

penetration; command and control to target to 

allow command disable in flight should a limited 

strike scenario not evolve as anticipated; real time 

battle damage assessment; and embedded weapon 

system state-of-health monitoring. To rapidly 

field such capabilities would require a production 

capability utilizing state-of-the-art manufacturing 

techniques, weapon system architectures, and 

certification strategies that could support block 

changes or “plug-and-play” components. 

Skills and readiness of the nuclear 

enterprise. A key contributor to nuclear 

deterrence is the exercise of the development, 

design, and production functions for nuclear 

weapons in the DoD and DOE. The DOE 

principally manages warhead development and 

production. The DoD’s roles are equally critical 

in setting system requirements, synchronizing 

the development, production, and adaptation 

of the delivery platform, and setting the 

weapon-platform interface requirements. 

The recent uptick in priority for nuclear force 

modernization in both departments sends a strong 

message of U.S. commitment to the deterrent, 

but it comes after 25 years of downplaying (and 

poorly resourcing) the mission. The question 

then naturally presents itself as to how quickly 

the DoD can rebuild the enterprise to a level 

that matches the demands now placed on it. By 

enterprise, the Board means the spectrum from 

research and development, production and test, 

and operations and maintenance, etc. and the 

story remains mixed. Some examples include:

§ Smaller numbers and types of weapons 

mean that more resources can be devoted 

to fundamental understanding and careful 

monitoring for reliability, but reliance on any 

one system is much higher and increases the 

risk of problems or failures that would affect 

a larger fraction of the force at any one time.

§ Underground nuclear testing provided both 

stockpile confidence and a powerful tool in 

advancing scientific understanding, but nuclear 

testing has not been permitted for 25 years. In 

its place, the nation supported the Stockpile 

Stewardship Program that significantly 

improved the fundamental understanding of 

material aging and nuclear explosive physics 

through a combination of above ground 

simulators, and state-of-the-art computational 

modeling. An open question remains as to 

how long one can have confidence in the 

weapons through these approaches alone. 

§ The DOE laboratories and DoD contractor 

community did little integrated design and 

development work outside of life extension 

for 25 years. They are ramping up their 

efforts, but of necessity the new workforce 

contains a large fraction of inexperienced 

scientists and especially engineers.

§ Responsiveness of the DOE complex is 

low because of a much stronger emphasis 

on safety and security embedded in Cold 

War era processes and facilities, some of 

which date back to the late 1940s. The 

capacity of the production complex is 

fully scheduled through the 2040s. 

§ Plans for facility recapitalization compete 

with warhead life extension programs and 

modernization programs. The last successful 

construction of a new nuclear production 

facility was in 1976. This becomes especially 

challenging in nuclear production facilities 

for plutonium components at Los Alamos 

and uranium components at Oak Ridge 

Y-12. Pit production of up to 30 per year 

is not planned before 2026; production 

rates beyond that are uncertain.

§ The DoD platform modernization requirements 

are occurring almost simultaneously and extend 

over two decades. The total budget on the 

current schedule will significantly compromise 

investments in conventional capabilities, both 

new and those that need to be replaced after 

15 years of fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. 
26 « Chapter 2

Monitoring to achieve early 

warning of nuclear proliferation 

should be improved

Another aspect of deterrence has always been 

limiting the number of nations possessing nuclear 

weapons (nonproliferation) and of those that 

do, limiting the numbers in their arsenals (arms 

control). Renewed interests during the Obama 

administration in improving the security of 

nuclear materials globally and advancing arms 

control agendas with the Russians led to a DSB 

effort to assess technologies in support of future 

arms control and nonproliferation treaties and 

agreements. The DSB realized that any progress 

in treaties and agreements had to take into 

account the compounding complexities that 

appear to be aggravating nuclear proliferation 

concerns into the foreseeable future:

§ Rogue state actions, such as those of the 

Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, 

and the potential cascading effects on 

neighboring allies or partners;

§ The impact of advancing technologies 

relevant to nuclear weapons development;

§ The growing evidence of networks of 

cooperation among countries that would 

otherwise have little reason to do so;

§ The implications of U.S. policy that 

relies more heavily on conventional 

military superiority as a major element of 

deterrence, accompanied by reductions in 

numbers of our nuclear weapons; and

§ The wide range of motivations, capabilities, 

and approaches that each potential proliferator 

introduces; i.e., it is not just about Russia.

In such a context, the DSB concluded that the 

technical approach for monitoring cannot continue 

to derive only from treaty and agreement dictates 

for “point” compliance to the numbers and 

types formally agreed upon and geographically 

bounded. Proliferation in this future context 

must be a continuous process for which persistent 

surveillance tailored to the environment of 

concern is needed. This leads to the need for 

a paradigm shift in which the boundaries are 

blurred between monitoring for compliance and 

monitoring for proliferation, between cooperative 

and unilateral measures. Monitoring will need 

to be continuous, adaptive, and frequently tested 

for its effectiveness against an array of differing, 

creative, and adaptive proliferators. In order 

to create such a comprehensive monitoring 

framework, three key elements would be needed: 

§ A systems analytical “white team” able to 

posit alternative futures, assess current 

capabilities to detect proliferation, 

identify gaps, and evaluate alternatives; 

§ New tools to enable proliferation detection 

as early as possible to achieve persistent 

monitoring over large and widespread 

geographies, physical and virtual, along with 

the data analytic capabilities to sift through 

the massive data sets generated; and

§ A red-blue field testing capability to 

elucidate the signatures for proliferation 

involved with small programs, denial and 

deception, advanced technologies, etc. 

Deeper looks into the early warning problem 

suggest that there is as yet untapped potential 

in open source monitoring, making use of 

state-of-the-art techniques in “big data” 

analytics, for queueing more sophisticated 

and precise collection resources.

Nuclear survivability is necessary 

for credible deterrence

It should be obvious that if U.S. nuclear forces 

are to be part of a credible deterrent, they must 

be able to survive and function in an adversary 

generated nuclear environment. What has not 

been as evident for some time is the parallel need 

for critical non-nuclear forces to be able to “fight 

through” in a nuclear environment if indeed the 

U.S. seeks to rely more heavily on those forces as 

part of its deterrent posture. In both cases the 

attention paid to the topic of nuclear survivability 
Deterring the Use of Nuclear Weapons « 27

remains limited, in part because of perceptions 

that the only recourse is equipment hardening 

and that cost to harden is prohibitive, and in 

part because of the atrophy in the specialized 

knowledge in nuclear weapons effects and 

warfighting principles associated with survivability. 

The DSB’s persistence on this topic from 

2005 to 2015 produced a series of reports 

that can be summarized as follows:

§ A consequence of the reduction in numbers 

of U.S. nuclear weapons is that an even higher 

premium is placed on reliability and survivability 

of the remaining force, especially in the limited 

use scenarios imagined for the future. 

§ Expertise in the Combatant Commands to assess 

and plan for U.S. conventional force operations 

in an adversary generated, limited nuclear 

environment is lacking, and the survivability 

of countless force elements is not known. 

§ General knowledge in the military regarding 

nuclear weapons and the environments they 

generate, outside of some in the strategic force 

cadres in the Air Force and Navy and a small 

group of specialists in the Army, does not 

exist. The Defense Threat Reduction Agency 

(DTRA), the Military Service laboratories, and 

specialized commands, national laboratories, 

and contractor communities, along with 

aboveground test facilities hold small pockets of 

technical expertise in nuclear weapons effects. 

§ The evolution of the conventional forces to 

systems that depend on commercial suppliers, 

the introduction of increasing levels of autonomy, 

and the reliance on networked operations 

are producing a potentially more vulnerable 

force, but we do not know to what degree.

§ The Department is making several major 

acquisitions as it modernizes the nuclear 

force and introduces new offset capabilities. 

These systems will be with the DoD for a 

long time to come, so that the Department 

should be buying all the survivability it can 

afford as a hedge against an uncertain future.

§ “Buying survivability” does not necessarily 

equate to hardening. The Department can 

relearn many lessons from the Cold War 

in which tactics, redundancy, and recovery 

were viable options for “fighting through.” 

Moreover, the cost to harden already fielded 

systems is indeed likely to be prohibitive, 

such that alternative approaches will be 

important for addressing legacy systems.

The significant change required to re-create 

nuclear literacy in the DoD will take leadership 

from the top. While some noticeable and 

noteworthy efforts are underway, progress will 

necessarily be slow to develop a new generation of 

nuclear savvy acquirers, planners, and operators. 

The DSB recommended that starting with a focus 

on mission assurance could lead to affordable and 

timely decisions and planning. It will require a 

concerted effort, with the following characteristics: 

§ Combatant Commands should identify 

mission critical functions derived from 

operational plans and Military Services then 

devolve that to mission critical capabilities;

§ The analytical community should provide 

support to link mission critical capabilities 

to specific systems and tactics;

§ The operational community should 

conduct gaming and experimentation 

in radiation degraded environments to 

identify gaps and uncertainties;

§ The Military Services should ensure a 

tiered system of education and training 

in nuclear warfighting, including a basic 

level of knowledge throughout the 

force and among decision makers;

§ In filling gaps, the acquisition community should 

set requirements and the testing and evaluation 

community conduct assessments tied to mission 

assurance, not simply hardening levels; and

§ The technical community should 

support all of these activities.
28 « Chapter 2

The DSB strongly recommends that all 

major acquisitions be born with a nuclear 

survivability requirement derived from 

projected threat scenarios relevant to the 

range of missions expected for the system. 

U.S. nuclear modernization 

has been put off too long

The level of interest in nuclear weapons has grown 

with existing nuclear powers, who are modernizing 

their forces, and in some cases, expanding their 

capabilities both qualitatively and quantitatively, and 

with new or latent proliferators. Principal drivers 

include an affordable hedge against U.S. conventional 

superiority and a deterrent against regional actors 

that threaten their interests or sovereignty. In 

parallel, an aging nuclear force and enterprise to 

support it in the U.S. has forced the need for a 

modernization program of our own. The nation and 

the Department are stepping up to the commitment 

needed, but the price to pay in both human resources 

and budget is substantial, given the more than two 

decades of neglect. Through its persistence over those 

decades, the DSB produced a compendium of findings 

and recommendations that can provide a rapid head 

start for the re-learning that must take place.

Supporting DSB reports

Future Strategic Strike Forces (2003 summer study)

Employment of the National Ignition Facility (2004)

Nuclear Weapons Effects Test, Evaluation, 

and Simulation (2005)

Nuclear Capabilities (2006)

Nuclear Deterrence Skills (2008)

Report on the Unauthorized Movement 

of Nuclear Weapons (2008)

Nuclear Weapons Inspections for the 

Strategic Nuclear Force (2008)

Nuclear Weapons Effects National Enterprise (2010)

Independent Assessment of the Air 

Force Nuclear Enterprise (2011)

Air Force Nuclear Enterprise Follow-On Review (2013)

Survivability of Systems and Assets to 

Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) and other Nuclear 

Weapon Effects (5 reports, 2011–2015)

Assessment of Nuclear Monitoring and 

Verification Technologies (2014)

The nation and the Department are stepping up to 

the commitment needed, but the price to pay in 

both human resources and budget is substantial, 

given the two-plus decades of neglect.
Deterring the Use of Nuclear Weapons « 29

CHAPTER THREE

Preparing for Gray Zone Conflicts

29
30 « Chapter 3

3. PREPARING FOR GRAY 

ZONE CONFLICTS

CONSTRAINED MILITARY OPERATIONS, SHORT OF ALL-OUT WAR, BECAME THE NORM 

Adversaries have been able to blunt the effectiveness of U.S. military power by pursuing 

sophisticated but lower risk approaches to challenge to U.S. security interests without 

triggering a major U.S. military response—in spite of the profound effectiveness of U.S. 

military power in place at the end of the Cold War. In several important cases, nations 

sought to deter U.S. military intervention by creating powerful area denial and anti-access 

capabilities, including nuclear weapons and flexible doctrines governing their employment.

Since the end of the Cold War, the confrontation 

and competition for influence usually takes place 

below the threshold of major inter-state armed 

conflict. The strong and the weak, developed and 

undeveloped nations, near peers and rag-tag nations, 

and even self-proclaimed non-nation states challenge 

and confront each other to improve their relative 

position—politically, militarily, economically, 

or to increase influence among a population.

Illustrative of these adversary campaigns in 

Europe include Russia’s gray zone efforts between 

war and peace to compel the independent states 

of the former Soviet Union to join a Russian 

led “Eurasian” entity. In East Asia, China’s 

efforts to convert the exclusive economic zone 

aspects of the Law of the Sea Convention into a 

sovereignty claim over the entire South China 

Sea enforced by its militarized “Coast Guard” 

to enforce it without incurring the risk of a U.S. 

military response has, so far, been proceeding.

Such competitions are typically open to multiple 

interpretations and U.S. interests are not clear. The 

Department could conduct actions at low “cost” 

i.e., low risk to U.S. lives, low risk to high value 

U.S. military assets, little danger to innocents, and 

little damage to infrastructure, as the U.S. may 

have to rebuild it later. Public opinion strongly 

shapes the rules of engagement: global public 

opinion, U.S. public opinion, public opinion of 

an ally, and public opinion of the adversary.

30 « Chapter 3
Preparing for Gray Zone Conflicts « 31

These conflicts take many forms; the conflicts 

offer no clear line between peace and war may go 

on for years at widely varying levels of intensity 

below the threshold of an international response, 

particularly in the absence of a U.S. decision to 

escalate. The U.S. may need assistance from other 

nations for transit and access and to shape public 

opinion. Some confrontations, which tend to be 

regional, involve an insurgency acting against 

a standing government, military, and political 

activities within a sovereign nation conducted 

by a neighbor, disputes over territory between 

neighboring nations, campaigns to undermine or 

enhance cultural influence, or terrorist or criminal 

activities within states or ungoverned territories.

Some challenges involve neither territorial 

domination, nor forceful confrontation, but 

still intended to advance adversary interests 

and frustrate U.S. efforts to protect its own 

interests. For example, these may involve theft 

of intellectual property, maritime displays 

of sovereign presence, media campaigns to 

wrongfully discredit U.S. soldiers in foreign 

locations, release of information stolen digitally, 

and penetrating a component supplier in order 

to degrade the performance of the weapon 

system in which the component is embedded.

The cumulative effect of these developments is 

the global attrition of U.S. power and influence, 

and a diminished U.S. will and a lack of a guiding 

strategy to affect events. Further, the success of 

such gray zone tactics stimulates other nations 

who share little else apart from their antipathy to 

the U.S., its allies, and the interests they share. 

The U.S. has responded to gray 

zone confrontations in the past

The U.S. responded to a somewhat similar 

diminution of influence and power in the middle 

of the last century just after the end of World 

War II. In just four years of post-war gray zone 

operations, the Soviet Union succeeded in imposing 

Communist regimes that enveloped much of 

Central and Eastern Europe as well as China, 

the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, and 

eventually most of Indochina—underpinned by the 

Red Army and the future prospect of the Soviet 

Union as a nuclear power competitive with the U.S. 

The relentless expansion of territory under the 

control of the Sino-Soviet alliance in the years 

immediately following the end of World War II 

exploited the near-abandonment of the U.S. forward 

military posture as it demobilized in the European 

and Pacific theaters of the conflict. The U.S. briefly 

held a nuclear monopoly: in 1949, the Soviet Union 

detonated an exact copy of the U.S. weapon used at 

Nagasaki four years earlier. The U.S. nuclear posture 

during its period of holding a nuclear monopoly was 

diplomatically and politically inconsequential in 

enforcing the 1945 Yalta and Potsdam agreements. 

In 1950, the U.S. leadership came to recognize 

the cumulative toll exacted by these undeterred 

gray zone operations. Using the newly created 

statutory National Security Council system, 

President Truman promulgated the core foreign 

policy document of the Cold War that shaped U.S. 

foreign policy until the Soviet Union collapsed 

in 1991—NSC-68. This document committed 

the U.S. to a “whole-of-government” approach 

to confronting Soviet military power that would 

bring to bear the full weight of U.S. economic 

and military power to support and sustain a 

global foreign policy to contain and deter the 

Soviet Union to the point that it collapsed.

NSC-68 called for substantial expansion and 

modernization of the military leveraging the 

technologies of information and precision navigation 

to field a force capable of persistent surveillance 

and precision strike that served as overmatch to the 

capabilities of any other nation. NSC-68 directed the 

development of a hydrogen bomb and a nuclear force 

that was able to deter (and extend the deterrent 

to U.S. allies) any nuclear adversary or coalition of 

adversaries. NSC-68 called for increased military 

aid to allies of the U.S., and made containment 

of global Communist expansion a high priority. 

That sustained execution of a whole-ofgovernment response was profoundly successful.

It is an appropriate approach for today.
32 « Chapter 3

The U.S. must respond to 

a new form of war

1. Create an overarching strategic concept:

As discovered in the Cold War, the U.S. needs 

an overarching strategic concept to enable 

the whole of government to be effectively 

mobilized around a national purpose. The 

U.S. requires a 21st century counterpart to the 

policy embodied in NSC-68 that will bring 

together the capabilities of all agencies whose 

capabilities and resources can favorably affect 

national security outcomes. Appropriately, 

a single agency within the national security 

infrastructure took the lead in drafting 

such a policy initiative for the President’s 

consideration; in 1950 the Department of State 

took the lead due to its extensive involvement 

in post-war reconstruction in Europe and 

Asia. Today, the DoD’s global involvement and 

capabilities in the management of multiple 

political-military crises has created a level of 

expertise unrivaled in the Federal government. 

Only DoD holds the insight and prowess to 

address incursion in the information spaces. 

2. Recognize and plan for information needs 

in Constrained Military Operations: The 

gray zone remains a critical battlespace with 

information needs that differ fundamentally 

from other types of conflict. These needs 

include information content and messaging, 

diplomatic activities, physical assets and 

activities, and economic activities. All elements 

affect the information dimension of U.S. 

activities in constrained military operations.

3. Broadly shape intelligence strategies 

and priorities to meet the needs of 21st

century conflict while denying adversary 

access: While traditional intelligence collection 

disciplines (human intelligence, signals 

intelligence, etc.) remain important, the vast 

array of persistent, universal, and global “open 

source” intelligence collection can be used to 

gain deep insights into adversary aims, behavior, 

and vulnerabilities. Cyber operations, electronic 

warfare, deception, and kinetic operations 

can contribute to our ability to deny the 

adversary access to information and resources.

4. Increase the use of open source 

information: Open source information can 

contribute significantly to situational awareness, 

and increase the effectiveness of traditional 

intelligence collection. It is the result of the 

observations, thoughts and digital actions 

taken by multitudes; it is more diverse and 

derives from more locations than that which 

the necessarily limited sensors and collectors 

of the U.S. and its allies collect. It is available 

on a continuous rather than episodic basis, and 

can be used to cue other means of information 

collection, enhancing traditional indications and 

warning as well as battle damage assessment. 

The ability to use modern data analytics, 

including autonomous processing and machine 

learning, can significantly enhance insights 

into adversary behavior and to contribute 

to the U.S. ability to mitigate adversary 

information operations and deception. The 

exploitation of highly automated advanced 

analytic technologies can enable a “deep” 

understanding of the adversary’s culture; 

politics; influence mechanisms; the commercial, 

financial, industrial, and governmental 

infrastructure; core interests of adversary 

leadership elites; and its vulnerabilities.

5. Develop and increase the stockpile of tools 

adapted to serve constrained military 

operations: Special Operations forces are 

committed to constrained military operations 

today, and are highly effective. The DSB advises 

increasing that force, using it more selectively, 

and using it in higher advantage situations. 

The U.S. could use better and more cyber 

options. The DoD’s provision of arms would 

be helped if given with means of assuring that 

they would not be used against the U.S. later. 

Other useful tools to be developed include: 

additional techniques for influencing ground 

movement of adversaries and neutrals; low 

“cost” no fly zone; low “cost” naval blockade; low 

“cost” land blockade; much better information 

operations and the use of social media; weapons 
Preparing for Gray Zone Conflicts « 33

that are non-lethal and reversible; and better 

indirect, but compelling, influence on players, 

e.g. a particular tribe or clan, who could take 

action in our favor, but are not doing so.

6. Develop expanded opportunities for 

deterrence: The U.S. must deter adversary 

use of capabilities for which cost-effective 

defenses are not available. Doing so in turn 

requires that the U.S. develop a sophisticated 

knowledge of decision makers, vulnerabilities, 

their most fundamental interests, and 

technologies, tactics, techniques, and 

procedures by which we can hold them at risk.

7. Engage allied and friendly nations 

with shared interests to contribute 

significantly to constrained military 

operations: Sharing important capabilities 

with allies can enhance the effectiveness by 

which U.S. capabilities apply. Precedents 

developed during the course of collaboration 

with allies in counter-terrorism intelligence, 

diplomacy, implementation of sanctions, 

and cyber operations well beyond the scope 

of traditional combined military operations 

is achievable and effective. Friendly nations 

can take actions that do not escalate a 

confrontation, while if the U.S. took the same 

action might trigger an unwanted escalation.

Lessons are taught but not learned

The DSB studied the evolving character of 

post-Cold War military challenges to U.S. 

interests in several reports prior to the 2016 

study for Constrained Military Operations. In its 

2004 report on Transition to and from Hostilities,

the DSB noted a recurring pattern embedded in 

post-Cold War experience. U.S. forces deployed 

on average once every three years, but while 

major U.S. military engagements remained 

very brief (in part due to the superiority of U.S. 

general-purpose forces), U.S. political-military 

involvement typically lasted for approximately eight 

years. Clearly the U.S. needed a better process, 

both to prepare for future conflicts it could not 

now anticipate, and a more efficient process of 

post conflict stabilization. The latter point gave 

rise to a separate, but related effort concerning 

stabilization operations in the 2005 report on 

Institutionalizing Stabilization Operations in the DoD.

Repeatedly, the DSB found that U.S. effectiveness 

was diminished by the absence of effective 

“strategic communications” as a “lesson taught but 

Strategic communication is a dynamic process with 

responsibility held by those at the highest levels of 

government—the President and senior government 

leaders. It must be executed with shared knowledge 

and strong, adaptive networks within government 

and between government and civil society.
34 « Chapter 3

not learned” over several post-Cold War military 

operations. As stated in Strategic Communication 

(2008), strategic communication is a dynamic 

process with responsibility held by those at the 

highest levels of government—the President and 

senior government leaders. It must be executed 

with shared knowledge and strong, adaptive 

networks within government and between 

government and civil society. Effective strategic 

communications could in many cases advance 

U.S. political-military and diplomatic aims more 

effectively than could military operations. 

Supporting DSB reports

Transition to and from Hostilities (2004)

Strategic Communication (2004)

Institutionalizing Stability Operations 

within DoD (2005)

Strategic Communication (2007 summer study)

Constrained Military Operations (final report in process)
Preparing for Gray Zone Conflicts « 35

CHAPTER FOUR

Maintaining Information Superiority

35
36 « Chapter 4

4. MAINTAINING INFORMATION 

SUPERIORITY

WHAT THE INFORMATION INFRASTRUCTURE IS ENABLING FOR ADVERSARIES AND FOR THE U.S. 

The U.S. maintains its global military dominance in large part by innovatively and 

extensively utilizing information technology in all aspects of warfighting. Unfortunately, 

the DoD’s comprehensive dependence upon this vulnerable technology created 

unacceptable levels of doubt in the resilience of these systems and thus, in the U.S.’ 

military dominance against an adversary who can hold these systems at risk. 

The DSB first highlighted this issue in a report 

entitled, Security Controls for Computer Systems 

(1970). This occurred during the transition from 

batch oriented stand-alone and air-gapped 

systems to time-sharing distributed systems. 

This transition opened a Pandora’s Box of 

new security concerns and attack vectors 

available to compromise computing systems. 

During the intervening decades, DoD and society 

as a whole continued to increase the missioncritical roles and associated dependencies of this 

rapidly evolving technology. The combination 

of extensive dependence, high vulnerability, 

and major consequences of failure turned many 

DoD systems, both enterprise and mission, 

into very attractive adversary targets. 

Because information has become a decisive and 

discriminating enabler of modern warfare and 

information superiority a potent deterrent, DSB 

increased its efforts in examining challenges and 

opportunities for achieving and maintaining 

information superiority. The Board has evaluated 

intelligence collection and analysis, big data, cloud 

computing, information and communications 

infrastructure, interoperability, geo-positioning, 

and advanced weapons systems while at the same 

time recommended ways to protect and defend 

these capabilities. This combination will increase 

and ensure the U.S.’ advantages and at the same 

time, increase the uncertainty of U.S. opponents. 

Today, the U.S.’ peer and near-peer adversaries 

increasingly maintain the ability to hold both U.S. 

36 « Chapter 4
Maintaining Information Superiority « 37

critical infrastructure and military systems at risk 

by compromising their information technology 

underpinnings. Many others have the ability to 

cause lesser but still grave harm to U.S. information 

systems. While awareness of this problem is high, 

progress to decrease the risk remains very limited. 

In many cases, the trade-space between system 

function, performance, and security has been too 

difficult to address. This impasse must be resolved 

and the DoD must step up its defensive game now. 

Information superiority is 

challenging in a complex 

electromagnetic environment

A central element of information superiority 

for the United States has been our military’s 

electronic warfare capabilities that are common 

to most mission areas: tactical communications; 

satellite communications; positioning, navigation, 

and timing; and intelligence, surveillance and 

reconnaissance. The limited availability of high-end 

electronics to defense system developers in a few 

large countries in part assured U.S. superiority in 

electronic warfare. Now that advanced and capable 

electronics are inexpensively available worldwide, 

the U.S.’ dominance has eroded and both large and 

small actors are developing effective electronic 

warfare capabilities. Without exception, the ability 

to perform required functions and conduct required 

operations seriously lacked in all but relatively 

benign electromagnetic spectrum environments. 

The expectation that U.S. forces will prevail 

in a conflict is predicated to a large extent on 

information supremacy, especially in an era 

of network-centric warfare. However, this 

supremacy will be lost if adversary electronic 

warfare capabilities deny U.S. forces the ability to 

sense, communicate, navigate, and synchronize 

on the battlefield. The proliferation of digital, 

software-driven electronics provides a technical 

foundation for very rapid adaption. This translates 

into a potential ability to change waveforms, 

techniques, and algorithms for large systems in 

hours or days, rather than today’s normal cycle 

of years. Certain potential adversaries of the 

U.S. have much of that capability today and 

more will acquire it as modern electronics and 

software continues to be global commodities. 

To mitigate the most critical deficiencies, 

the DSB recommends:

An early analysis of computer network vulnerabilities. These findings were effectively dismissed by 

many in the defense community at the time, and even for those that understood the significance, 

very little was done. (DSB Report on Security Controls for Computer Systems, 1970)
38 « Chapter 4

§ Managing the use of the electromagnetic 

spectrum far better and more 

dynamically than today; 

§ Adapting to related events, either in 

terms of mitigating problems or taking 

advantage of opportunities, far faster 

than can currently be done; and 

§ Shift more to offense, because responding to 

every problem defensively will never get ahead 

of the adversary, and bound to be unaffordable. 

§ A final recommendation to revitalize the DoD 

electronic warfare enterprise was immediately 

adopted by the DoD, because without 

appropriate advocacy, oversight, coordination, 

and supporting infrastructure for EW, any 

technical improvements will be short lived. 

Space and the global positioning 

system play a central role

The combination of electronic warfare and 

cyber threats appears daunting. As these 

historically distinct disciplines increase 

their level of collaboration, the defensive 

challenges will increase geometrically.

An excellent example of a foundational 

technology and platform underpinning the U.S. 

military’s information superiority is the Global 

Positioning System (GPS). GPS signals permit 

simultaneous determination of both precise 

three-dimensional position and precise time 

and thus, provide a common thread of precise 

position and time throughout our national 

security and economic infrastructures. For 

these reasons, the DSB published its report 

on the Future of the Global Positioning System 

(2005). By many measures the GPS appears to 

be a successful program, however, the report 

revealed a number of serious issues that affect its 

operational viability in military effectiveness, civil 

performance, competitiveness, and governance. 

While there has been a growing awareness to 

which GPS is integral to mission success, there has 

been insufficient planning or implementation of the 

changes needed to make GPS more able to support 

future missions and architectures. The ability of 

the U.S.’ military to maintain GPS service to U.S. 

forces in the presence of hostile forces remains 

essential. However, inexpensive, capable, lowpower jammers proliferated in the international 

arms market to deny this service. Potential enemies 

are undoubtedly aware of GPS effectiveness, and 

will take advantage of this jammer technology in 

future conflicts. It is imperative therefore that 

anti-jam margins for military GPS equipment 

be raised in order to mitigate the effect of these 

low power jammers. Additionally, the potential 

growth in the use of proliferated ultra-wideband 

networking and communications devices and its 

effect on the noise floor will likely make consistent 

reception of all GPS signals more challenging, 

particularly in metropolitan areas. The DoD 

understands anti-jam solutions but implementation 

lags need. The Department should also accelerate 

the GPS-III programs, and undertake research 

to further improve the robustness of GPS 

and explore alternatives to supplement GPS 

for military positioning and navigation.

The DSB has long held that space superiority 

is essential in achieving global awareness, 

information dominance on the battlefield, 

deterrence of potential conflict, and superior 

combat effectiveness of our forces. Shortfalls 

within existing and planned space systems 

will affect the U.S.’ vulnerability to emerging 

electronic warfare, kinetic, and cyber threats. 

For critical systems, it is not enough to be 

resilient to each of these threat vectors; they 

must be resilient to any combination of these 

offensive capabilities. The DoD needs strategies 

to enhance the resilience of the space enterprise, 

including those critical elements provided by 

international partners and the commercial sector.

Military microelectronic and software 

systems must be protected

In large part, rapid improvements in fundamental 

microelectronic technology, such as those 

led by Moore’s Law, in the past drove the 

enhancing of the U.S.’ information dominance 
Maintaining Information Superiority « 39

over all potential opponents. The exponential 

improvements in hardware such as integrated 

circuits, microprocessors, microcontrollers, digital 

signal processors, and programmable logic arrays, 

led to performance advances in communications, 

networking, and software. Thus, microelectronics 

hardware is foundational to U.S. information 

dominance and the Department must protect 

it. In High Performance Microchip Supply (2005), 

the DSB noted that the DoD remains highly 

dependent upon this technology to maintain 

military superiority—not only information 

superiority—that the U.S. must maintain a trusted 

and assured supply of these integrated circuits. 

Key potential opponents increasingly engage 

in the life cycle of this technology: product 

definition, design, process development, mask 

making, chip fabrication, assembly, test, customer 

support, materials, production equipment, and 

contracting. This causes enormous challenges in 

the associated supply-chain. The report concluded, 

“If the real and potential adversaries’ ability to 

subvert U.S. microelectronics components is not 

reversed or technically mitigated, our adversaries 

will gain enormous asymmetric advantages that 

could possibly put U.S. force projection at risk.” 

The acquisition cycle of a weapon system and 

the larger life cycle of these systems, provide 

opponents increasing opportunities to insert 

exploitable constructs into U.S. systems. The 

combination of the hardware and software supply 

chain challenges seems intractable. Even though 

the level of awareness of these issues grew and 

new DoD policy and structure developed, the 

Department remains at great risk. The DSB 

began a study on the Cyber Supply Chain (final 

report in process) in 2015. The members found 

that assuring the integrity of weapons systems 

supply chain has become more difficult (rather 

than less) and required ever increasing vigilance 

and sophistication in both acquisition and 

sustainment. This is due in part to increased 

globalization and decreased control over suppliers, 

increased complexity, latent vulnerabilities, 

and subsequent system modification. Given the 

unavoidable dependence of DoD cyber supply

chains on commercial components, globally 

produced microelectronics, and embedded 

software, and the growing body of evidence that 

U.S. adversaries exploit the opportunities, the 

DoD still finds itself extremely vulnerable with 

inadequate program protection practices and 

immature technologies to mitigate the risks.

Similarly, and again predictably in Mission Impact 

of Foreign Influence on DoD Software (2007), the 

DSB observed that the DoD missions strongly 

depend on software with increasing offshore 

provenance. While critical military applications 

were likely develop using trusted or cleared 

contractors, the lower level software structures 

such as operating systems could easily have foreign 

fingerprints. Further, because of the high degree of 

interconnectedness, should an adversary penetrate 

any point, the infiltrator can move laterally to 

other connected systems. This presents a tempting 

target and may be an inexpensive approach when 

compared to microelectronics. Once the adversary 

introduces the malicious code, it would be difficult 

to detect and could grant access to the DoD 

system for purposes of denying service, stealing 

information, or corrupting critical data. Even if 

the malware were discovered, attribution and 

intent would be difficult to prove. This ensures 

a small risk and large benefit for the attacker.

Defense acquisition of information 

technology is more difficult than ever

In response to a growing concern from the U.S. 

Congress and among Department of Defense 

leadership that the nation’s military advantage may 

be eroding, DSB undertook a policy review in its 

report Department of Defense Policies and Procedures for 

the Acquisition of Information Technology (2009). The 

scope of the report touches on acquisition oversight 

policies and procedures, roles and responsibilities 

for acquisition activity department-wide, reporting 

requirements, and testing. Importantly, the report 

found that the deliberate process through which 

weapon systems and information technology 

acquired by the DoD cannot keep pace with 

the speed of introduction of new capabilities 

in today’s information age. Both the length of 
40 « Chapter 4

time for acquiring new information technology 

and the openness of the acquisition community 

allows an adversary provide ample opportunity 

to develop countermeasures to DoD systems 

and allows adversaries to leverage U.S. military 

innovations and employ those same capabilities 

against the nation. The DoD may need a separate 

acquisition system for information technology 

than that used for major weapons systems. 

Resilient and effective cyber 

protection will require a 

systems approach

Under pressure to increase information sharing 

and assured interoperability, the DSB published 

a report entitled Creating an Assured Joint DoD 

and Interagency Interoperable Net-Centric Enterprise 

(2009). The report considered net-centricity a key 

enabler for information sharing. The overarching 

national security vision created an assured joint 

DoD and interagency interoperable net-centric 

enterprise along with integration with the existing 

cyber strategy that could enable U.S. decision 

superiority at all levels. While clearly this would 

significantly enhance U.S. military advantage, it 

was not clear how to do this in a cyber-contested 

environment. The U.S. must temper its appetite 

for enhanced system performance, functionality, 

and interoperability with its ability to sufficiently 

protect these systems from the adversary. This 

appears straightforward for small insurgent 

groups, but not as simple for a nation state.

By 2011, a confluence of events and activity 

markedly increased the urgency and visibility 

of fully leveraging new information technology 

developments and at the same time ensuring the 

resiliency of them. The digital cloud was becoming 

omnipresent, and seen as the next major step in 

the evolution of computing infrastructure. The 

allure and affordability of petaflops of processing 

capacity, petabytes of data storage, and very high 

bandwidth became irresistible. At the same time, 

the Department saw a clear and unambiguous 

increase in adversary cyber penetrations of the 

DoD’s unclassified and classified networks. 

The DSB concluded in Cyber Security and Reliability 

in a Digital Cloud (2013), that against low level 

opponents and for less critical systems, the 

cloud held the promise of improved security. 

Cloud storage provides much better security 

consistency and a more rapid application of 

patches. The combination of the security boost 

and the potential for large cost savings appeared 

attractive and reasonable for non-critical systems. 

However, higher tier opponents will likely target 

the use of cloud technology for critical systems.

One cannot address the resiliency of a system 

without indicating the level of threat targeting 

the system. The Resilient Military Systems and the 

Advanced Cyber Threat (2013) report introduced 

a structure for characterizing various levels of 

threat. The low-level attacker primarily exploits 

known vulnerabilities with openly available tools. 

The mid-level opponent holds the added ability 

to discover new vulnerabilities and develop the 

corresponding tool set. Finally, the top-level 

adversary can also create and operationally 

introduce supply chain vulnerabilities into their 

target and perhaps do this at significant scale.

Against this backdrop, the study concluded 

that the U.S. cannot be confident that critical 

information technology systems will work under 

a full-spectrum attack from a sophisticated 

and well-resourced opponent utilizing cyber 

capabilities in combination with its entire 

military and intelligence capabilities. Because 

risk is a function of threat, vulnerability, and 

consequence of compromise, to effectively 

manage risk, the DoD must work the risk 

reduction challenge as a systems problem. 

The DoD must protect the 

information enterprise

While the DoD’s space-based systems and their 

ground-based support remain critical to U.S. 

information superiority, they represent just a part 

of the information enterprise upon which the 

U.S. military became dependent. Today’s military 

operating environment is increasingly complex. 

Our adversaries appear dispersed, often mixed with 
Maintaining Information Superiority « 41

civilians and other non-combatants, and targets 

located in areas where great concern exists over 

collateral damage and unintended consequences. 

Adversaries are adaptive, amorphous, and stealthy, 

further increasing U.S. reliance on information. 

The DSB assessed the department’s strategy, scope, 

and progress toward achieving a robust and adaptive 

net-centric DoD information management system. 

The many facets of the problem include support 

for combat operations, information management, 

information assurance, and architecture 

requirements; the DSB found that these 

considerations converge on the simple question 

of how to provide robust, useful information at 

all levels from decision-makers to tactical users. 

The DSB evaluated information management 

in four operational scenarios in Information 

Management for Net-Centric Operations (2006): 

§ Preventing and protecting the United 

States against catastrophic attack;

§ Conducting large-scale counterinsurgency operations, including 

stabilization and reconstruction; 

§ Conducting global distributed, small-scale 

operations, including counter-terrorism 

and humanitarian relief; and 

§ Enabling large-scale operations 

against near peer adversaries. 

Consistently, the DSB’s reports found the 

provocative notion that the DoD’s information 

networks, as a whole, are a critical weapon 

system and must be protected and operated 

in a manner consistent with the mission of 

protecting and defending the United States. 

The mission assurance dependencies on DoD 

networks hold major implications for commanders, 

operators, and training regimens. A critical 

defense weapon system requires enterprise-wide 

operational management, performance monitoring, 

and contingency planning functions. Operators 

must know how to operate the combat weapon 

system, and readiness assessments, throughput and 

performance, and trades and metrics to measure 

performance and assurance must be available. 

Many defense assets connect via this system and 

system services must be prioritized and tested, 

and war fighters must train with the system. 

The DSB recently investigated ways to improve 

the overall management processes to provide 

the needed security to its systems and networks. 

In Cyber Defense (2016), DSB examined methods 

to assess and provide leadership with improved 

cyber protection management, methods to assess 

A cyber threat taxonomy proposed in the DSB Report on Resilient Military Systems and the Advanced Cyber Threat, 2013
42 « Chapter 4

system resilience, and ways to inform future 

security investments and provide a prioritized 

list of how to spend its next cyber defense dollar. 

The combination of very effective red teams 

and increased adversarial activity significantly 

enhanced senior leadership awareness and concern, 

reflected in several “cyber awakening” activities. 

Specific and actionable recommendations that 

collectively aim at significantly augmenting the 

DoD’s defensive position include: collecting and 

analyzing attack data, engaging senior leadership, 

automating network management operations, 

identifying and protecting mission critical systems, 

including cyber preparedness in defense readiness 

reporting, developing modeling efforts to inform 

future investments, and working with commercial 

suppliers to enhance the security of their products. 

However, even with these improvements, the 

DSB recognized that against a top tier opponent 

these efforts would likely prove inadequate to 

safeguard the DoD’s most vital systems.

A common theme throughout the DSB’s numerous 

evaluations of information superiority is the 

recognition that the U.S.’ information systems 

will be constantly under attack by its adversaries 

and these systems must work in a degraded mode. 

Combat information capacity is no different 

than any other defense weapons system. As 

well, doctrine, concepts of operations, tactics, 

techniques, and procedures, and contingency 

plans must be developed to address these threats 

against combat information systems. Relevant 

systems must be exercised regularly to enable 

U.S. commanders to understand how to operate 

in degraded modes. The DSB also addressed 

organizational roles and strategy to deal with the 

DoD’s increasing adherence to net-centric doctrine. 

Because of the inability to sufficiently protect these 

critical systems in the face of a top tier opponent, 

the report concluded that the U.S. cyber defensive 

strategy must include an element of deterrence. 

This deterrence conclusion resulted in a new study, 

found in Cyber Deterrence (final report in process). The 

findings of this task force supported the resiliency 

report and extended its insights. In particular, the 

study recognized that due in part to the uncertainty 

about the offensive cyber capabilities and intentions 

of potential adversaries, the extent of U.S. 

vulnerabilities, and the time to recover from an 

attack even experts disagree whether the potential 

impacts of cyber-attacks should be characterized 

as “catastrophic” or “existential.” Regardless of 

this distinction, the offensive cyber capabilities 

of U.S. adversaries will likely to continue to grow 

more rapidly than the DoD’s ability to defend 

and make resilient its critical infrastructures. 

Consequently, the U.S. must prioritize developing 

and sustaining a credible cyber deterrence posture. 

An effective deterrence strategy will tailor the 

approach for each potential opponent, realizing 

that people are deterred, rather than nations. As 

such, the DoD must understand by country and 

leadership what they hold dear that may be at 

risk using cyber resilient capabilities. Specifically, 

kinetic and offensive cyber response capabilities 

used by the DoD must not only be resilient to 

traditional attack vectors but also must be resilient 

to a top tier offensive cyber attack. The innovative 

use of offensive cyber capabilities to support 

defensive objectives remains critical to increasing 

U.S. confidence in its response capabilities and 

decreasing the confidence of the attacker in their 

ability to neutralize these response capabilities.

Information technology 

routinely delivers advantages 

and vulnerabilities

The DoD uses network connectivity and the 

integration of state-of-the-art commercial 

microelectronics and software in both enterprise 

systems and weapon systems to tremendous 

advantage, economically and militarily. 

Unfortunately, this is a double edged sword. 

The growing vulnerability of these systems 

to a knowledgeable and motivated adversary 

keen on reducing U.S. advantages offset these 

game-changing advantages. It is increasingly 

clear that this is core to their strategy. As a result, 

the DoD should expect full-spectrum cyber 

to be a part of all future conflicts, especially 

against near-peer opponents. The DSB suggests 

a strategy to leverage the military utility of this 
Maintaining Information Superiority « 43

technology and at the same time sufficiently 

protect it from our potential adversaries. Cyber 

remains a complicated domain and requires 

management from a systems perspective. There 

is no silver bullet today and there will not likely 

to be one in the future. While the Department 

cannot eliminate risks, it must manage risks 

through a combination of improved cyber defense, 

a proactive cyber offense to support the DoD’s 

defensive needs, and effective deterrence.

Supporting DSB reports

Future of the Global Positioning System (2005)

High Performance Microchip Supply (2005)

Information Management for Net-Centric 

Operations (2006 summer study)

Mission Impact of Foreign Influence 

on DoD Software (2007)

Department of Defense Policies and Procedures for 

the Acquisition of Information Technology (2009)

Creating an Assured Joint DoD and Interagency 

Interoperable Net-Centric Enterprise (2009)

21st Century Military Operations in a Complex 

Electromagnetic Environment (2013 summer study)

Resilient Military Systems and the 

Advanced Cyber Threat (2013)

Cyber Security and Reliability in a Digital Cloud (2013)

Cyber Defense (2016)

Cyber Supply Chain (final report in process)

Defense Strategies for Ensuring the Resilience of 

National Space Capabilities (final report in process)

Cyber Deterrence (final report in process)

Military Satellite Communication and Tactical 

Networking (final report in process)
4444 « Chapter 5
Anticipating Intelligent Systems and Autonomy « 45

CHAPTER FIVE

Anticipating Intelligent Systems and Autonomy

45
46 « Chapter 5

5. ANTICIPATING INTELLIGENT 

SYSTEMS AND AUTONOMY

NUMBERS AND DISAGGREGATION § RANGE § DANGER ON AND ABOVE SEA SURFACE DRIVE WARFARE UNDERSEA  

The U.S. is generally believed to have the best military technology in the world. Coupled 

with outstanding professional soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines, military technology 

contributed to the U.S.’ role as the leading global power. However, the cost of technology 

and its associated equipment remains high, which has had cascading effects.

DoD resources are stretched thin because of 

increasing global demands on the military 

and the constraints of limited budgets. In 

this situation, the generally high cost of new 

technology has significantly limited the quantities 

that can be acquired. In turn, the few systems 

that are fielded often serve as prime targets 

for adversaries. These factors together tend to 

reduce U.S. willingness to engage due to the 

cost, in dollars and lives, of losing these assets. 

A promising approach to address this challenge is to 

use lower cost, unmanned systems more extensively, 

to complement existing systems and to provide 

alternatives to these systems going forward. While 

lower cost systems will often be less capable and 

support a more limited mission scope, they can 

be acquired in larger numbers and, as illustrated 

in Technology and Innovation Enablers for Superiority 

in 2030 (2012 summer study), quantity can be an 

important quality factor. Furthermore, low-cost 

systems in large numbers can be cost-imposing, 

especially when it costs more for adversaries to 

defeat them than for the U.S. to acquire them. 

Building trust in autonomous systems 

is challenging yet achievable

With recent advances in artificial intelligence, 

autonomy is being rapidly adopted for a 

diverse and expanding set of commercial 

applications, such as self-driving cars, 

factory automation and manufacturing, 

fraud detection, and medical diagnostics. 

46 « Chapter 5
Anticipating Intelligent Systems and Autonomy « 47

When the DoD considers the use of autonomy 

its applications, the Department raises the key 

issue of trust, particularly for lethal systems. 

Significant public discussion has raised concerns 

associated with lethal autonomous weapon 

systems. These discussions are sometimes 

cast in the context of “killer robots” and 

accompanying ethical and emotional issues.

While technical issues will indeed require 

development to improve trust in autonomous 

systems, the first step in dealing with the public 

concerns about lethal autonomous weapons systems 

is to recognize that a truly fully autonomous 

system does not exist. Furthermore, the DoD 

Directive 3000.09 (2012) includes a very clear 

and explicit policy requiring “appropriate levels 

of human judgment over the use of force.”

DoD is increasingly employing autonomous 

capabilities across a diverse array of systems. Every 

application of autonomy engages both human and 

machine throughout the system lifecycle. Certain 

roles will remain the purview of the human, others 

will be shared, and some tasks will be implemented 

solely by machines. While the specific roles of 

humans will vary by mission and over time, all 

autonomous systems are supervised at some level 

within the bounds set by the system designer. 

The DoD can take several steps to enhance 

confidence in autonomous systems, as explored 

in the DSB Summer Study on Autonomy (2015). For 

example, a key design task is to ensure intuitive and 

effective human-system interfaces that facilitate 

operator understanding of the computer’s state 

of knowledge and the basis for decisions that will 

be made by the computer. Developing effective 

interfaces can be assisted by the use of model-based 

design techniques that employ system simulations 

that grow in fidelity as the design matures and that 

enable operators to interact with the autonomous 

system through all phases of its development. 

This simulation-based approach provides valuable 

design feedback that enhances the operators’ 

understanding of the computer’s functions and 

ultimately enables the human and autonomous 

system to interact and engage as a team. 

A system simulation can evolve throughout 

the design process and, when mature, serve 

as an effective tool for the test and evaluation 

required to accept and certify an autonomous 

system, particularly a complex intelligent system 

based on non-deterministic software that does 

not lend itself to exhaustive regression testing. 

Every application of autonomy 

engages both human and machine 

throughout the system lifecycle.
48 « Chapter 5

Using the simulation environment to augment 

operational testing, testers can explore the 

full operating envelope, including complex 

boundary-condition cases, to validate the system’s 

performance relative to its specifications.

Perhaps somewhat paradoxically, many current 

unmanned systems require significant numbers 

of human operators. In fact, the Air Force has 

commented that “manning their unmanned 

systems” is its most challenging manning problem. 

The DSB identified the failure to allocate cognitive 

functions explicitly between the operator and 

the computer as a primary cause of the manning 

problem. The Role of Autonomy in DoD Systems 

(2012) recognized that this allocation was likely to 

be dynamic, varying over the course of a mission 

as conditions changed and complexity increased. 

It proposed a framework for use during both 

the requirements and design process to focus 

attention on this critical development task.

Finally, to grow capability over time in a costeffective manner as the technology evolves, it 

remains important to separate the software from 

the hardware platform and to ensure the use of 

an open architecture with government ownership 

rights. This approach better enables the adoption 

of new technology, facilitates multi-platform 

application of the software, and avoids vendor lock.

Development of low-cost platforms 

requires a new acquisition mindset

The traditional DoD requirements-driven 

development process collects a set of capabilities 

desired by the operational community into a 

requirements document for a new system. Because 

the acquisition process is lengthy and the number of 

new programs is limited, the “system” is motivated 

to include as many desirable capabilities as possible 

in the requirements. In turn, cost is generally 

considered as one of a set of characteristics that 

compete with each other in a systems engineering 

trade study. As military capability with little 

direct responsibility for development budgets and 

affordability stands as the primary motivation for 

the operational community, the trade studies often 

result in a complex and expensive design of systems 

that can then only be acquired in limited numbers.

To develop low-cost systems that can be acquired 

in large numbers to complement very capable 

front-line equipment, the DoD should treat 

cost differently. A target cost per unit should 

be established upfront as a non-tradeable 

An autonomous system reference framework highlights the allocation of cognitive functions between 

the human operator and the computer. The Role of Autonomy in the DoD Systems (2012).
Anticipating Intelligent Systems and Autonomy « 49

requirement, and capabilities should be selected 

that provide the most relevant military capability 

within the target cost even if this capability is 

less than potentially achievable or is limited 

to only a subset of potential missions. 

By approaching the design process from this new 

perspective, the DoD can eliminate or reduce some 

traditional requirements because of the resulting 

low cost and ability to acquire and deploy large 

numbers. For example, one of the most costly 

requirements is platform survivability, crucial 

for expensive manned platforms and drives the 

development of advanced technologies for aircraft 

signature reduction (stealth), armored vehicle 

protection (advanced materials and adaptive 

armor), and indefinite submersion and quieting of 

submarines (nuclear power and long-life batteries). 

With unmanned systems, human lives are not at 

risk, so if costs remain low enough, the DoD can 

consider the vehicle attritable and may not require 

costly survivability technologies. Depending 

on the mission, the Department can also avoid 

costs for recovery with an expendable system, 

as has been the case for missiles, munitions, and 

other systems. In many of these situations, it 

may cost the adversary more to detect, track, 

and defeat a low-cost platform than it costs 

the U.S. to acquire and deploy it. This sets up 

a favorable cost-exchange ratio that does not 

often exist with more complex equipment.

The DoD can also control costs by reusing or 

adapting existing military or commercial platforms 

for new missions by focusing on payloads and 

mission capability rather than on potentially 

exquisite new platforms. In particular, an increasing 

number of opportunities to leverage commercial 

platforms has accompanied the explosion of 

commercial activity related to unmanned air and 

undersea vehicles. For example, the DSB report 

Next Generation Unmanned Undersea Systems (final 

report in process) identified an array of commercial 

unmanned undersea vehicles developed for multiple 

purposes (e.g., oceanography and oil and gas 

exploration). The Navy may adapt each of these 

platforms for its missions at a cost and development 

time significantly lower than those anticipated, 

such as for the custom-built Large Diameter 

Unmanned Undersea Vehicle (LDUUV), as initially 

conceived. The report also suggested designs 

for several reference missions to demonstrate 

the potential for low cost missions and mission 

payloads. These leverage commercial platforms 

with costs on the order of $1 million; mission 

payloads are expected to be in the same cost 

Several commercial unmanned undersea vehicles have been adapted for military use at a far lower cost than a traditional 

D0D acquisition program, as described in Next Generation Unmanned Undersea Systems (final report in progress).
50 « Chapter 5

range as the platforms. The report also explored 

using very large unmanned undersea vehicles as 

a means for cascaded delivery of smaller systems, 

which could enable manned submarines to take 

on more complex and challenging tasks. Several 

commercial unmanned undersea vehicles have been 

adapted for military use at relatively low cost.

Experimentation and learning 

are required to validate 

proposed concepts

In a series of studies, the DSB has exploited the 

principle of low-cost systems in large numbers to 

suggest approaches to a wide range of challenging 

defense problems, including time-critical strike 

from strategic standoff (Time Critical Conventional 

Strike from Strategic Standoff, 2009), air dominance 

in an anti-access/area-denial environment (Air 

Dominance, final report in process), cruise and

ballistic missile defense (Defense Against Advanced 

Ballistic and Cruise Missile Threats, final report in 

process), complementing manned submarines 

with unmanned systems to extend U.S. undersea 

advantage (Next-Generation Unmanned Undersea 

Systems, final report in process), and expanding the 

capabilities of indirect fires for the Army (Integrated 

Fire Support in the Battlespace, 2004). In some of these 

cases, the proposed point solution was not low-cost 

in an absolute sense because the long range needed 

to address the required capability cannot be 

achieved inexpensively. Even in these situations, 

however, the solution was less expensive and relied 

on greater numbers than the manned alternatives.

Often, the proposed low-cost platforms or 

rounds are intended to work in concert with 

high-end manned systems and expand capability 

by enabling new concepts of operations, including 

decoys, deception, and dispersion. In addition, 

overall survivability is improved by increasing 

both the number of and the area with potential 

targets that an adversary needs to address, 

which can provide the U.S. with an asymmetric 

advantage that complicates and increases the 

adversary’s cost of defense. Lethality can also 

increase in configurations such as the Navy’s 

concept for distributed lethality, which, in a 

sense, disaggregates offensive capabilities by 

putting more weapons on more platforms. 

This increase in number of targets raises the 

adversary’s engagement cost to levels that are 

unaffordable for them and, consequently, the 

need for the U.S. to defend each platform can 

decrease resulting in lower system costs.

While innovative point designs may exist for 

challenging problems, designs and their associated 

concepts of operations should be validated through 

a robust experimentation program that involves and 

solicits feedback from operational personnel. These 

experiments should be constructed as learning 

exercises in which it is possible and even acceptable 

to fail rather than just demonstrate performance. 

The DSB expects that both system requirements 

and concepts of operation will change based on 

experimentation results. However, the DoD should 

structure the programs so that operational forces 

may use residual assets that demonstrate utility.

To control cost and accelerate acquisition, 

the initial deployed system should be the 

simplest, most mature configuration that 

holds meaningful military value, rather 

than maximum potential value. The system 

architecture design should support iterative 

development and growth in capability to enable 

new missions as technology becomes available.

New infrastructure is required 

to support low-cost systems

In addition to low-cost platforms, defense 

infrastructure is of particular importance to 

effective mission capability. The DSB identified 

three infrastructure areas as especially significant:

§ Intelligence, surveillance, 

reconnaissance, and targeting

§ Command, control, and communications 

§ Guidance, navigation, and control 

Information from both national technical means 

and tactical sensors remains crucial to identifying 

and locating potential targets accurately. One 

of the key challenges is ensuring alignment of 
Anticipating Intelligent Systems and Autonomy « 51

the coordinate systems of the sensors and the 

tactical platforms so that target coordinates 

can be transferred without error. This process 

has become easier in recent years because 

of effective gridlocking and the ubiquitous 

availability and use of the Global Positioning 

System, although there still can be problems 

on the tactical battlefield. One of the key 

advantages of arming Predator unmanned aircraft 

with Hellfire missiles in the recent conflicts 

is that it co-located a sensor with the weapon, 

effectively eliminating previous gridlock issues.

As battlespace complexity increases with large 

numbers of low-cost platforms, C3 systems that 

provide coordination and control among the 

various systems take on greater importance. 

A C3 system is more than just computers and 

communications gear. The decision-making 

process, an inherently human endeavor, often 

stands as the long pole in the decision timeline, 

particularly when rules of engagement require 

minimizing collateral damage. In many situations 

the significant time it took to complete the 

decision process meant that the added value of 

extreme weapon speed did not justify the additional 

cost. None of the scenarios exposed a need for “one 

hour, global range delivery.” There appears to be 

nothing unique or compelling about one hour. 

The DoD needs intuitive human-system 

interfaces to enable effective human supervision 

of autonomous systems. It remains critical 

for all missions to ensure that the operator 

understands and trusts the autonomy, especially 

those with lethal consequences where DoD 

policy requires the employment of appropriate 

human judgment. Simulations running in both 

the onboard system and in a control center with 

frequent comparison of results and situational 

awareness can be a useful mechanism for 

building trust, particularly with short decision 

times or limited communications bandwidth.

Low-cost platforms depend on reliable, accurate, 

and cost-effective positioning. In nearly all 

scenarios, GPS combined with a relatively low-cost 

inertial navigation system provides sufficient 

accuracy to meet mission requirements. A difficulty 

arises when GPS is either jammed or unavailable 

for some other reason, such as being indoors or 

underground. The low power of the GPS signal 

created significant and justifiable concerns 

about jamming, and extensive research exists on 

In many situations the significant time it took to 

complete the decision process meant that the added 

value of extreme weapon speed did not justify 

the additional cost. None of the scenarios exposed 

a need for “one hour, global range delivery.” 
52 « Chapter 5

alternatives to GPS. While the DoD has made 

progress, no single silver-bullet alternative exists 

that provides comparable accuracy. Solutions to 

GPS denial will likely rely on integrating inputs 

from a number of different sensors and data 

sources. One of the design challenges for these 

GPS-denied situations will be to trade the cost 

of a potentially complex multi-sensor integration 

solution providing increased accuracy against the 

cost for the increased number of lower accuracy 

systems required to satisfy the mission.

U.S. must prepare for adversary use 

of low-cost unmanned systems

The U.S. is not alone in considering how to 

exploit low-cost unmanned systems; highly 

capable technology is available both globally and 

commercially. In particular, commercial unmanned 

aircraft are readily available in the global marketplace 

at low cost, and unmanned undersea vehicles can be 

purchased for modest cost. In addition, nearly all 

research universities with engineering programs 

offer autonomous robotics projects as standard 

curriculums. Thus, there exist few barriers to 

entry, as both the systems and the knowledge 

to use them have become broadly available. 

Consequently, U.S. adversaries will inevitably 

use these technologies against the nation. 

The U.S. must prepare to face these systems and 

develop approaches to defeat them. This will 

require that wargames, experimentation, and 

operational exercises include low-cost unmanned 

systems in the opposing force arsenal. In these 

exercises, the Department must take care to 

avoid only mirroring the way the DoD plans to 

use the capability. Adversaries will likely hold 

more permissive rules of engagement than the 

U.S., which requires that the DoD opens the 

aperture on usage to create the full range of 

threats that will almost certainly be encountered.

Supporting DSB reports

Integrated Fire Support in the Battlespace (2004)

Time Critical Conventional Strike 

from Strategic Standoff (2009)

The Role of Autonomy in DoD Systems (2012)

Technology and Innovation Enablers for 

Superiority in 2030 (2012 summer study) 

Autonomy (2015 summer study)

Air Dominance (final report in process)

Next-Generation Unmanned Undersea 

Systems (final report in process)

Defense Strategies for Advanced Ballistic and 

Cruise Missile Threats (final report in process)
Anticipating Intelligent Systems and Autonomy « 53

CHAPTER SIX

Supporting Stabilization, Reconstruction, 

Peacekeeping, and Nation Building

53
54 « Chapter 6

6. SUPPORTING STABILIZATION, 

RECONSTRUCTION, PEACEKEEPING, 

AND NATION BUILDING 

WINNING THE PEACE

The DSB vision for enhancing U.S. effectiveness in the transition 

to and from hostilities includes two dimensions:

§ Management and planning discipline.

The management discipline used by the 

Military Services to plan and prepare 

for combat operations must extend to 

peacetime activities, and to stabilization 

and reconstruction operations, in the DoD 

and across the whole of government.

§ Building and maintaining certain 

fundamental principles and capabilities 

now lacking critical to success in 

stabilization and reconstruction.

These capabilities include establishing clear 

objectives and ensuring comprehensive 

planning and oversight; improving strategic 

communication; developing local cultural 

understanding and intelligence; effectively 

integrating contractor support throughout 

planning and operations; and most importantly, 

improving relevant personnel development. 

The DoD must plan for stabilization 

and reconstruction operations

Stabilization and reconstruction operations 

typically last five to eight years—significantly 

longer than typical combat operations. Further, 

since the end of the Cold War, the United States 

began stabilization and reconstruction operations 

every 18 to 24 months. That frequency coupled 

with the length of these operations indicates the 

significant requirement for skilled personnel in 

support of these operations. While technological 

advances can contribute to U.S. capabilities, 

they are not likely to materially reduce the time 

needed for stabilization and reconstruction 

or the requirement for in-country forces.

Even with predicted political reluctance, the 

U.S. military expeditions to Afghanistan and 

Iraq will unlikely be the last such excursions. 

54 « Chapter 6
Supporting Stabilization, Reconstruction, Peacekeeping, and Nation Building « 55

While technological advances can contribute to U.S. 

capabilities, they are not likely to materially reduce 

the time needed for stabilization and reconstruction 

or the requirement for in-country forces.

While U.S. armed forces remain extremely 

capable of projecting force and achieving 

conventional military victories, success in 

achieving U.S. political goals also requires 

success in maintaining political stability during 

stabilization and reconstruction operations that 

follow hostilities. Further, orchestration of the 

instruments of U.S. power in peacetime might 

obviate the need for many military excursions; 

or, failing that, at least better prepare the U.S. to 

achieve political objectives after hostilities during 

stabilization and reconstruction operations. 

Taking lessons from history, the DSB observed 

the importance of comprehensive planning and 

preparation before, during, and after conflict in 

order to secure both short-term and longer-term 

stability once hostilities cease. Issues the DSB 

addressed include: identification of the information 

and intelligence required to successfully conduct 

stabilization and reconstruction operations; best 

use of the National Guard and Reserves with 

their civilian sector skills; language and cultural 

training; and campaign planning and exercising 

for stabilization and reconstruction missions on 

par with what the U.S. does for combat missions.

In partnership with the Department of State, 

the National Security Council (NSC), and 

other elements of the Executive Branch, the 

Department of Defense has made modest progress 

toward planning for the next stabilization 

mission, although much more remains to do. 

The DoD needs investments to 

adequately prepare for stabilization

Objective planning and oversight. Success 

depends on a stronger partnership and closer 

working relationships between the DoD and the 

Department of State toward making stabilization 

and reconstruction missions one of their core 

competencies. Moreover, both departments 

need to augment their existing capabilities for 

stabilization and reconstruction. The DoD has 

not yet embraced stabilization and reconstruction 

operations as an explicit mission with the 

same seriousness as combat operations.

The Department needs new coordination and 

integration mechanisms to bring management 

discipline to the continuum of peacetime, 

combat, and stabilization and reconstruction 
56 « Chapter 6

operations. For countries with high risk of U.S. 

intervention, the President or NSC would direct 

the initiation of a robust planning process. The 

elements of that process should include:

§ During high likelihood of U.S. intervention, 

full-time planning activities may continue 

for months or years and must be staffed 

by individuals, from all involved agencies, 

who maintain genuine, deep expertise in 

the culture of the countries of interest 

and in needed functional areas. The DoD 

must create Joint interagency task forces 

composed of senior government executives 

and military officers who operate in the 

particular country or area of interest to 

ensure coordination and integration of the 

activities of all U.S. personnel “in-country.” 

§ When intervention begins, the Department 

should establish a center with country and 

functional expertise should support the 

contingency planning and integration task 

forces and the joint interagency task forces. 

The center coordinates augmentation of 

skills and expertise of the government 

task forces, supports the planning process, 

and provides the necessary continuity.

§ The DoD must identify a focal point at 

each regional Combatant Command. The 

most likely candidate is the combined/

joint forces land component commander. 

Strategic communication. Encompassing 

public affairs, public diplomacy, international 

broadcasting, information operations, and special 

activities, strategic communication remains vital 

to America’s national security and foreign policy. 

The strategic communication environment and 

requirements changed considerably because of 

many influences, including a rise in anti-American 

attitudes around the world; the use of terrorism 

as a framework for national security issues; the 

widespread use of social media as a communication 

vehicle; and the volatility of Islamic internal 

and external struggles over values, identity, 

and change. U.S. adversaries are using strategic 

communication very effectively against the 

U.S. The country needs an integrated coherent 

strategic communication capability and operation 

to support each of its national objectives. 

Knowledge, understanding, and intelligence 

for the 21st century. The knowledge required 

to be effective in conducting stabilization and 

reconstruction operations differs from the military 

Contract support of deployed military operations has been used since the American Revolution. 

(DSB Report on Contractor Logistics in Support of Contingency Operations, 2014)
Supporting Stabilization, Reconstruction, Peacekeeping, and Nation Building « 57

knowledge required to prevail during hostilities, 

but no less important. Knowledge of a nation’s 

security interests and external relations; armed 

forces; the local political scene; internal social, 

cultural, and economic conditions; security; and 

social and economic well-being remain as important 

to stability operations as the knowledge of the 

enemy order of battle during hostilities. Often U.S. 

forces relied too heavily on remote sensors versus 

on the ground intelligence and understanding of 

the cultural nuances of the adversary and the local 

allies. The DoD needs to treat understanding 

of culture and developing language skills as 

seriously as it treats learning combat skills: the 

Department needs both for success in achieving 

U.S. political and military objectives.

Effective stabilization and reconstruction, and 

intelligence for these activities, must reflect 

a whole-of-government effort and whole-ofgovernment capabilities. The U.S. requires the 

means to transition into and out of hostilities, 

and nowhere is this need more salient than for 

counterinsurgency missions (Transition to and from 

Hostilities (2004 summer study). Addressing the 

entire life-cycle requires knowledge management 

capabilities that serve a wide variety of U.S. 

Government departments and agencies—DoD, 

Department of State, the intelligence community, 

and so on. A national intelligence mission for 

counterinsurgency would facilitate efficient and 

effective intelligence support enabling a knowledge 

management capability supporting whole-ofgovernment efforts and which would encourage 

use of a broader range of information sources 

that go beyond legacy intelligence collection.

The U.S. government does not invest adequately 

in the development of social and behavioral 

science information critically important for 

counterinsurgency and national security in 

general. Many, if not most, specific requirements 

for intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance 

center on population and are not exclusively 

solvable with hardware or hard, physical science 

solutions. One senior intelligence officer with years 

of field experience pointed out that 80 percent of 

useful operational data for counterinsurgency does 

not come from legacy intelligence disciplines. Good 

intelligence exists outside the traditional intelligence 

organizations. The U.S. needs anthropological, 

socio-cultural, historical, human geographical, 

educational, public health, and many other types of 

social and behavioral science data and information 

to develop a deep understanding of populations 

(Understanding Human Dynamics, 2009). Such data, 

collected and analyzed using the scientific method, 

remain vital to counterinsurgency success.

Private sector support to stabilization and 

reconstruction activities. The Department must 

establish organizations and approaches to exploit 

its “fifth force provider”—the private sector. The 

report established that contractor support holds 

as an essential element of employing the private 

sector. The Department has used contractors in 

the support of our troops since the Revolutionary 

War. For the majority of the time in Iraq and 

Afghanistan, more than 50 percent of the U.S. 

supported forces in the field were contractors. The 

report concluded that well-managed contracted 

support is, and will continue to be, a necessary 

tool for future contingency operations. Realizing 

all the benefits from contracted support of 

deployed military forces hinges on acceptance 

and integration of such support in planning 

and exercises as a key component of the total 

force. This culture change in the Department of 

Defense just began, but will need vastly improved 

leadership and organization at all levels before full 

implementation, before the next unpredictable 

event that will mobilize the U.S. military.

The government instruction for preparing 

various status of forces agreements must include 

non-government entities. Such agreements 

must preclude controversy and consequence 

surrounding tax law and subject of individuals 

to local criminal law. Ignoring such provisions 

will limit private sector participation. 

Personnel development. The development of 

effective personnel who can be effective in this 

non-combat mission represents the most important 

element of a complete strategy for preparing for 

stabilization and reconstruction operations.
58 « Chapter 6

§ Leadership development. The nature of 

stabilization and reconstruction operations 

places enormous burdens on junior officers 

and non-commissioned officers and the units 

that they command. Presently, they must 

make decisions that traditionally believed to 

be far above their pay grade. For this mission, 

small unit performance represents the key to 

success. The potential key message from this 

report is that small units and their leaders are 

strategic assets and the department should 

resource them accordingly. Proper training 

and leader development can make a significant 

impact sooner than many other investments 

in doctrine, organization, training, materiel, 

leadership, personnel, or facilities. Training has 

been a significant asymmetric advantage to U.S. 

forces over the course of the last two decades. 

§ Professional military education. The challenges 

of the 21st century demand that senior officers 

be thoroughly educated and culturally attuned 

while in command positions. The DoD needs 

to reform its personnel system so that fast track 

officers hold the opportunity to attend the most 

prestigious graduate schools to obtain advanced 

degrees in subjects such as area studies, 

languages, cultural studies, and military history. 

§ Use of Reserve Forces. The Reserve and 

National Guard forces remain a very 

important asset that must be cultivated and 

prepared to support these operations. They 

often bring more varied experience than the 

regular force and stand ready to act once they 

hit the ground. However, they too need to 

understand the local cultures that they are 

likely to face and this requires training. 

The DoD needs broad 

organizational changes

The DSB examined a number of organizational 

approaches to the establishment of an entity to 

prepare for future stability operations. Such an 

organization would be useful in pre- and posthostility operations. It would focus on supporting 

national objectives in each selected region. It 

would manage the pre-hostility (Phase 0) and 

post-hostility counterinsurgency activities with 

a focus on influence and non-traditional powers 

like strategic communication and reconstruction 

to support the DoD’s national objectives versus 

military force. In the end, the DSB decided 

that such a recommendation on organization is 

so all-encompassing that it transcends adding 

an assignment to an existing organization. The 

Board sees this recommendation as much more 

than a new focus; it contains strong parallels to 

founding a new mission-oriented agency. The 

major topic of open discussion in the DSB task 

forces on pre- and post-hostilities is in regard to 

the appointment of an executive agent to focus 

on the implementation of said recommendations. 

Instead, the DSB recommended that the Secretary 

of Defense, along with the head of the intelligence 

community, jointly compose a course of action. 

The DSB believes that this action will involve 

beginning a new organization, and whether that 

organization reports to the Secretary of Defense, 

the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the head of intelligence or 

a military service is a matter for them to decide.

The DSB strongly urges Combatant Commanders 

to broaden the aperture of their disciplined 

planning process to encompass not only combat, as 

now, but also the peacetime employment of military 

instruments and the Department’s capabilities for 

stabilization and emergency reconstruction. This 

role also includes humanitarian support currently 

in the scope of the Combatant Commands.

For that expanded planning activity to have 

meaning, defense intelligence organizations 

should maintain and execute a portfolio of 

concomitant intelligence campaign plans 

supporting the aforementioned regional 

combatant commanders’ operations plans.

Executing the stabilization and reconstruction 

operational elements of campaign plans will 

require vastly expanded and improved stabilization 

and emergency reconstitution capabilities, and 

the DSB asks the Military Services to ensure 

those capabilities are available to the regional 

combatant commanders. In planning for the 
Supporting Stabilization, Reconstruction, Peacekeeping, and Nation Building « 59

provision of those capabilities, the Military 

Services need to perform quantitative analysis of 

their likely expected needs with at least the same 

veracity as they do for combat force structure. 

The Military Services should also take skills 

in languages and culture as seriously as they 

take skills in combat; otherwise the nation may 

win the war but will surely "lose the peace."

In addition to strengthening capabilities 

within the DoD, the DSB urges the Secretary 

to use his considerable influence to propel 

needed changes that span other government’s 

agencies and departments or which center on 

cabinet departments other than Defense.

The Secretary should lend his support to the 

efforts of other departments and agencies as 

they undergo transformation, particularly in 

their approach to instituting management 

discipline for contingency planning and for 

maintaining contingency capabilities. Finally, 

the Secretary should urge the establishment of 

an effective national strategic communication 

capability and lend the DoD’s resources and 

capabilities to this effort, as appropriate.

DoD must be prepared 

to win the peace

If the DoD implements the DSB’s 

recommendations, what will the 

U.S.’ adversaries face?

An adversary will face the focus of the full range 

of the U.S. Government powers in peacetime 

from security assistance to special operations 

to head off stability operations or major 

combat operations. If the DoD cannot avoid 

stability operations, an adversary will face a 

comprehensive pan-government activity backed 

by an operational plan and pan-intelligence 

community supporting intelligence plans. 

In order to achieve these outcomes, the U.S. must 

prepare to anticipate the long-lead capabilities 

needed for the future stability and influence 

operations. The government must clearly assign 

roles, responsibilities, accountability, and 

resources to departments and agencies. It must 

focus on issues before crises occur and maintain 

contingency capabilities: planning, exercising, 

and deep expertise in regions of interest. It must 

prepare to invest in the human resources to win 

the peace: linguists, analysts, and case officers. 

In order to achieve these capabilities, the DoD 

must prepare to provide adequate resources. The 

alternative is more expensive in both dollars 

and lives. While the DSB did not undertake a 

rigorous effort to derive the costs of implementing 

these recommendations, nor did it attempt to 

enter the “trade space” in which investment in 

these capabilities would be offset by savings 

associated with cuts to current capabilities, cost 

savings appear almost certain. Approaches that 

rely on population-centric intelligence would 

significantly reduce the likelihood of costly, 

major combat operations. Building a national 

infrastructure of country- and region-specific 

experts, reinvigorating the Foreign Area Officer 

program, and establishing relevant intelligence 

programs within the major intelligence agencies 

would represent a fraction of the cost of a major 

military intervention, and could save millions of 

human lives lost in more traditional hostilities.
60 « Chapter 6

Supporting DSB reports

Transition to and from Hostilities (2004 summer study)

Institutionalizing Stability Operations 

within DoD (2005)

Force Protection in Urban and 

Unconventional Environments (2006)

Understanding Human Dynamics (2009)

Counterinsurgency Intelligence, Surveillance, 

and Reconnaissance Operations (2011)

Contractor Logistics in Support of 

Contingency Operations (2014)
Supporting Stabilization, Reconstruction, Peacekeeping, and Nation Building « 61

CHAPTER SEVEN

Preparing for Surprise

61
62 « Chapter 7

7. PREPARING FOR SURPRISE

TO THE U.S. AND BY THE U.S.

One of the clear messages of the last ten to 15 years is that too often world events will not unfold 

as desired or even predicted and that the U.S. must be prepared to deal with the unanticipated. 

The DoD must improve the cultural understanding of the nature of surprise, how to reduce its 

occurrence, how to prepare for it before it occurs, and how better to deal with it when, inevitably, 

it does occur. Reinvigorating flexibility and innovation in strategies, tactics, forces, acquisition 

system, and in the industrial base rapidly becomes a requirement rather than a “nice-to-have.”

Military forces must be able to adapt

How they train and exercise

How they incorporate learning

How they operate in the field

Given the inevitability of surprise, one of the 

principal keys to dealing with it will be the 

ability to adapt, sometimes to unforeseen 

operational tactics by an adversary, sometimes 

to unforeseen weapon systems or characteristics, 

and sometimes to a combination of both. The 

DoD’s ability to adapt, rapidly and effectively, 

will depend upon the flexibility it builds 

into two interrelated but distinctly different 

domains: how the Department develops and 

trains the troops and how it specifies and 

builds the systems on which they depend. 

To prevail in a tactical environment of 

uncertainty and surprise, operational flexibility 

and the ability to adapt rapidly to unexpected 

circumstances are clearly necessary attributes. 

To achieve this, the Department needs to instill 

a “culture” of adaptability in its forces, from 

the lowest level soldier to senior officers.

Red teaming

Red teaming is one of the most sorely needed 

activities to improve adaptability. In its simplest 

form red teaming entails structured challenging 

of decisions, accepted ways of doing things, 

system constructs and architectures, tactics and 

operations, and anything else that may be subject 

to something beyond the control of the user, 

developer, or creator. Issues such as enemy tactics, 

62 « Chapter 7
Preparing for Surprise « 63

operational environments, threat characteristics, 

and adversary responses to the DoD’s actions or 

system improvements all are things that are beyond 

the Department’s control and can affect success 

or failure on the battlefield. The talent, expertise, 

creativity, and independence of the red teamers 

represent critical characteristics of successful red 

teaming. Senior leadership holds equally important 

role in creating an environment that recognizes 

and fully embraces the importance and value of 

aggressive red teaming with a primary role to 

challenge accepted views and the status quo. This 

must be conveyed throughout the organization, be 

it operational or materiel development. At whatever 

level the Department conducts red teaming, 

leadership must also provide “top cover” for the 

red team, to prevent the results from dismissal or 

marginalization. When implemented successfully, 

red teaming can be invaluable in getting ahead 

of whatever an adversary might do and preparing 

forces for dealing with unanticipated circumstances.

Training and exercising in 

stressing environments 

Current military exercises are often more 

demonstrations than good learning opportunities. 

The DSB recognizes the need for some degree of 

show and tell, particularly in large-scale exercises, 

but troops also need to be subject to tactics, 

environments, and weapon characteristics for which 

they are not totally prepared. Clearly, the troops 

are better off with the opportunity to learn how to 

adapt and fight through issues on the training field 

rather than scrambling when lives are at stake. 

Numerous examples exist of the DoD stopping 

exercises as operations start to fail, rather than 

letting them continue so that lessons can be 

learned, troops have the opportunity to adapt, and 

most importantly, a culture of always having to 

deal with the unexpected is created. In particular, 

the Department needs training and some degree 

of exercising in severely challenged sensor, 

communications, and geospatial environments 

of electronic warfare, cyber intrusion, loss of 

space capabilities, etc. It should not surprise 

the DoD when today’s adversaries attempt 

to create these challenging environments 

and the Department needs to be prepared to 

successfully negate and/or operate in them.

The learning associated with both robust red 

teaming and training and exercising should 

The rate of change in defense systems was examined in the DSB Report on Enhancing Adaptability 

of U.S. Military Forces, 2011. As the DoD has adopted more unmanned, mobile, and softwaredependent systems, adaptability has become a critical performance parameter.
64 « Chapter 7

encourage operational units and their commanders 

to embrace alternative viewpoints at all levels. 

Willingness and indeed eagerness to examine 

a wide range of possible options on how to 

deal with the unexpected can yield a two-sided 

advantage. On the one hand, it may provide a 

response to something an adversary has done that 

is well outside the realm of previously considered 

or conventional responses and which can offer 

unusual leverage. But equally, or perhaps even 

more important, is discovering and seizing on 

opportunities to create uncertainty and inflict 

surprise on the opponent. Such opportunities may 

more likely present themselves when looking at 

a situation with fresh eyes or viewpoint, rather 

than in more tried and true conventional ways.

Encouraging alternative viewpoints

All of this argues for achieving a balance 

between the necessity for non-chaotic, organized 

behavior of troops on the battlefield; and 

non-predictability, flexibility, and adaptability 

in responding to the unexpected, and in turn 

imposing the unexpected on the adversary. A U.S. 

edge in training and a culture of willingness to 

embrace aggressive self-examination and diverse 

viewpoints can enable both to occur as needed. 

Operational adaptability should be an inherent 

strength of our forces and operational surprise 

should be nurtured to work in our favor. 

Military systems must 

be able to adapt

How they are specified

How they are architected

How they are upgraded

How they adapt in the field

Ensuring the Department provides its forces with 

intrinsically adaptive systems appears as important 

as developing adaptive forces. The knowledge that 

DoD will face surprise largely drives the motivation 

for maintaining adaptive systems, and it must 

assume the systems built will require operation 

in ways and in conditions the Department will 

never completely be able to predict. This reality, 

combined with the ever-increasing need for speed 

and learning, drives the DoD’s need for adaptive 

systems. U.S. forces and capabilities will need to 

anticipate change to the extent possible, sense 

and adjust to the change as quickly as feasible; 

this also remains true for the DoD’s acquisition 

processes and the systems produced. The Cold War 

Perhaps even more important, is discovering and 

seizing on opportunities to create uncertainty and 

inflict surprise on the opponent. Such opportunities 

may more likely present themselves when looking 

at a situation with fresh eyes or viewpoint, rather 

than in more tried and true conventional ways.
Preparing for Surprise « 65

legacy of many of today’s fielded major acquisition 

weapon systems and the acquisition process that 

built them emerged from a much more clearly 

defined threat and set of potential scenarios. 

Today, the DoD needs different requirements 

methods, acquisition approaches, and design 

principles to deal with the variety of futures the 

U.S. faces and the inevitability of surprise.

Characteristics of adaptable systems

Speed remains key to adaptive systems; they must 

be designed to intrinsically be able to keep pace 

with the increasing rapid advance in technology, 

change as the adversary learns and adjusts, and as 

the DoD’s adaptive war fighters learn new ways 

to use the equipment. Adaptive systems must 

be honed by realistic exercising and red teaming 

and able to be resilient to execute their mission 

despite degraded conditions. These operations 

may encounter natural degraded environments 

such as weather or induced degradation such as 

cyber, electronic warfare, or space attacks. Most 

successful historical cases of delivery of adaptive 

systems had a strong alignment between the 

development team, testers, program management, 

and the operational user. In many cases the 

timeline of delivery was driven by an operational 

timeline versus an “enterprise” timeline. 

As might be expected from this problem statement, 

there is not a universal approach for designing 

adaptive systems. Instead, basic principles of design 

should guide the design. For example, a system 

that can used for multiple roles and missions is 

adaptive by definition—the oft-cited B-52 as a 

positive example—it is used today in ways much 

different than envisioned for its original cold war 

strategic deterrence mission. Conversely, it is also 

true that multi-mission approaches are not always 

the most adaptable solution—the Joint Tactical 

Radio System as the oft-cited negative example—in 

hindsight the design approach of combining the 

full waveform set in a single software defined radio 

was overly complex, expensive, and fundamentally 

flawed. In these cases, the key step is performing 

upfront a realistic business case for alternative 

approaches, and looking skeptically at technology 

maturity and complexity of the design and resultant 

risks in engineering development before deciding 

which path to choose. The challenge is to do this 

in a way that does not inhibit new concepts, new 

technologies, or the application of innovation. 

This upfront work informs whether to pursue 

A dual acquisition process was proposed in the DSB Report on Fulfillment of Urgent Operational Needs, 2009. 

Rapid acquisition process and programs are with us to stay and should be embraced by leadership.
66 « Chapter 7

multi-mission (“Swiss army knife-like”) approach 

versus a simplified single mission approach (“plastic 

knife, fork, and spoon”) and how much risk to 

assume versus the potential benefits to be accrued. 

Rapid acquisition

A plethora of rapid acquisition organizations have 

proliferated around the Department outside the 

standard acquisition and requirements process. 

War fighter urgent operational needs drove these 

activities to go from a validated requirement to 

fielded capability in two years or less. Well-known 

operational problems that held such urgent 

operational needs and programs included the 

efforts to counter improvised explosive devices 

in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as delivering 

quickly battlefield surveillance capabilities. 

Fast acquisition approaches maintain their own 

set of challenges, for example, once a rapid 

capability is fielded, the associated training, 

maintenance, and sustainment become the next 

set of challenges. The DoD also continually faces 

the challenge in determining the proper end 

state of a successful rapid acquisition program. 

How does the Department reconcile programs 

of record with their rapid acquisition adjuncts 

with what happens to the equipment when the 

urgent need is no longer there? One such example 

is the MQ-9 Reaper unmanned aircraft program 

and myriad of modifications to it driven by 

the Joint Urgent Operational Need process.

The closest to an underlying design metric for 

adaptive systems is speed; whenever feasible, 

capabilities should be fielded fast. Even if an 

attempted “80 percent solution” provided quickly 

to the war fighter fails, often the most adaptable 

approach is to rapidly try a different approach. 

For this reason, rapid acquisition processes 

and programs will stay with the DoD and 

Department leadership should embrace them.

Open and modular systems

DoD also needs to commit to open and modular 

building systems for those cases with impossible 

rapid fielding, such as the next generations of 

ship, ground vehicle, or aircraft. The Department 

can achieve open standards a variety of ways, but 

there are fundamentals that cannot compromise. 

For example, the system module interfaces must 

be based on an agreed-upon standard available 

publicly; conversely, the interfaces and data models 

cannot be proprietary to only some vendors.

Acquisition strategies for open and modular 

systems should include regular block upgrades 

within the program schedule, with the initial 

version consisting of only those technologies 

and subsystems that are sufficiently mature and 

earned a prioritization from the warfighter. For 

the subsequent blocks, the acquisition strategy 

should be flexible to allow for unplanned 

changes due to emerging threat or technology 

requirements to guide specific content of each 

block. Finally, the system design should build in 

appropriate margins in size and weight, as well 

as “hooks” for future unknown design upgrades, 

such as hardened points on aircraft wings or 

extra payload volume on ships and submarines. 

While having open, modular designs are critical 

for enabling adaptive systems, there must also be a 

deliberate technology maturation process to take 

advantage of the open system design. The Military 

Services need to continuously fund technology 

pipelines to feed future upgrades. Research and 

technology development must be resourced with 

a deliberate objective of feeding potential future 

block upgrades of systems. Experimenting and 

prototyping programs in the Department also 

should be used to mature concepts and capabilities 

for block upgrades; such experimentation and 

prototyping remains critical for future innovation, 

as noted in Technology and Innovation Enablers 

for Superiority in 2030 (2012 summer study).

For more strategic investments such as the 

future of long-range strike or air dominance, 

the Department should continue to emphasize 

a “family of systems” portfolio of capabilities 

approach organized around the broad mission 

area and across platforms and Military Services. 

The Department should then take a proactive 

approach to shaping and preparing for future 

conditions with the way it manages the portfolio 
Preparing for Surprise « 67

as a whole. This includes deliberate hedges 

in the acquisition planning to defer final 

commitment in design and budgeting until it 

becomes clear exactly what capability is needed 

to hit a desired fielding date. Analysis tools 

to support hedging are believed to make such 

hedges in planning scientific and feasible. 

Real-time adaptability is 

needed throughout the DoD

Most of the above has focused on the ability 

to upgrade systems rapidly over time as new 

threats demand and new technology provides 

opportunities. Another kind of system adaptability 

driven by unexpected events happens on the 

battlefield in the midst of conflict. This kind of 

adaptability requires overnight responses. The 

DSB has provided some guidelines on system 

architectures to achieve it; hooks, data recorders, 

and connectivity back to rapid analysis centers to 

understand what happened and craft responses; 

and the need for such permanent “on call” centers, 

such as the Joint Air Tactical Operations office for 

airborne electronic attack. The natural extension 

of this adaptability design principle is for the 

Department to continue to pursue, where feasible, 

real time adaptive capabilities; an example could 

be mission data files on aircraft having the ability 

for real-time as the EW threat environment 

is actually encountered during the mission. 

Technology surprise is inevitable 

in a globalized world

How to obtain an edge for ourselves, how to anticipate an 

adversary’s usage

The world is an unpredictable place, and the 

galloping advance of technology is making it more 

so. It has been experience multiple times that no 

matter how well DoD plans and prepares, there 

will be surprises—and there is the ever present 

value of inflicting surprise on our adversaries. 

The DSB has advised DoD on how the 

Department can be better poised to respond to 

surprise swiftly and with agility, adaptability, 

and resilience. The approaches include having a 

technology infrastructure which can be swiftly 

and inexpensively pivoted to meet changing 

needs and threats; using more red/blue teaming; 

and using realistic free play in training and 

exercises. The DSB has also identified potential 

technological surprises and recommended 

hedging strategies in certain circumstances.

An agile and responsive acquisition system acts 

as an enabler for preparing for surprise, and in 

particular an agile requirements regime based on 

early up front rational analysis of “what to buy” in 

contrast to “how to buy it.” This encourages the 

creativity of the scientists and engineers in U.S. 

industry and universities. An innovative DoD 

should introduce change into the field: new potent 

systems, creative strategies and tactics, powerful 

operational concepts, outstanding Military Service 

personnel performance, at such a dizzying rate that 

an adversary could maintain no hope of developing 

countermeasures fast enough; this is the essence 

of how to ensure future U.S. military superiority.

A strong technology base, including knowledge 

of emerging science and technology, dedicated 

scientists and engineers, and infrastructure 

and facilities, acts as a solid foundation in the 

preparation for surprise. It provides the DoD both 

strategic differentiators and strategic necessities. 

Of course, the U.S., the national security 

community, and the Military Services can and 

have experienced surprise in many ways. The 

potential opportunity and consequence of 

potentially devastating surprise, explored in the 

Strategic Surprise (2014) report, has only increased 

in the present day. Of the several reasons for 

the increases, almost none of them are new. 

Scientific breakthroughs, rapid and unexpected 

technology development, and novel uses of existing 

capabilities all exemplify the ways the DoD 

thinks about technology surprise. Accelerating 

global advances in technology cause an increasing 

likelihood that potential adversaries may first 

discover and employ the technology surprise. 

This explains the desire in U.S. national security 

to find novel ways to make an early detection of 

a breakthrough, to understand and mitigate its 
68 « Chapter 7

potential use by adversaries against the homeland, 

and the Department to exploit it for U.S. national 

interests. The DSB identified two categories of 

surprise: “known surprises” and “surprising surprises”

in the Capability Surprise (2008) report: each requiring 

a different course of action to best mitigate, and each 

requiring persistent and focused leadership attention.

The known surprise category consists of cases 

where the country received clear and unambiguous 

warning that a serious, indeed possibly catastrophic 

condition was emerging, and which a potential 

adversary held good reason to pursue. Potential 

surprises that fit this category today are in the 

domains of cyber, space, and nuclear weapons. 

In these known surprise cases, the Department 

needs persistent leadership attention to assess 

and mitigate the constantly changing risks, to 

continually prepare using appropriate operational 

exercises and red teaming, and needs its leadership 

to track progress via a set of measurable goals.

Cases of surprising surprises occur when the nation 

might have access to the possible information 

indicating the eventual surprise, but was buried 

among myriad of other possibilities, any of which 

held unclear evidence and consequences. To address 

this difficult challenge of preparing for surprising 

surprises, the DSB identified five necessary 

capabilities: scanning and sifting processes, red 

capability projection, net assessment, options 

analysis, and finally a decision package to aid 

senior leadership in establishing a path forward. 

A wide variety of technologies, capabilities, 

concepts, and enablers may be candidates for 

emerging challenges and opportunities. The 

Department could to define this topic area as the 

framework that asks: what are potential serious 

outcomes that the U.S. and the DoD would regret 

ten years forward, say in 2027, and what can the 

Department do to prevent them? Where should the 

U.S. develop capabilities now to best prepare for to 

avoid regret in the future? A number of candidate 

emerging opportunities and challenges have been 

identified with a summary listed as follows:

§ Concepts for combined weapons 

effects and operations;

§ New and innovative uses of autonomous systems;

§ Continuing exploitation of the 

undersea domain in new ways;

§ Holistic, end-to-end approaches to 

missile and cruise missile defense 

(including so called “left of launch”);

§ Approaches to disrupt adversary weapon 

systems, including asymmetric and/

or cost imposing strategies;

§ Ensuring forces can fight 

through a nuclear event;

§ Enhancing space security and resiliency;

§ Developing an effective space control capability;

§ Ensuring the trustworthiness and 

integrity of critical systems;

§ Innovative concepts for combined, 

cognitive and adaptive electronic warfare, 

communications, and sensor capabilities; and

§ Concepts for robust and resilient 

communications and position and 

navigation capabilities.

Rekindling a culture of 

innovation is a necessary step

The U.S. defense industrial base often receives 

criticism for high cost, excessive time to market, 

and lack of innovation. All tend to be true to a 

degree, certainly as compared to the commercial 

work place, but largely a consequence of the 

way its customer, the DoD acquisition system, 

buys its products. Requests for proposals for 

developmental systems generally specify general 

system and performance characteristics but all too 

often also specify design attributes that needlessly 

constrain technical approaches, getting in the way 

of innovation. Note the DoD can demand mature 

system designs in development acquisitions without 

being over-prescriptive of the design approach. 

Because of a long history of cost and schedule 

overruns or serious performance underruns in 
Preparing for Surprise « 69

development programs, acquisitions can ask for 

detailed risk assessments and risk reduction plans 

and specify required technical readiness levels 

(TRLs) at relatively early in the development cycle. 

In fact the Department, driven in some cases by 

statute, developed a mechanical dependence on 

specifying early TRL sufficiency and compliance 

well beyond the original purpose of TRLs. 

Experienced design and development engineers 

in both military and commercial applications 

generally do not evaluate and mitigate technical 

risk by using something as superficial as a single 

TRL number assessment—indeed it is not in their 

internal vocabulary—yet that is what the current 

acquisition system and statute demands. While 

this may be reasonable as a way of calibrating 

competing proposals, there is no formal method 

in the evaluation process for the potential benefits 

associated with an innovative offering to be 

traded off with the higher associated risk. While 

true that there can be innovation that does not 

create risk for time or money, most often, with 

technical innovation, that is not the case. In 

general, an innovative solution, by definition, 

is not something that has been done before 

and does not have the same level of maturity 

as a “proven” way of doing things. Because the 

downside evaluation marks for risk are clear and 

the upside for added performance value or the 

benefits of some other beneficial characteristic 

are not, contractors are motivated to take the 

safe road; low risk at the expense of innovation.

In addition to the issue of real or perceived risk 

in proposal evaluation, major contractors often 

become concerned that the higher risk associated 

with some new way of doing things will come 

back to haunt them in subsequent competitive 

procurements. A standard section of a DoD 

request for proposals is “past performance,” in 

which both the bidder, as well as government 

program managers, provide examples of previous 

similar development programs in which the 

bidder performed. If, as a result of trying to 

do something new, a bidder ran into cost or 

schedule trouble in a previous program, this 

could negatively affect their score on a new 

effort. In the technology development world, it 

is standard practice, particularly in the case of 

one poor contract performance, to document 

lessons learned from the experience and describe 

how that learning will apply to a new effort. 

The current system incentivizes downplaying 

innovative or non-standard approaches.

The defense industrial base’s innovation is also 

impacted by the inherent difference between 

very large companies, which the DoD relies on to 

produce systems at scale, and small companies, 

which tend to be more flexible and innovative. 

Many valid reasons exist for the lack of agility in 

larger companies, including the need for highly 

coordinated efforts across a large, sometimes 

geographically distributed workforce, driving 

the need for standard processes, as well as the 

sometimes huge financial impact of falling 

short. While this conservatism contributes 

to performance safety and stability, no doubt 

remains that it tends to inhibit innovation. 

Many companies recognize this problem 

and attempt to isolate small development or 

prototyping organizations from the rest of the 

company. The isolation is not simply physical 

but also entails less bureaucracy, fewer processes, 

and greater incentives for “out of the box” 

thinking. Similarly, teaming with small centers 

of innovation during early development in an 

attempt to circumvent the significant cultural 

disconnect between small and large companies can 

disincentivize both to effectively work with each 

other. Lastly, a disconnect can also occur when 

an innovative component prototype transitions 

into a system that must reliably operate in the 

tough environments of combat, be operated by 

non-technical troops, and be sustained for years. 

Thus, while the defense industrial base certainly 

desires greater innovation, one of the keys to 

achieving it is for greater innovation in the way 

the government specifies, evaluates, and works 

with contractors. Specifying how the potential 

fruits of innovation will be traded off with possible 

negative risk, cost, and schedule impacts would 

help. Specifying performance, cost and schedule 

objectives without creating an impression, real 

or imaginary, about “favored” solutions would 
70 « Chapter 7

also help. Because one of the required attributes 

in a time of uncertainty on the battlefield is 

flexibility, the DoD must find ways to specify 

quantitatively what flexibility means in terms of a 

particular system, how it will evaluate and test the 

systems, and so on. Quantifying flexibility for the 

particular situation involved, specifying it as a key 

performance parameter, and describing the process 

for evaluating it through testing in competitive 

demonstrations may incentivize contractors to 

innovate and provide real system flexibility.

Planning for surprise is no mystery

Surprise remains inevitable, may come in various 

forms, and may arise because of new technologies, 

new system constructs, or new ways of using 

existing systems, operating in new domains with 

new tactics and operations. It can be reduced 

by paying attention to emerging technologies, 

watching ways in which potential adversaries 

operate and train, reading their publications, 

and thinking about how they might avoid 

U.S. strengths and exploit its weaknesses. 

Two other aspects of surprise 

remain equally important—

§ The DoD should assume that it will happen 

and create a culture of flexibility and 

adaptability in how it specifies and builds its 

systems, in how it trains the troops to fight, 

in how it uses new technologies, and in how 

it encourages and harnesses innovation.

§ The Department should not think about 

surprise solely as the province of the adversary. 

It is the DoD’s to exploit and inflict, and 

an opportunity to create uncertainty on 

adversary operations, impose cost, and weaken 

the ability to respond to U.S. initiatives.

Keys to achieving these objectives include 

aggressive red teaming; balancing risk 

with opportunity; encouraging diversity of 

thought and approaches; building a culture of 

innovation; seeking out and embracing new 

technologies; and fashioning systems that can 

be block upgraded in synchronization with 

the operational cycles of the troops that will 

use them, and whose system operations and 

algorithms can be altered literally overnight 

to mitigate problems or exploit opportunities 

that present themselves on the battlefield. 

Surprise remains inevitable, may come in 

various forms, and may arise because of new 

technologies, new system constructs, or new 

ways of using existing systems, operating in new 

domains with new tactics and operations. 
Preparing for Surprise « 71

Supporting DSB reports

Transformation: A Progress Assessment 

(2005 summer study)

21st Century Strategic Technology 

Vectors (2006 summer study)

Challenges to Military Operations in Support 

of U.S. Interests (2007 summer study)

Creating an Effective National Security 

Industrial Base for the 21st century (2008)

Capability Surprise (2008 summer study)

Buying Commercial – Gaining the Cost/

Schedule Benefits for DoD Systems (2009)

Fulfillment of Urgent Operational Needs (2009)

Enhancing Adaptability of our Military Forces 

(Parts A and B) (2010 summer study)

Improvements to Services Contracting (2011)

Basic Research (2012)

Technology and Innovation Enablers for 

Superiority in 2030 (2012 summer study)

Strategic Surprise (2014 Summer Study)
72 « A Call to Action
A Call to Action « 73

A CALL TO ACTION

The seven defense priorities the Defense Science Board offers 

for the new Administration differ greatly in kind. 

Protecting the homeland and deterring the use 

of nuclear weapons are core responsibilities and 

competences of the Department of Defense, and 

of the highest priority. Changing circumstances, 

new adversaries, and evolving technology present 

challenges the Department must and can meet.

The mission to support stabilization, 

reconstruction, peace keeping and nation 

building greatly differs from conflict with the 

armed forces of adversary states, a mission arisen 

again over the last hundred years, made even 

more difficult by the ineluctable accompanying 

insurgency. Gray zone conflicts also represent 

a very different mission than conventional war 

with adversary states, and will increasingly be the 

norm as other countries seek ways to avoid direct 

conflict with the potent U.S. armed forces, and 

yet accomplish their aggressive policy objectives.

Information and information technology stands at 

the heart of modern warfare for the United States 

and its adversaries. Information dominance must 

be a DoD goal as it is also a goal of adversaries. 

Cyber, intelligence systems, and autonomy present 

a threat to mitigate and an opportunity to grasp; 

intelligent systems and autonomy are similar.

Finally, relative to all of the above, and more, 

the Department must be prepared to effectively 

respond to inevitable surprise, as well as cause 

surprise to deter and confound adversaries. 

Doing so partly depends on technology, even 

more on the way the Department works, 

and most of all on the Department culture. 

At the end of the day the DoD’s culture of 

innovation will likely offer competitive military 

advantage as any technology or system.

By summarizing the main findings and 

recommendations of the Defense Science Board 

over the last dozen years, the Board intends this 

report to assist the incoming Administration 

to make a fast start in addressing pressing 

national security issues and opportunities.
74 « Photography Credits
Photography Credits « 75

PHOTOGRAPHY CREDITS

Ch1. pg 14. U.S. Army Spcs. Charles Friedrich and Brandon Birge, both with the 1140th Engineer 

Battalion, Missouri Army National Guard, fill sandbags to help with flood relief efforts in Dutchtown, 

Mo., April 22, 2013. The U.S. Coast Guard, Army Corps of Engineers and National Guard units responded 

to major flooding along rivers in the Midwest. (DoD photo by Michelle Queiser, U.S. Army National 

Guard/Released)

Ch 2. pg 22. U.S. Air Force B-2 Spirit bomber aircraft from Whiteman Air Force Base, Missouri, like 

the one pictured above, deploy to Andersen Air Force Base, Guam, as a routine deployment providing 

global strike capability and extended deterrence against potential adversaries in the Indo-Asia-Pacific 

region. (U.S. Air Force photo by Airman 1st Class Joel Pfiester/Released)

Ch 3. pg 30. Chinese dredging vessels are purportedly seen in the waters in the disputed Spratly Islands 

in the South China Sea in this still image from video taken by a P-8A Poseidon surveillance aircraft 

provided by the United States Navy, May 21, 2015.

Ch. 4 pg 36. U.S. Navy Fire Controlman 1st Class Aaron Tadlock monitors a radar console in the 

combat information center aboard the guided missile destroyer USS Donald Cook (DDG 75) in the 

Atlantic Ocean Feb. 3, 2014. The Donald Cook was underway in the U.S. 6th Fleet area of responsibility 

conducting a home port change from Naval Station Norfolk, Va., to Naval Station Rota, Spain. (DoD 

photo by Mass Communication Specialist Seaman Edward Guttierrez III/Released)

Ch 5. pg 46. Hexacopter drones flying in the evening, Copyright 2013, Oktay Ortakcioglu, Ratoath, 

Ireland
76 « Photography Credits

Ch 6. pg 54. Khowst Province, Afghanistan “ Pfc. Tullio Perez (near), Pfc. Ryan Lethem (middle), Pfc. 

Jared Bishop (far), all assigned to 2nd Platoon, Troop B, 1st Squadron, 33rd Cavalry Regiment, 3rd Brigade 

Combat Team “Rakkasans,” 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault), use secure electronic enrollment kits 

to record data of the local population in Shamal District, Afghanistan, Jan. 10, 2013. The mission was 

conducted alongside soldiers with the Afghan National Army’s 203rd Corps, 1st Brigade, 6th Kandak, 2nd 

Koy, in attempt to find anyone possibly working with insurgents within the district. (U.S. Army photo 

by Spc. Brian Smith-Dutton, Task Force 3/101 Public Affairs) (Photo Credit: Spc. Brian J. Smith Dutton 

(FORSCOM))

Ch 7. pg 62. Fireball erupting in the South Tower, Copyright 2001 – Robert J. Fisch