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i 

99–626 2016

[H.A.S.C. No. 114–95] 

HEARING 

ON

NATIONAL DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION ACT 

FOR FISCAL YEAR 2017 

AND

OVERSIGHT OF PREVIOUSLY AUTHORIZED 

PROGRAMS 

BEFORE THE

COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 

ONE HUNDRED FOURTEENTH CONGRESS 

SECOND SESSION 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON EMERGING THREATS AND 

CAPABILITIES HEARING 

ON

DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE FISCAL YEAR 

2017 SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY 

PROGRAMS: DEFENSE INNOVATION TO 

CREATE THE FUTURE MILITARY FORCE 

HEARING HELD 

FEBRUARY 24, 2016 
(II) 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON EMERGING THREATS AND CAPABILITIES 

JOE WILSON, South Carolina, Chairman 

JOHN KLINE, Minnesota 

BILL SHUSTER, Pennsylvania 

DUNCAN HUNTER, California 

RICHARD B. NUGENT, Florida 

RYAN K. ZINKE, Montana 

TRENT FRANKS, Arizona, Vice Chair 

DOUG LAMBORN, Colorado 

MO BROOKS, Alabama 

BRADLEY BYRNE, Alabama 

ELISE M. STEFANIK, New York 

JAMES R. LANGEVIN, Rhode Island 

JIM COOPER, Tennessee 

JOHN GARAMENDI, California 

JOAQUIN CASTRO, Texas 

MARC A. VEASEY, Texas 

DONALD NORCROSS, New Jersey 

BRAD ASHFORD, Nebraska 

PETE AGUILAR, California 

KEVIN GATES, Professional Staff Member 

LINDSAY KAVANAUGH, Professional Staff Member 

NEVE SCHADLER, Clerk 
(III) 

C O N T E N T S 

Page 

STATEMENTS PRESENTED BY MEMBERS OF CONGRESS 

Langevin, Hon. James R., a Representative from Rhode Island, Ranking 

Member, Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities ..................... 2 

Wilson, Hon. Joe, a Representative from South Carolina, Chairman, Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities ................................................... 1 

WITNESSES 

Miller, Mary J., Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Army for Research and 

Technology, Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Acquisition, 

Logistics and Technology ..................................................................................... 6 

Prabhakar, Dr. Arati, Director, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency 

(DARPA) ................................................................................................................ 12 

Walker, Dr. David E., Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Science, 

Technology and Engineering, Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Air 

Force for Acquisition ............................................................................................ 10 

Welby, Stephen, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering, Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology 

and Logistics ......................................................................................................... 3 

Winter, RADM Mathias W., USN, Chief of Naval Research and Director, 

Innovation Technology Requirements, and Test and Evaluation (N84) .......... 8 

APPENDIX 

PREPARED STATEMENTS: 

Miller, Mary J. .................................................................................................. 46 

Prabhakar, Dr. Arati ........................................................................................ 126 

Walker, Dr. David E. ........................................................................................ 86 

Welby, Stephen ................................................................................................. 32 

Wilson, Hon. Joe ............................................................................................... 31 

Winter, RADM Mathias W. ............................................................................. 66 

DOCUMENTS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD: 

[There were no Documents submitted.] 

WITNESS RESPONSES TO QUESTIONS ASKED DURING THE HEARING: 

[There were no Questions submitted during the hearing.] 

QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MEMBERS POST HEARING: 

Mr. Castro ......................................................................................................... 158 

Mr. Langevin ..................................................................................................... 155 

Mr. Nugent ........................................................................................................ 157 

Mr. Wilson ......................................................................................................... 153 

(1) 

DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE FISCAL YEAR 2017 SCIENCE 

AND TECHNOLOGY PROGRAMS: DEFENSE INNOVATION TO CREATE THE FUTURE MILITARY FORCE 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES, SUBCOMMITTEE ON EMERGING THREATS AND CAPABILITIES, 

Washington, DC, Wednesday, February 24, 2016. 

The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 2:09 p.m., in room 

2212, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Joe Wilson (chairman 

of the subcommittee) presiding. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. JOE WILSON, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM SOUTH CAROLINA, CHAIRMAN, SUBCOMMITTEE 

ON EMERGING THREATS AND CAPABILITIES 

Mr. WILSON. Ladies and gentleman, I would like to call this 

hearing of the Emerging Threats and Capabilities Subcommittee of 

the House Armed Services Committee to order. I am pleased to 

welcome everyone here today for this hearing on fiscal year 2017 

budget requests for science and technology [S&T] programs within 

the Department of Defense. In a recent speech, Secretary of Defense Ash Carter spoke about the return of great power competition 

and the need to deter our most advanced competitors. We can only 

deter these competitors and adversaries when the Department of 

Defense [DOD] harnesses innovation and creates new capabilities 

for the military that will maintain and expand our technical superiority, now and into the future to achieve peace through strength. 

The budget request is a good step in tackling the modernization 

challenges of the Department. Activities like the third offset strategy and the long-range research and development plan are important to charting a course that takes a strategic view of the security 

environment. However, I remain concerned that it is too little too 

late. As I see it, starting major initiatives at the end of an administration makes it difficult to ensure that these programs will survive 

the new budgetary and policy priorities that will naturally arise 

with a new President. I hope I am wrong, since I support many of 

the things being proposed in this budget request, but only time will 

tell. 

I would like to welcome our distinguished panel of witnesses, and 

appreciate their perspectives on all of these issues. This panel includes Mr. Stephen Welby, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering; Ms. Mary Miller, Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Army for Research and Technology; Rear Admiral 

Matt Winter, U.S. Navy, Chief of Naval Research; Dr. David Walker, Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Science, Tech-
2 

nology, and Engineering; and Dr. Arati Prabhakar, the Director of 

Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency [DARPA]. 

I would like now to turn to my friend and ranking member, Mr. 

Jim Langevin, of Rhode Island for any comments he would like to 

make. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Wilson can be found in the Appendix on page 31.] 

STATEMENT OF HON. JAMES R. LANGEVIN, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM RHODE ISLAND, RANKING MEMBER, SUBCOMMITTEE ON EMERGING THREATS AND CAPABILITIES 

Mr. LANGEVIN. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I want to 

thank you too—thanks to our distinguished witnesses for appearing before the subcommittee to address the Department of Defense 

science and technology policy and programs hearing for fiscal year 

2017. Our S&T investments have been instrumental in delivering 

the capabilities necessary to address the threats that we have faced 

for more than a decade and a half from our enemies, like Al Qaeda 

and other terrorist organizations that seek to do us harm. Investments in S&T have also resulted in the very best protection for our 

troops from improvised explosive devices and other combat casualties. As long as our forces are still facing these adversaries, we 

must continue to invest in tools that could rapidly deliver the edge 

required for today’s combat, while working to decrease technological surprise and maintain our edge against those threats on the 

horizon and beyond. Maintaining our technological edge is a priority for the House Armed Services Committee, and especially for 

this subcommittee. 

As state actors continue to develop capabilities and leverage the 

latest technology, and non-state actors like ISIL [Islamic State of 

Iraq and the Levant] present new challenges to our information operations, it is imperative that the Department of Defense capitalize 

on the most cutting-edge technology and spur innovation for required capabilities. Doing so, however, requires more than just 

money. It requires the DOD to build lasting dynamic relationships 

with industry and academia while utilizing its in-house capability 

to the maximum extent possible. 

The Department must also foster new relationships with nontraditional DOD partners. In the last 2 years, the Department has 

initiated two programs, DIUx [Defense Innovation Unit Experimental] and In-Q-Tel, intended to strengthen its collaboration with 

tech firms, entrepreneurs, and start-ups. 

In-Q-Tel has a proven track record with the intelligence community and has the potential to bring the same success to DOD. DIUx 

seems to be a mechanism for relationship building, but it remains 

unclear to me exactly what their role is, and how they are interfacing with transition offices, program managers, and others in the 

existing S&T and acquisition communities. 

While I support efforts to access and harness new technologies, 

I want to ensure the Department is fully leveraging its existing 

toolbox, like small business innovation programs, rapid innovation 

funds, transition offices, and prototyping accounts in place. I would 

appreciate hearing the witnesses’ views and understanding of these 

mechanisms. 
3 

Innovation also requires the Department to be able to recruit and 

retain a talented workforce. I believe the Department’s workforce 

is a critical element in maintaining our technological edge, and I 

look forward to hearing from our witnesses about what they may 

need as it pertains to current hiring authority modifications, or 

new authorities to ensure that we are investing in the very best 

and brightest minds available. 

Another essential element in maintaining our technological edge 

is the Department’s in-house infrastructure. DOD labs are a national asset; yet, the 2017 budget remains void of investment in 

physical facilities. The subcommittee has attempted to address the 

lack of military construction funds for labs by providing limited authority to use RDT&E [research, development, test, and evaluation] 

funds. But today, I hope to hear about infrastructure investment 

requirements and continue a dialogue about how those requirements can be met. 

With that, I just want to thank all of the witnesses for being 

here today. I appreciate the work that you are doing in very cutting-edge fields. You are all involved in investing in your time and 

energy in looking at those high-risk, but high-payoff, technologies 

that are going to keep our military highly effective and our warfighters very safe. 

So with that, I want to thank you again for being here and giving 

your distinguished service to the Nation. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I yield back. 

Mr. WILSON. Thank you, Mr. Langevin. I would like to remind 

each witness that your written statements will be submitted for the 

record. We ask you that you summarize your comments to 5 minutes or less, and then after each one of you have made a presentation, each member of the subcommittee will have an opportunity 

at 5 minutes, and Kevin Gates is very strict on that 5 minutes, and 

you will notice that he cuts us off, so that we can all have an opportunity to participate. And again, we just appreciate your service 

so much. 

Mr. Welby, we will begin with you and we look forward to your 

opening statement. 

STATEMENT OF STEPHEN WELBY, ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF 

DEFENSE FOR RESEARCH AND ENGINEERING, OFFICE OF 

THE UNDER SECRETARY OF DEFENSE FOR ACQUISITION, 

TECHNOLOGY AND LOGISTICS 

Mr. WELBY. Chairman Wilson, Ranking Member Langevin, members of the subcommittee, I am pleased to appear before you today 

and have the opportunity to provide testimony on the Department 

of Defense’s fiscal year 2017 science and technology program, and 

to join my colleagues from across the services and DARPA to report 

on the current state of science and technology in the Department. 

The DOD S&T program works to deliver a balanced portfolio of 

technology to the Department informed by awareness of global 

technology trends and critical threat capabilities. I believe we are 

at a pivotal moment in history. And the chairman mentioned this 

in his opening statement where the capacity that the Nation has 

relied upon to provide us with unmatched technological superiority 

on the battlefield is now being challenged. It is being challenged by 
4 

investments in military technology being made by increasingly capable and assertive foreign powers. I believe that today, and, in 

fact, every day when I visit our laboratories and organizations 

across the defense enterprise, I encounter young scientists and engineers pursuing technological innovations motivated to meet the 

challenge that we see emerging globally, launching new and emerging capabilities in a variety of disciplines, and applying those technologies to create improved military capabilities informed by operational experience and needs. 

Our Department-wide focus on technological innovation seeks to 

identify and invest in those unique capabilities that can sustain 

and advance the Department’s conventional military superiority 

into the 21st century. As Secretary Carter mentioned in his remarks on the budget at the Economic Club of Washington on the 

2nd of February, we must take the long view and seize opportunities for the future in order to sustain our lead in full-spectrum warfighting. 

Today, the Department employs over 39,000 scientists and engineers in 63 defense laboratories, warfare centers, and engineering 

centers across 22 States, sustaining our ability to support and field 

militarily critical technology that often has no commercial equivalent. Our laboratories have produced very significant innovations in 

vital defense areas such as electronic warfare, propulsion, and 

weapons design. And maintaining this unique technical expertise 

within the Department is critical for ensuring the Department’s 

ability to prepare for future threats. 

Over the last year, the science and technology community has 

not only supported the immediate needs of our warfighters, but 

also has taken action that has had strategic impact in the areas 

such as helping to eliminate Syria’s chemical weapons stockpile 

and helping to deploy diagnostic laboratories to curb the spread of 

Ebola in West Africa. 

However, we cannot innovate and bolster our future technological 

superiority from within the Department alone. Our defense S&T 

enterprise touches the broadest range of emerging concepts 

through our deep engagement with academia, with industry, and 

our international partners, to help keep the DOD smart, knowledgeable, agile, and responsive in the face of new and emerging 

threats. 

This includes, as was mentioned, an outreach to a vibrant and 

growing commercial innovation community that sometimes doesn’t 

see the Department as a natural customer, and doesn’t think initially to apply their technologies to the national security sphere. 

And we want to break down those barriers and engage that fastmoving sector. 

In those areas, investments being made by the commercial technology sector are accelerating the development of technologies with 

critical relevance to future defense capabilities. Many of these 

small innovative commercial firms lack knowledge about defense 

systems, organizations, and problems that could benefit from their 

products and technology, and that is why we have made investments in activities like DIUx in Silicon Valley as a way to help 

match DOD customers with some of those potential sources of advanced capabilities that are rising from the commercial enterprises. 
5 

As the Department looks to its future, there are significant challenges that will require renewed emphasis on sustaining our U.S. 

technological superiority. The United States must seek to develop 

and maintain asymmetric advantages, those that take advantage of 

fundamental U.S. strengths in military and commercial technology 

innovation and apply them to outcompete our competitors. 

We must accelerate our approaches to identifying promising technology differentiators, improve our process for mapping technology 

capabilities to operational advantage, and continue to focus on 

methods of moving capability much more rapidly from laboratory 

to field. 

For the last 6 years, the Department has engaged in a major effort to improve our internal acquisition processes through the Better Buying Power initiatives. The latest iteration of Better Buying 

Power 3.0 focuses the acquisition system of the Department on 

achieving dominant capabilities through technological excellence 

and innovation. That emphasis reflects the criticality of research 

and engineering on our overall acquisition success and emphasizes 

the need to bring and support a strong and effective DOD laboratory enterprise. 

I want to point out just very quickly three of the many Better 

Buying Power initiatives that are relevant to our S&T community. 

The first is the use of prototyping and experimentation to accelerate operational assessment and adoption of key technologies to 

advance current and future weapon systems. The second is the support for robust DOD STEM [science, technology, engineering, and 

mathematics] engagement to ensure that we have a future workforce and a pool of defense-relevant technical talent available to us 

to ensure our future capabilities. 

And, finally, I want to point out that the Better Buying Power 

reinforces the cost consciousness of our S&T community using tools 

like ‘‘Should Cost,’’ to ensure that we’re getting the best return on 

investment for our taxpayer and warfighter. 

Our strength is in our people. We must recruit, retain the best 

and brightest military and civilian scientists and engineers and 

harness their innovative spirits to give our military forces a warfighting edge. Ultimately, our goal each day must be to ensure that 

our soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines all have the scientific 

knowledge, the right technology, the advanced systems and tools, 

the best care, and the decisive advantage and material edge to succeed when called upon. Our research and engineering enterprise 

really does need to measure its success in the security of our Nation and the success of our warfighters. And we are trying to drive 

that home in everything we do. 

Let me thank you for your support for the Department’s science 

and technology efforts as we work to discover, design, and deliver 

those technological capabilities that our warfighters will need to 

shape the future. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Welby can be found in the Appendix on page 32.] 

Mr. WILSON. Thank you very much, Mr. Welby. 

We now proceed to Ms. Miller. 
6 

STATEMENT OF MARY J. MILLER, DEPUTY ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF THE ARMY FOR RESEARCH AND TECHNOLOGY, 

OFFICE OF THE ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF THE ARMY FOR 

ACQUISITION, LOGISTICS AND TECHNOLOGY 

Ms. MILLER. Chairman Wilson, Ranking Member Langevin, and 

distinguished members of the subcommittee, thank you for this opportunity to discuss the Army’s science and technology program for 

fiscal year 2017. The United States faces a complex and growing 

array of security challenges across the globe. A new generation of 

threats and opportunities has emerged, and will continue to develop in unprecedented ways. Technology is evolving and proliferating at an exponential rate, and our enemies’ access to this technology has closed the gap in our operational overmatch. We are in 

a race with our adversaries to harness and field the best military 

applications of innovation. 

In the 1990s the Army made great strides to advance night vision technology into operational capability to own the night. Based 

on those early S&T investments and the great work of our industrial base, the U.S. has enjoyed overmatch in night operations for 

almost two decades. Today other countries have developed or acquired similar capabilities, eroding our significant advantage. This 

is just one example of the impact of the globalization of technology, 

and emphasizes our need to continue to innovate alternative technologies and operational methods to maintain overmatch. 

The Army S&T enterprise cannot predict with certainty what 

challenges and threats the future holds, but it can organize itself 

to help prepare for the future, mitigating the possibility of technical surprise and ensuring that we remain dominant in any environment. Transparency, efficiency, and flexibility help us to invest 

our limited resources where they have the greatest payoff. This 

framework allows us to adjust our approach in response to changing circumstances. I am proud to represent the U.S. Army’s nearly 

12,000 scientists and engineers who are innovative change agents 

committed to solving difficult national security challenges and developing the capabilities needed by America’s soldiers to overcome 

adversaries, both today and into the future. 

In past years, I have detailed to the committee our enduring 

Army challenges and how they influence the Army S&T’s technology portfolio investments. Today, I would like to take this opportunity to describe some newer strategic initiatives that cut across 

our portfolios, and are instrumental in helping us realize our objectives. To quote General Milley, the Chief of Staff of the Army, ‘‘We 

will do what it takes to build an agile, adaptive Army of the future. 

We need to listen and learn, first from the Army itself, from other 

services, from our interagency partners, but also from the private 

sector and even from our critics. Developing a lethal, professional, 

and technically competent force requires an openness to new ideas 

and new ways of doing things in an increasingly complex world. 

These strategic initiatives that I am discussing here are designed 

to help the Army do just that. Listen, learn, change, and adapt.’’ 

Technology war gaming is a reconnaissance effort undertaken by 

the S&T enterprise to foster greater innovation. It is focused on 

identifying concepts and conducting technology-based assessments 

about what technology will look like in the deep future, the 2030 
7 

to 2040 timeframe, and how this will affect both the Army and our 

adversaries. It includes crowd-sourced brainstorming, conducting 

virtual workshops with subject matter experts, and red teaming potential technology concepts to ensure technical feasibility. 

At the heart of this initiative lies a commitment to solid analysis 

and a focus on bringing in fresh ideas from a wide community, including innovative thinkers who haven’t traditionally been a part 

of the Army’s S&T planning process. We use these war games as 

the basis for strategic conversations on potential leap-ahead capabilities for the future force and how best to align resources and organizations to pursue those opportunities. 

Another key component of our S&T strategy is broadening and 

deepening our ability to identify, understand, and eliminate potential vulnerabilities in emerging technologies and future systems 

that could threaten their success upon deployment in Army operational settings against an evolving and responsive threat. Our 

S&T red-teaming investment provides in-depth, independent assessments of emerging technologies across laboratories, tabletop, 

and live-build environments. A number of years ago, the Army entrusted my office to initiate a pilot focused on technology transition. 

They established a budget activity for funding line with the intent 

to enable the Army to better transition across the often-cited ‘‘valley of death.’’ This pilot began with a small amount of dollars, but 

with a large vision, a vision that hinged upon establishing collaborative partnerships with the acquisition and requirements communities, conducting co-led technology maturation efforts for pre-milestone A or B activities leading into programs of record, and building prototypes that could be used by operators in mission scenarios 

to allow candid feedback on new capabilities. 

By understanding the technology trends of the future, assessing 

technology and system vulnerabilities, and conducting maturation 

and prototyping earlier in the acquisition life cycle, we can identify 

and address areas of risk before the government commits funding 

to programs of record. Ultimately, it is more cost effective to prove 

out innovative concepts and capabilities within the science and 

technology program than it is under a formal program acquisition. 

Finally, I would also like to acknowledge the support provided by 

members of this committee and your staff. Congress is one of our 

most important partners, and your strong support of the S&T enterprise helps ensure that the U.S. Army remains a preeminent 

force in the world. The Army S&T mission is never complete. We 

will continue working to ensure that our soldiers are always 

equipped with the technology to win. We owe our soldiers no less. 

Thank you, and I would be pleased to answer any questions you 

may have. 

[The prepared statement of Ms. Miller can be found in the Appendix on page 46.] 

Mr. WILSON. Thank you very much, Ms. Miller. 

And we now proceed to Admiral Winter. 
8 

STATEMENT OF RADM MATHIAS W. WINTER, USN, CHIEF OF 

NAVAL RESEARCH AND DIRECTOR, INNOVATION TECHNOLOGY REQUIREMENTS, AND TEST AND EVALUATION (N84) 

Admiral WINTER. Good afternoon, Chairman Wilson, Ranking 

Member Langevin, and distinguished members of this subcommittee. Thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today to 

discuss our Department of the Navy [DON] science and technology 

investment strategy that ensures our sailors and marines will retain the technological advantage on the battlefield, which is absolutely essential. Today, I am representing an incredible team of 

more than 4,000 scientists and technical professionals in the naval 

S&T community. My testimony will provide a snapshot of our naval 

S&T investment strategy that is fully supported by the President’s 

fiscal year 2017 budget request. 

As you know, the DON has a rich history of pushing the boundaries of our science and technology to ensure our Navy and Marine 

Corps are equipped with the capabilities that they require to perform the full range of military operations assigned to our naval 

forces in every theater against every known threat. Our ability to 

maintain that decisive technological advantage starts right here at 

the Office of Naval Research [ONR]. With our 70th anniversary 

this coming August, the Office of Naval Research has been delivering that technological advantage to our naval forces for over 

seven decades, leveraging the intellectual capital of our scientists 

to discover the new knowledge that generates the breakthrough 

technologies that delivers the innovative solutions to win our Nation’s battles, and as importantly, strive for a global peace. 

The President’s fiscal year 2017 budget request funds the required initiatives to support our Naval S&T Strategy, which is a 

key enabler in realizing our Navy’s design for maintaining maritime superiority, and our Marine Corps’ priority for modernization 

and technology outlined in Advance to Contact strategy, both of 

which were unveiled in January by our Chief of Naval Operations 

and our Commandant of the Marine Corps, respectively. Our logical and forward looking science and technology investment strategy leverages our S&T community triad—academia, industry, and 

government performers—to realistically deliver technological advantages. 

Our investments continue to yield a very high rate of return in 

terms of intellectual capital growth through our extensive academic 

STEM outreach initiatives, fostering of new innovative small businesses through our Small Business Innovative Research initiatives, 

and providing of game-changing, next-generation capabilities for 

our sailors and marines through the partnerships with academia, 

industry, and our naval research and development establishment. 

During my first full year here as the Chief of Naval Research, 

this team has accomplished this a lot. We have awarded over 4,000 

academic grants to domestic and international universities, inspiring and retaining the Nation’s best and brightest talent. Our basic 

research conducted at our premier Naval Research Laboratory has 

generated over 200 basic research projects, resulting in discoveries 

of new knowledge, phenomenologies, and technologies. 

Last year, we filed over and were awarded over 380 technical 

patents for new discoveries. It was the 16th consecutive year that 
9 

the U.S. Navy ranked first amongst all U.S. Government agencies. 

And we successfully transitioned and demonstrated over 200 key 

technologies across that ‘‘valley of death’’ out of S&T to our warfighters and to programs of record. Leveraging these accomplishments, our ONR teams are executing ongoing research programs in 

a number of key priority areas that are yielding that high payoff 

and potential game-changing capabilities for our sailors and marines. 

I would like to highlight a couple. Directed energy. Our directed 

energy efforts will enable our naval forces to truly fight at the 

speed of light. ONR-funded research delivered a solid state laser to 

the USS Ponce last year, successfully demonstrating destruction of 

surface and air targets. Our hypervelocity projectile program, the 

HVP, was successfully fired from a 5-inch Mark 45 gun with a ballistic range of 34 nautical miles. We have had over 40 HVP firings 

to date, and have been executed paving the way for accelerated 

transition and leading to significant capabilities enhancement for 

our future naval force. 

Another critical warfighting enabler is access to assured information by keeping our Navy and Marine Corps cyber doors locked. 

Our naval tactical cloud research is providing the framework and 

big data analytics for our platform cyber defense solutions such as 

resilient hull, mechanical, and electrical security system. We call it 

RHIMES. RHIMES is a cyber protection system designed to make 

its shipboard mechanical and electrical control systems resilient to 

cyber attacks. 

Autonomy. Autonomy in the undersea domain is extending our 

capabilities in new ways. We have demonstrated our hybrid fuelcell-powered large displacement unmanned underwater vehicle. We 

call it LDUUV. And it completed its first tests at our Naval Surface 

Warfare Center, Carderock, and demonstrated the ability to launch 

a fuel-cell-powered unmanned aerial vehicle [UAV] from the underwater vehicle. 

Finally, our warfighters will benefit from our incredible breakthroughs in synthetic biology and medical research. Advances in 

medical technology, for example, including 3–D printing of live tissue into arteries, veins, and capillaries, will ensure that those in 

the battle and those returning from battle will not only survive, but 

will thrive. 

Throughout this coming year our focus will remain on rapidly delivering these innovative technological solutions. Examples of our 

initiatives coming in 2016: two new forward-looking innovative 

naval prototypes that will push game-changing technologies and capabilities to maintain our superiority in the undersea domain and 

our electromagnetic domain. Directed energy efforts will continue 

on the USS Ponce. We will leverage those lessons learned and we 

are moving forward with the technology maturation effort of a 150- 

kilowatt capability for future platforms. 

While we continue to work on the ground-based capabilities with 

our United States Marine Corps, the GBAD [Ground-Based Air Defense] system, which will give a vehicle-based, high-energy laser capability to our 21st century marine. We also are demonstrating atsea capability for our low-cost UAV swarming technologies. We will 
10 

be able to launch, form, control, and task 30 UAVs in an offensive 

swarm. 

And finally, we will take the next step in undersea autonomy, 

and we will conduct a long endurance transit test of our LDUUV 

operating submerged from San Diego to San Francisco. Our ONR 

scientist contributions are marked and making a marked difference 

to our Navy and Marine Corps. Key to these accomplishments are 

our partnerships. Partnerships with industry and academia, partnerships with our sister services and DARPA, and through our six 

ONR global locations around the world in London, Prague, Tokyo, 

Singapore, Santiago, and San Paulo, working with our international S&T partners around the world. We will continue to expand and deepen these partnerships to execute our S&T mission. 

Through innovative research, disruptive thinking, and high-velocity learning, always striving to make existing systems more effective and affordable while improving breakthrough technology 

transitions to acquisition programs and our sailors and marines. 

And in doing so, we remain aligned with our Navy and Marine 

Corps leadership. Our Chief of Naval Operation and Commandant 

of the Marine Corps’ strategic guidance is underpinned by our forward-thinking S&T investments. 

We cannot afford to do business as usual and wish away the 

technological advantages of emerging global actors that are challenging our warfighting supremacy. Our S&T strategy provides the 

framework to think and act differently for success. We must be 

committed, all of us committed, to pursuing the technology solutions for tomorrow today. It is essential to tie the technical to the 

tactical to the strategic. And we in the Navy and the Marine Corps 

are committed to ensuring the S&T resources that you and your 

congressional colleagues provide us gets the most bang for the buck 

by giving our sailors and marines the technological advantage on 

the battlefield to fight the fight and keep the peace. 

One final note, I offer to each and every one of you an open invitation to visit one of our 50 warfare centers and system centers 

around the world—or excuse me, around the United States. And 

right here in Anacostia, our Naval Research Laboratory, where you 

can get a firsthand look at our world-class scientists, engineers, civilian employees that are the ones that are really making things 

happen. Gentlemen, I appreciate and thank you for your time this 

afternoon and your continued support of our S&T efforts. I look forward to answering your questions. 

[The prepared statement of Admiral Winter can be found in the 

Appendix on page 66.] 

Mr. WILSON. Admiral, thank you very much. And it is very encouraging to hear about the public/private partnerships you identified. 

Dr. Walker. 

STATEMENT OF DR. DAVID E. WALKER, DEPUTY ASSISTANT 

SECRETARY OF THE AIR FORCE FOR SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY AND ENGINEERING, OFFICE OF THE ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF THE AIR FORCE FOR ACQUISITION 

Dr. WALKER. Thank you. Chairman Wilson, Ranking Member 

Langevin, members of the subcommittee and staff, I am pleased 
11 

again to have the opportunity to provide testimony on the fiscal 

year 2017 Air Force Science and Technology Program, and our efforts to innovatively and affordably respond to warfighter needs 

today, while simultaneously creating the force of the future. I 

would like to thank Congress, and especially this subcommittee, for 

your continued support of the Air Force’s S&T programs, our laboratories, the infrastructure, and most importantly, our valuable 

scientists and engineers. Over the past 31⁄2 years that I have been 

the Air Force’s science technology executive, I have seen the fruits 

of your labors and our ability to advance game-changing technologies, continue to develop our people, and strengthen the industrial base for the long-term security of our Nation. 

As you have heard from my colleagues today, and from the Air 

Force senior leaders in the past, we are at a critical juncture in history. The relentless pace of change continues to increase the complexity and decrease the predictability in warfare. We believe our 

science and technology program capability development processes, 

our STEM workforce, our laboratory infrastructure, are all critical 

to achieving new levels of strategic agility to address this rapid 

rate of change. By strategic agility, I mean harnessing the attributes of flexibility, adaptability, and responsiveness in order to 

make us more effective in a rapidly changing world. 

As highlighted in the Air Force strategy, strategic agility allows 

us to address evolving threat environments faster than our adversaries, which can help us counter uncertainty. Our efforts in this 

area, many of which are described in my written statement, support the Department’s third offset strategy and are aligned with 

the long-range research and development planning program. 

Further, the Air Force is leveraging Mr. Kendall’s Better Buyer 

Power 3.0 initiatives to strengthen our ability to innovate, to 

achieve technical excellence, and to dominate—to field dominant 

military capabilities. Air Force senior leadership is committed to 

S&T investment and embracing new paradigms and capability development. Our fiscal year 2017 President’s budget request for S&T 

is approximately $2.5 billion, which represents a 4.5 percent increase over our fiscal year 2016 budget. 

We emphasize research in hypersonics and low-cost cruise missile technologies for contested environments in support of the longrange research and development planning program. We are working on advanced combat missiles and research and technologies 

that provide robust position, navigation, and timing capabilities; 

and, also, focusing on the Air Force’s game-changing technologies 

which include hypersonics, autonomous systems, unmanned systems, directed energy, and nanotechnology. 

As a whole, this research is designed to amplify the speed, range, 

and flexibility and precision of air power. Our fiscal year 2017 

President’s budget request also includes increase funding in budget 

activities 4 and 6 to support our development planning, prototyping, experimentation, and our model and simulation efforts. The reinvigoration of development planning in the Air Force at the enterprise level gets us back to our roots, and allows us to really formulate innovative strategy choices and the leveraged attributes of 

agility and our capability to development. The Air Force is using 

enterprise capability collaboration teams as an approach to facili-
12 

tate the developmental planning of our highest priority mission 

areas. These teams are chartered by senior leadership to explore 

cross-domain concepts of operations, combined with the existing 

and emerging technologies to address future warfighting gaps. 

The ultimate goal is to identify capabilities, concepts of operations, emerging technologies to inform acquisition decisions in the 

future. Experimentation is the engine to our reinvigorated development planning process. It enables the unfettered exploration of alternatives of future—future environments and brings together our 

operators, it brings together our technologists, the requirements 

generators, and the acquisition professionals, all collaborating together from the beginning to the end to develop a truly integrated 

approach to solving warfighting problems. 

We are currently conducting four pilot experimentation campaigns addressing future concepts for close air support, operationalized and directed energy, reducing time to move from data to decisions, and defeating agile and intelligent targets. We are also focusing on prototyping as a valuable tool across all levels of technology 

maturation from initial concepts to operational prototypes. Our 

adaptive engine transition program is an excellent example of prototyping being used to reduce risks and bridging the gap between 

S&T and a program of record. 

None of these efforts would be possible without our world-class 

scientists and engineers operating state-of-the-art laboratory facilities. We continue to leverage the authorities and lab demo, the 

SMART [Science, Mathematics and Research for Transformation] 

scholarships, and other funding sources to recruit, retain, and develop our Air Force STEM workforce. In addition, we are 

leveraging section 219 and MILCON [military construction] funding to build and maintain world-class laboratory facilities for them 

to operate in. 

Chairman, and members of the subcommittee and staff, thank 

you again for the opportunity to testify today. I look forward to 

your questions. 

[The prepared statement of Dr. Walker can be found in the Appendix on page 86.] 

Mr. WILSON. Thank you very much, Dr. Walker. 

We now proceed to Dr. Prabhakar. 

STATEMENT OF DR. ARATI PRABHAKAR, DIRECTOR, DEFENSE 

ADVANCED RESEARCH PROJECTS AGENCY (DARPA) 

Dr. PRABHAKAR. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Mr. Langevin, members of the subcommittee. I will add my thanks for this opportunity 

to be here with my colleagues. 

DARPA works closely with this entire defense science and technology community. And we also work with defense companies, with 

commercial companies, with universities and labs of all sorts. We 

are very much part of this wide ecosystem. Within that ecosystem, 

DARPA has one specific role, and that is, to make the pivotal early 

investments in the technologies that can have huge impact, offscale impact, on the future of national security. 

Now, today when we do that work, we do it in the context of 

these shifts in the global security environment in a world that is 

filled with fast-moving technologies, very much the themes that we 
13 

have been talking about this afternoon. I wanted to give you one 

concrete example that brings all of that to life, and it is an example 

about aircraft self-protection. Today, when our aircraft go out on 

their missions, they are loaded up with a set of jamming profiles. 

So these are specific frequencies and wave forms that they can 

transmit in order to jam and disrupt an adversary radar to protect 

themselves. 

Sometimes when they go out today, they encounter a new kind 

of frequency, or a different wave form, one that they are not programmed for, that is not in their library. And in a time of conflict, 

that would leave them exposed. So what do we do when we come 

across that situation today? Today what we do is we have to send 

a new aircraft out, a different aircraft out, to collect that signal. 

That signal is then sent to a lab where it is analyzed, where a new 

jamming profile is created, where the development—where the new 

software upgrade for the system is developed, and then eventually, 

months, sometimes years later, our aircraft finally get the protection that they need against this new kind of radar signal. 

Now, in a time when our adversaries were changing their radar 

signals very rarely, that might have been okay. But, of course, that 

very slow-moving world is now gone. And in fact, it is actually just 

not that hard to modify a radar system today. If you think about 

it, the same technologies that brought—that have brought communications and the Internet to billions of people around the world, 

those are the same technologies that now people are using to modify radars to shift the frequencies and they use new wave forms. 

And we see that going on in many different regions around the 

world. 

One of our programs at DARPA is taking a whole new approach 

to this problem, this is an effort that we refer to as cognitive electronic warfare. We are using artificial intelligence to learn in real 

time what the adversary’s radar is doing, and then on the fly, create a new jamming profile. And that whole process of sensing, 

learning, and adapting is going on continuously. So what all of that 

means is that our aircraft in the future won’t have to wait weeks— 

you know, months to years, but in real time, in the battlespace, 

they will be able to adapt and jam this new radar threat that they 

get. 

I think that is just one example of how powerful it can be to first 

accelerate these areas of research and technology, and then apply 

them for our military capabilities. And across the DARPA portfolio, 

you will find many, many other examples of that kind of power of 

technology. They range from new systems that we are developing. 

We just put in the water our new surface vessel that will be able 

to navigate across the open ocean by itself without a single sailor 

onboard. If you look across our research portfolio, you will find that 

we are harnessing photons and algorithms, and even living cells to 

open possibilities that people really just couldn’t even have dreamt 

about until today. And I am happy to talk about all of that, but 

I want to finish this afternoon by just touching on two pillars of 

your support that are so vital for us to be able to do this work. 

The first, of course, is the budget. And your support here has 

been vital to a relative stability that we have benefited from at 
14 

DARPA over the last few years. So I will ask again for your full 

support of the fiscal year 2017 President’s budget request level. 

The second area is people. And, of course, nothing could be more 

important to that—than that. I want to really give a special thanks 

to the work that this committee has done over many years, first in 

creating a special 1101 hiring authority, and then over many years, 

supporting that. That is a big reason that DARPA is able to move 

fast and hire exceptional people. And really, you know, great people 

and that trust that you have in us, that is why DARPA is able to 

develop breakthrough technologies that allow us to take these huge 

strides forward in our national security capabilities. And with your 

continued support, that is exactly what we will continue to do. So 

thank you very much. And I look forward to answering questions 

along with my colleagues. 

[The prepared statement of Dr. Prabhakar can be found in the 

Appendix on page 126.] 

Mr. WILSON. And, Dr. Prabhakar, thank you very much. And I 

also want to thank you so much for the opportunity I had to visit 

your facilities, to visit your personnel. It really is reassuring, and 

I hope that other members of the subcommittee will take advantage of the open invitation you have 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 

to come visit. And—but it really is inspiring, the personnel that 

you have assembled. 

As we now begin the very strict 5 minutes, beginning with me. 

Mr. Welby, could you explain the third offset strategy? How are 

science and technology investments being aligned to support that 

strategy? 

Mr. WELBY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. As we have discussed in, 

I think, every statement here today, we find ourselves increasingly 

challenged by near-peer competitors who are investing in high-end 

capabilities, in ballistic missiles, in advanced cruise missile technology, in advanced electronic warfare and other capabilities that 

directly challenge U.S. systems. We recognize that as we look to 

the future, it is going to be increasingly difficult to compete with 

those capabilities in an investment-for-investment, dollar-for-dollar, 

system-for-system basis. We need to be thinking harder about how 

we shift the shape of competition, the playing field on which our 

soldiers, sailors, and marines will be fighting into areas where can 

ensure the United States has an enduring dominant technical capability. 

The Deputy Secretary regularly talks about the first and second 

offset strategy, looking back to competition with the Soviet Union, 

and in the 1950s, how technical nuclear weapons were deployed to 

counter the numerical superiority of that threat and how, in the 

1970s and 1980s, the Department developed precision weapons, 

ISR [intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance], low observability, novel use of space, network-centric capabilities, the toolkit 

that we have fought with since to remarkable success. 

Today, we now see others around the world building capabilities 

directly designed to blunt those U.S. advantages. We now see others having those capabilities which were once purely the domain of 

the United States. And as that symmetry begins to develop between ourselves and potential competitors, we want to assure that 

we have asymmetric advantage that we can deploy in the future. 
15 

This whole discussion about offset strategies is about finding 

those technology offsets, how they map into operational capabilities, how we can invest in those capabilities that will begin to move 

the ball in a way that will shape a longstanding advantage for U.S. 

capabilities. 

And we believe those capabilities will rise from the emerging 

technical innovations that were discussed here today in areas like 

thinking about new long-range systems and exploiting manned/unmanned machine teaming in new ways and leveraging autonomy to 

build things like cognitive warfare systems, electronic warfare systems, and thinking about spectral agility, and many of the things 

that we are working on in our laboratories, but moving them faster 

into tactical application and arranging those into strategic concepts 

that will allow our forces to shape future battlefields. 

The topics that were mentioned earlier, things like the longrange research and development planning program, an activity 

that I led for the previous 18 months, provided a set of potential 

options for the future of the Department, new material systems 

that might offer significant advantage in the future, that report— 

while the report itself remains classified, is reflected in the support 

and decisions that were made in the shaping the 2017 budget submission, and informed by many—a number of other studies in 

areas and the ongoing war-gaming activities that are going on 

across the Department. 

And, so, the third offset strategy is not a thing, if you will. It is 

an ambition to think differently about how a department will fight 

in the future, how the services will align technology, organization, 

and capabilities to provide that enduring advantage. But it is underpinned in a very significant way by our critical technology investments we are making here across the services. 

Mr. WILSON. Well, as a very grateful dad of four sons serving in 

the military, I appreciate you thinking ahead on how to protect our 

service members and protect the American people. 

And, Dr. Prabhakar, could you describe some of the efforts 

DARPA has initiated to combat the ability of groups like Daesh to 

spread violent extremist propaganda and radicalize users online. 

Dr. PRABHAKAR. Mr. Chairman, you have touched on something 

that is increasingly becoming integral to any kind of conflict 

around the world. Obviously, I think, we are all aware of the use 

of social media by ISIS [Islamic State of Iraq and Syria], ISIL. It 

is also very integral to hybrid warfare that we see the Russians engaging in. So I think it is a vital important area today. 

DARPA has had programs over the last several years that bring 

data analytics and tools to end users so that they can start to wrestle with this vast array of bits that are flying at them, whether it 

is military information or open online information. And building on 

those today, we are developing some tools that we hope will be very 

helpful in these kinds of future information conflicts. One specific 

area in the last year where we have had some good progress, last 

couple of years, has been focusing on the impact on what—we have 

been working with law enforcement who have been worried about 

human trafficking. And they have been struggling to really see— 

you know, if you think about where people advertise for the sex 

trade, for example, a lot of that is open advertising. But right now 
16 

our law enforcement partners, we found, really are sort of searching that space single threaded, one Google search at a time, if you 

like, a very arduous way to figure out the patterns and the connectivity of the kinds of ads that are being served up. 

So what we have developed, in that case, was a set of tools that 

allow for very deep domain-specific, deep Web search, not just the 

surface Web that is indexed by Google or Bing, but really an ability 

to go deep into the open Web and find all the linkages among ads, 

for example, for human trafficking, that are related to human trafficking. 

What we find is that it dramatically enhances our law enforcement partners’ ability to find those linkages. And that tool is now 

being used, for example, by the district attorney’s office in New 

York, and has led to a number of indictments, and even at least 

one conviction. 

So I think that gives you a little bit of a sense of the power of 

the kinds of tools. When you apply these big data approaches to 

these areas like law enforcement, you can see, I think, how that 

would extend into the information warfare domain that sadly, I 

think, is going to become integral to conflicts going forward. 

Mr. WILSON. Well, thank you very much. And thank you for citing about human trafficking. I am very grateful. My home State of 

South Carolina, by State legislation and prosecution, has been one 

of the leading States to address what is just horrific. 

We now proceed to Mr. Langevin. 

Mr. LANGEVIN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I thank our panel 

here, again, for your testimony here today and the work you are 

doing in these fields. 

Admiral Winter, if I could start with you, can you discuss the relationship and the coordination efforts between ONR and the Strategic Capabilities Office when it comes to directed energy efforts. 

And certainly, I would like to also hear from our other witnesses 

how you are working with the Strategic Capabilities Office as well. 

But, Admiral, let’s start with you if we could. 

Admiral WINTER. Yes, sir. I am in a periodic contact with Dr. 

Will Roper, who is the head of the Strategic Capabilities Office, 

and geographically, they are one block down from my office. And 

we have continuous discussions about the technologies that ONR is 

bringing forward that I mentioned in my opening remarks across 

the spectrum of electric weapons and directed energy specifically, 

but others. And so we have a number of relationships and technological partnerships with the Strategic Capabilities Office. I will 

focus on the electric weapons and the directed energy to your question, sir. 

Our work with the Strategic Capabilities Office is a partnership 

in requirements and funding to pursue the science and technology 

objectives of the Department of the Navy. Our Department of the 

Navy’s strategic focus on laser and directed energy, so high energy 

laser and also high energy RF [radio frequency] technologies, to 

push forward to meet our Marine Corps and Navy objectives continues to move forward in marked progress, and moving forward, 

as I mentioned earlier. The Strategic Capabilities Office has come 

forward with their analysts and resources to provide us an oppor-
17 

tunity to move faster and to move into different directions and 

partnerships. 

From an electric weapon perspective, we are in partnership with 

them on our electromagnetic rail gun. But I don’t consider that directed energy. I look at that as more as electric weaponry. 

So right now, sir, those are the—that is our relationship. That 

is our engagement. The Strategic Capabilities Office provides those 

resources and guidance along the lines of the third offset strategy 

and other greater departmental warfighting capability analysis. 

And the Department of the Navy has the opportunity to partner 

and bring our resources to bear to help Dr. Roper and his team realize their mission. 

Mr. LANGEVIN. Okay. We are not going to have—I am not going 

to have time, I don’t think, to hear from everybody on that, but I 

would like to hear your feedback. Maybe you can respond in writing on how you are interacting with the Strategic Capabilities Office. 

What I would like to ask for all of you, is directed energy a priority, and, in particular, is it a priority for the Department? I know 

many of you are working on these things. And, Admiral, you have 

talked about. But I want to know, is it a priority for the Department? Are they ready to accept these technologies once they have 

matured, and what technologies are maturing in this field? I think 

you talked about the Ponce, Admiral. So maybe from the other ones 

if we could hear your perspective on these things? 

Mr. WELBY. Maybe I could start and we could move down the 

table quickly. 

Mr. LANGEVIN. Yeah. 

Mr. WELBY. Sir, I believe that today—you know, we have long 

had a conversation about directed energy being just 5 years off, and 

it has always been just 5 years off. And what—you know, I have 

a strong background in working directed energy programs. I think 

we are now today at a very different place, a place where those systems are now rapidly moving towards realization and are going to 

have impact on future military capabilities. Each of the services 

has efforts underway today. We heard about the Ponce. I will let 

Dave talk about some of the things that the Air Force is doing, particularly in advanced beam direction, I think, that are putting the 

other pieces together for real airborne lasers, and the opportunities 

in programs of record in areas like IFPC [indirect fire protection 

capability], where the Army is considering utilizing directed energy 

as a tool in the counter-rocket, artillery, mortar space. 

I think we are now seeing application space emergence of capabilities, the breakthrough technologies, smart beam direction, realizable solid state lasers at high powers, 100 kilowatt plus kind 

of levels, and the ability to amass large numbers of fiber lasers coherently and to be able assemble and scale at a way that we just 

have not been able to do. All those—I am very excited about what 

is happening in each of those spaces. I’ll turn it down the table. 

Mr. LANGEVIN. Thank you. 

Ms. MILLER. So the Army is committed to pursuing directed energy. Our high energy laser program within the Army S&T is demonstrating capability and has been used in an analysis of alternatives for the indirect fire protection capability program of record. 
18 

Right now, we are aligned to transition into that program of record 

in the 2023—fiscal year 2023 timeframe. Why that long? Because 

we are doing a step-wise demonstration of capability in the mission 

set of the Army. So we have to make sure that the lasers work and 

do the full set of scopes against the threats that we project. And 

those threats include the counter-rockets, artillery, and mortar, but 

also, UAV threats and cruise missile threats. We are trying to 

make sure that we understand, before we offer it to a soldier, what 

it can do and they understand its capabilities. And that is already 

planned in and funded. 

Dr. WALKER. On the Air Force side, we have got a strong support 

for the Air Combat Command and our Air Force Special Operations 

Command [AFSOC] for integrating lasers defensively and offensively onto our aircraft in the future. Air Combat Command, together with the Air Force Research Lab, has commissioned the, 

what we call the Shield Advanced Technology demonstration to put 

a medium-powered laser, 30-kilowatt-class laser into a pod on a 

fighter aircraft to provide self-protection with the goal to grow the 

power as the devices grow in power. The Special Operations Command [SOCOM] has now commissioned both the Air Force Research Laboratory and the Navy at Dahlgren working with 

SOCOM to look at putting an offensive capability onto a AFSOC 

130 gunship. 

So that is a second one we are working. There is a lot of technology in beam steering and in power management, thermal management, that has to be worked in these that we are working under 

a considered S&T program with an eye toward transition on those 

two aircraft. 

Mr. LANGEVIN. Very good. Thank you. 

And with that, I know my time I have gone over, and I know Mr. 

Lamborn has similar questions, my co-chair of the Directed Energy 

Caucus. So in that case, I will yield back, Mr. Chairman, and 

thank you. 

Mr. KLINE. Thank you, Mr. Langevin. And now we will proceed 

to your teammate, Congressman Doug Lamborn of Colorado. 

Mr. LAMBORN. Thank you. And I thank the co-chairman of the 

Directed Energy Caucus, Representative Langevin of Rhode Island, 

for beginning this subject. It is such an important subject. And I 

am just going to build on what he has already asked. 

How do you all make sure that you are not duplicating what 

each other is doing? I see three centers of important research of 

making things operational, not to mention DARPA. And so—and I 

don’t know if that is for you, Mr. Welby, or for the individual 

branches to respond to. But how do we make sure that there is no 

duplication, you know, no reinventing the wheel going on, whether 

it is directed energy or anything? 

Mr. WELBY. If I could quickly, I think this is a great area where 

we can demonstrate kind of solid cooperation coordination through 

S&T and across the services. The High Energy Laser Joint Technology Office serves as a clearinghouse and a center for coordination across all the efforts across the Department. And that allows 

us to ensure that each of our investments are aligned, not duplicative, and are building on each other. And I think that in each of 

the domains, there are service-unique issues. So it is with how 
19 

those will be hosted on future platforms. But there is also supporting technology that services all those needs. And we very well 

coordinate, I think, in this space, across all those areas. And I will 

turn it back—— 

Mr. LAMBORN. And, Ms. Miller, I see that you have been working 

on this for 30 years. So—and, Admiral, did you want to respond to 

that as well? 

Admiral WINTER. Not to the 30-year question, sir, but the center—the center—the communities of interest that the Department 

has established that allows the services and DARPA to come forward in functional areas allows us to share our resources, our research, and our efforts, not specifically for directed energy, but 

across the board, that allows us to see what I call common, cousin, 

and unique efforts. And there is some benefit in common research 

where it is appropriate. But as Mr. Welby mentioned, our uniquenesses for maritime shipboard applications, for example, and also 

looking at underwater directed energy applications, there is challenges in that. And so our efforts that go forward are looked at the 

Navy uniquenesses. I am very—sitting here now one year downrange, very satisfied that we collectively—we meet once a month at 

the senior level, and we have working group that meets once a 

week to talk across our span of 6.1, 6.2, and 6.3 research to understand where we can leverage off of each other. And not only within 

the Department of Defense, but with our industry partners, academia, and our other interagency folks. 

Mr. LAMBORN. Mrs. Miller, would you agree that we are—like 

Mr. Welby has already said, that we are—it is not something that 

is always 5 years off, that we are now getting a lot closer, if not 

actually there, with operational directed energy weapons? 

Ms. MILLER. I believe—— 

Mr. LAMBORN. Defensive and offensive. 

Ms. MILLER [continuing]. I believe we are very close. And I think 

right now what we need to do is build trust with our operators so 

they understand what lasers can do. Lasers have been promised for 

an awful long time, and they have never held up and delivered 

what was asked for. And so the operators are quite rightfully skeptical, which is why you see the services taking laser out in operational environments and letting them be used by operators so they 

understand what the capabilities are. 

I think we are very close. And while we are looking at the large 

capabilities that these can provide, there will be steps along the 

way where we will spin out lesser capable laser systems that can 

do good things on smaller platforms, and that is something that 

you will see coming out relatively soon. 

Dr. WALKER. A couple of things on that, sir. The Air Force every 

day is flying with lasers under our large aircraft, infrared countermeasure system. So we have done exactly that. We have spun out 

lower-powered lasers that gave us the capability to protect our aircraft, flying in theater today. The goal is to build off the experiences that we have had there to, as we get larger power outputs, 

better thermal management out of smaller packaged lasers to be 

able to transition these to other aircraft besides our large transport 

aircraft. And as we build those powers eventually moving defensive 
20 

capability to using that same laser to give us offensive capability 

as well. 

So I think we are on a good path. The move to electronic lasers 

has allowed us to do that. The other point is, one of the reasons 

that we are able to do this well across the services, is that we have 

a joint technology office that really works those fundamental laser 

technologies for us as a joint team that we then spin off each into 

our own particular areas, our domains for usage. And having that 

office support, what we need as the three of us sit on the advisory 

panel to determine what they are going to actually invest the funds 

in, make sure that they are meeting our needs as a service. 

And the last piece is our partnership with DARPA has really allowed to us move lasers forward, moving the slab lasers, electric lasers, and moving into fiber lasers. DARPA has been a key partner 

in allowing us to do that. 

Mr. LAMBORN. I appreciate the work that you are all doing. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. WILSON. And thank you co-chairman Lamborn. We now proceed to Congressman Marc Veasey of Texas. 

Mr. VEASEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I wanted to specifically 

ask you about talent as it relates to implementing a lot of this new 

technology. Of course, you know that the Secretary has visited Silicon Valley and talked with the executives there. How does the Department tap into these smaller companies, because so much of 

what has happened in Silicon Valley and the technology that we 

are using today, and so much of the technology that our enemies 

around the world are using, I mean, we have been following this 

deal with not being able to unlock the iPhone. 

How does the Department tap into the technology that may be 

available from some of these smaller companies that aren’t necessarily coming up through some of the larger defense corporations 

and things like that that we normally use? Anybody that wants to 

answer that, it would be great. 

Mr. WELBY. Let me start, again, and pass it down the table. I 

think we have a number of tools that we use I think very effectively to engage small innovative business. And small business is 

often the key engine for innovation. Traditional tools, like our 

Small Business Innovative Research program, our STTR [Small 

Business Technology Transfer] program, and tools like the Rapid 

Innovation Fund, which has a very large portion of small business 

engaged in rapidly moving contracts that can be rapidly exploited, 

moving technology to application. 

The Secretary has been committed to trying, opening the Department to new sources of innovation. He has been out engaging small 

companies in Boston, and on the West Coast, will happen in other 

parts of the country here shortly, personally demonstrating the importance of the Department engaging with small innovative business to think through ways that we can couple what they are working on with the needs of the Department. 

I spent a day last week out at our DIUx facility in Mountain 

View, where we had an afternoon and invited small innovative 

companies in to come talk to us. And we had over 200 companies 

show up at that meeting. I spent 2 hours in one-on-ones with small 

companies afterwards. A lot of these folks don’t want to be called 
21 

small companies, of course, because they want to be the next big 

thing and they take that as a bit of a—but it is really kind of remarkable sets of ideas. Traditionally, the challenge has been trying 

to connect those back to the needs of the Department, and many 

of these companies don’t have the time, energy, connections, background knowledge to be able to make those kind of connections. 

And the question earlier was what are we trying to do with 

DIUx, part of it is to take that burden off of those companies and 

to allow some of our smart folks to serve as shepherds, if you will, 

to serve as ambassadors to connect those folks who have ideas, who 

have new emerging technology, often focused at a commercial market, and connect them with people in the Department who could 

really apply that. 

And so we have got folks sitting out in that facility in Mountain 

View today who understand a lot about the needs of the Department. They spend a lot of time talking to small innovative businesses, and they are trying to make those connections every day. 

We think that is going to help us accelerate the process. It is a people thing, as well as simply the kind of making sure we have dollars and contracting vehicles in place. 

Mr. VEASEY. Yes, and let me ask you another question along the 

lines as far as innovation and technology. You know, one of the 

things that has been brought up also is retaining talent, the Pentagon being able to retain talent because Silicon Valley and other 

tech centers can pay so much more. Just from a budgetary standpoint, do you think that as far as retaining that talent, that maybe 

we need to look at paying those people more? And let me give you 

an example of what I mean by that. Like, for instance, in State 

government, like in the State that I am from, or the State that Mr. 

Aguilar is from, where you have large pension funds. The people 

that actually are the State employees that run those pension funds 

are usually the highest paid employees. They make a lot more than 

the Governor makes. 

Do you think that there should be some sort of a, you know, 

carve-out for individuals, because this is obviously going to be high 

priority with our enemies being able to more and more use this 

technology to try to harm us; that we should have some kind of a 

carve-out that will allow us to pay the people that have this expertise and keep them at the Pentagon? 

Mr. WELBY. Sir, I don’t want to keep them at the Pentagon. I 

want to keep them out in our laboratories where they are going to 

make those real compelling changes. But the thing I do worry 

about is talent. The thing that keeps me up at night is talent. And 

I am very excited that under the ‘‘Force of the Future’’ personnel 

initiatives that the Secretary has initiated, we are now talking 

about talent management, talent retention, recruiting, using kind 

of commercial recruiters as ways to get access to key talent. 

I don’t worry that—in the government, it is going to be very difficult for us to compete dollar for dollar in terms of salary with 

folks. I note that last week, the National Engineering Salary Survey came out, and I noted that the average salary, not the talent 

that we are looking for, but kind of average over the engineering 

professionals in the United States, the typical pay increase was 7.5 
22 

percent over the last year. We haven’t seen a 7.5 percent increase 

in government I don’t think ever. 

So I mean, every year we kind of fall behind in terms of that 

offer we are able to make people. But people don’t come to work 

for us because of the pay. Historically, people came to work for the 

government because of stability, but the current generation doesn’t 

want stability. What they want is opportunity. And we offer, in 

many of the laboratories and many of our critical areas, the ability 

to make a difference, a mission that is compelling, an access to key 

technical tools, and in some areas, we are competing directly with 

the best for cutting-edge talent. 

I worry though, in some areas, biotechnology, in artificial intelligence, computer science, robotics, we are in a strict competition 

for talent. And I watch those areas very closely, and the folks that 

I have on my short list of our best, I see more leaving than coming 

in. So we are working hard to kind of focus our recruiting efforts 

in that area. We are thinking about what we can do to augment 

those people with contract and support or other mechanisms that 

we can have. But any flexibility in people I think is going to be 

critically important in the future. 

Dr. PRABHAKAR. I know we are late on time. I would like to just 

tag on one small comment. A very specific thing that we use all the 

time is the special hiring authority that this committee originated 

in 1999, and has extended over and over again. It is called the 

1101 authority. It gives DARPA a little bit of flexibility in salary 

levels; not nearly enough to compete head on, but exactly, as Steve 

said, it makes it not completely impossible to go after some of these 

amazing people. 

But that authority is vital to our ability to bring in amazing people and we do regularly compete against staggeringly large number 

salary offers that our candidates are getting, and we are able to get 

them because they want to come change the world from DARPA. 

But the specific thing that this committee has an opportunity that 

can make a huge difference, is that 1101 authority has been an experimental authority now for 16 years. I think the experiment has 

really proven out, and I would ask for your support to make that 

a permanent option for hiring as we go forward. 

Mr. VEASEY. Thank you. 

Dr. WALKER. I would also like to weigh in on it. One of the things 

that really allows us to attract top talent is some of our scholarship 

capabilities, and the SMART program has been one that has been 

exceedingly successful for the Air Force and for the other services. 

One of the keys to retaining talent is getting them into the laboratory and getting them the opportunity to actually operate in the 

laboratory and have the freedom they get and the magnitude of responsibility they get within the government laboratories. The 

SMART program is a way to bring them in and then to continue 

to educate them as they move forward, and, so, that is one of the 

ways we have been able to bring in top talent, and so far, we have 

been retaining about 87 percent of our SMART-educated folks, once 

their government service mandate is up. So, that has been very 

successful. I would like to continue that one. 

Mr. VEASEY. Thank you. Mr. Chairman, thank you very much. 
23 

Mr. WILSON. Thank you, Mr. Veasey. We now proceed to Congressman Pete Aguilar of California. 

Mr. AGUILAR. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, I appreciate the opportunity, and I had similar questions to Mr. Veasey related to your 

ranks and pipeline and the number of researchers we have. And I 

know out of the material that was one of the takeaways that I had 

is continuing to offer that flexibility and the resources that you 

have in order to attract and retain those who are at the laboratory 

level working hard for us. 

You know, we heard a little bit about directed energy, and within 

S&T, if you folks, you know, I may be the last questioner here, so, 

you know, within your crystal ball, if you were talking to your 

predecessor, or, I am sorry, your successor, you know, 10, 20 years 

down the line, what areas do you think this committee and those 

individuals will be working on? And I say that, Mr. Welby, you 

know, you talked about small businesses, and those in the outside 

world who were thinking about big ideas, and, but I mean, I look 

across this table, and what you have done in government, the five 

of you, you know, you are our innovators, and you are our line to, 

you know, weigh and discuss these issues of importance that are 

going to help protect and defend this country. 

And, so, I would just like to hear a few ideas or examples of 

things that you feel you would be talking to your successors about, 

you know, down the line if you were crystal balling looking at areas 

that this committee may have to weigh in on. 

Mr. WELBY. Let me quick start. Sir, I’ve had the opportunity to 

kind of spend my life thinking about that future, trying to live in 

that future, trying to predict what those things that will matter 

will be. When I look across what is being invested in by my colleagues and the folks within the Department, I see four areas I will 

just bring up. There are many more. But I will go through these 

very quickly. 

One is unmanned and autonomous systems, the work that is 

going on in the Navy in unmanned undersea vehicles and the 

DARPA work in unmanned surface vehicles, the work going on in 

swarming air vehicles. I think we are going to see a lot of—a very 

fundamental change from the baby steps we have taken in that 

space today to a very different world in the future. 

I see a real opportunity as we come to the end of Moore’s law 

where we have been able to predict microprocessor change over 

time, seeing explosion in new capabilities. We built industries on 

the predictability of Moore’s law, which is coming to an end and it 

is going to create new opportunities. I think that we are going to 

see biology as a technology, a major push of DARPA’s start to 

shape the world in fundamental ways. We need to think about 

that. That is an area for which the Department is not as strong as 

we could be. We need to start thinking about how we build our biological technology capabilities; not just—we think about biochem 

defense, but really, biology, for example, as a manufacturing 

science. 

And then thinking about that last topic, manufacturing, what is 

the future of manufacturing and design? How will we be delivering 

capability in the future? How will it be stanching that capability 

to advanced systems? I think that that list is interesting because 
24 

those four things are not going to be unique to defense. All of them 

are going to have commercial implications and we need to be—if 

I tell my folks, we want to be able to surf the coming wave in these 

areas, but to be a good surfer, you have to be out in front of that 

wave paddling in front of it. And we need to be smart getting out 

in front of that before those things hit. And so that is my short list 

anyway, sir. 

Ms. MILLER. So he had four critical ones and in the area of autonomy, you know, we are looking at intelligence systems and how 

we can get the capability to interface autonomous capability with 

humans and make sure that we have a seamless way to provide 

kind of design for individual capability, be it training, be it operating systems that scenario that goes into the biological sciences 

that we are not usually accustomed to. And so when we talk about 

building our workforce and giving them interesting dilemmas to 

bring them into our team to work for the Department of Defense, 

that is one of those areas that we are building up our expertise because we see that as critical for the future going forward. 

Admiral WINTER. Sir, I just have to look at 30 years ago what 

was in our petri dish and test tubes that we are fighting with 

today. So what should be in our petri dish and test tubes today 

that we are going to be fighting with in 30 years that I would tell 

to my successor. I look at areas of brain-based learning, understanding the true neuroscience of human thinking and how we can 

model that into an engineering model that will allow us to truly realize cognitive artificial intelligence of man-machine capabilities. 

That is one area. 

Breakthrough in our nano and photonic domain, of being able to 

process and transmit data at rates that are just unfathomable 

today, based upon advanced material science and bringing that together to then enable that cognitive AI [artificial intelligence] and 

man-based and machine capabilities to levels we haven’t even 

thought about, Terminators, those type of things, moving forward. 

And then from a bio-inspired perspective, the advances in our 

synthetic biology of being able to craft organisms that can eat ferro 

metallic material and excrete electricity in any domain, undersea, 

a vacuum, allows us to start to think of the possibilities of endless 

supplies of energy. Endless supplies of energy are things that people scoff at, but the scientists are the ones that are supposed to be 

doing the things that are scoffed at. So I see areas in brain-based 

learning, our bio-inspired technologies, our cognitive IA, advanced 

materials, and photonics and nano areas. Thank you, sir. 

Dr. WALKER. I have to say that we are all looking down the same 

path. One of the areas I really see promise that in 20 years from 

now, I would hope to be actually the state of the art is really the 

science of the very small. Is how do we take advantage of nanomaterials, quantum effects, metamaterials, and then how do we link 

that with biological agents that actually help us manufacture those 

materials in a very effective way. 

There is a lot of promise in that area that I think we will see 

in the future will move us into being able to build materials that 

we don’t even conceive at this point in time. The other areas which 

Mr. Welby hit on was manufacturing is fundamentally changing. 

And we are not going to see large factories in the future like we 
25 

are used to today. We are going to see the ability to actually grow 

things and other manufacturing technologies that will allow us to 

get our economic order quantities down to the order of one, which 

will fundamentally change how we do business where we don’t 

have to buy 1,000 to be effective. 

And the final one is in autonomy. We are just scratching the surface with autonomy and aiding humans. Autonomous decision-making to aid humans to be able to execute warfighting from a distance. We are seeing it now in its very infancy. Twenty years from 

now, we will just see this as everyday. You will see that every day 

when you get in your car and your car takes you where you want 

to go, and parks you where you need to be, and you read your iPad 

the entire time you are going there. 

Dr. PRABHAKAR. These are all great answers. I think they are 

terrific. Let me add one different kind of log on the fire. There is 

something happening with social behavior with the Internet, the 

Internet of Things and social media. And social behavior itself is 

changing, but also how we can look at and understand social behavior is changing in some fundamental ways. It is going to, in the 

next 10 or 20 years, I think it is going to give us even bigger headaches than we already see. We are going to have privacy headaches. We are going to have information warfare headaches. We 

see that today. I think those are going to get worse over time. But 

at the same time, what is happening is, I think there is going to 

be a fundamental shift in our ability to understand social behavior. 

And I would submit that there is actually nothing more fundamental to national security than that. 

Mr. AGUILAR. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. WILSON. And thank you, Mr. Aguilar. And Dr. Prabhakar, 

the, as you have said, headaches, I was hoping with the Internet, 

it would be opportunity. 

Dr. PRABHAKAR. Both. 

Mr. WILSON. And it should be both, but sadly, recently I have 

seen more headaches than I have seen opportunity. And so we are 

counting on you to figure out how to address the headaches. So 

again, I am very grateful for each of you for your service. And there 

being no further business, and upon the advice of Mr. Langevin, we 

are now adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 3:26 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.] 

A P P E N D I X 

FEBRUARY 24, 2016 

PREPARED STATEMENTS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD 

FEBRUARY 24, 2016 

(31) 

Chairman Wilson Opening Statement 

Hearing: 

"Department of Defense (DOD) Fiscal Year 2017 Science and Technology 

Programs: Defense Innovation to Create the Future Military Force" 

February 24th 2016, 2:00pm, 2212 

I call this hearing of the Emerging Threats and Capabilities subcommittee of the 

House Armed Services Committee to order. 

I am pleased to welcome everyone here today for this hearing on the Fiscal Year 

2017 Budget Request for science and technology programs within the Department of 

Defense. 

In a recent speech, Secretary of Defense Ash Carter spoke about the return of 

great-power competition, and the need to deter our most advanced competitors. We can 

only deter these competitors and adversaries when the Department of Defense harnesses 

innovation and creates new capabilities for the military that will maintain and expand our 

tech-superiority, now and into the future to achieve peace through strength. 

This budget request is a good step in tackling the modernization challenges of the 

Department. Activities like the Third Offset Strategy and the Long Range Research and 

Development Plan are important to charting a course that takes a strategic view of the 

security environment; however, I remain concerned that it is too little too late. As I see it, 

starting major initiatives at the end of an administration makes it difficult to ensure that 

these things will survive the new budgetary and policy priorities that will naturally arise 

with a new President. I hope I am wrong, since I support many of the things being 

proposed in this budget request, but only time will tell. 

l would like to welcome our distinguished panel of witnesses, and appreciate their 

perspectives on all of these issues. This panel includes: 

Dr. Stephen Welby, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering 

Ms. Mary Miller, Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Army for Research and 

Technology 

Rear Admiral Mat Winter, USN, ChiefofNaval Research 

Dr. David Walker, Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Science, 

Technology, and Engineering 

Dr. Arati Prabhakar, Director, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency 

I'd like to tum now to my friend and Ranking Member, Mr. Jim Langevin from 

Rhode Island, for any comments he'd like to make. 
32 

Statement by Mr. Stephen Welby 

Assistant Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering (ASD(R&E)) 

Before the 

Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities, 

Armed Services Committee, U.S. House of Representatives 

Department of Defense Fiscal Year 2017 Science and Technology Programs: 

Defense Innovation to Create the Future Military Force 

February 24, 2016 

NOT FOR PUBLICATION UNTIL RELEASED BY THE SUBCOMMITTEE 
33 

Accelerating the Development of Military Capability through Innovative Defense Research 

and Development 

Introduction 

Chairman Wilson, Ranking Member Langevin, and Members of the Subcommittee, I am 

pleased to have the opportunity to provide testimony on the Department of Defense (DoD) Fiscal 

Year 2017 Science and Technology (S&T) program and to join my colleagues from across the 

Services and DARPA to report on the current state of S&T in the Department. Defense S&T 

enables our nation to sustain the technological advantage that underpins our ability to 

successfully execute the Department's mission. The DoD S&T program delivers a balanced 

technology investment, informed by an awareness of global technology trends and critical threat 

capabilities, and supports the three tenets of the Department's research and engineering strategy: 

to provide technology to mitigate current and anticipated threat capabilities, to affordably enable 

new or extended capabilities in existing military systems and to create technology surprise 

through advanced capabilities that significantly expand our capabilities. 

Key to our S&T success is our investment in our people- the talented scientists and 

engineers who perform the complex, state-of-the-art research, development and engineering 

required to ensure America's future technological superiority in an increasingly competitive 

global security environment. With their colleagues in academia and industry, our delense S&T 

workforce is engaged every day in developing the capabilities that our nation's warfighters will 

need tomorrow. 

We are at a pivotal moment in history where the advanced technical capability and 

capacity that the Nation has relied upon to provide us with unmatched technological superiority 

on the battlefield (including capabilities in precision weapons, long-range ISR, space systems 

and stealth) is now being challenged by the military technology investments being made by 

increasingly capable and assertive powers. Other nations are increasing their investments in 

advanced capabilities, including anti-access/area-denial capabilities, which are intended to 

counter US technological strengths and deter the US from projecting power abroad to defend our 

national interests, maintain international norms, and support our allies and partners. 

Our nation has long pursued strategies that leveraged US technological advantage as a 

force multiplier. We continue to leverage advances in technology and new operational concepts 

to provide sustained advantage to US forces - shifting the landscape of future national security 

competition to our advantage by seeking asymmetric opportunities in technological and 

operational innovation. 

2 
34 

Today, our brightest young scientists and engineers are pursuing these technology 

innovations by leveraging new and emerging capabilities in material science, advanced 

electronics, computational algorithms, quantum sciences, biology and health sciences, advanced 

optics, robotics, artificial intelligence, and other disciplines and applying these technologies to 

create improved military capabilities informed by operational experience and needs. 

As any surfer knows, the only way to catch and ride a wave is to paddle out in front of 

the surge; catching a wave from behind does not work. The same is true with technology. In a 

fast changing technology environment, the Department must be positioned to understand, shape 

and exploit technological opportunity to its best advantage for application to military systems. 

The Department must carefully select those areas where we must invest to lead technology 

development. We must also identify those areas where we want to partner with academia, 

industry and our international partners in shaping technology development. By engaging early, 

DoD can shape the technology environment and drive a focus on speed from lab to field. 

Driving Innovation 

Our Depatiment-wide focus on technology innovation seeks to identify and invest in 

unique capabilities to sustain and advance the Department's military superiority for the 21st 

Century. As Secretary Carter said in his remarks on the budget at the Economic Club of 

Washington, D.C. on the 2"d of February, we must take a "long view" and "seize opportunities 

for the future" in order to "sustain our lead in full spectrum war fighting". 

In an increasingly competitive and fast moving technology environment, the Department 

must be open to all sources of competitive technical advantage and must engage with traditional 

and non-traditional sources of capability both internal and external to the Department. 

Today, the Department employs over 39,000 scientists and engineers in 63 Defense 

laboratories, warfare centers, and engineering centers across 22 states sustaining our ability to 

support and field military critical technology that often has no commercial equivalent. Our 

laboratories have produced important innovations in vital defense areas such as electronic 

warfare, propulsion, and weapons design and maintaining this unique technical expctiise is 

critical for ensuring the Department's ability to prepare for future threats. However, we cannot 

innovate and bolster our future technological superiority from within the Department alone; our 

Defense laboratory enterprise touches the broadest range of emerging concepts through a deep 

engagement with academia, industry, and international partners to keep the DoD smart, 

knowledgeable, agile, and responsive in the face of new and emerging threats. This includes 

outreach to a vibrant and growing commercial innovation community that sometimes does not 

consider applying their emerging technologies to the national security sphere. In Fiscal Year 

2015 DoD's research and engineering enterprise established over 2,000 cooperative research and 

development agreements with private companies or universities and filed over 875 patents. 

3 
35 

In fast moving areas, investments made by the commercial entrepreneurial sector are 

accelerating the development and maturation of technologies with critical relevance to future 

defense capabilities. Often, small innovative commercial firms lack knowledge about the 

defense systems, organizations, and problems that could benefit from their products and 

technology. They are also often unwilling to invest their scarce time and resources in identifying 

DoD customers tor their work and unable to navigate the DoD acquisition system. The 

Department has begun efforts to address these challenges and recently established the Defense 

Innovation Unit-Experimental (D!Ux) with an initial operating location in Silicon Valley, 

California. D!Ux is experimenting with new approaches to serve as an "point of presence" 

connecting the Department with non-traditional technology and capability sources by scouting 

for capabilities relevant to military needs and by matchmaking DoD customers with potential 

sources of advanced capabilities from innovative commercial entrepreneurs. 

Driving Value to the Warfightcr through Science and Technology 

The Department is committed to sustaining our technological advantage and maintaining 

our long term technological superiority. Over the last year we have continued to make progress 

strengthening both our internal capabilities and our connections to external innovation centers. 

Some representative activities of note from 2015 include: 

The Department of Defense played a critical role in supporting the US government and 

international response to the West African Ebola outbreak to support Ebola planning and 

response efforts. From the earliest days of the outbreak, DoD S&T personnel worked tirelessly 

to deliver critical equipment and supplies to the affected West African countries. The 

Department deployed and sustained Ebola diagnostics laboratories to Liberia and Sierra Leone 

and provided timely technical subject matter expertise and advice to the Task Force on Ebola 

Response, the Combatant Commanders, interagency partners, and international partners. The 

Department also contributed to the development of Ebola-specific detection technologies, 

developed breakthroughs in medical countermeasures and bio-containment transport systems, 

and provided knowledge management tools to aid decision-makers. DoD efforts helped curb the 

spread ofEbola virus in West Africa, saved lives, and contributed to building sustainable binsurveillance and public health capacity in the region. 

In 2015, the Department continued to focus efforts on developing advanced capabilities 

to address emerging electronic warfare (EW) challenges, to evaluate these capabilities and to 

mature them tor future operational adoption. One example ofthese eftorts was the successful 

Vigilant Hammer experimentation campaign. The Vigilant Hammer provided a cost effective, 

joint opportunity to explore and assess US emerging capabilities to fight in a complex, 

congested, and agile electromagnetic spectrum. Vigilant Hammer provided the S&T community 

with unprecedented access to the representative dense signal environment in which US systems 

will operate in the future. 

4 
36 

In May 2015, the Deputy Secretary of Defense hosted the first-ever DoD Lab Day at the 

Pentagon, which showcased more than I 00 Air Force, Army, Navy, Marine Corps, and DoD 

Medical innovations designed to ensure the future technological superiority of our nation's 

military. DoD Lab Day increased awareness and understanding of the complexity and diversity 

of the DoD Lab enterprise and highlighted the contributions that DoD labs made in providing 

vital support to missions as diverse as global disaster relief, defensive cyber protection, chemical 

and biological defense' and counter improved explosive devices. 

In order to ensure we remain at the forefront of S&T we must also be connected to the 

global community by continuing to forge relationships with our international partners. The DoD 

S&T community continues to engage globally with allies and partners and with key academic 

and technology institutions worldwide. Among our global engagements, we continue to support 

multilateral S&T cooperation through the NATO alliance and through The Technical 

Cooperation Program (TTCP) with the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. 

The Department continues productive bilateral S&T cooperation, and in the last few weeks have 

concluded annual reviews of on-going collaborative S&T efforts with a number of partner 

nations. As an example of the benefits of the cooperation, the US/UK Multi-disciplinary 

University Initiative (MURI) effort supports projects that are competitively selected with DoD 

supporting US Academic institutions and the UK Ministry of Defense (MoD) supporting UK 

researchers who then collaborate in areas of mutual US DoD and UK MoD interest. We have 

also continued to focus on strengthening US-India defense cooperation. Over the past year, the 

Assistant Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering (ASD(R&E)) has sponsored five 

workshops with India covering a wide-range of areas of mutual interest: cognitive sciences; 

autonomy; directed energy; materials; and munitions (including Counter-improvised explosive 

devices). Over 30 potential S&T projects from these workshops arc currently under 

consideration for co-development. 

As we execute our plans for the rest of this fiscal year and into Fiscal Year 2017, 

ASD(R&E) continues to provide oversight of the Department's comprehensive S&T investment 

portfolio through the Reliance 21 framework. Reliance 21 provides a forum to synchronize, 

coordinate, and deconflict Service and Agency S&T activities. In the last year, we improved 

joint planning and coordination ofS&T activities among the Department's senior S&T 

leadership to achieve efficiencies and improve the effectiveness of our support to the Operating 

force. This collaborative process captures the interests and activities of the entire R&E enterprise 

and all our partners in a collection of I 7 Communities oflnterest (CO Is). The COls maintain 

awareness of their portfolio areas by reviewing and assessing the alignment of current and 

planned R&E programs, identifying gaps, and helping to prioritize R&E funding efforts to meet 

the technical challenges ofthe DoD in their respective portfolio area. Each Reliance 21 COl 

represents specific cross-domain technology areas with a rotating steering group lead and draws 

upon subject-matter experts from across the Department working in the relevant technology area. 

5 
37 

The Reliance 21 framework, its S&T Executive Committee, and technology area CO Is are key 

mechanisms that support ASD(R&E) integrated oversight of the Department's S&T investments. 

Fiscal Year 2017 Budget Submission 

The President's Fiscal Year 2017 Budget submission continues to demonstrate strong 

support for sustaining a robust DoD S&T investment to ensure that the Department is developing 

the innovative technological capabilities that will inform future capability options and sustain US 

technological superiority. The chart below depicts DoD funding over the last decade and as 

proposed in the current budget submission over the Future Year Defense Program. 

DoD S&T FUNDING: FY 2006-2021 

4,000 +--------------------------

2,000 

6 
38 

As evidence ofthis commitment to a strong DoD S&T capability and capacity, the Fiscal 

Year 2017 budget request for overall S&T is $12.5 billion; 1.9 percent above the Fiscal Year 

2016 budget request and 2.4 percent of the Defense topline ($524 billion). In real terms, the 

Fiscal Year 2017 S&T budget request is 25 percent higher than the Fiscal Year 2000 budget 

request of$9.8 billion. The table below details the proposed DoD S&T budget by year and 

breaks out investment by budget category and by S&T account. 

Table l. FY 2015- FY 2021 Budget (S Millions) 

t I ~ I ~ ] Total 

Pr~ram F¥2015* ~ F¥2016**' 1 F:Y20I7 ! A F¥16~17 1 F¥2018 ) F¥2019: : F¥202.0 F¥2021 j FYl7:~Zl 

2.277.7 2.088.9 2.228.3 2.268.4 . 2,302.6 2.329.0 11.230.2 ' 

5'ource (FY2017 -FY2021): C/5' 5 January 20!6 

* FY 2015 Enacted (hasc), no OCO 

** FY 2016 President's Bud,e;et (base), no OCO 

• The Fiscal Year 2017 S&T budget request includes a $12.9M growth from the Fiscal 

Year 2016 budget request in Basic Research investment to $2.1028. Much of this 

investment supports the Department's engagement with academic institutions in the 

foundational research efforts that drive future innovation. 

• The proposed 2017 S&T budget includes a $102.2M growth from the Fiscal Year 2016 

budget request in Applied Research investment to $4.8158. 

• The proposed 2017 S&T budget includes a$119.3M growth from the Fiscal Year 2016 

budget request in Advanced Technology Development investment to $5.5848. 

Additional investment increases an emphasis on prototyping and experimentation to 

reduce program risk. 

The Department's Fiscal Year 2017 S&T budget request is aligned with DoD priorities 

that supports increased demonstrations and increased efficiency in our DoD-wide S&T program 

while preparing the Department for a competitive global security environment. 

7 
39 

A Focus on the Future 

As the Department looks to the future, significant global challenges are on the horizon 

that will require renewed emphasis on sustaining US technological superiority. For the last 30 

years the US and our allies have been able to count on a set of unique capabilities in combat that 

no regional adversary could bring to bear: capabilities such as long range precision weapons, 

airborne !SR for real time targeting, network centric integration of command and control and 

strike, low observable systems, and integrated use of space assets. These technological 

capabilities enabled a US strategy of power projection -leveraging a limited forward presence 

with he ability to respond to provocation with follow-on forces that could be moved to theater 

and deployed with confidence in an opposed environment. Today, we are seeing a return to a 

more competitive environment- one where regional actors have studied US strengths and are 

capable of making the investments required to develop advanced systems designed directly to 

counter US technological strengths in a power projection environment. This evolution in our 

competitive technological posture will require the DoD to invest in the technological and 

operational innovation required to sustain our decisive conventional overmatch against regional 

adversaries. 

As Secretary Carter has said, "Russia and China are our most stressing competitors. They 

have developed and are continuing to advance military systems that seek to threaten our 

advantages in specific areas. And in some case, they are developing weapons and ways of wars 

that seek to achieve their objectives rapidly, before they hope, we can respond." 1 Given our 

constrained budget resources, we must pursue a technological strategy to ensure our 

conventional deterrence remains as strong in the future as it is today. Accomplishing this goal is 

one of the most important strategic tasks facing the Department. 

As it has been in the past, technological and operational innovation will be the key to 

future strategy. Maintaining and extending our competitive, technological, and operational 

advantages is not a purely quantitative contest with other nations. Rather, the United States must 

seek asymmetric advantages particularly those that take advantage of US strengths in military 

and commercial technological innovation. We must accelerate our approaches to identifying 

promising technological differentiators, our processes for mapping technological capability to 

operational advantage, and our methods of moving new capabilities from laboratory to field. 

Future capabilities will likely be increasingly joint in nature; leveraging the ability to 

synchronize simultaneous operations in the space, air, sea, undersea, ground, and cyher domains. 

Emerging tools based on breakthroughs in computer science, advanced electronics, novel 

communications and sensors and human-machine interface will enable new operational concepts 

that will enable faster and better decision making, coordinated operations at range and across the 

battlespace by manned, unmanned and cyber operations. 

1 Remarks by Secretary Carter on the Budget at the Economic Club of Washington, DC. february 2. 2016 

8 
40 

In recent presentations, the Deputy Secretary of Defense has pointed to several areas 

where he sees significant opportunity for advanced technology to advance differentiating US 

capabilities: 

• Autonomous, Learning Systems systems capable of manipulating and understanding 

large volumes data, and/or that have the delegated authority to support or make decisions 

within delegated limits under operational control, especially in application areas that 

require faster than human reaction times (e.g., cyber defense; EW attacks; missile 

defense; and active protective systems); 

Human-Machine Collaboration and Manned-Unmanned Combat Teaming··- systems that 

team humans with machines to exploit the advantages of both for better and faster human 

decision making; 

• Assisted Human Operations -systems that directly support humans to perform better in 

combat (e.g., wearable electronics and integrates software applications); and 

Advanced Weapon Systems hardened to operate in complex Cyber and Electronic 

Warfare (EW) Environments systems that can commw1icate, coordinate and 

communicate with each other in mission, in complex threat environments to achieve 

synergistic effects. 

In 2015, the Department conducted a classified long range research and development 

planning program (LRRDPP) to identify critical technologies and future system concepts that the 

department should consider to inform material operations for the future force. The Fiscal Year 

2017 budget is infonned by the LRRDPP study and other analysis efforts and includes more than 

$3.6 billion in Fiscal Year 2017 and $18 billion over the Future Year Defense Plans to help spur 

research, development, test, evaluation, and procurement of advanced capabilities that will 

enable future offset strategies that our military will need to deter and, if necessary, fight and win 

high-end conflicts in the future. While relatively modest compared to the Department's overall 

program, these investments will enable the development of leading-edge, primarily asymmetric 

capabilities and help spur development of new ways ofwarfighting to counter advanced 

adversaries. 

These investments include new capabilities that can be fielded rapidly through modifying 

and upgrading existing systems, material concepts that could immediately enter accelerated 

development, and technology-driven concepts that could have a significant impact on the Joint 

Force's conventional capabilities over the longer term. They also emphasize the importance of 

focusing on cost so that we will be able to introduce asymmetric capabilities into the Joint Force 

at scale. 

Our S&T investments ultimately are reflected in the capabilities embedded in material 

systems that are acquired, fielded, and operated by our fighting forces. For the last six years, the 

Department has been engaged in a major campaign to improve our acquisition processes. 

Originally initiated by then Under Secretary for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics Ashton 

9 
41 

Carter and continued under current USD(A T &L) Frank Kendall, the Better Buying Power 

initiatives reduce unnecessary rules and regulations, eliminate unproductive processes, 

strengthen the acquisition chain of command, and align incentives with performance. The latest 

iteration of Better Buying Power 3.0 has as its principal focus on "Achieving Dominant 

Capabilities through Technical Excellence and Innovation." This focus reflects the criticality of 

the research and engineering components of the acquisition community in sustaining US 

technological superiority and emphasizes the need to support a strong, effective and productive 

DoD laboratory enterprise to foster continuous improvement across the research and engineering 

community. 

Two areas emphasized in Better Buying Power 3.0 arc I) the use ofprototyping and 

experimentation to accelerate operational assessment and adoption of key technologies to 

advance current and future weapons systems and 2) support for a robust DoD STEM engagement 

to ensure a pool of defense relevant technical talent to support our future force. 

Better Buying Power 3.0 

Achieving Dominant Capabilities through Technical Excellence and Innovation 

lncentivize Productivity in lndustrv and Government 

Align profitability more tightly with Department goals 

Employ appropriate contract types, but increase the use of 

incentive type contracts 

Expand the superior supplier incentive program 

Ensure effective use of Performance-Based Logistics 

Remove barriers to commercial technology utilization 

lmprove the return on investment in DoD laboratories 

Increase the productivity of corporate !RAD 

lncentivize Innovation in lndustrv and Government 

• Increase the use of prototyping and experimentation 

~lim_i~t~_ll_OQLQg_y_«l_iy_!t_er_q_gt~S~itif!.JI_61J_~!ll!_~_rn_qy 

• Emphasize acquisition chain of command 

responsibility. authority and accountability 

Reduce cycle times while ensuring sound investme-nts 

Streamline documentation requirements and staff 

reviews 

Remove unproductive requirements imposed on industry 

E!:QmQ1~-~ff-~~tive C.,Q..!IU!.~.titiQ.O 

• Create and maintain competitive environments 

Improve DoD outreach for technology and products 

from global markets 

• Increase small business participation, including more 

effective use uf market research 

!lpprpve Tra_decrJ}_fJ: in_Ac_q!-li.$ition o_f SeJJ(i_c~s 

• Strengthen contract management outside the normal 

acquisitionchain- installations, etc. 

Improve requirements definition for services 

Improve the effectiveness and productivity of 

contracted engineering and technical services 

Emphasize technology insertion and refresh In program planning 

Use Modular Open Systems Architecture to stimulate innovation 

Increase the return on and access to small business research and 

development ~ 

Provide draft technical requirements to industry early and involve • 

industry in funded concept definition 

Provide clear and objective "best value" definitions to industry 

We are placing a strategic emphasis on prototyping and experimentation to identify 

emerging capabilities and unanticipated threats and reduce risk in DoD acquisition efforts. We 

are using prototyping supplemented by engineering analysis to evaluate new concepts, guide new 

technology development, and demonstrate new capability. Prototyping may pennit the 

Department to explore the realm of the possible without a commitment to follow-on 

10 
42 

procurement. Other benefits of our investments in prototyping include the ability to sustain 

unique elements of the defense industrial base, stimulate design teams to advance the state of the 

practice, improve development methods and manufacturing, and promote open standards, and 

competition throughout the product lifecycle. Our analysis efforts use scenario-based, 

engineering informed, excursions of emerging technologies and potential operational concepts to 

inform the requirements, acquisition and wartighter communities. 

We also support our forces at the tip of the spear with technology solutions and timely 

analysis of demonstrations targeted towards critical system solutions. The ASD(R&E) Emerging 

Capability and Prototyping Directorate is engaged with the Combatant Commanders (COCOMs) 

and the Service technology and acquisition communities to exploit innovative demonstrations 

through Joint Capabilities and Technology Demonstrations and other programs that support 

COCOM concerns and warfighter needs. 

Balancing the near- and far-term missions of our military with the rapid rate of 

technology turnover drives complexity in the engineering, testing, and evaluation of our defense 

systems. Systems engineering and testing are among the Department's strengths; however, the 

traditional practices of engineering and tests are challenged not only by the scale and operational 

tempo of the national security enterprise but by additional factors that include fiscal and 

budgetary constraints; the evolution and globalization of advanced technology and software; the 

necessary integration of complementary systems to achieve mission etiects; and the 

responsibility to provide a safe, secure military capability that is ensured to perform as expected. 

These factors translate into design and performance demands for our engineers and testers in 

terms of resilience, affordability, interoperability, reliability, safety, and security. We continue 

to focus on ensuring a robust engineering and test competency and practice across the 

Department, as this capability remains critical to program success. 

Our Research and Engineering enterprise also supports national leadership by engaging 

with, and shaping the national and international ROT &E environment through our STEM efforts, 

workforce programs, community outreach, international programs and our support for interagency efforts. By teaming with our strategic partners, the Department is taking steps to sustain 

and strengthen our critical organic workforce capabilities and broaden our partnerships with 

commercial and defense industry, universities, and federally funded research and development 

centers to augment our workforce with their talented worktorces. As the Nation's largest 

employer of scientists and engineers, we are concerned with the younger generations falling test 

scores and global competition for STEM talent. DoD is fully engaged in a national effort to 

reverse the declining trends in the STEM student population. While focused on defense specific 

needs, we are partnering with other agencies and local communities, and, most importantly, our 

own STEM workforce to fully engage students, teachers, and family members with a goal of 

building a 21st century STEM workforce that will ensure the US remains the world's leader in 

defense innovation. Two critical STEM efforts are the Departments Science, Mathematics, and 

Research for Transformation (SMART) Scholarship Program and Military Child program. 

11 
43 

SMART is our flagship scholarship-for-service program designed to produce the next 

generation of Department of Defense laboratory science and technology leaders. The program 

was identified by the Secretary of Defense as a critical workforce enabler and is included in the 

DoD's Porce of the Future initiative. SMART offers highly competitive scholarships to 

undergraduate, masters, and doctoral students who have a demonstrated ability and aptitude for 

excelling in the scientific and engineering fields critical to the Department. Students receiving 

SMART scholarships commit to a period of employment within the DoD research and 

engineering community commensurate with the fiscal investment made by the Department in 

their education. In Fiscal Year 2015, the DoD awarded 207 scholarships adding to the 456 

scholars currently in academic pursuit, and hired 167 SMART graduates into the workforce 

adding to the 485 already serving their commitment. As of December 2015 we had 1,867 

SMART applications completed for 150 awards to be made in the 2016-2017 academic year. To 

date, we have a retention rate of 81% within the DoD beyond their service obligation. This 

program has been highly successful in attracting the best and brightest to pursue careers in DoD 

Research and Engineering. 

The Department has a critical responsibility to the dependent children of our Soldiers, 

Sailors, Airmen, and Marines, but military dependents often have a uniquely transitory lifestyle 

which can challenge our ability to fully meet their educational needs. There are currently 1.2 

million military children, with 55 percent between the grades ofK-12. As stated in the Joint 

Explanatory Statement to Accompany the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 

2015, it is in DoD's interest to promote education programs that benefit both military children 

and our future national security workforce, both because we have a responsibility to support 

those who serve and because these students are more likely to go on to serve in national security 

careers, including military service. To promote STEM education among military dependents, we 

are partnering with the National Math and Science Initiative in military-connected schools --

building on documented success in improving students' performance in rigorous STEM 

coursework and associated assessments. Results have been dramatic, with improvements 

averaging 85 percent increase in Advanced Placement Math and Science scores within the first 

year of implementation, and 137 percent after three years. Benefits among underrepresented 

minority and female groups arc even higher. In Fiscal Y car 2015, we have reached an additional 

36 schools with the potential of reaching over 28,000 students and teachers with approximately 

9,000 being military children. In Fiscal Year 2016, we are extending our partnership to include 

the National Science Foundation and are extending the program to include computer science as a 

core component of the curriculum. An investment in our STEM pipeline ensures our Nation's 

technological dominance and develops the innovative brainpower our Nation needs to maintain 

our security and deter aggression. 

Preparing for the Future 

The Depatiment's goal to sustain and advance our nation's technological superiority for 

the 21st Century national security environment requires sound research and development 

12 
44 

investments. The enhanced use of prototyping, demonstration, and experimentation will help the 

Department to more rapidly mature and assess the impact these technologies can have on our 

future force. Our investments protect essential US advantages in design, development, and 

manufacturing capabilities that would be very difllcult to reconstitute iflost replace. These 

investments deliver the knowledge and tools necessary to preserve our advantage in a future 

global environment and provide the Department with the ability to make a strategic choice in the 

future to shape the nature of military competition. 

The DoD Research and Engineering community works to create options for how the 

Department will meet our Nation's future national security needs and serves as an agile 

innovation engine for the Department. We must continue to focus on speeding the development 

and application of technology to meet acquisition program needs and must leverage ideas from 

inside and outside the Department; adapting and shaping them to solve military problems. 

Our strength is in our people. We must recruit and retain the best and brightest military 

and civilian scientists and engineers and harness their innovative spirits to give our military 

forces the warfighting edge. 

Ultimately, our goal must always be to ensure that our Soldiers, Sailors, Airman, and 

Marines always have the scientific knowledge, the right technology, the advanced systems and 

tools, the best care and the decisive technology and material edge to succeed when called upon. 

Our Research and Engineering enterprise measures its success in the security of our Nation and 

the success of our warfighters. 

The Fiscal Year 2017 President's Budget request will enable us to move toward driving a 

culture of technical innovation across the Department, will help us prepare for an increasingly 

competitive global National Security environment and will foster a whole-of-department 

coordinated effort across Army, Navy, Air Force, DARPA, and other DoD research and 

engineering organizations 

Thank you for your support of the Department's science and technology efforts as we 

work to discover, design and deliver the technological capabilities our warfighters will need to 

shape the future. 

13 
45 

Mr. Stephen P. Welby 

Assistant Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering 

Mr. Stephen P. Welby was confirmed as the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Research and 

Engineering (ASD(R&E)) on December 14, 2015, and serves as the Chief Technology Officer for the 

Department of Defense and the principal advisor to the Secretary on all matters relating to science, 

technology, research and engineering. As ASD(R&E), Mr. Welby is responsible for the Department's 

strategies and supporting plans to develop and leverage the technologies needed to ensure continued 

U.S. technological superiority. He provides leadership to, and establishes policy and guidance for, the 

development and execution of the DoD Research and Engineering program. He oversees matters from 

basic science and capability prototyping to research and engineering at the Department's laboratories, 

promotes coordination and cooperation across the DoD and between the DoD and other federal and nonfederal agencies and organizations, and ensures technical exchange with allied and friendly nations. 

Mr. Welby had previously served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Systems Engineering, 

and was responsible for establishing and executing engineering policy and oversight across the 

Department. His responsibilities included engineering design, development and manufacturing of 

complex military systems, and the engineering review, analysis and technical risk assessment of the 

Department's portfolio of major acquisition programs. He provided tunctionalleadership to more than 

40,000 technical professionals in the DoD Engineering and Production, and Quality and Manufacturing 

workforce. Mr. Welby also served as the Defense Standardization Executive, directing the DoD program 

to develop and maintain defense-critical government and commercial technical standards. 

Mr. Welby has more than 28 years of government and industrial experience in technology and product 

development, including senior leadership positions at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency 

(DARPA). His experience includes development of leading-edge aeronautical and space systems, 

robotics, advanced weapons, high-performance software, and military sensor systems. 

Mr. Welby holds a bachelor of science degree in chemical engineering from The Cooper Union tor the 

Advancement of Science and Art, a master's degree in business administration from the Texas A&M 

University, and master's degrees in computer science and applied mathematics from The Johns Hopkins 

University. 

Updated: December 2015 
46 

RECORD VERSION 

STATEMENT BY 

MS. MARY J. MILLER 

DEPUTY ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF THE ARMY 

FOR RESEARCH AND TECHNOLOGY 

BEFORE THE 

HOUSE ARMED SERVICES COMMITTEE 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON EMERGING THREATS AND CAPABILITIES 

SECOND SESSION, 114TH CONGRESS 

ON THE UNITED STATES ARMY'S SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY (S&T) 

PROGRAM FOR FISCAL YEAR 2017 

FEBRUARY 24, 2016 

NOT FOR PUBLICATION UNTIL RELEASED BY THE 

COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES 
47 

STATEMENT BY 

MS. MARY J. MILLER 

DEPUTY ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF THE ARMY 

FOR RESEARCH AND TECHNOLOGY 

Chairman Wilson, Ranking Member Langevin, and distinguished members of the 

Subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to discuss the Army's Science and 

Technology (S& T) Program for fiscal year (FY) 2017. I greatly appreciate the support 

this committee has shown Army S&T over the years. You remain important partners in 

our mission to identify, develop and demonstrate technology options that inform and 

enable affordable capabilities for the Soldier. 

The coming years will see important shifts in the strategic environment in which the U.S. 

Army operates. Geopolitical changes are coupled with equally profound global 

technological and economic changes. The United States has traditionally been able to 

produce the equipment and technology necessary to dominate. However, we are 

seeing technology evolving at an exponential rate along with an increased rate of 

technology proliferation, which has become much more affordable to weaponize. Our 

enemies' access to this advanced technology has closed the gap in our overmatch. 

The technological world is becoming ever flatter and more dynamic, and we are in a 

race with our adversaries to harness and field the best military applications of product 

innovation. 

"We will do what it takes to build an agile, adaptive Army of the future. We need to 

listen and learn - first from the Army itself, from other Services, from our interagency 

partners, but also from the private sector, and even from our critics. Developing a 

lethal, professional and technically competent force requires an openness to new ideas 

and new ways of doing things in an increasingly complex world. We will change and 

adapt." 

- GEN Milley, Chief of Staff, Army 
48 

The Army S& T Enterprise cannot predict with certainty what challenges and threats the 

future holds, but it can organize itself to help prepare for the future, mitigating the 

possibility of technical surprise and ensuring that we remain dominant in any 

environment. Transparency, efficiency and flexibility help us invest our limited resources 

where they have the greatest payoff. This framework allows us to adjust our approach 

in response to changing circumstances, while providing the stability needed for longrange S&T. The U.S. Army's nearly 12,000 scientists and engineers are innovative 

change agents committed to developing the science and technologies that provide 

America's Soldiers with the capabilities to overcome adversaries, both today and 

tomorrow. I am proud to represent them here today before you. 

Strategic Environment 

The United States finds itself facing a declining defense budget and challenges from 

new adversaries everywhere. A new generation of threats and opportunities has 

emerged that will continue to evolve in unprecedented ways. As our current large-scale 

military campaign ends, the United States faces a complex and growing array of 

security challenges across the globe. Future conflicts could range from hybrid 

contingencies 1 against proxy groups using asymmetric approaches, to a high-end 

conflict against a state power armed with weapons of mass destruction or 

technologically advanced anti-access and area-denial (A2/AD) capabilities. 2 

"Our fundamental task is like no other- it is to win in the unforgiving crucible of ground 

combat. We must ensure the Army remains ready as the world's premier combat force. 

Readiness for ground combat is- and will remain - the U.S. Army's #1 priority. 

Developing a lethal, professional and technically competent force requires an openness 

to new ideas and new ways of doing things in an increasingly complex world." 

- GEN Milley, Chief of Staff, Army 

1 Hybrid warfare is a military strategy that blends conventional warfare, irregular warfare and 

cyberwarfare often used to mask the identification of the aggressor in order to avoid attribution or 

retribution. 

2 2014 Quadrennial Defense Review, March 2014, 12. 
49 

The future Army will be smaller and increasingly based in the continental United States. 

Yet it must remain capable of conducting the full range of operations on land, including 

prompt and sustained land combat as part of large, multiphase joint and multinational 

operations. 

While the future force will become smaller and leaner, its great strength will lie in its 

increased agility, flexibility and ability to deploy quickly, while remaining technologically 

advanced. To prevent enemy overmatch, the Army must develop new capabilities while 

anticipating enemy efforts to emulate or disrupt those capabilities. 

Army S& T is actively involved with the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OS D)-led 

Long Range Research and Development Planning Program for Ground Combat 

(LRRDPP-GC). Chartered in September 2015, the LRRDPP-GC is a follow-on to the 

original LRRDPP, which was focused on A2/AD concepts. This new study is a sixmonth effort tasked with identifying high-payoff enabling technology investments to 

provide U.S. forces with a decisive advantage in land-associated operations in the 2030 

timeframe. The LRRDPP-GC is modeled after a similar effort that was conducted in the 

1970s which led to the accelerated maturation of a suite of capabilities that the U.S. 

relies on today and leverages the LRRDPP #1 study conducted earlier this year with the 

focus on A2/AD. The LRRDPP-GC focuses on ground combat technologies that can be 

incorporated into developmental programs over the next five years and acquired and 

fielded in quantity within 15 years. 

The Army's differential advantage over enemies derives, in part, from the integration of 

advanced technologies with skilled Soldiers and well-trained teams. 

-The U.S. Army Operating Concept 
50 

Army S& T Portfolios 

For coordination and oversight across the Army S& T Enterprise, the Office of the 

Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Army for Research and Technology (ODASA(R& T)), 

organizes the S&T budget and programs into eight S&T Portfolios. Each Portfolio is 

overseen by a Portfolio Director within the ODASA(R& T) who coordinates the Planning, 

Programming, Budgeting and Execution process inputs and other oversight actions 

specific to that Portfolio. The Army S& T portfolios address challenges across six Armywide capability areas: Ground Maneuver, Soldier/Squad, Air, Command, Control, 

Communications and Intelligence (C31), Lethality and Medical portfolios. There are also 

two S&T enabling portfolios: Innovation Enablers and Basic Research. 

Army Investments by Portfolio 

F\'17: $2,48" 

Army S& T Enterprise Program Funding % Breakdown by Portfolio 
51 

In Fiscal Year 2017 (FY17), the Army will maintain the 2016 President's Budget level of 

S&T funding and will sustain or increase resources supporting OSD areas in 

fundamental sciences, such as advanced materials and synthetic biology, research in 

the areas of human performance, robotics and autonomous systems and advancing 

capabilities such as defense against ballistic and cruise missile and air threats, 

electronic warfare and network defense. 

Army S& T investment portfolios support Army modernization goals to develop and field 

affordable equipment in a rapidly changing technological and economic environment. 

The S&T Enterprise addresses this need by fostering technology invention, innovation, 

demonstration and maturation for the current and future fight. 

Army S& T Strategic Initiatives 

In past years, I have detailed to the Committee our enduring Army challenges and how 

they influence the S&T portfolios. Today, I would like to take the opportunity to instead 

describe some newer strategic initiatives that cut across our portfolios and are 

instrumental in helping us realize our objectives- Technology Wargaming, S&T Red 

Teaming, and Prototyping/Technology Maturation Initiatives (TMI). 

Technology Wargaming 

Technology Wargarning is a reconnaissance effort focused on scouting for S&T trends 

that could provide innovative capabilities for operations in the deep future. It leverages 

scientists and engineers, experts in military operations, and creative thinkers from 

academia, industry, federally funded research and development centers, and other hubs 

of innovation to analyze S&T trends and identify future technology concepts that are 

feasible and bounded by the laws of physics. Technology Wargaming is used to inform 

strategic conversations on technologies that could deliver leap-ahead capabilities for the 

future force, and how best to align resources and organizations to pursue those 
52 

opportunities. It serves as part of a broader Army effort to break down communication 

barriers that have hindered innovation and facilitates Army S&T's ability to capture 

innovative ideas from nontraditional partners. 

Technology Wargaming helps provide background technical underpinning for the 

Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) annual Unified Quest (UQ) Wargame, 

encourages innovative thinking and strategic dialogue within the Army S&T community, 

and informs future capabilities/needs/concepts and the potential for innovative, cuttingedge technologies to address them. 

Some of the key milestones for Technology Wargaming include scouting open source 

information for U.S. and foreign S&T trends. These trends are analyzed by Subject 

Matter Experts (SMEs) within the Army S&T and Intelligence communities and added to 

crowd-sourcing ideas from scientists, engineers, thought leaders and creative thinkers 

inside and outside the Government. These exercises contemplate how S& T may 

influence the world and military capabilities in the deep future, and combine results from 

trend scouting, SME surveys and crowd-sourcing to create a set of future technology 

concepts and roadmaps. These concepts represent conceivable technologies that 

could affect capabilities available to the U.S. Army and potential adversaries within the 

next 30 years. 

Another example of S& T forecasting is conducted by the Army Research Laboratory 

(ARL). This forecasting is guided by the principle that actors in future conflict will seek 

to persuade in three realms: physical, the domain of activities defined in space and time 

by the laws of physics; informational, the domain of activities defined by thought and 

perception; and cultural, the domain of activities defined by the interaction of people and 

societies. Workshops between government, industry, and academic experts probe the 

potential of these areas to provide new military capabilities. Among other topics 

considered this past year, these workshops examined the technologies necessary to 
53 

enable expeditionary on-demand manufacturing and integrated teaming between 

Soldiers and intelligent systems3 

S&T Red Teaming 

A key component of the S& T strategy is broadening and deepening our ability to 

identify, understand and eliminate potential vulnerabilities in emerging technologies and 

future systems that could threaten their success upon deployment in Army operational 

settings. To achieve this, the S&T Red Teaming investment provides in-depth, 

independent assessments of emerging technologies across laboratory, table-top, and 

live field environments. These assessments seek to uncover potential vulnerabilities of 

future Army systems when employed in a system of systems context and against an 

evolving and responsive threat. 

In FY14, building from the success of our Deployable Force Protection efforts, my office 

initiated an innovative program to identify, understand and eliminate potential 

vulnerabilities in emerging defense technologies and systems that could threaten their 

success upon deployment and use in Army operational settings. The core components 

of this program are Technology Red Teaming, which provides in-depth, laboratorybased vulnerability assessments and Adaptive Red Teaming, which seeks to uncover 

potential vulnerabilities of emerging technologies when employed in a systems context 

against an evolving and responsive threat. 

S&T Red Teaming embraces a philosophy of leveraging independent and 

multidisciplinary perspectives across a broad range of future employment factors and 

scenarios to purposely introduce novel, nontraditional thinking into technology 

development. It seeks to extend solution design considerations in a way that avoids 

ingrained biases and practices that can unintentionally introduce vulnerabilities when 

employed. Moreover, by identifying technology vulnerabilities early in the development 

3 A collective of physical or software agents acting independently but under human supervision to 

conduct military relevant missions. 
54 

life cycle, the Army encourages adaptation and mitigation at times where changes can 

be economically accommodated with the highest likelihood of equipping Army 

Warfighters with operationally robust systems. 

Technology Red Teaming applies state-of-the-art engineering and scientific approaches 

to identify and assess potential vulnerabilities in developing technologies and materials 

specific to system design choices, and to ascertain their potential robustness once 

implemented into Army systems. These efforts independently assess technologies in 

ways that complement, yet extend beyond typical material testing. These assessments 

consider current, emerging and future threats, emerging disruptive technologies, and 

cutting-edge materials science developments in ways that effectively address potential 

future scenarios and yield engineering tradeoffs that may not have been considered 

previously. Ultimately, Technology Red Teaming seeks to proactively identify and 

mitigate unforeseen risks and vulnerabilities as new technologies are adopted by the 

Army and promote the development of S&T products that are "threat ready." 

Adaptive Red Teaming applies state-of-the-art and time-proven Red Teaming methods 

within a series of multidimensional, multi-organizational, in-depth activities to identify 

and assess potential system and/or system-of-systems vulnerabilities. While the 

Technology Red Teaming activities pursue within-system robustness, the Adaptive Red 

Team (ART) activities look to the seams of system-of-systems interaction to provide a 

full consideration of successful integration. The crown jewel of our ART activities is our 

Technical Support and Operational Analysis (TSOA) effort. TSOA exercises provide 

technologists and systems developers with realistic and challenging multi-day 

experiments to employ and assess their solutions prior to entering acquisition programs. 

Collaborative, non-punitive experiments take emerging systems and prototypes out of 

the lab and into "messy" environments, incorporating varied operational and 

increasingly complex scenarios against capable adversaries, using experienced 

warfighters and security forces that provide real-time user feedback on both design and 

performance. In these settings, technology solutions are examined from multiple 

perspectives including systems integration, logistics, training and adaptability risks 
55 

in order to expose potential employment vulnerabilities and identify needed 

improvements early on. TSOAs are conducted quarterly in a variety of different 

environments, from the desert to the marshlands to urban environments. 

The TSOA methodology has proven to be successful and has spawned a number of 

successes. For example, based on TSOA assessments and feedback resulting in 

system improvements, SOCOM purchased over twenty five Frontier Tag, Track and 

Locate devices for use in low visibility operations. Additionally, the Prowl radar-based 

ground sensor participated in several TSOAs and used the feedback to make system 

improvements and fix identified vulnerabilities. As a result, it passed Army Test and 

Evaluation (ATEC) testing and is now part of a USSOCOM PEO-Special 

Reconnaissance, Surveillance, and Exploitation Program of Record. 

The vulnerability assessments we are doing are also bringing interesting and useful 

results for technologists and system developers. For example, we have an ongoing 

effort to look at individual blade control (IBC) technologies that can offer substantial 

improvements in flight control and performance of rotorcraft systems. An in-going 

hypothesis for these technologies, however, is that flight control capabilities would be 

significantly reduced if the blades were to receive ballistic damage in a combat 

environment. This is seen as a major hurdle to the adoption of IBC technologies for 

military rotorcraft. In recent live-fire red teaming intended to better understand IBC's 

ballistic vulnerabilities, a rotor blade test article continued to function properly following 

each of three shots, with an apparent minimal reduction in control authority. While we 

have much more analysis to conduct in order to understand the overall feasibility of IBC 

technologies, this is an example of how knowledge generated under early, technical red 

teaming assessments are helping to reduce the risk of adopting high-payoff 

technologies into future platform designs. 

Overall, the results of the Technology Red Teaming and Adaptive Red Teaming 

activities enable the Army S& T and acquisition communities to become stronger by 

determining early in the lifecycle how well technologies and integrated systems can 
56 

perform in hostile environments, most notably against near-peer threats and against 

exploitation by adaptive, adversarial forces. 

Prototvpinq and Technology Maturation Initiatives 

A number of years ago the Army entrusted my office to initiate what amounted to a pilot 

initiative. They established a Budget Activity 4 (Advanced Component Development 

and Prototypes (ACD&P)) funding line under the authorities of the DASA(R& T) with the 

intent to enable the Army to better transition across the often cited "Valley of Death". 

This pilot began with a small amount of dollars but with a large vision -- a vision that 

included a collaborative partnership with the acquisition and requirements community 

and a multi-pronged approach to improved transition: 1) to work with the Program 

Executive Offices (PEOs) on technology maturation for pre-Milestone (MS) A orB 

activities that would lead directly into a Program of Record (PoR) and 2) work with the 

requirements community to prototype new capabilities and provide them to operators to 

allow real and candid feedback. These activities help to better inform requirements for 

new systems, as well as drive down the risk of integrating new technologies, by 

demonstrating mature solutions that are technically achievable and affordable. In 

conducting maturation and prototyping earlier in the acquisition lifecycle, we can identify 

and address areas of risk before the government commits more significant levels of 

funding to a PoR. Ultimately, it is much more cost-effective to prove out innovative 

concepts and capabilities in the S& T program than it is under formal program 

acquisition. 

The Army's Technology Maturation Initiative (TMI) is our 6.4 line, which established a 

strategic partnership between the S&T Enterprise and acquisition communities to 

enable the transition of priority technologies at reduced cost and risk. A current priority 

under the TMI is the set of efforts focused on driving down cost and technical risk for 

technologies that provide dismounted and mounted Soldiers with trusted Position, 

Navigation and Timing (PNT) information, while operating in conditions that impede or 

deny access to the Global Positioning System (GPS). The S&T Enterprise is 
57 

addressing risk in four thrust areas: (1) Pseudolites (pseudo-satellites) that augment or 

replace military GPS signals by developing a terrestrial/aerial based GPS-Iike signal, 

enabling signal acquisition/tracking, navigation and timing in degraded or denied 

environments (this transitioned at a MS A to the Assured PNT PoR in June 2015); (2) a 

PNT hub for vehicular applications that develops a robust system to support all PNT 

needs on the platform and maintain PNT capability during operations in GPS-denied 

environments; (3) a PNT hub for dismounted Soldiers systems that has low SWaP and 

can provide assured PNT signals for all Soldier equipment; and (4) Anti-Jam Antennas 

that enable GPS signal acquisition and tracking in degraded or denied environments. 

These PNT efforts leverage both traditional S& T and TMI investments, and have a 

direct tie into the Assured PNT PoR. By further developing these technologies to a 

relatively high maturity level, we are driving down the risk to the PoR, accelerating 

capability, and ensuring that our troops will be able to operate in a contested 

environment. 

In FY16, we initiated a major, multi-year effort within TMI on Combat Vehicle 

Prototyping (CVP). The CVP Program is designed to mature technologies to address 

technical and integration challenges facing the ground combat fleet in the areas of 

mobility, survivability, lethality and vehicle architecture. CVP focuses on maturation and 

demonstration of combat vehicle sub-systems such as engines, transmissions, ballistic 

protection, blast mitigation, lethality subsystems and advanced fire controls. The goal is 

to mature and demonstrate, by FY19, a series of subsystems that inform current and 

next-generation combat vehicle designs and requirements. These activities will ensure 

future acquisition program requirements are informed with what is technically feasible 

and affordable, while driving down technical risks. Technologies developed under 

combat vehicle prototyping are scalable and modular to ensure applicability for current 

and future vehicles across the combat fleet. In FY17, we will expand the combat 

vehicle prototyping activities by funding the integration of these subsystems to create a 

full system prototype that can be used by operators to provide performance feedback 

and design insights before we finalize formal requirements for the Army's next combat 

system. 
58 

Another of our major prototyping activities is the Modular Active Protection System 

(MAPS). The MAPS program is developing technologies in order to increase vehicle 

survivability and protection against current and emerging advanced threats. 

Technologies developed will provide this increased protection while maintaining or 

reducing vehicle weight by reducing reliance on armor through the use of other means 

such as sensing, warning, hostile fire detection and active countermeasures. 

While the S& T Enterprise has developed and demonstrated successful active protection 

capability in the past, each system was designed for a specific platform and threat set. 

The MAPS effort is a departure from previous APS efforts in that it establishes an APS 

Common Architecture (CA) and APS common controller (algorithms and software) 

applicable across all military vehicles. MAPS is developing the APS CA to have 

standard interfaces that enable adaptable APS solutions that can be integrated across 

Army vehicle platforms as required. The APS CA provides the flexibility, potential 

component commonality and growth capability to enable "Best of Breed" components. 

This helps alleviate integration and cost challenges across the military vehicle fleet. In 

order to test and validate MAPS and the APS CA, a soft-kill demonstrator and a hardkill/soft-kill demonstrator will be developed and tested in FY17 and FY19, respectively. 

The goal of this effort is the development and demonstration of an effective APS 

capability and APS CA that establish and document standardized interfaces, subsystem 

specifications and a verified and validated APS simulation tool. 

Experimentation and prototyping activities like those described above are critical to the 

development of successful acquisition programs. We began to see clear indicators of 

the value of early prototyping many years ago. The Future Tactical Truck System 

(FTTS) is a good example of how Army S& T seed corn enabled the Joint Lightweight 

Tactical Vehicle (JL TV) acquisition program. The FTTS effort started over fifteen years 

ago at the Tank Automotive Research Development and Engineering Center (TARDEC). 

TARDEC led the S&T technology development effort that demonstrated mature 

technologies which ultimately led to realistic and achievable requirements. The FTTS 
59 

prototyping model stressed close coordination between the technology, requirements, 

and acquisition communities. 

While 15 years is a long time, it is important to note that the development of JL TV and 

its S& T predecessors occurred during a time of war, which impacted TARDEC priorities 

and caused us to learn several new things such as the need for vehicle underbody 

protection. It was during this same time that the TARDEC team worked with the Army 

Research Laboratory (ARL) on such major initiatives as designing and implementing 

Frag Kit armor in response to Operational Needs Statements (ONS) coming out of Iraq 

and with the Program Executive Office for Combat Support & Combat Service Support 

(PEO CS/CSS) on the development of the Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) 

vehicle in response to Joint Urgent Operational Needs Statement (JUONS) coming out 

of Afghanistan. The S& T technology development, system design, and fabrication and 

testing drove down the risk for the JLTV MS A decision, and compressed the 

Technology Development (TO) Phase "preparation" time (e.g., specs, Statement of 

Work, Contract Data Requirements Lists, etc.). The S&T effort also ensured that there 

was viable competition for the TO phase by preparing industry to be able to bid and 

compete. This allowed the Program of Record to conduct a competitive acquisition 

process and to leverage the different companies' strengths to get the best out of the 

program as a whole. 

The Army S& T Enterprise 

The Army owns a vast network of research and development facilities located across 

the world, with roughly 12,000 scientists and engineers that make up the heart of what 

we do. The Army relies on its laboratories and centers (collectively referred to as "labs") 

to foster innovation; develop and demonstrate new technologies; assess competing 

technology options; and help transition research as they mature. A flexible and agile 

workforce is critical to maintaining the Army's technological superiority now and in the 

future. Critical to the development of the agile workforce is the ability to recruit new 

employees, the ability to develop existing employees and the ability to retain these 

same employees. Recruiting, developing and retaining the best science and 
60 

engineering talent into the Army laboratories have become increasingly challenging due 

to a series of events - the pay freeze instituted in 201 0; conference restrictions 

implemented in 2012; furloughs related to sequestration in 2013; and retirement 

eligibility for greater than 25 percent of the workforce. The labs have benefitted greatly 

from authorities provided by Congress to all Science and Technology Reinvention 

Laboratories (STRL) to implement pay-for-performance systems. The personnel 

systems they have developed give the labs the flexibility to enhance recruiting (direct 

hire mechanisms), development (sabbaticals and critical skills training) and retention 

(retention allowances) of our workforce. With two exceptions4 (the Army Research 

Institute for Behavioral and Social Science (ARI) and the Space and Missile Defense 

Technology Center (SMDTC)), all the Army laboratories have some portion oftheir 

workforce rated under a pay-for-performance system. The flexibility available to the 

laboratory directors allows them to shape their workforce and remain competitive with 

the private sector. 

In order to recruit and retain a world-class workforce, we must also be able to maintain 

a world-class infrastructure. As I've testified before, our laboratory infrastructure is 

aging, with an average approximate age of 50 years. Despite this, the S&T Enterprise 

manages to maximize the sustainment, restoration and modernization funding and the 

authorities provided by Congress for minor military construction to minimize the impact 

of aging infrastructure. This is not a long-term solution, however. The Army S&T 

Enterprise is faced with a highly competitive Army MILCON environment that is focused 

on investment to build out the critical shortfalls in the following Focus Areas by 2029: 

Energy/Utilities, Organic Industrial Base, Organizational Vehicle Maintenance, Reserve 

Component Readiness Facilities, Trainee Barracks and Training Support Systems. 

Properly maintaining world-class research facilities will be a major challenge for the 

Army S&T Enterprise in the years to come. 

Of course, innovation does not only take place in Army labs. The Army engages 

industry and academia to identify potential technology solutions to priority problems and 

4 Both ARI and SMDTC were granted authority to become STRLs in the FY15 NDAA and are assessing 

plans for conversion to the laboratory demonstration system. 
61 

capability challenges through stronger partnerships. One example is the Defense 

Innovation Marketplace, an online portal with two primary purposes: a broad, publicaccess communication tool used by the Army to communicate its needs directly to 

industry, and a portal for industry to place/announce its independent research and 

development (I R&D) technology efforts in a Government-only access environment that 

protects proprietary information. Through the Marketplace, the Army provides industry 

with a primary source of information about the Army's investment priorities and 

technology requirements, giving industry the ability to better align its I R&D projects with 

the Army's needs. 

Another example of how we engage with industry and academia, and one that I believe 

has been a great success, is the Army Research Laboratory's (ARL) Open Campus. 

Open Campus forms a global S&T ecosystem to provide long term benefits for our 

national security, and lays the groundwork for joint teaming through fundamental 

science and technology. Collaboration partners fund their own efforts and work in 

research areas of mutual benefit that align with ARL's Technical Strategy. Since last 

year the number of agreements with academia and industry have doubled, from 60 to 

over 130. These agreements have leveraged over $16M from the Army's collaborative 

partners. The total number of open campus participants have also doubled from over 

200 to beyond 500 participants collaborating on-site in ARL laboratories. The 

implementation of enhanced layered security practices have allowed over 54 

international collaborators from 19 countries to work alongside Army researchers within 

the installation. Human resource best practices are being revisited to encourage 

around 10% ARL's workforce to take assignments at universities, with small business, 

and with other partners. These assignments could be anything from working with a 

collaborator for a month on a shared project, going to a University as a professor for a 

semester or two, or even supporting a small business for several years. For example, 

ARL scientists and engineers are embedded at the National Institutes of Health 

researching mechanisms to alter intercellular dynamics for traumatic brain injury 

protection, and at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst researching fundamental 

principles of novel low profile antenna concepts. The Army is establishing several 

research centers to focus large scale collaboration on Army challenges. The Center for 
62 

Research in Extreme Batteries has been established with the University of Maryland 

and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to focus on the 

fundamental science for batteries with extreme properties, operating in extreme 

environments for defense, space and biomedical applications. This first center has 

already attracted the interest of hundreds of participants from DoD labs, universities, 

other government laboratories, and industry. 

The majority of DoD Laboratories are concentrated in the eastern United States. This 

leaves the DoD with minimal exposure to the west coast, where many new ideas and 

technologies are being generated. ARL West, as an extension of the Open Campus 

initiative, is an effort to co-locate Army research and development personnel on the 

West Coast in order to gain access to SMEs, technical centers, and universities not well 

represented on the East Coast. ARL West draws from existing large regional talent 

pools and establishes areas for collaborative research in Army-relevant technology 

sectors. We expect increased collaboration with universities, start-ups and established 

companies working in simulation and training, electronics, information science, 

intelligent systems, and human-system interaction that will ultimately benefit the Soldier 

and ensure our nation's future strength and competitiveness. 

ARL has established an agreement with the University of Southern California (USC) to 

stand up ARL West. USC will provide nearly 22,000 sq. ft. in support of up to 70 Army 

personnel and focus initially on research between USC's Institute for Creative 

Technologies (ICT) (an Army University Affiliated Research Center) and ARL. This is 

the first collaboration center located near Los Angeles (LA) in the so-called Silicon 

Beach area, which is home to more than 500 tech companies including Google, Yahoo!, 

You Tube, and many others. In addition, the LA area is one of the largest regions for 

graduating engineers in the country. Researchers are expected to arrive in early 2016 

and will include locally recruited scientists, students, and representatives from other 

Army organizations. The ARL West campus ribbon cutting ceremony and opening are 

tentatively scheduled for April 2016. We are hoping that this new venue will help 

establish a significant link to some of the most cutting-edge, innovative companies in 

the world. 
63 

Conclusion 

Our primary goal is to provide capabilities and materiel solutions that empower, 

unburden and protect our Soldiers in an environment of uncertainty and complexity. 

Simply put, it's providing Soldiers with the Technology to Win. As the Army S&T 

program continues to identify and harvest technologies suitable for transition to our 

force, we aim to remain ever vigilant of potential and emerging threats. We are 

implementing a strategic approach to modernization that includes an awareness of 

existing and potential capability gaps, understanding of emerging threats, knowledge 

and leveraging of state-of-the-art commercial, academic and government research, and 

understanding the competing needs for limited resources. Ultimately, our focus remains 

on Soldiers. Army S&T consistently seeks new "ways" to increase the Soldier's 

capability and ensure their technological superiority today, tomorrow and decades from 

now. The Army's strong support of the S&T Enterprise and its continued investment in 

technology ensure that the U.S. Army remains the pre-eminent force in the world. The 

Army S&T mission is never complete. We will continue working to ensure that our 

Soldiers are always equipped with the technology to win- our "ends". We owe our 

Soldiers no less. 

"No matter where we are around the world, America's Soldiers are displaying courage, 

commitment and character. We are demonstrating unparalleled competence and 

agility. And no matter the challenge, no matter how complex the environment, or how 

dangerous the situation, our Soldiers fight and win." 

- GEN Milley, Chief of Staff, Army 
64 

Ms. Mary J. Miller 

Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Army 

(Research and Technology) 

Ms. Miller was selected for the Senior Executive Service in August of 2005. In February of2013, she 

was designated as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Army for Research and Technology. Ms. Miller 

is responsible for the entirety of the Army's Research and Technology program, spanning 16 

Laboratories and Research, Development and Engineering Centers, with more than 12,000 scientists and 

engineers and a yearly budget of just over $2 billion dedicated to empowering, unburdening and 

protecting Soldiers. 

CAREER CHRONOLOGY: 

Feb 2013 -Present: Deputy Assistant Secretary of tbe Army (Research and Technology 

Sep 2012 -Feb 2013: Acting Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Army (Research and Technology 

Dec 2010 Sep 2012: Deputy Program Executive Ofticer Soldier 

Aug 2005 -Dec 2010: Director tor Technology, Office ofthc Assistant Secretary of the Army for Acquisition, 

Logistics and Technology, Pentagon, Washington, D.C. 

Apr 200 I ·-Aug 2005: Deputy Director of Technology for Aviation, Missiles, Soldier and Precision Strike under 

the Director for Technology, OASA(ALT), Pentagon, Washington, D.C. 

Oct 1992- Apr 2001: Team Leader Nonlinear Optical Processes Team, U.S. Army Research Laboratory (ARL), 

Adelphi, MD 

Jun 1999- Jun 2000: Science and Technology Liaison to the Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations- Force 

Development (now the DCS G8-FD). Pentagon, Washington, D.C. 

Mar 1990 Oct 1992: Team Leader, Advanced Optics Team, Project Lead for the Visible/Near Infrared 

(VIS/NIR) Sensor Protection efforts, Night Vision & Electro-Optics Directorate, Laser Division, Ft. Belvoir, VA 

Jul 1984 Mar 1990: Electronics Engineer, Night Vision & Electro-Optics Directorate, Laser Division, Ft. 

Belvoir, VA 

COLLEGE: 

Masters of Business Administration from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN. 

Masters of Science in Electrical Engineering, Electro-Physics from the George Washington University, 

Washington, D.C. 

Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from tbe University of Washington, Seattle, WA. 

AWARDS AND HONORS: 

Army Research & Development Achievement Award in 1988 for her technical achievement in the "Development 

of Nonlinear Materials for Sensor Protection." 

Four patents awarded for sensor protection designs, two additional patents pending. 

CERTIFICATIONS: 

Certified Level III in Program Management 

Certified Level Ill SPRDE, Systems Engineering 

Certified Levell! SPRDE, Progran1 Systems Engineering 

PROFESSIONAL MEMBERSHIPS AND ASSOCIATIONS: 

Association of the United States Army (AUSA). member since 2003 
65 

MA.JOR PUBLICATIONS: 

Ms. Miller has published more than 50 papers and has addressed over 30 major commands and international 

groups with technical presentations. She served as a conference committee member and co-chair for SPIE 

Conference on Nonlinear Optical Liquids, 1996-1998 and served as a peer-reviewer for technical papers in her 

area of specialty submitted to the Journal of Applied Optics, Applied Optics and Optics Letters from 1987-1999. 

B.P. Ketchel, C.A. lleid, G.L. Wood, M.J. Miller, A. G. Molt, R.J. Anderson, and G.J. Salama, "ThreeDimensional Color Holography Display," Appl. Optics, 38:6159 ( 1999) 

G.L. Wood, A. G. Molt, and M.J. Miller, "Investigation ofTetrabenzporphyrin by the Z-scan Technique," Opt. 

Lett., 20:973 ( 1995). 

G.L. Wood, W.W. Clark, Ill, M.J. Miller, G.J. Salamo, E.J. Sharp, R.R. Neurgaonkar, J.R. Oliver, 

"Photorefractive Materials" (invited) Book Chapter in Spatial Light Modulators: Materials, Devices, and 

Applications, ed. U. Efron, Marcel Dekker, New York NY, p.l61-215 (1994). 

E.J. Sharp, W.W. Clark, Hl, M..l. Miller, G.L. Wood, B. Monson, G.J. Salamo, R.R. Neurgaonkar, "Double Phase 

Conjugation in Tungsten Bronze Crystals," Appl. Opt. 29:743 (1990). 

B. Monson, G.J. Salamo, A. G. Molt, M.J. Miller, E.J. Sharp, W.W. Clark, III, R.R. Neurgaonkar, "Self-Pumped 

Phase Conjugation with Nanosecond Pulses in Strontium Barium Niobate," Opt. Lett., 15:12 ( 1990). 

W.W. Clark, Ill, G.L. Wood, M.J. Miller, E.J. Sharp, G.J. Salama, 13. Monson, R.R. Neurgaonkar, "Enhanced 

Photorefractive Beam Fanning Due to Internal and External Electric Fields," Appl. Opt., 29:1249 ( 1990). 

March 2013 
66 

NOT FOR PUBLICATION UNTIL RELEASED BY THE 

HOUSE ARMED SERVICES COMMITTEE 

EMERGING THREATS AND CAPABILITIES SUBCOMMITTEE 

STATEMENT OF 

REAR ADMIRAL MATHIAS W. WINTER, UNITED STATES NAVY 

Cl liEF OF NAVAL RESEARCI I 

BEFORE TilE 

EMERGING THREATS AND CAPABILITIES SUBCOMMITTEE 

OF THE 

HOUSE ARMED SERVICES COMMITTEE 

ON 

THE FISCAL YEAR 2017 BUDGET REQUEST 

FEBRUARY 24,2016 

NOT FOR PUBLICATION UNTIL RELEASED BY THE 

HOUSE ARMED SERVICES COMMITTEE 

INTELLIGENCE, EMERGING THREATS AND CAP ABILITIES SUBCOMMITTEE 
67 

Introduction 

Thank you for the opportunity to talk to you today about the Department of the Navy (DoN) 

Science and Technology (S&T) Strategy and discuss how the President's FY 2017 Budget for 

S&T investments supports our Sailors and Marines. The FY 2017 Budget requests $2 billion for 

Naval S&T. At almost 1.4 percent of the entire DoN Budget, I view S&T as the venture capital 

of the Navy and Marine Corps. In building a future Fleet and Force to achieve U.S. national 

security objectives, we balance S&T resources between a range of initiatives to support nearterm advances in established operational areas- and to sustain long-term research that will prove 

disruptive to traditional operational concepts. 

Naval Science and Technology Strategy 

The Secretary of the Navy has renewed the call for innovation, recognizing its vital role in 

sustaining our warfighters' decisive edge. While innovation of all types and at all levels is 

needed, the kind of innovation that wins wars is technology-based. As the Office of Naval 

Research (ONR) celebrates its 701

h anniversary in 2016, the Navy continues to leverage its 

phenomenal track record in maintaining a decisive capability advantage and the Naval Science & 

Technology Strategy guides these efforts. The strategy drives ongoing research and provides the 

foundation for how we invest the DoN's S&T budget. Our strategy is simple: to discover, 

develop and deliver decisive naval capabilities, near to long term, by investing in a balanced 

portjblio of breakthrough scientific research, innovative technology and talented people. 

The Naval S&T Strategy outlines our investment portfolio and identifies nine S&T research 

focus areas: 1) Assure Access to the Maritime Battlespace, 2) Autonomy and Unmanned 

Systems, 3) Electromagnetic Maneuver Warfare, 4) Expeditionary and Irregular Warfare, 

5) Information Dominance- Cyber, 6) Platform Design and Survivability, 7) Power and Energy, 

8) Power Projection and Integrated Defense, and 9) Warfighter Perfom1ance. The Naval S&T 

Strategy charts our course as we navigate between existing systems and concepts of operations 

toward a war fighting capability to counter predicted and emerging threats in an increasingly 

complex, uncertain future. Starting with evolution of cun·ent systems through incremental 

improvement and spiral development of known technology, we move toward yet-to-be2 
68 

discovered, dismptive, game-changing technologies. The Naval S&T Strategy aligns S&T 

investments with Naval missions and future capability needs by targeting knowledge gaps to 

develop new technologies that will address wartighting capability needs. 

Executing the Strategy 

Naval S&T investment portfolio falls into four broad components Discovery and Invention 

(D&l), Leap Ahead Innovations (Innovative Naval Prototypes/INPs), Technology Maturation 

(Future Naval Capabilities/FNCs), and a Quick Reaction S&T (QRST) capability to respond to 

emerging requirements. 

Discovery and Invention 

New technologies emerge from basic research. ONR's Discovery and Invention (D&l) includes 

basic research (6.1) and early applied research (6.2). D&I develops fundamental knowledge, 

provides a basis for future Navy/Marine Corps systems, and sustains our Scientist/Engineer 

workforce. D&T enables future capabilities, with the majority ofD&I investments conducted by 

academic and non-profit performers. The ONR Naval Research Laboratory conducts the 

majority of the DoN's basic research effort across all nine focus areas. D&I is peer reviewed by 

outside experts and overseen by ONR program officers and senior leadership. Investment 

decisions are guided by need, risk, impact, significance, originality, principal investigator, and 

budget resources. 

ONR's University Research Initiative (URI) includes the Multidisciplinary University Research 

Initiative (MURI), the Defense University Research Implementation Program (DURIP), and the 

Presidential Early Career Award for Scientist and Engineers (PECASE). MURI supports teams 

of researchers investigating topics that involve multiple technical disciplines. DURIP provides 

grants for the purchase of instrumentation necessary to perform research essential to the Navy. 

PECASE recognizes achievements of young scientists/engineers and encourages them to explore 

professions in academia and Naval laboratories. The Basic Research Challenge funds promising 

research not addressed by ONR's core program, while the Applied Research Challenge rewards 

the technical community for specific, measurable progress in new applied research. The Young 

3 
69 

Investigator Program supports scientists/engineers with exceptional promise for Naval research. 

Research opportunities for undergraduate and grad students, fellows, and future faculty members 

arc provided by the Naval Research Enterprise Internship Program (NREIP), where participants 

work at Naval laboratories and warfare centers. The In-House Laboratory Independent Research 

(!LIR) and Independent Applied Research (IAR) programs sponsor critical research and further 

the education of scientists and engineers at warfare centers. ONR also brings Historically Black 

Colleges and Universities and Minority Institutions (HBCU/MI) together with Naval laboratories 

and warfare centers to give students hands-on experience in Naval research. 

Leap Ahead Innovations (Innovative Naval Prototypes) 

ONR's Leap Ahead Innovations portfolio defines the future of naval warfighting. Leap-ahead 

technology initiatives demonstrate decisive new naval capabilities. Innovative Naval Prototypes 

(INP) are high-risk/high-payoff disruptive departures from established capabilities and 

operational concepts that can dramatically change how Naval forces fight, while reducing 

acquisition risk. The goal is to prove concepts and mature technology in 4-7 years, allowing 

informed decisions about risk reduction and transition to acquisition programs. 

Some INP examples include the Large Displacement UUV technologies deliver game-changing 

capabilities to naval warfighters. Scientific leadership in autonomy and unmanned systems 

enabled LDUUV, which complements existing undersea capabilities and platforms. The 

Autonomous Aerial Cargo/Utility System (AACUS) is developing autonomous capabilities for 

rapid, affordable rotorcraft supply in permissive, hostile and GPS-denied settings. 

Electromagnetic Rail gun (EMRG) is a revolutionary advancement in naval gun technology, and 

developmental success has enabled steady progress toward a demonstration. If realized, the 

capability offered by a multi-mission railgun will provide long-range land-attack, air defense, 

and anti-surface warfare against ships and small boats. 

Technology Maturation (Future Naval Capabilities) 

Technology Maturation provides vetted solutions to naval technology requirements and 

capability needs. It delivers critical component technologies to naval acquisition programs and 

4 
70 

many technology transition initiatives arc focused on improving affordability. This is the critical 

component of our transition strategy. It consists of the Future Naval Capabilities (FNC) 

program, USMC Advanced Technology Development (6.3) funds, Low Observable/Counter 

Low Observable funds, and Manufacturing Technology (Man Tech). 

FNCs are near-tenn (2-4 year), requirements-driven, delivery-oriented projects that deliver 

mature technologies to acquisition sponsors for incorporation into new or upgraded systems. 

FNCs use a collaborative process involving requirements, research, acquisition, and Fleet/Force 

communities to align this part of the S&T portfolio with Naval Capability Gaps identified by the 

Office of the Chief of Naval Operations (OPNAV) and the Marine Corps Combat Development 

Command (MCCDC). A gap is any capability required to achieve Naval objectives that are not 

achievable with current platfom1s, weapon systems, doctrine, organizational structure, training, 

materials, leadership, personnel or facilities and requires S&T investment to address. FNCs are 

based on D&l investments where technology can mature from Technology Readiness Level 

(TRL) 3 to TRL 6 in 3-5 years. As FNC products transition to Advanced Component 

Development and Prototypes and Engineering and Manufacturing Development, responsibility 

for development shifts from ONR to acquisition commands. 

Quick Reaction S&T (QRS&T) 

QRS&T delivers innovative solutions from ideas submitted by Sailors and Marines via the 

TechSolutions website. It is responsive to urgent technology needs that solve problems for 

warfighters, and rapid turnaround delivers a working prototype in less than 2 years. 

TechSolutions uses quick prototyping to meet specil1c requirements, with each project structured 

around del1nable metrics, and appropriate acquisition/test systems by integrated product teams. 

While neither a substitute for the acquisition process, nor a replacement for systems commands, 

TechSolutions prototypes deliver solutions to address immediate needs that can be easily 

transitioned to the Fleet/Force. 

Expeditionary Maneuver Warfare and Combating Terrorism 

5 
71 

In this evolving and complex world, the Marine Corps will remain the Nation's Crisis Response 

Force capable of operating in a forward posture in a joint/coalition environment. The Marine 

Corps serves as a maritime-based expeditionary force that operates across the range of military 

operations in a five domain battlespace (sea, air, land, cyber, and space). Projecting power from 

a variety of naval platforms and land bases, this highly trained and educated force will operate 

the most modern and technologically advanced equipment. 

ONR's science and technology contribution to the Marine Corps mission is executed through the 

DoN's Expeditionary Maneuver Warlare and Combating Terrorism S&T portfolio. While 

focused on science and technology to enable new capabilities for the Marine Corps, this S&T 

portfolio also supports naval special warfare and the Navy Expeditionary Combatant Command. 

The S&T portfolio provides new technology options to enable capabilities across the areas of 

Human Performance Training and Education (HPT&E), force protection, logistics, C4 

(Command, Control, Communications, and Computers), fires, maneuver, and !SR. 

To enable greater performance of our force we demonstrated and delivered to the Marine Corps 

the Augmented Immersive Team Trainer (AITT), an augmented reality training system that 

displays virtual indirect fire effects onto actual terrain. We anticipate continued development of 

augmented reality capabilities ultimately moving from a training perspective into a tactical use 

which opens the door for different types of scientific advancement and opportunities - e.g., 

Continuous and Dynamic Geo-Landmark Matching, visualization research, augmented reality 

metrics and measurement. 

The investments we make in intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (TSR) have advanced 

natural language processing and computer vision. These advances enable automated production 

of increasingly complex ISR products with common semantic representation of different types of 

data and information. The technology enables intelligence template products to refresh 

automatically and autonomously, potentially saving many hours of intelligence staff time. This 

gives Marines more time for deeper analysis and enhanced decision making and increases 

battlespace tempo that had been limited by the slow intelligence cycle. ISR efforts will continue 

6 
72 

the development of deep learning methods to process information. This work has the potential of 

making big data operationally useful with the construction of signatures that will capture how 

entities interact with the world and describe relevant behavior and/or activity of those entities. 

We have an active program that advances the state of Marine Corps munitions technology. The 

Enhanced Expeditionary Engagement Capability (E3C) project is an example of a collection of 

technoiO!,'Y advancements that will yield an affordable, precision, guided, extended range, dualmode GPS and Semi-active Laser (SAL), 8lmm mortar munition (Advanced Capability 

Extended Range Mortar, ACERM). This advanced mortar was designed from the ground up to 

push the art of the possible with the goal of increased range and increased accuracy. Moving 

forward we will continue the pursuit of science and technology advances in wide field-of-view 

visible and infrared frequency band cameras, video analytics implemented on embedded 

processing, a semi-autonomous system interface, self·correcting fire control, and wireless 

communications. Advances in these areas will enable the development of weapon system 

autonomy for application to unmanned ground systems. 

Integrated into the Naval and Joint Force with a reinvigoration of maneuver warfare, the Marine 

Corps will require continued technical approaches to enable high speed mobility from the sea to 

objective ashore. ONR's S&T continues research in hydrodynamics, propulsion, light-weight 

materials and human factors to enable maneuver from multiple options for entry. High water 

speed, reduced signature, enhanced range, and capacity all contribute to flexibility and advancing 

surface maneuver options, protecting landing forces, reducing risk to shipping and improving 

combat power build up ashore. 

Through our logistics efforts we continue to research areas that reduce maintenance and improve 

the operations of our ground vehicles. To reduce maintenance associated with corrosion, we 

supported the advancement of new isocyanate-free polysiloxane-based coatings. Significant 

progress has been made enhancing the perfonnance of highly hydrophobic, low-gloss, color 

retaining, flexible, weather resistant, isocyanate-tYee topcoats that resist chemical agent 

simulants. The last line of defense in the war on corrosion is the system's topcoat. 

7 
73 

ONR continues to identify key S&T opportunities in academia and industry that address unique 

aspects of information operations, electronic warfare and cyber operations .. Marines working at 

the "tactical edge" face challenges that require different S&T approaches to provide the small 

unit, distributed, expeditionary warfightcr the infotmation they need when and wherever they 

need it. Our cmTent and future S&T efforts focus on tactical self-healing networking and the 

ability to manage a secure mobile network with little supporting infrastructure. We support S&T 

to develop and apply metrics that provide the most resilient and stable network structure, as well 

as methods of multilayer device security. We also support tcchnolOk,'Y to provide radio 

architectures that can quickly change between waveforms, and simultaneously transmit and 

receive more than one waveform. 

We are pursuing science and technology that enhance our warfighting capabilities in unmanned 

aerial systems (UAS) and robotics, artificial intelligence and autonomous technologies that will 

ultimately provide tactical and operational advantage. Low-Cost UAV Swarming Technology 

(LOCUST) is an ONR project using the Coyote, a small expendable UAS deployed from an Asize sonobuoy tube or Common Launch Tube (CLT) that performs Intelligence, Surveillance and 

Reconnaissance (ISR) missions. In order to better understand and define autonomy, ONR is 

conducting basic research in robotic interaction/human factors; machine reasoning, learning and 

intelligence; scene/image understanding; bio-robotics; cognitive science, and neuroscience. 

These fundamentals are the keys to teaching collaboration and teaming among autonomous 

systems and between human and unmanned systems. 

With the accelerated pace of technology development our expeditionary maneuver warfare S&T 

has to support training events that allow the lorce to test, fail, and learn. The partnership of S&T 

with experimentation is a crucial aspect of moving the S&T forward. In these efforts, we work 

directly with the Futures Directorate and the Marine Corps Warlighting Laboratory (MCWL) at 

Quantico, whose mission is to use war-games, experimentation, and technology assessment to 

validate a concept's viability- as well as identity opportunities tor future Jorce development. 

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Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance and 

Reconnaissance (C4ISR) 

Cyber, space, and spectrum are becoming increasingly contested domains with the proliferation 

of anti-access, area-denial (A2/ AD) capabilities among potential adversaries. We have a 

requirement to project power despite A2/AD challenges and to maintain maritime superiority in 

a highly infonnationalized environment. To achieve that, we are investing in S&T to provide 

resilient cyber operations, robust communications and networking, rapid accurate decision 

making, and assured electromagnetic spectrum access for battle space awareness, threat 

assessment, and agile spectrum maneuver. 

In partnership with the Naval Research and Development Establishment (NR&DE) and other 

Services, ONR developed Naval Tactical Cloud (NTC) to provide the underlying information 

infrastructure and big data analytics that operate on tactical radio frequency networks to improve 

warfighting effectiveness while operating inside adversary kill chains. We will transition 

technologies developed by NTC to the relevant Navy programs, including the Consolidated 

Afloat Networks and Enterprise Services (CANES), the Agile Core Services (ACS), and the 

Distributed Common Ground System-Navy (DCGS-N). ONR developed the Dynamic Tactical 

Communications Network (DTCN)- a GOTS router that provides enhanced security and 

priority-aligned routing capabilities for Command and Control (C2) thinline and plans to 

demonstrate the capabilities ofDTCN at Trident Warrior 2016 exercise. 

Understanding cyber vulnerabilities in our networks, platforms, computing and infonnation 

systems, and data is essential to develop technologies that will enable total platfonn cyber 

protection for mission assurance. To this end, ONR is investing in S&T foundations and tools 

for resilient cyber components and systems, including hull, inti·astructure, mechanical and 

electrical systems cyber security; trusted network, data, and computing platfonns; and computer 

network defense. ONR developed Byzantine Fault Tolerance++ (BFT ++) to provide cyber-attack 

fault tolerance of real-time control systems by employing a combination of artificial diversity 

across the controllers and a known good state recovery mechanism. 

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The Naval Enterprise is also developing a framework for Electromagnetic Maneuver Warfare 

(EMW) that will make spectrum an integral part of a strategy to deter, fight and win against near 

peer adversaries. This framework will bring together multiple functional elements in the domain 

of electromagnetics: awareness, agility, reasoning and control. This will enable the warfighter 

to understand, utilize, shape, maneuver, attack and defend the electromagnetic spectrum. ONR is 

developing S&T building blocks to support the EMW vision, which requires a holistic, 

coordinated approach for sensing, communications, electronic warfare, information warfare, as 

well as integration of kinetic and non-kinetic payloads. We developed a multi-platfonn adaptive 

sensing technology that networks multiple RF sensors to enhance search sensitivity, electronic 

protection, and spectral efficiency. ONR will transition the technology to relevant Navy 

programs of record, including F/A-18 and DDG Flight Ill. 

Ocean Battlespace Sensing 

Naval forces must be able to adapt to ocean, air, littoral and riverine environments. Changes in 

geopolitics, focus on strategic locations, and new detection technologies create an emerging need 

for more accurate, long range forecasts for DoD and Naval operations. Our basic and applied 

experimentation to characterize ocean, atmosphere, and arctic processes are building the 

foundation for the next generation of environmental prediction deployed by Commander, Navy 

Meteorology and Oceanography Command (CNMOC). ONR's environmental studies are 

conducted worldwide with international patiners to gain specific knowledge of processes in 

various regions. Currently joint efforts are being conducted with Vietnam, India, Sri Lanka, and 

Singapore. Ongoing work in the Canadian Basin of the Arctic is studying ocean acoustic 

propagation and the etTects of open water during summer months. S&T will improve 

understanding of surface wind impact on upper ocean dynamics and energy fluxes across ocean 

boundary layers and enhance our ability to forecast operational conditions. The payotT is safe 

and efficient Naval operations in maritime environments through improved immediate, seasonal, 

and long range forecasts. ONR's research is field-oriented, using oceanographic ships, aircratl, 

and autonomous air and undersea vehicles- including Navy-owned Research Vessels that ONR 

schedules and supports in pminership with the National Science Foundation (NSF) as part of the 

community consmiium University National Oceanographic Laboratory System (UNOLS). 

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Contributing to our ability to understand and prevail in ocean environments, Navy operates 

several classes of Unmanned Underwater V chicles (UUV s ). ONR has invested in developing 

UUV s and autonomy tor these systems tor several decades, with successful transitions to the 

acquisition community and Fleet in the areas of Naval Special Warfare, Mine Countermeasures, 

Explosive Ordnance Disposal, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR), AntiSubmarine Warfare (ASW), and Oceanography. These systems generally fall into three classes: 

Man-portable, Lightweight, and Large Displacement with corresponding displacement and 

endurance. The ONR Innovative Naval Prototype Large Displacement UUV (LDUUV INP)ill 

design and build five LDUUVs: two preliminary designs, two pier-to-pier vehicles, and one 

submarine compatible vehicle. 

The program is developing energy, autonomy and core systems to operate in a complex ocean 

environment near harbors, shorelines, and other high traffic locations. Goals include doubling 

air-independent UUV energy density, using open architecture to lower cost, and enabling pier to 

pier autonomy in over-the-horizon operations. Achieving these goals will reduce plattonn 

vulnerability and extend the Navy's reach into denied areas. ONR is developing a long 

endurance, fuel cell-based power plant to be incorporated into LDUUV prototypes. A long 

endurance mission demonstration is scheduled in FY 2016. 

As Naval S&T has succeeded in developing new capabilities, it has also created successful 

businesses which arose [rom academic institutions such as Hydroid, Inc. from Woods Hole 

Oceanographic Institution and BlueFin Robotics from MIT. Small Business Innovation 

Resem·ch (SBIR) efforts helped nurture these businesses which were bought by larger 

corporations-- Hydroid was acquired by Kongsberg Marine and BlueFin Robotics was acquired 

by Battelle. As a result, there is a mature, competitive private sector industrial base for design, 

development, and maintenance ofUUVs and associated sensors and payloads. The exception to 

this is ONR's technical risk reduction in endurance and autonomy, where there is no analogous 

commercial need. Our Discovery and Invention, INP and other mission autonomy Future Naval 

Capability programs in MCM and ASW are providing the research into these critical topics. 

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Sea Warfare and Weapons 

ONR's major focus in Sea Warfare and Weapons is to improve surface and undersea platform, 

and undersea weapon performance. S&T investments provide options for advanced power and 

electrical systems and components, and survivable, agile, mobile, sustainable, manned and 

unmanned, surface and sub-surface sea platforms, and undersea weapons. 

Our Electric Ship Research and Development Consortium enlists academic institutions to 

collaborate with industry and the Naval Warfare Centers to develop electric power architectures 

and technologies to support high power sensors and weapons, including directed energy 

weapons. As part of a Department of Defense sponsored joint service initiative, ONR 

successfully demonstrated a Hybrid Energy Storage Module (HESM) that will lead to systems 

that enable electric weapons and sensor systems on legacy and next generation naval vessels. 

Leveraging other government work to maximize the government's return on investment, ONR 

coordinated this project with the Department of Energy's Advanced Research Projects Agency 

(ARPA-E) Advanced Management and Protection of Energy-storage Devices program. 

ONR's autonomous sea surface vehicle and undersea vehicle S&T includes development of 

autonomous unmanned sea surface vehicles (USVs) and long-endurance, air-independent power 

systems for unmanned undersea vehicles (UUV s ). We conducted successful tests of USV s 

demonstrating autonomous navigation capabilities, and multiple autonomous USVs operating 

jointly toward a common purpose. ONR recently conducted a successful test of a hydrogen 

powered fuel cell, adapted from an automotive application, in a UUV. 

A key enabler of these capabilities is investment in naval materials. Investments focus on 

performance and affordability of materials for lightweight structures, corrosion and biofouling 

mitigation, maintenance cost-reduction, undersea acoustic sensors, and energy/power-dense 

electrical energy conversion and storage. These efforts explore and apply fundamental materials 

physics to discover and develop materials meeting warfighting platform demands such as 

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investment in Integrated Computational Materials Engineering (ICME), a key clement of the 

Lightweight and Modem Metals Manufacturing Initiative. 

Warfighter Performance 

People arc the critical clement in complex systems. They provide the ingenuity, collaboration, 

and detennination necessary for operational effectiveness and resilience. Warfighter 

Perfonnance S&T addresses a broad range of research questions and technology transitions that 

support Sailors and Marines afloat and ashore. These research areas include manpower, 

personnel, training and design approaches to enhance perfonnance while reducing costs. 

Advances in behavioral sciences, medical technologies, and modeling and simulation techniques 

are enabling new approaches to mission-critical questions such as: How do we train effectively, 

efficiently reducing the time and cost of pre-deployment training? llow do we desi1,rn intuitive 

systems that are easy to use, reducing the requirement for on-the-job training? How do we 

support decision making in distributed teams of people and autonomous agents? How do we 

mitigate the risks of putting our warfighters in harm's way, keeping them healthy and ready to 

fight? 

Manpower and personnel simulations can help us design crew complements for new ships across 

a broad range of missions. Artificially intelligent tutoring systems can help new recruits learn 

basic skills, while adaptive simulation-based training systems tailor training to the needs of 

individual Sailors and Marines. Tmmersive and augmented reality displays provide experiential 

learning opportunities using simulation to train as we fight. Automated perfonnance assessment 

techniques enable instructors to evaluate readiness at the individual and team level and to focus 

their efforts et1iciently and effectively on the knowledge and skills gaps of the individual 

warfighters where it's needed. In FYlS/16 the Mission Planning Application (MPA) tool 

developed through the 011ice of Naval Research Capable Manpower Future Naval Capability 

program transitioned to the submarine fleet with installation on I 0 SSBN's and two shore 

trainers as part of combat system upgrades. 

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Intuitive, decision-centric, and user-friendly interfaces and decision support displays can reduce 

training requirements and associated costs while enabling more effective operational capability. 

Human-centered design enhances tactical, operational, and strategic decision making and 

planning. A deeper understanding of human intelligence, communication, and collaboration will 

enable better team performance and, ultimately, support peer-to-peer collaboration between 

human and artificially intelligent machines. Models of human social and cultural behavior will 

help defeat our adversaries and set the stage for more effective humanitarian assistance and 

disaster relief. 

Synthetic biology and medical technologies are needed to mitigate warfighter risk at sea, in the 

air, and in austere isolated environments. In FY15, ONR demonstrated reduced noise 

propagation on a CVN during flight operations and noise reduction in diver helmets, a major 

source of noise-induced hearing loss in Navy divers. ONR synthetic biology MURis 

demonstrated programmable, micro-bio-robots for environmental sensing and computer-aided 

design capabilities for genetic programming. The Food & Drug Administration selected ONR to 

provide expertise in the use of closed-loop medical monitoring and therapeutic interventions that 

will facilitate the use of automated care during sea-based casualty evacuation. 

Naval Air Warfare and Weapons 

The goal ofNaval Air Warfare and Weapons research is to broadly advance the fundamental 

understanding of the science and technology related to air vehicles and weapons systems for 

future naval systems and to demonstrate technology for air platforms, missiles, and directed 

energy weapons in relevant environments. We invest in science and technology for improving 

and maintaining current aircraft, such as the F A-18 E/F /G, as well as longer term research that 

will enable greatly enhanced, next-generation air dominance (NGAD) systems. Many of the 

longer-term, basic research projects are funded at a large number of universities around the 

country and support fundamental advancements in science as well as supporting workforce 

development in Aerospace Engineering and related fields. This is critical to ensuring that 

engineers, particularly those with advanced degrees, are available for the defense industry and 

DoD laboratories to design and build next generation aircrall and weapons. We also develop, 

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demonstrate, and transition technologies to increase the speed, range, accuracy, and lethality of 

Naval weapon systems to enable rapid, precise, assured defeat of land, sea and air targets. 

Naval Air Warfare and Weapons research supports the critical National Naval Responsibility 

(NNR) for Sea Based Aviation. ONR identifies these NNRs as S&T disciplines that are both 

critical for the Navy and in which other organizations will not provide sufficient investment. 

While other services and the commercial market invest in aircraft technology, only ONR deals 

with the unique S&T challenges of Sea Based Aviation. Examples of topics that are funded in 

the sea-based aviation NNR are materials and structures that can withstand the ultra-demanding 

marine environment, aircraft technology for ship launch and recovery of fixed and rotary wing 

aircraft, and propulsion systems that are ultra-compact and responsive to meet demands of wave 

off and bolter if landings are aborted, while concurrently being ultra-fuel efficient to allow for 

maximum range. Along with these NNR areas, there is significant investment in energetic 

materials, single and multiple autonomous vehicle operations, as well as directed energy and 

counter directed energy systems. 

Last year the Solid State Laser Quick Reaction Capability (SSL-QRC) was fielded as a science 

and technology demonstration aboard the USS PONCE. It was successfully demonstrated as an 

effective weapon system and was subsequently transitioned to the fleet in the Central Command 

area of responsibility and is now an operational system. ONR is building on this demonstrated 

capability with a program to improve component and system performance for directed energy 

weapons called Solid State Laser- Technology Maturation (SSL-TM). The prime contractor will 

develop a laser weapon with a beam director system to defend against small boats, unmanned 

aerial vehicles, and other targets. The Naval Surface Warfare Center, Dahlgren Division will 

serve as the lead system integrator. The SSL-TM Program is developing a higher powered laser 

with enhanced capabilities that is planned to be installed and tested at sea in FY18. Technology 

development etTorts will address improvements to laser beam quality, beam director architecture, 

as well as ship and combat system integration to support extended shipboard demonstrations in 

the maritime environment. 

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ONR is developing technology for electromagnetic (EM) rail guns, hypervelocity guided 

projectiles, and the power and cooling systems to integrate these on surface combatants. The 

railgun is a high-power, kinetic energy weapon capable oflaunching precision guided 

hypervelocity projectiles using electricity instead of chemical propellants. Magnetic fields 

created by high electrical currents accelerate a sliding metal conductor, or annature, between two 

rails to launch projectiles to velocities greater than Mach 6 at muzzle exit. With its increased 

velocity and extended range, the EM Rail gun will give Sailors a new capability, allowing them 

to conduct precise naval surface fire support or land strikes; ship defense; and surface warfare to 

deter enemy vessels. EM Railgun is a true warlighter game changer. Wide-area coverage, 

exceptionally quick response and very deep magazines will extend the reach and lethality of 

ships armed with this technology. The Navy partnered with the Office of the Secretary of 

Defense Strategic Capabilities Office (SCO) to develop closed-loop fire control command 

guidance lor the projectile that will expand the range of future missions tor the rail gun and HVP. 

The Tactically Exploited Reconnaissance Node (TERN) program is a joint ONR-DARP A project 

to demonstrate technologies enabling unmanned air vehicles to sustain operations at long range 

from small deck combatants such as the LCS and DDG-51. TERN is intended to improve 

aviation capabilities from smaller ships substantially beyond the current state-of-the-art. lf 

successful, TERN will provide the t1exibility to provide air operations support off existing ships 

without extensive ship modifications, and would provide the flexibility to carry interchangeable 

mission packages for both overland and maritime missions. It would be able to operate from 

multiple ship types and in elevated sea states. 

The Autonomous Aerial Cargo/Utility System (AACUS) Program is intended to demonstrate a 

platform independent autonomous system for landing aircraft without the need for a trained pilot 

for its operation. Given the approximate location of the desired landing, the system will identify 

the location for landing by itself and will avoid potential obstacles, such as trees and power lines. 

Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) 

A world-class, diverse science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) workforce 

enables the Department of the Navy to maintain technological superiority across our missions 

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and to protect our Sailors and Marines at home and abroad. In order to cultivate a talented and 

well-trained workforce for the Navy and Marine Corps, the Navy has a rich history of providing 

educational opportunities for students of all ages. These opportunities begin with naval-relevant 

outreach programs at the pre-kindergarten through high school grade levels, continue through 

internships and other programs at undergraduate and graduate schools, support student 

advancement into post-doctoral work and continue through all stages of professional 

development. 

We aim to inspire, engage and educate the next generation of scientists and engineers, and to 

attract, employ, develop and retain our diverse technical workforce through collaboration across 

the Navy, the federal government and the broad STEM community. There is no more valuable 

investment we can make in Naval S&T than in the minds of our workforce, investments that 

result in greater productivity and innovation throughout Navy laboratories, warfare centers, and 

in the academic and private sector. 

Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) 

The Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) is the Navy and Marine Corps Corporate Laboratory and 

reports directly to CNR/ONR. Sponsored by ONR, the NRL base research program develops 

S&T to meet needs identified in the Naval S&T Strategic Plan. Research at NRL is the 

foundation that can focus on a broad spectrum of scientific areas to advance scienti fie 

understanding for DoN, and develops technology from concept to operation when high-priority, 

short-term needs arise. NRL is the lead Navy lab for space systems, firefighting, tactical 

electronic warfare, advanced electronics and artilicial intelligence. As the Navy's in-house 

laboratory, NRL sustains skills and innovation in a world-class workforce. Among our great 

challenges is the need to modernize aging NRL infrastructure so it can continue to meet the 

emerging needs of our future Naval forces. This is especially important as the pace ofS&T 

advancement accelerates rapidly across the rest of the world, and near peer competitors begin to 

arise, challenging our Naval superiority. 

ONRGiobal 

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ONR Global employs a cadre of technical experts who facilitate international research 

collaboration, maintain global technology awareness, and provide S&T advice and support to 

operational fleet/forces. ONR recognizes that R&D spending and technical innovation outside 

the United States are accelerating and works to improve technology outreach through global 

partners who assist in our pursuit of innovation and technological superiority. Investment in 

cooperative research can provide better products for our warfighters at reduced cost. ONR 

offices in London, Prague, Santiago, Sao Paulo, Singapore, and Tokyo coordinate activities with 

the other services and Assistant Secretary of Defense (Research and Engineering) in the host 

country and spanning over 55 countries. We search tor emerging S&T to meet current needs, as 

well as requirements for future capabilities. ONR Global establishes contacts with international 

S&T leaders, giving us new perspectives and helping identify trends and threats. It enables us to 

recruit foreign scientists and engineers in partnerships that benefit the U.S. and allies. ONR 

Global Science Advisors relay Fleet/Force needs to the Naval Research Enterprise (Navy labs, 

warfare centers, affiliated universities) to facilitate development of solutions to transition back to 

the Fleet/Force. Science Advisors are Naval engineers who coordinate experimentation, develop 

prototypes, explore transition options, and collaborate with the Fleet/Force to shape S&T 

investments. ONR Global Science Advisers support demonstrations ofONR technologies UAVs 

for tactical ISR from various platfmms and prototype laser weapon systems. We continue to see 

increasing demand for ONR Global activities to keep pace with global technology developments 

and Navy requirements for innovation. 

Small Business Innovation Research 

We must increase the return on investment in Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR). 

ONR's SBIR program has had success helping small businesses make progress in technology 

development, but we must do a better job of helping small businesses transition from S&T and 

development to production. Small businesses remain one ofNavy's most productive sources of 

innovation. Active oversight and management ofSBIR goals, utilizing marketing, metrics, and 

improved communications, will ensure that Navy is more aware of small business capabilities 

and that small businesses are more aware ofNavy requirements. We need to utilize small 

businesses to the maximum extent possible, and are already doing so in areas as diverse as 

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development and construction of combat ships and landing vessels, design and manufacture of 

airframe structural components, marine charter transportation, and non-nuclear ship repair. 

Small businesses have repeatedly proven their ability to provide lean, agile and innovative 

solutions to warfighter needs. 

70111 Anniversary 

ONR has been delivering technology innovations to naval forces for 70 years. Established by 

Public Law 79-588 in August 1946, ONR was our nation's first federal research agency. 

Although WWI! had ended, Congress, the Navy and academia realized the importance of science 

and technology to meeting the challenges of modern warfare. The technological edge provided 

by innovations such as radar and the proximity fuze proved key to our war fighters to defeat our 

adversaries. The Navy had a strong research enterprise in the Naval Research Laboratory and 

Naval Warfare Centers, but saw the value in expanding the enterprise to academia and industry. 

Public and private universities, faculty and graduates students could propose naval relevant 

research. This ongoing Navy investment in civilian research would maintain and build the 

academic science base and provide a pipeline of science and technology for the future. 

By discovering and working with top minds-both here at home and around the worldfostering scientific research to support naval power remains as vital today as it was 70 years ago. 

Conclusion 

ONR's vision is to "never put a Sailor or Marine in fair fight!" Naval S&T investments represent 

careful stewardship of taxpayer dollars that lead turns our DoD's toughest challenges that 

delivers decisive capabilities. The FY 2017 President's Budget request will enable us to move 

toward enhanced naval capabilities, more effective partnership between research and acquisition, 

and stren6>1:hen partnerships with the Army, Air Force, DARPA and other DoD research 

organizations- as well as performers outside the Naval R&D system. Thank you for your 

support of naval science and technology as we discover, develop and deliver decisive naval 

capabilities for our warfighters. 

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Rear Admiral Mathias W. Winter 

Chief of Naval Research/Director, Innovation Technology Requirements, and Test & Evaluation 

(N84) 

Rear Adm. Mathias Winter, a 1984 graduate of the University of Notre Dame with a Bachelor of 

Science in Mechanical Engineering, received his commission through the Naval Reserve Officers 

Training Corps and was designated a naval flight officer in 1985. 

Winter served operational tours as an A-6E Intruder Bombardier/Navigator with Attack Squadrons 42, 

85 and 34 making multiple deployments aboard aircraft carriers l.JSS Saratoga (CV 60), l.JSS America 

(CV 66), l.JSS Dwight D. Eisenhower (CVN 69) and USS George Washington (CVN 73). 

Winter's acquisition tours include assistant deputy program manager (DPM) for the Joint Standoff 

Weapon System; executive assistant to the Joint Strike Fighter (.IS F) program director; chief engineer 

for JSF Integrated Flight and Propulsion Control; DPM for the Tactical Tomahawk All-Up-Round 

development program; chief of staff to the Program Executive Officer (PEO) for Tactical Aircraft 

Programs; and his major acquisition command tour as the Precision Strike Weapons (PMA-201) 

program manager. 

Winter has served flag tours as the commander, Naval Air Warfare Center Weapons Division, China 

Lake/Point Mugu, Califomia, assistant commander for Test and Evaluation, Naval Air Systems 

Command and PEO tor Unmanned Aviation and Strike Weapons. In December 2014, he became the 

25th chief of Naval Research with concurrent flag responsibilities as director, Innovation Technology 

Requirements, and Test & Evaluation. 

Winter holds a master's degree in computer science from the Naval Postgraduate School and another in 

national resource strategy from National Defense University's Industrial College of the Armed Forces; 

and a Level Ill certification in Program Management and Test & Evaluation from the Defense System 

Management College. 

His personal awards include the Legion of Merit (3), Defense Meritorious Service Medal (2), Navy 

Meritorious Service Medal (2), Navy and Marine Corps Commendation Medal (4), Joint Service 

Achievement Medal (2), Navy and Marine Corps Achievement Medal, Air Force Acquisition Excellence 

Award, Southwest Asia Service Medal, Kuwait Liberation Medal, and various unit and sea service 

awards. 

Updated: 30 December 2014 
86 

NOT FOR PUBLICATION UNTIL RELEASED BY 

HOUSE ARMED SERVICES COMMITTEE 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON EMERGING THREATS AND CAPABILITIES 

U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 

DEPAR'fMENT OF THE AIR FORCE 

PRESENTATION TO THE HOUSE ARMED SERVICES COMMITTEE 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON EMERGING THREATS AND CAPABILITIES 

U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 

24 February 2016 

SUBJECT: Fiscal Year 2017 Air Force Science and Technology 

STATEMENT OF: Dr. David E. Walker, SES 

Deputy Assistant Secretary 

(Science, Technology and Engineering) 

NOT FOR PUBLICATION UNTIL RELEASED BY 

HOUSE ARMED SERVICES COMMITTEE 

SUBCOMMITTEE EMERGING THREATS AND CAPABILITIES 

U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 
87 

INTRODUCTION 

Mr. Chairman, Members of the Subcommittee and Staff, I am pleased to have the 

opportunity to provide testimony on the Fiscal Year 2017 Air Force Science and Technology (S&T) 

Program and our efforts to innovativcly and affordably respond to warfighter's needs now while 

simultaneously creating the force of the future. 

1\s you heard the Secretary of Defense state recently, the Fiscal Year 2017 President's 

Budget takes the "long view" required to sustain our lead in full-spectrum warfighting. During the 

Acquisition Reform hearing in early January, we shared thoughts with the full Committee on the 

changing character of war and the inevitability of increasingly rapid change. On one side, the 

Department is thinking about the long-tenn capabilities necessary to fight in I 0, 20 or 30 years 

down the road. On the other side, we've recognized that the relentless pace of change increases 

complexity and decreases predictability in warfare. As slated in the Air Force Future Operating 

Concept, "no technology or technique will eliminate the metaphorical fog and friction of warfare, 

and no military advantage will go unchallenged by adversaries seeking to achieve their objectives 

and deny us ours." 

Given this environment of rapid change, how do we as an Air Force-and as a Department 

as a whole-ensure we have the capabilities we need to dominate the cun·ent tight, prepare for the 

future tight, and/or deter it from happening at all? We believe the answer is to bring a new level of 

agility and innovation into our capability development processes, workforce and intl-astruclure. As 

highlighted in the Air Force Strategy, America's Air Force: A Call to the Future, strategic agility 

allows us to rapidly adjust to evolving threat environments faster than our adversaries and can help 

us counter uncertainty. The Air Force's efforts in this area, many of which are described in this 

statement, support the building blocks of the Department's Third Offset Strategy and our Fiscal 

Year 2017 Air Force S&T Program has alignment to the Long Range Research and Development 

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Planning Program initiatives. From an acquisition perspective, our Air Force efforts also 

incorporate and support the Better Buying Power (BBP) 3.0 initiatives under the leadership of Mr. 

Frank Kendall, Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics (AT&L). 

The BBP 3.0 initiatives arc endeavoring to strengthen our ability to innovate, achieve technical 

excellence, and field dominant military capabilities. 

The following statement provides an overview of the Air Force's move toward strategic 

agility in capability development through reinvigorating development planning, maximizing the 

impact of our robust S&T program (game-changing, enabling, relevant, and rapid technologies), 

increasing efforts in experimentation and prototyping, and leveraging the contributions of our entire 

world class workforce and infrastructure. 

AIR FORCE FISCAL YEAR 2017 S&T PROGRAM AND ASSOCIATED EFFORTS 

As our budget request highlights, Air Force senior leaders are committed to science and 

technology and embracing new paradigms in capability development. The Air Force Fiscal Y car 

2017 President's Budget request for S&T is approximately $2.5 billion. This is an increase of$108 

million or a 4.5% increase from the Fiscal Year 2016 President's Budget request. We have 

emphasized research in hypersonic and low cost cruise missile technologies to provide the 

capability to counter adversary anti-access and area-denial (A2/AD) in support of the Long Range 

Research and Development Planning Program; advanced air combat missiles; and research in 

technologies to provide robust position, navigation and timing (PNT) capabilities. The Air Force 

Fiscal Year 2017 President's Budget request also includes funding in Budget Activity 4 (Advanced 

Component Development and Prototypes) and in Budget Activity 6 (RDT &E Management Support) 

to support our prototyping, experimentation, and modeling and simulation efforts. Approximately 

$62 million for prototyping and experimentation funds the experimentation campaigns chartered by 

Air Force senior leaders and approximately $285 million funds the Adaptive Engine Transition 

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Program (AETP). More infonnation on these efforts is provided later in this statement. 

Approximately $13 million of integrated modeling and simulation funding will be used to build and 

maintain the tools and virtual environments necessary to conduct development planning, 

prototyping, and experimentation. 

AGILITY IN CAPABILITY DEVELOPMENT 

To capitalize on the increasingly dynamic environment, the Air Force is aggressively 

pursuing a path toward strategic agility. At its heart, the term agility means the ability to act 

appropriately within a changing context and captures the attributes offlexibility, adaptability, and 

responsiveness. Flexibility is the hallmark of airpower, and the adaptability of our Airmen, 

organizations, operational concepts, and weapon systems has long underwritten that flexibility. We 

now look to our Airmen to foster a culture which values anticipation over reaction and shaping over 

responding. Achieving greater agility in how we organize, train, equip, and employ our Air Force 

provides a strategic advantage over potential adversaries. The Air Force is not forging this 

paradigm shift in capability development simply for our own sake, but for the sake of the joint fight 

and the Nation. 

We're also not starting this endeavor from scratch. Historically, we've used development 

planning to drive innovation and plan our future. Our reinvigoration of development planning at the 

Air Force enterprise level gets us back to our roots to formulate truly innovative strategic choices 

and leverage the attributes of agility in our capability development. Development planning enables 

us to understand and synthesize future warfighting needs and reconcile those with available and 

potential capabilities, concepts, and emerging technologies and will be a key process to support Air 

Force strategic decisions. Key development planning functions to achieve this understanding 

include: systems engineering to formulate and evaluate viable concepts; operational trade space 

analysis and definition; technology shortfall identification; S&T needs and gap analysis; and 

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requirements refinement. In conjunction with development planning, the Air Force is conducting 

experimentation and prototyping activities which bring together operators, technologists, 

requirements, and acquisition professionals to explore the full range of multi-domain innovative 

materiel and non-materiel solution options. These activities provide an environment where our 

Airmen can take smart risks when exploring innovative ideas. 

The Air Force is using an Enterprise Capability Collaboration Team (ECCT) approach to 

facilitate development planning for our highest-priority mission areas. ECCTs have the freedom to 

explore concepts with a direct path to senior leadership for quicker decisions on courses of action to 

increase agility across the enterprise. The ECCTs are leveraging knowledge and expertise residing 

in the Air Force operational community, acquisition enterprise, the DoD laboratory enterprise, 

Federally Funded Research and Development Centers (FFRDCs), academia, and industry, as 

appropriate. 

CONTRIBUTION OF AIR FORCE S&T IN AGILE CAPABILITY DEVELOPMENT 

The Air Force S&T Program plays an integral role in developing technologies to provide 

options for our forces of tomon·ow and ensuring needed technologies get into the hands of our 

warfighters today. The Air Force emphasized the role ofS&T by dedicating an annex in the 

Strategic Master Plan which outlines a strategic approach to S&T and the supporting elements 

necessary to bring forth the next generation of capabilities. 

Game-Changing (Revolutionary) Technologies 

As outlined in America's Air Force: A Ca/1 to the Future, we are focusing on several gamechanging technologies that can amplify many of the enduring attributes of airpower~speed, range, 

flexibility, and precision. These game-changing technologies are: autonomous systems, unmanned 

systems, hypcrsonics, directed energy, and nanotechnology. The Air Force's S&T efforts in 

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autonomous systems and unmanned systems provide key support to the realization of the five 

enablers of the Department's Third Offset Strategy. 

Autonomous Systems 

Autonomy has the potential to enhance Air Force readiness for increasingly complex, future 

operating environments. Autonomous systems can provide new approaches to airpowcr by 

potentially reducing unnecessary manning costs and time required for critical operations while 

increasing the range of operations and levels of reliability, persistence and efficiency. While 

autonomous systems can extend human reach by providing potentially unlimited persistent 

capabilities without degradation due to fatigue or lack of attention, such increases in machine 

autonomy requires humans and automated systems to work as a team, with some level of decisionmaking delegated to the machine counterpatt. 

Our research seeks to find the right balance of human and machine capability to meet Air 

Force challenges in the future. To achieve optimal human-machine teaming, the Air Force is 

developing technologies to enable Airmen atld machines to work together, with each understanding 

mission context, sharing understanding and situation awareness, and adapting to the needs and 

capabilities of the other. Additional research is focused on understanding human cognition and 

decision-making and applying these concepts to machine learning. These etrorts are developing 

efficient interfaces for an operator to supervise multiple unmanned aerial system (UAS) platfom1s 

and providing cyber operators and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) analysts with 

tools to assist in identifying and tracking targets of interest. 

To achieve human-machine cooperation in a complex, contested environment, the Air Force 

is focused on increasing machine intelligence. Cooperative, distributed system technologies will 

enable machines to synchronize activity and information. Systems that coordinate location, status, 

mission intent, and intelligence at1d surveillance data can provide redundancy, increased coverage, 

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decreased costs and/or increased capability. Air Force S&T efforts are focused on the coordination 

and integration of disparate sensor systems across multiple aircraft as well as developing munition 

sensors and guidance systems that will increase operator trust, validation, and flexibility while 

capitalizing on the growing ability of munitions to autonomously search a region of interest, provide 

additional situational awareness, plan optimum Hight paths, de-connie! trajectories, optimize 

weapon-to-target orientation, reduce operator workload, and cooperate to achieve optimum effects. 

To help ensure safe operations of autonomous systems, the Air Force is researching the 

architectures and mechanisms to prevent cyber intrusions, and as importantly, developing capability 

in the system to detect anomalies and validate data. We have initiated research to develop and test 

techniques to verifY the decision-making and logic of the system and validate the system's ability to 

operate safely and effectively in unanticipated and dynamic environments. 

Unmanned Systems 

With the advent of unmanned warfighting capability, there is a new path for disaggregation. 

By removing the operator from the aircraft, unmanned platforms can be made less complex and 

much smaller. This allows the complexity of the air mission system to be increased, as needed, 

through composition of multiple, simpler platfom1s. Mission packages may be composed of 

specialized, unmanned platforms performing each of the needed functions singly such as global 

communication, precision navigation, target identification, and weapon delivery. Disaggregated 

unmanned air systems present a new dimension for achieving the operational agility envisioned in 

the Air Force Future Operating Concept and the Department's Third Offset Strategy. 

There are expansive technology requirements to field a disaggregated unmanned system. 

These systems will have a critical dependence on secure tactical communication to share services 

across the mission package. They will require a robust combination of on board autonomy and 

distributed command and control. To fit high performance functionality on small platfonns requires 

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advanced structural concepts, flexible electronics, and advanced on board power sources. Other 

needs are new classes of distributed, collaborative sensors and onboard data fusion. Tbis class of 

vehicles will also need to navigate safely in airspace as well as launch, refuel, and recover in unique 

ways. 

The Air Force S&T Program is addressing many of these issues. For example, we have 

multiple efforts to enhance propulsion and power performance for smaller air vehicles and our 

robust portfolio of autonomy investments discussed earlier in this statement will allow for critical 

onboard decision-making and enhanced human-machine interfaces. Air Force S&T etTorts in this 

area are focusing on advancing and enhancing rapid and agile manufacturing techniques for these 

systems. In addition, the Air Force Research Laboratory has demonstrated and fielded multiple 

approaches to collision avoidance to allow for safe airspace integration. 

This class of platforms also presents an ideal context for advancing our capability for rapid, 

agile development and fielding. One of these efforts, Low Cost Attritable Aircraft Technology 

(LCAA T), is discussed later in this statement along with other rapid transition and fielding 

activities. Development can accelerate by establishing new certification standards for these lowcost, limited life airframes. A commitment to open architectures and interface specifications allows 

for upgradable modularity. Integration of design and manufacturing, coupled with automated and 

additive construction, opens the door to purpose-built platforms. This unique opportunity tor 

frequent, simplified technology refresh will keep these disaggrcgated unmanned systems everrelevant and cost effective. 

Hypersonics 

Hypersonics arc one of the game-changers that provide high-speed options for engaging 

time sensitive targets, while improving the snrvivability of Air Force systems. The Air Force is 

developing technologies for a High Speed Strike Weapon (HSSW) to enable a responsive, long8 
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range strike capability. These weapons can be employed from fighters and bombers and fly at 

hypersonic speeds to their intended target on the ground. 

The Air Force continues to partner with the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency 

(DARPA) on two flight demonstration programs for HSSW technologies: Hypersonic Air-breathing 

Weapon Concept (HA WC) and Tactical Boost Glide (TBG). These programs intend to address 

three technology challenge areas: air vehicle feasibility, effectiveness and affordability. The 

HA WC program aims to develop and demonstrate critical technologies and attributes of an effective 

and affordable hypersonic cruise missile. The TBG program aims to develop and demonstrate 

technologies to enable future air-launched, tactical-range hypersonic boost glide systems. 

The HSSW Technology Maturation (Tech Mat) effort is developing technologies to 

complement the DARPA-Air Force HSSW demonstrations and to expand the technology trade 

space in hypersonics. HSSW Tech Mat focuses on longer term enabling and enhancing 

technologies. Some of these include: ordnance; advanced materials and manufacturing; guidance, 

navigation, and control; and solid rocket motor technologies. 

Directed Energy 

The Air Force has invested in directed energy (DE) including high power microwave (HPM) 

and high energy laser (HEL) technologies to the point that we are now positioned to provide 

Airmen distinctive and revolutionary capabilities tor several Air Force and joint mission areas. 

With a uniquely focused high power DE S&T organization with a wide range of modern, dedicated 

facilities and an excellent scientist and engineering (S&E) workforce, including a large number of 

young military officers, the Air Force is in a leading position in this game-changing area. 

We recently initiated S&T efforts to implement DE on small and rapidly maneuvering 

platfonns where size, weight and power scaling arc major challenges. This effort, when 

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accomplished, will provide a force multiplier by placing both kinetic and non-kinetic weapons 

capabilities on our current platfonns. 

Lower power laser technologies are rapidly evolving for infrared seeker jamming, improved 

ISR and target identification, and secure communications in congested and jammed spectrum 

environments. To make HEL weapon systems useful to the warfighter, our S&T program invests in 

research for laser sources that include narrow line width fiber laser amplifiers that when combined 

in large numbers produce weapons class lasers. To complement the laser source development, the 

Air Force has parallel research in beam control component and system-level technologies; 

atmospheric compensation, acquisition, pointing, tracking, laser effects; and physics-based end-toend modeling and simulation. All of these technologies are maturing to a point where the Air Force 

S&T Program can now address the highly turbulent environment for correcting aero effects on the 

laser beam from an aircraft. This will be demonstrated by integrating a moderate power laser system 

into a standard fuel pod for aircraft seli~protection applications. 

The High Energy Laser Joint Technology Office (HEL JTO) supports all of the Services 

under Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) leadership by translating requirements into 

technology. The HEL JTO is a key enabler to the BEL community at the component level for laser 

sources, beam control, lethality, and modeling and simulation. Several advances in the development 

of high power laser devices like the 100 kilowatt, laboratory-scale Joint High Power Solid State 

Laser and the Robust Electric Laser Initiative would not have occurred without HEL .ITO 

leadership, joint service collaboration, and adequate funding. The HEL .ITO is also developing the 

Advanced Beam Control for Locating and Engagement program that will advance pointing and 

tracking through the use of improved sensors and adaptive optics. The Services arc leveraging these 

components and designs for inclusion in future weapon systems. 

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Air Force HPM S&T will complement kinetic weapons by engaging multiple soft targets 

and neutralizing communication systems, computers, command and control nodes, and other 

electronics, with low collateral damage for counter A2/AD in future combat situations. Using the 

results from the highly successful Counter-Electronics High Power Microwave Advanced Missile 

Project (CHAMP) Joint Capabilities Technology Demonstration, there is research investigating 

size, weight and power updates for a more effective, more capable weapon delivering a broader 

spectrum of microwave effects on a smaller platfmm. In addition, the Air Force is refurbishing the 

two remaining CI lAMP platforms and investigating options for them to be used by the warfighter to 

address the vehicle survivability, environment suitability, range, reliability, and maintainability 

issues highlighted by the Operational Utility Assessment. 

Nanotechnology 

Emerging research and developments at nanometer dimensions-below 100 nanometerspromise revolutionary technological changes for a wide range of Air Force and DoD applications 

and platforms by delivering materials, coatings, devices and sensors with new and novel 

perfmmance. Nanotechnologies to be incorporated within the Air Force platfmms are directly 

relevant to the Air Force technology areas of aerodynamics, mobility, stealth, sensing, power 

generation and management, smart structures and materials, resilience and robustness, and 

augmented human performance. In addition, Air Force S&T efforts are investigating how 

nanotechnologies will impact battlespace systems concerned with information and signal 

processing, autonomy and intelligence. Our Air Force S&T investment in this game-changing 

technology will also enable the development of novel materials providing the basis for the design 

and development of new properties and structures resulting in increased perfmmance, reduced cost 

of maintenance, and enhanced functionality. 

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The Air Force is also leveraging advances in nanoscience to enable game-changing 

computing technologies. For example, our investment in this area includes large-scale symbolic 

inference models and subsequent computing architecture implementations for affordable, agile, 

autonomous, and trusted systems capable of ingesting and processing big data to support decision 

makers. Multifunctional nanoelectronics and nanomaterials involving hybrid and three-dimensional 

(3D) stacking will provide a 100 times increase in computing density, and enable human-level 

computing capacity in embedded systems. Ensuring a U.S. industrial base for nanofabrication 

capabilities will be critical to competitively enabling this functionality in domestic systems. 

Towards this end, Air Force Research Laboratory researchers are working closely with the 

nanofabrication facility at the State University of New York Polytechnic Institute to collaborate and 

exploit advancements in nanoelectronic design and manufacturing, thus shortening the time from 

concept to fielding to the warfighter. 

Enabling Technologies 

In addition to these game-changing technologies, the Air Force S&T Program also invests in 

many enabling technologies to facilitate major advances and ensure maximum effectiveness in the 

near-, mid-, and far term. 

Basic Research 

Basic research embraces the challenge set forth by Air Force senior leadership by driving 

game-changing innovation to achieve the art-of-the-possible. The development of revolutionary 

capabilities requires the careful investment in foundational science to generate new knowledge. 

Air Force basic research sits at the center of an innovation network that tracks the best S&T 

with our partners in the Army, Navy, Defense Threat Reduction Agency, and DARPA while 

monitoring the investments and breakthroughs of the National Science Foundation, NASA, the 

Department of Energy, and National Institute of Standards and Technology. Furthermore, through 

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open, publishable research that cuts across multiple scientific disciplines Air Force S&Es attend to 

and collaborate with the best universities and research centers from around the world. Our scientists 

and engineers seek out the potential military utility of new ideas and concepts to transition gamechanging S&T to the Air Force and our partners. The Air Force S&T Program integrates these 

developments and provides the support to inject scientific results and innovative breakthroughs into 

the research and acquisition community. 

Game-changing capabilities begin with foundational, cross-cutting and revolutionary basic 

research. For instance, Air Force researchers have perfonned the first fully resolved direct 

numerical simulations of the turbulent boundary layers of interest to hypersonic t1ight. This 

fundamental research is leading the way to determining the 3D unsteady separation of the flow on 

control surfaces. The basic research modeling and simulation work is being applied to high fidelity 

wind tunnel testing and flight data simulation, with additional application to thermally-induced 

structural distortions on hypersonic weapons. 

Live, Virtual, and Constructive (LVC) 

Our national security challenges make it imperative that our forces be prepared to meet the 

challenges of the future battlespace through realistic training environments. The Air Force strategy, 

America's Air Force: A Call to the Future, describes Live, Virtual, and Constructive (L VC) as "one 

of the more promising paths to agility in operational training and readiness." As such, our Air Force 

S&T Program is continuing to develop and demonstrate technologies for L VC operations to 

maintain combat readiness. 

The need for L VC is highlighted as training costs are increasing and threat environments 

become highly complex. In particular, realistic training for A2/ AD environments is not available. 

Past demonstrations of Air Force S&T LVC capability for tactical air have integrated an F-16 

networked simulation environment (a virtual simulator) to simultaneously intemperate with a mix 

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of live F-16 aircraft, other virtual simulations (including the immersive environment known as the 

Joint Terminal Attack Controller Training and Rehearsal System), and high-fidelity, computergenerated constructive players. This mix of players enabled the real time and realistic portrayal and 

interaction of other strike package assets and aggressor aircraft with a level of complexity that could 

not be achieved if limited to live assets, given the expense and resource availability to support the 

scenarios. 

Although the example just discussed is for tactical air, L VC can apply to other operational 

domains, such as special operations; cyber; ISR; and command and control (C2). A recent example 

of a successful L VC demonstration is the integration of live Joint Terminal Attack Controllers 

(.TTACs) with live A-10 aircraft in a training exercise. The JTACs were operating within the Joint 

Theater Attack Controller Training and Rehearsal System and were coordinating air strikes with the 

A-1 0 aircraft. For the Air Force medical community, L VC is envisioned to support training tor 

expeditionary medicine, enroute medical care, and schoolhouse medical training. The Air Force 

Research Laboratory is teaming with the U.S. Air Force School of Aerospace Medicine to review 

these areas ofLVC application. 

In Fiscal Year 2017, the Secure LVC Advanced Training Environment (SLATE) effort is 

planned to continue L VC hardware and software development, 5th generation wavefo1m maturation 

and Operational Flight Plan (OFP) modification. These S&T efforts will focus on upgrades to range 

infrastructure and integration of L VC pod/internal form factor for the F-35 which will include a new 

datalink and Multiple Independent Levels of Security (MILS) encryptor and processors. 

Position, Navigation, and Timing 

The Air Force is emphasizing S&T efforts in PNT to improve the robustness of military 

Global Positioning System (GPS) receivers and also developing several non-GPS based altemative 

capabilities including exploitation of other satellite navigation constellations, use of new signals of 

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opportunity, and incorporation of additional sensors such as star trackers and ten·ain viewing optical 

systems. These receivers provide new navigation options with different accuracy depending on 

available sensors and computational power. 

We are collaborating with DARPA, the Anny, and the Navy on the development of future 

adaptable military navigation systems. In this endeavor, we are promoting technology trends toward 

more open architectures and software defined radios for navigation systems to address future spiral 

enhancements and control cost growth of embedded GPS-inertial avionics. We are also partnered 

with DARPA on inertial and clock size, weight, power, and cost (SWaP-C) advances via a variety 

of teclmological approaches and in starting a new very low ti·equency (VLF) terrestrial beacon 

based navigation and timing research effort. We have also conducted multiple GPS-denied visionaided inertial flight experiments that demonstrate a small percent of distance traveled error 

accumulation in position accuracy. 

Manufacturing Technologies 

The Air Force's Manufacturing Technology program has focused on promoting technologies 

for an agile, next generation manufacturing industrial base with strategic benefits in efficiency, 

atfordability, and capabilities in Air Force warfighting products. The program strategically aligns 

key agile manufacturing objectives including: l) moving manufacturing considerations earlier in the 

design cycle to reduce acquisition cost and risk; 2) enabling seamless lifecycle management through 

an integrated digital thread to document and improve process control, optimization, and 

manufacturing agility; 3) integrating the industrial base enterprise to predict, identify, and react to 

supply chain issues; and 4) creating the factory of the future with flexible, smart machine cells and 

assembly processes that are efficient even at low volume production. Several agile manufacturing 

initiatives are now underway. The Agile Manufacturing for ISR (AMISR) AgilePod effort is 

focused on developing and implementing advanced manufacturing techniques to enable affordable, 

low volume production of open architecture multi-sensor ISR pods. The Air Force Manufacturing 

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Technology Program is also key to the LCAA T effort to develop and demonstrate a capable, 

attritable aircraft for less than $3 million without mission systems. More information on this effort 

is provided later in the statement. 

The Air Force is continuing support to the Manufacturing Institutes as part of the National 

Network for Manufacturing Innovation. The Air Force Research Laboratory participates on 

Technical Advisory Boards and Government Advisory Boards and provides subject matter experts 

(SMEs) for source selection and project execution. The two newest institutes are the American 

Institute for Manufacturing-Integrated Photonics (AIM-IP) and Next Flex for flexible hybrid 

electronics. AIM-IP was established in August 2015 and is focused on developing novel 

manufacturing processes for integrated photonic devices. Air Force applications include but aren't 

limited to lasers, detectors, waveguides/passive structures, modulators, electronic controls and 

optical interconnects. NextFlex was established in September 2015 and is focused on developing 

highly tailorable devices on flexible and stretchable substrates. Air Force applications include 

integration of flexible components such as circuits, communications, sensors and power with more 

sophisticated Silicon-based processors. Both institutes utilize a "shared" leadership model with an 

Air Force Research Laboratory Chief Technology Officer (CTO) responsible for the technical 

vision of the institute. 

Material Technologies (Sustainment) 

At all stages of defense planning sustaining the force remains a priority. The average age of 

our air and space forces is at a historic high and will continue to increase. For this reason the 

acquisition life cycle of our defense systems needs to ensure planning for sustainment early in the 

cycle. For fielded systems the need to improve sustainability and increase life cycles is also 

imperative. This is an area where we can and must be more innovative and less risk averse in 

discovering and demonstrating additional methods to sustain our existing assets. 

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Air Force S&T is directly contributing to this fight. We are committed to developing new 

technologies to sustain our current systems as evidenced by our work developing new materials, 

manufacturing processes and Non-Destmctive Inspection (NDI) techniques, and improving 

maintenance and repair diagnostics, and analysis tools for life prediction and extension, fleet 

management, and decision-making. For example, data mapping analysis technology will be 

demonstrated on the B-1 B Lancer to incorporate NDI and additional maintenance and repair data. 

Additionally, the C-5 Galaxy will be our test bed for an environmental data/dwell time model that 

will more accurately estimate the state and location of an aircraft's corrosion. 

Relevant Technologies 

Cyber 

The execution of Air Force core missions to deliver airpower relies on the ability to 

effectively operate in cyberspace. Operations in cyberspace can magnify military effects by 

increasing the efficiency and effectiveness of air and space operations across all domains. However, 

the cyberspace domain is becoming increasingly contested and denied and the Air Force faces risks 

from malicious insiders, insecure supply chains, and increasingly sophisticated adversaries. 

Air Force S&T efforts in mission assurance are pursuing survivability and freedom of action 

in contested and denied environments through enhanced cyber situational awareness for air, space, 

and cyber commanders. Current foundational research focuses on detection and protection of cyber 

penetration into Air Force mission systems. This work concentrates on stopping attacks before 

systems are fully compromised. Going beyond the CUITent strategies offirewalls and vims/malware 

detection, the technologies being developed will understand attacks, discover persistent threats, and 

use a framework to allow resources to collaborate on a defense. This will allow the Air Force to 

maintain operations in a contested cyber environment. The research provides an array of 

foundational technology options to Air Force cyber needs and requirements. 

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We are also conducting research in agility and survivability to develop technologies that 

dismpt adversaries' cyber "kill chain," along with their planning and decision-making processes, 

and hardening our cyber elements to improve the ability to fight through, survive, and rapidly 

recover from attacks. Air Force S&T efforts arc improving our agility within cyberspace by 

investigating techniques called moving target defenses and by providing a C2 stmcture to plan, 

assess, and execute a coordinated defense for our Air Force networks. Our efforts are developing 

visualization technologies that will enable a global common operational picture of complex cyber 

capabilities that can be readily manipulated to support Air Force mission-essential functions. Other 

cyber efforts seek to identify critical human skills and abilities for cyber warriors and develop a 

realistic distributed network training environment. 

The Air Force is developing secure foundations of computing to provide operator trust in 

Air Force weapon systems, including a mix of embedded systems, customized and militarized 

commercial systems, commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) equipment, and unverified hardware and 

software developed outside the U.S. To counter the lack of hardware-based cyber security features 

which allow exploitation of software vulnerabilities, Air Force S&T is developing and testing a 

secure central processing unit (SCPU). The resulting government-owned intellectual property could 

be used to secure future embedded systems such as remotely piloted vehicles or other mission 

critical or autonomous systems. 

Additionally, research into formal verification and validation of complex, large scale, 

interdependent systems, as well as vulnerability analysis, automated reverse engineering, and realtime forensics tools will enable designers to quantify the level of trust in various components of the 

infrastructure and to understand the risk these components pose to the execution of critical mission 

functions. 

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Assured Communications 

The Air Force S&T Program is investing in many areas to assure communications across our 

domains. We are developing technologies to counter global threats to mission performance 

(spectrum congestion and jamming), increase capacity over longer range air-to-air with militarygrade security, and maintain or increase available bandwidth through dynamic spectrum access to 

new portions of the radio frequency (RF) spectrum, alleviating pressure on DoD spectrum 

allocations. Future access to the new spectrum will increase DoD communications architecture 

capacity and affordability, by requiring fewer expensive, high capacity gateways. Additional 

bandwidth will also allow improved anti-jam communications performance and higher frequency 

communications, which will reduce scintillation losses for nuclear command and control. The 

performance enhancements will directly improve the ability of remotely piloted vehicles to transmit 

images and data (ISR), improve C2 assurance, and increase communications support to Air Force 

core missions. 

We arc building upon ongoing research in several technical areas, such as V/W band 

experiments for high capacity satellite communications, non-proprietary multi-gigabit data link, 

Joint Warfighting Integrated Network operations, and advanced anti-jam waveform development 

for next generation software defined radio frequency systems. We have initiated a new etlort to 

develop the specification and reference architecture for a revolutionary new networked directional 

data link lor airborne systems. These new inexpensive and interoperable radios/waveforms will be 

able to survive and operate in future contested environments. Our approaches will leverage cost 

effective commercial best practices tailored to rapidly deliver revolutionary new mission capability. 

For example, developing a Waveform Development Language baseline will encourage competition, 

increase intcropcrability, enable dynamic on-demand assured connectivity, and drive down the cost 

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of developing/testing wavefonns. It will steer away from proprietary and single-use solutions and 

rather focus on developing technology that can be built upon and that will serve multiple purposes. 

The Air Force is the primary Service responsible for the modernization, sustainment and the 

technological advancement of nuclear command, control and communications (NC3) systems since 

we own approximately 75 percent of the Nation's NC3 systems. The Air Force S&T Program is 

investing in the Assured Communication for Nuclear Command and Control (ACNC2) effort to 

address key aspects of technological advancement with the goal of achieving a significant return on 

investment for the Air Force's key stakeholders. The ACNC2 effort will provide the warfighter with 

a full understanding of the anti-scintillation characteristics of the V /W bands for survivable beyondline-of-sight (BLOS) communications; adaptive digital signal processing technologies for higher 

performance in existing and next-generation systems; survivable multiple levels of security and 

information management solutions for the Air Force nuclear enterprise; and an unprecedented 

capability to perform modeling, simulation and emulation for end-to-end NC3 operational 

assessment. 

Electronic Warfare 

Electronic warfare, conducted by manipulating the electromagnetic spectrum, can negate the 

integrated air defenses of our adversary and allow us to conduct missions in an A2/AD 

environment. This requires ways to defeat new sensors operating across the electromagnetic 

spectrum, with more elaborate detection methods, and greater computational, networking and cyber 

capabilities of adversaries. These capabilities defeat the detection and engagement from threat 

systems using RF, Electro-Optical (EO), Infrared (lR), and thermal technology. 

Air Force S&T efforts in this area have reduced size, weight, and power (SWaP) and 

improved the algorithms in the Visible Missile Warning Sensor (VMWS) development. The sensor 

performed very well at live-fire tests in August 2015 and the requirements and design for a 

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Technology Readiness Level (TRL) 6 sensor are underway. The Air Force Research Laboratory 

also incorporated improvements to the Proactive infrared countermeasures (IRCM) testbed and 

demonstrated multi-spectral detection and identification of targets at range. Tests will continue to 

refine the algorithms and the capability will be incorporated into a Proactive Advanced Technology 

Demonstration (A TD) slated to begin in Fiscal Year 2017. 

Long Distance Sensing 

While over the past decade we have been able to conduct airborne ISR operations outside of 

the lethal range of air defense systems, we do not expect this to be the case in the future. Today's 

foreign Integrated Air Defense Systems (lADS) have increased lethality and significantly improved 

engagement capabilities that will force ISR aircraft to fly at longer stand-off distances. With 

distance limiting the ability to accurately detect, identifY, and geo-locate targets the effectiveness of 

cun·ent precision weapons will be reduced. The Air Force S&T program is investing in improving 

our long standoff sensing capability and adequately addressing the challenges of extended range 

ISR collection. 

The Identification at Range Integrated Sensor (IRIS) program has made excellent progress 

over the last year and is on track for long range imaging demonstrations in the Fiscal Year 2016 and 

2017 time frame. IRIS is a synthetic aperture Laser Radar (LADAR) program that seeks to provide 

target identification through geometric imaging at ranges and resolutions exceeding the geometric 

imaging limits of conventional apertures. Significant progress has been made in the transceiver 

development, image formation algorithms, and modeling and simulation. 

Hydrocarbon Boost 

The Hydrocarbon Boost Demonstration (HCB) effort is expected to result in the most 

advanced liquid rocket engine technologies in the world. The engine cycle used is 30 percent more 

efficient than that used in all previous and current U.S. hydrocarbon fueled rocket engines. 

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Last year, the program tested a sub-scale pre-burner. Numerous lessons learned at this scale 

at a fraction of the cost were applied to enable successful completion of the preliminary design of 

the full-scale pre-burner that will be used in the final demonstration. In addition to being a part of 

the hydrocarbon boost final demonstration, the Air Force-developed full-scale preburner will be 

tested at the NASA Stennis Space Center facilities. Full-scale preburner testing will enable the 

testing of the full-scale thrust chamber combustion stability rig. This testing should occur in 2017 

and will provide additional data for the program. The full-scale pre-burner critical design review is 

currently scheduled to be completed in May 2016. We completed preliminary design of the 

turbopump assembly, the most diflicult component, and will conduct the critical design review in 

June 2016. The I!CB demonstration is also validating new physics-based modeling, simulation, and 

analysis tools we developed in an earlier program and is already having an impact on Industry. The 

HCB demonstration is part of the Rocket Propulsion 21 program, a coordinated program chaired by 

OSD and NASA with the three Services and industry aimed at improving rocket propulsion 

technology for the nation. 

Munitions 

The Air Force is investigating new missile technologies to support advanced capabilities for 

future platfonns in the 2030 timeframe. One of the new weapon concepts being explored is the 

Small Advanced Capabilities Missile (SACM). The SACM will be affordable and provide high 

loadouts compared to current air-to-air missiles. Another of these new concepts is the Miniature 

Self-Defense Munition (MSDM). The MSDM would enhance future platforms self-defense 

capability, without impacting the primary weapon payload. 

Space Situational Awareness (SSA) 

To help build a holistic national SSA capability, the Air Force's S&T investment is designed 

to leverage our in-house expertise to innovate in areas with short-, mid- and long-term impact that 

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are not already being addressed by others. As part of our long history of proving new technologies 

in relevant environments, the Automated Navigation and Guidance Experiment for Local Space 

(ANGELS) program examines techniques for providing a clearer picture of the environment around 

our vital space assets through safe, automated spacecraft operations above Geosynchronous Earth 

Orbit (GEO). Equipped with significant detection, tracking and characterization technology, 

ANGELS launched in 2014, successfully maneuvered around its booster's upper stage and explored 

increased levels of automation in mission planning and execution, enabling more timely and 

complex operations with a reduced footprint. 

We also have investments in S&T for ground-based optical SSA. The Air Force currently 

has two unique 3.5 meter class telescopes that it uses both to conduct research in characterizing 

space objects in low earth orbits up to GEO orbits and to support various customers in providing 

near real-time data on such satellites. One of the systems is located at the Star/ire Optical Range 

(SOR) on Kirtland Air Force Base, New Mexico and the other is located at the Maui Space 

Surveillance System (MSSS) on tbe island ofMaui, Hawaii. These sites are complementary SSA 

sites: technically, geographically, situated in different atmospheric conditions, and providing critical 

data to our space warfighters on the health and status of many satellites. Recent breakthroughs have 

provided outstanding images during daylight hours which allow us to support Air Force Space 

Command with desired information in a much shorter timeframe. 

In addition, the Air Force is developing key enabling S&T capabilities for data integration, 

multi-sensor fusion, space object and event characterization, and threat indications and warning for 

enhanced SSA. The Air Force's Multi-int Activity Pattern Learning and Exploitation (MAPLE) 

suite of tools, already in operational usc in the intelligence community, are currently being 

enhanced to provide advanced multi-intelligence fusion, satellite characterization, and space system 

behavioral analysis capabilities for "left of the event" recognition of anomalous activities for more 

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timely warning and assessment of evolving space events. Rapid prototype fusion, characterization, 

assessment, and decision support capabilities have already been successfully demonstrated using 

passive radio frequency and electro-optical SSA data and are being further developed for planned 

transition to Joint Space Operations Center (JSpOC) Mission System (JMS) Increment 3. 

Space Resilience 

The Air Force also seeks to explore and mature a number of space resilience technologies in 

a relevant environment through on-orbit space experimentation. Space experimentation affords a 

unique opportunity to inculcate resilience into nearly all phases of the acquisition lifecycle from 

design and build to employment and tactical operations, while still balancing those objectives with 

technical risk inherent to S&T. It additionally requires integration and exercising of all space system 

segments (ground, link, space), providing an invaluable breadth of education for the growing base 

of space professionals. 

Through legacy experiments such as XSS-11, TacSat-3 and ANGELS, the Air Force has 

demonstrated satellite resiliency concepts including responsive proximity operations ahead of 

inspection and satellite, repair, real time data to Combatant Commanders and monitoring of the 

local space environment. The Air Force's next major S&T flight endeavor is a collection of 

experiments called ESP A-Augmented GEO Laboratory Experiment (EAGLE) expected to launch in 

early Fiscal Year 2018. The host platform for EAGLE transfonns a basic EEL V-Secondary Payload 

Adapted (ESPA) ring into a highly capable satellite bus demonstrating resiliency as a space access 

multiplier, by hosting and/or "forward deploying" additional secondaries into optimized orbits at 

times of our choosing. Additionally, the concept supports growing calls for more distributed, 

diverse and proliferated system architectures to better enable space resilience. EAGLE will contain 

multiple experiments to include tactical awareness and warning, onboard anomaly assessment, 

deployable self-inspection capabilities, and advanced launch detection capabilities. 

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We are also continuing the Navigation Technology Satellite-3 (NTS-3) program, which will 

demonstrate a range of technologies for potential inclusion in Block 4 of the GPS constellation. 

Equipped with advanced digital payloads and antennas, NTS-3 is designed to provide critical PNT 

capabilities in GPS-denied environments. Additionally, NTS-3 is being developed to showcase the 

first purpose-built cyber resilient space system, and will demonstrate persistent PNT capabilities in 

a cyber-contested environment. 

Spacecraft Propulsion 

The Air Force is investing in propulsion technologies that will greatly increase the t1exibility 

and resiliency of military satellites. Our S&T program invests in research through the regime of 

spacecraft propulsion to include: flight programs; advanced electric and chemical propulsion; 

modeling, simulation, and analysis; and plume phenomenology and signatures. The Air Force ha<> 

transitioned spacecrall propulsion technologies to most of the nation's National Security Space 

systems since the 1980s. The latest system to be flying Air Force spacecraft propulsion technology 

(Hall Effect Thrusters) is the Advance Extremely High Frequency (AEHF) satellite. An AEHF 

satellite was recently in the news when the on-orbit Hall Effect Thrusters had to be used to put the 

satellite into its proper orbit when the primary orbit raising thruster failed. Most recently, the Air 

Force Research Laboratory, the Rapid Capabilities Office, SMC, and industry partners teamed to 

quickly modify and characterize the thruster (XR-5) used on the AEHF satellite and test it on orbit 

using the X-37B reusable space vehicle. The modified thmster (XR-5A) incorporates modifications 

which improve performance and operating range. The Air Force has matured Hall Effect Thmsters 

and is now engaging in research into multimode thrusters in the form of Field Reverse 

Configuration thmsters. These multimode thrusters are capable of highly efficient, low thrust 

operations when needed to do station keeping while simultaneously being able to provide high 

thrust when needed to maneuver quickly, all using a single propellant. 

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Rapid Innovation (Responsive) Technologies 

As the Secretary of Defense recently stated, we don't have the choice between current tights 

and future fights-we have to do both. The Air Force S&T Program has had a long history of rapid 

innovation projects responding to senior leader-identified urgent needs. We have diligently refined 

the process based on lessons learned over nearly a decade of such projects; carefully optimized the 

process to rapidly produce cost-effective and operationally suitable prototypes; and leveraged 

Congressionally-authorized funding sources and non-traditional defense communities. 

For example, the Air Force Research Laboratory Rapid Innovation Process leveraged 

funding authorized by Section 219 to develop the Long Endurance Aerial Platfonn (LEAP). LEAP 

provides a revolutionary, low-cost, low acoustic signature, persistent aerial ISR capability to 

address Combatant Command and U.S. Special Forces ISR gaps by converting a proven, fuelefficient Light Sport Aircraft into an Unmanned Aerial System (UAS). The Air Force Research 

Laboratory completed tbc development and flight testing of the Spiral 11 design which has a takeoff 

weight of 1,650 pounds, endurance of more than 30 hours and carries a BLOS satellite 

communications, command and control (SATCOM C2) data relay along with day/night imaging full 

motion video and radio direction finding payloads. Based on the success of these tests, an 

operational evaluation of the system in theater was requested by U.S. Special Operations Command 

and funded by the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence. The Laboratory 

procured the hardware for a complete system of four air vehicles and payloads in preparation for 

deployment. 

The Air Force S&T Program is also working to dispel the myth that rapid capabilities are 

always less affordable. For example, the LCAA T program is leveraging recent advances in 

advanced manufacturing, such as 3D printing, to rapidly design, build, and field near-term 

expendable or limited-life unmanned air platforms as single assets or in autonomous or 

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manned/unmanned teams to detect, deny, and/or disrupt the enemy. This approach bends the cost 

curve in our favor by enabling the U.S. to deploy weapons systems to destroy or degrade the 

systems of our adversaries and protect those of our armed forces and of our allies at a small fraction 

of the cost of current manned and re-usable systems. The low cost attritablc aircraft will provide an 

A21 AD operations capable system, and offer near-term !SRi strike capability in remote regions 

where forward basing is difficult or prohibited. 

The LCAA T program is seeking to change the approach of the typical DoD acquisition 

process by enabling constant refresh and increased flexibility through close engagement and 

collaboration with innovative private and public businesses and revolutionary small, non-traditional 

businesses to reduce cycle time as well as cost. The attritable aircraft concept will offer a gamechanging approach to "on-demand" system manufacturing by leveraging open systems architecture, 

COTS, and distributed manufacturing concepts that will reduce market barriers to entry lor new 

technology capability and enable rapid and agile acquisition. 

The Defense Rapid Innovation Program has also been an excellent means for the Air Force 

to communicate our areas of critical need and solicit vendors to respond with innovative technology 

solutions. The program continues to help us strengthen the lines of communication between the 

Program Executive Officers, warfighters, S&T community, and industry. We have done this under 

full and open competition with preference given to small businesses. We have now completed four 

solicitations and are in the process of making awards under the fifth solicitation. The results have 

been noteworthy. From the time Congress first authorized the defense rapid innovation program, the 

Air Force received over 3,200 white papers from all 50 states in response to our topic areas. With 

available funding, as of December 2015, we have invited 234 proposals and made 112 awards. 

Additional awards will be made this spring under the Fiscal Year 2015 program. Several of our 

projects have had significant success in the current fight. For example, one of our projects has more 

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than doubled the target detection capability of our MQ-1 Predator. This capability deployed in 

September 2015 and is currently supporting Operation Inherent Resolve. The new capability 

involving Airborne Cueing and Exploitation significantly reduces analyst workload, enabling each 

of them to be more effective and efficient. Other agencies are benefitting from this pr()ject as well. 

The National Geospatial Agency is taking the results from this Defense Rapid Innovation Program 

effort and further expanding it to support a full spectrum capability and the Army is integrating the 

improved code onto their platforms. 

The Air Force S&T community is also in talks to tl.tlly leverage the work of the Defense 

Innovation Unit-Experimental (D!Ux) located in Silicon Valley, California. Researchers involved 

with the Air Force Research Laboratory Rapid Innovation Process have agreed to conduct "quick 

look" assessments of technologies discovered by the D!Ux to determine validity of further 

collaborative engagements. The Air Force Research Laboratory Small Business Office has also 

begun discussions related to technology transfer processes to determine the feasibility oflicensing 

laboratory inventions to startups and academia in Silicon Valley similar to how it is accomplished in 

both the Dayton, Ohio and Rome, New York areas. This office is also investigating ways to partner 

in the Small Business Innovation Research/Small Business Technology Transfer (SBIR/STTR) 

realm. 

EXPERIMENTATION 

As discussed earlier in this statement, experimentation is truly the engine of our reinvigorated 

development planning efforts. It enables the unfettered exploration of alternatives in future 

environments and involves operators, technologists, requirements, acquisition professionals, and 

others collaborating from beginning to end in a truly integrated fashion. Campaigns of 

experimentation are not staged, one-off events; but a series of progressive and iterative activities 

designed to build knowledge and provides a method to rapidly evaluate capability concepts that 

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may involve using existing systems in new ways through changes in tactics, techniques, and 

procedures or in new combinations with other systems and enabling technologies. The campaigns 

will conduct live exercises, wargaming, modeling and simulation, and virtual and hardware 

prototyping to assess concepts and advanced technologies. Robust experimentation enables the Air 

Force to explore implications of disruptive technologies and employment of existing systems and 

technologies in new ways. 

The Air Force is currently conducting four pilot experimentation campaigns: Close Air 

Support (CAS); Directed Energy (DE); Data to Decisions (D2D); and Defeat Agile Intelligent 

Targets (DAIT). The D2D and DAIT campaigns are supporting the Air Superiority 2030 ECCT. 

These experimentation campaigns are designed to provide timely empirical data to enable strategic 

investment decisions and to reinvigorate the culture of experimentation within the Air Force. 

The objective of the CAS Experimentation Campaign is to characterize the Air Force's 

ability to conduct CAS and explore concepts through experimentation. Results from the CAS 

Experimentation Campaign are expected to enhance the joint capability to perform CAS in a variety 

of operational environments and across a range oftimeframes. The campaign formed along three 

distinct lines of effort: I) localized battlefield networking; 2) JT AC and pilot simulator training 

enhancements; and 3) determination of the optimal mix of CAS weapons and platforms. The Air 

Force conducted experiments to communicate a common understanding of the battlefield between 

ground and air at various distances. Initial experimentation results have demonstrated that a 

remotely accessible internet protocol (IP) network can be used to enhance Tactical Data (Link 16) 

with National Technical Data and improve CAS targeting identification. CAS experimentation also 

improved joint training through LVC demos and enhancements. Competency based training 

scenarios at the JT AC Dome, which is a high-fidelity, fully-immersive, realistic training and 

rehearsal environment with real-time sensor, simulator, and database correlation, have benchmarked 

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standard JT AC competencies. L VC experimentation has connected live A-I 0, F-16, and AH-60 

platforms with virtual MQ-ls in the constructive Modern Air Combat Environment to validate 

JT AC training benchmarks in a Distributed Mission Operations Network. Future CAS munitions 

experimentation for testing on tbe range and in a LVC environment is also being planned. The CAS 

Experimentation Team is exploring emerging weapons concepts to improve the effectiveness of 

each pass. Several flight demonstrations are planned for Fiscal Year 2016 and Fiscal Year 2017 to 

ensure near-, mid-, and far-term weapons development is consistent with future CAS mission 

requirements. 

The Air Force is also conducting the DE Experimentation Campaign to inform senior 

leadership on strategic investment decisions in this technology area. The Air Force S&T investment 

in DE technologies has placed us at a point where we can take the concepts and capabilities out of 

the laboratories and put them into the hands of our wartighters. The campaign is exploring a broad 

range of DE-enabled concepts through a series of experiments using constructive and operator-inthe-loop simulations and live exercises to understand the interplay of technologies, concept of 

operations ( CONOPS), and doctrine in close collaboration with operators and technology 

developers. One effort of the DE Experimentation Campaign involves exploring the value of 

employing a ground-to-air DE hard kill weapon as part of an integrated air defense system. We are 

doing this in collaboration with the North American Air Defense Command (NORAD) of U.S. 

Northem Command (NORTHCOM) to explore how advanced technologies could potentially 

improve its National Capital region air defense capabilities. We are developing and evaluating kill 

chain CONOPS, performing live fire tests against multiple targets, addressing policy issues, and 

exploring system integration with existing command and control and guidance systems. A related 

effort involves experimentation with employment of an air-to-ground HEL weapon system on an 

i\C-130 gunship. We will execute this experimentation in close collahoration with the Air Force 

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Special Operations Command to assess and deepen our understanding of system performance 

characteristics, airborne platform integration considerations, and CONOPS. In addition, we will 

identity and work through important policy-related issues, determine associated infrastructure 

requirements for a deployed system, and explore residual operational capabilities for continued 

experimentation and operational observations. The body of knowledge gained through these efforts 

will identifY key risk areas and technology needs to better focus our research and accelerate the 

realization ofHEL capabilities across a range of systems and platforms. 

The two additional experimentation campaigns heing planned are in response to Air 

Superiority 2030 ECCT direction. The D2D experimentation campaign will explore various 

concepts to provide the right data to decision-makers in the time and manner required and the DAIT 

experimentation campaign will explore new technology-enabled concepts to defeat challenging 

targets. 

PROTOTYPING 

Prototyping is a valuable tool for development planning and experimentation as it enables 

evaluation of design, performance and production. Prototyping activities are useful at various levels 

of technology maturity-specifically, concept prototypes for the early stages to assess feasibility, 

development prototypes to test advanced concepts and integrated capabilities, and 

operational/fieldable prototypes that look toward the production and deployment stage and 

satisfying operational needs. The Air Force has recognized that engaging operational users 

intimately involved in need analysis, solution conceptualization, and prototype development enables 

delivery of a suitable prototype with all the right attributes to satisfy the user need. Furthennore, a 

rapid spiral development process that incorporates experimentation and prototyping allows the 

design to evolve quickly based on lessons learned during operations. 

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One successful rapid prototyping effort is our recent project to improve Convoy C3 and 

Situational Awareness. In response to a request from 20th Air Force and Air Force Global Strike 

Command, the Air Force developed and delivered the first spiral of a convoy communications and 

situational awareness solution. This system provides a selt~configuring, self-healing mobile 

network that allows the members of a nuclear convoy to share voice and text chat messages, 

imagery from on-vehicle cameras (including overhead imagery from supporting UH-lN 

helicopters), moving map displays, and reach-back to a command and control center. After 

approval to prototype a specific design concept was received, a prototype system was delivered in 

less than six months to operational users at the 90th Missile Wing, F.E. Warren AFB, Wyoming. 

The wing then successfully conducted a Limited Operational Demonstration and Evaluation that led 

to a follow-on effort to fully adopt the system and employ it at all three 20th Air Force missile 

wings. In parallel with this deployment to all three missile wings, the Air Force Research 

Laboratory implemented product improvements in the system based on lessons learned from the 

Operational Demonstration and Evaluation. This second spiral of the system design has been 

selected for full-scale development with support from Air Force Global Strike Command and the 

20th Air Force. The full-scale deployment is on-track for early calendar year 2016 completion. 

The Air Force's Adaptive Engine Transition Program (AETP) is building on several years of 

rigorous adaptive engine technology maturation, including significant industry cost share, and is an 

excellent example of prototyping to reduce risk prior to Engineering and Manufacturing 

Development (EMD). Following the highly successful S&T efforts in the Adaptive Versatile Engine 

Technology (ADVENT) and Adaptive Engine Technology Demonstration (AETD) programs, the 

AETP represents a $2 billion next generation jet engine demonstration and validation program that 

will advance designs through extensive ground testing for future integration and flight test. The 

Fiscal Year 2017 $285 million Air Force funding forth is program is in Budget Activity 4 

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(Advanced Component Development and Prototypes). Under this effort, awards will be made to two 

contractors in Fiscal Year 2016. Awarding to two contractors will help ensure that the most costeffective solutions to the challenges of engine operability, durability, sustainability, and air platform 

integration are achieved, while reaching the fuel efficiency and thrust goals set for the program. 

Additionally, two contractors developing designs will help sustain a healthy domestic and 

competitive industrial base, enabling the Air Force to have multiple vendors, including second and 

third tier vendors, to meet development and production needs for legacy and future platforms. 

Since the U.S. has no monopoly on technical expe1iise, we are also actively engaged in the 

international community in prototyping efforts. Through these relationships, oppmiunities are 

identified to leverage investments, advance capabilities, produce standards for interoperability, and 

avoid technological surprise. For example, with the four current 5-Power Project Agreements, the 

U.S. invests $4.2 million each year with our partners providing an additional $8.3 million each year. 

These collaboration efforts have resulted this year in a new agreement with Italy and Germany to 

develop a prototype Small Scalable Kinetic Weapon. This real-time, adjustable UAV-dclivcrcd 

weapon could be used to limit collateral damage in urban environments. 

On all of our efforts in this area we're working closely with AT &L 's BBP 3.0 efforts to 

reinvigorate the use of experimentation and prototyping for the purposes of rapid fielding of 

technologically advanced weapons systems, providing wartighters with the opportunity to explore 

novel operational concepts, suppmting key elements of the industrial base, and hedging against 

threat developments or surprises by advancing technology and reducing the lead time to develop 

and field new capabilities. 

WORLD CLASS WORKFORCE 

The world class workforce of the Air Force science, technology and engineering community 

continues to be our most important asset. We recognize that the technological superiority of the Air 

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Force depends on the technical talent and innovative spirit of our workforce. In order to maintain an 

agile science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) workforce, two aspects have 

guided our investments of funding and collaborative energy this year: attracting and inspiring 

individuals to Air Force STEM careers, and recruiting, retaining and developing the STEM 

workforce. 

Attracting and Inspiring STEM Talent 

This past year, the governing body of Air Force STEM, the Air Force STEM Advisory 

Council (STEMAC), challenged its members to support a dedicated li.mding source for Air Force 

STEM outreach programs. Historically, Air Force STEM outreach programs received support 

through the National Defense Education Program as well as local base-level funding. The Fiscal 

Year 2017 Air Force S&T Program includes a dedicated effort for funding of STEM outreach 

activities. These funds will enable outreach programs across multiple installations to dependably 

offer their excellent STEM programming to K-12 students without fear of competing priorities. 

Additionally, the Air Force STEM Outreach Office will work toward strategic goals such as 

improving engagement of traditionally underrepresented communities and developing useful, 

relevant metrics to assess the impact of K -12 programming. 

Attracting and inspiring individuals to Air Force STEM careers is a dynamic mission; as the 

battleJield shifts and evolves, so too do our workforce requirements. As such, Secretary of the Air 

Force Deborah Lee James encouraged the STEM Outreach OfJice to develop outreach programs to 

target speciJic technical areas. From this encouragement, the StellarXplorers pilot program 

completed its first national competition in April2015. Stel/arXplorers is the Jirst space-centered 

STEM program of its kind to challenge high school students to tackle complicated spacecraft 

payload flights. As the program grows, the vision is to combine simulated competition to studentled manufacturing of spacecraft hardware. 

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Recruiting, Retaining and Developing the STEM Workforce 

Recruiting, retaining and developing the STEM workforce is vital toward building the future 

Air Force. The establishment of the Cyber-Spectrum Research and Technology Development 

Virtual Environment (CSpec-DVE) program showed great progress in this endeavor. CSpec-DVE 

provides the participating Air Force, Army, and Navy Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) 

cadets exposure and a means to contribute toward cyber, electronic warfare, and signals intelligence 

product-oriented research. In this pilot year, 10 universities-in coordination with the Infmmation 

Directorate of the Air Force Research Laboratory-will oversee and mentor the ROTC cadets. 

Participating universities include: Georgia Tech University, Louisiana State University, Louisiana 

Tech University, Syracuse University, Texas A&M University, University of Dayton, University of 

Houston, Rice University, Southern University and Tennessee State University. CSpec-DVE 

provides early career development for future leaders by enabling them to contribute to research on 

cyber, signal intelligence and electronic warfare technical problems. 

The ability to recruit, retain and develop the Air Force STEM workforce has been greatly 

supported and enabled by Congress. The National Defense Authorization Acts of the past several 

years have provided additional personnel authorities to the S&T community. Specifically, the 

addition of direct hire authority for candidates with bachelor degrees has been extremely useful in 

hiring qualified scientists and engineers in less than half the time of traditional hiring methods. We 

are continuing our efforts to fully implement all of the personnel authorities provided specifically to 

our community by the Congress. 

The Laboratory Personnel Demonstration Project continues to provide the Air Force 

Research Laboratory a more responsive and flexible personnel system through direct hire 

authorities, broad banding, the contribution-based pay system, simplified job classification, 

developmental opportunities, voluntary emeritus corps, among other unique workforce shaping 

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tools. These authorities have enabled the Laboratory to successfully attract and retain high quality 

scientists and engineers. 

To spark and foster innovation in our current workforce, the Development Opportunity 

Program (DOP) provides oppmiunitics for Air Force Research Laboratory personnel to acquire 

knowledge, experience, and expertise that cannot be acquired in the standard working environment. 

Laboratory personnel have taken advantage of advanced training and education opportunities at 

academic institutions across the globe. Additionally, Laboratory personnel have contributed to the 

scientific community as visiting faculty or research scientists at various institutions. We are 

investigating the expansion of this program to all employees under the Laboratory Personnel 

Demonstration Project. 

LABORATORY INFRASTRUCTURE 

lnfrastmcture focused on S&T is an important component to support innovation and force 

modernization. The Air Force has made S&T infrastmcture a priority as evidenced in the Fiscal 

Year 2016 and Fiscal Year 2017 military constmction (M!LCON) processes. Thanks to the 

approval of the Congress in Fiscal Year 2016, the Air Force Research Laboratory Space Vehicles 

Directorate will soon have access to a new Space Vehicles Component Development Lab. The 

Component Development Lab will support space vehicles component development of space power 

generation, solar an·ays and photovoltaic cells, space power storage, space vehicle mechanisms 

(launch separators and maneuvering components), mechanism controls, space protection including 

radiation-hardened electronics, and environmental sensors and cryocoolers with four light 

laboratories, two medium laboratories, and class 1,000 clean rooms required for space vehicle 

research, development, and experiments. This new facility will consolidate 11 separate S&T 

infrastructures on Kirtland Air Force Base, New Mexico. increasing the effectiveness and efficiency 

of work accomplished by the directorate. The Fiscal Year 2017 President's Budget for MILCON 

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includes the proposed construction of an Advanced Munitions Technology Complex on Eglin Air 

Force Base, Florida. This laboratory facility is integral to support research and development of subscale high speed munitions requiring advanced energetics containing nano and conventional 

materials. This laboratory would fill a need for the Air Force and the entire DoD as it would be 

capable of handling and using nano explosive powders or advanced energetics that usc nano 

materials, a capability which does not cm1"ently exist in the U.S. today. 

Not only has S&T infrastructure received Congressional support in the MILCON process, 

special Congressional authorities provided to the Laboratory Commander to conduct minor 

infrastructure projects, know11 as the "Section 219" authority, have enabled rapid improvements to 

S&T infrastructure. For instance, an important Section 219 project is under construction at the Air 

Force Research Laboratory Munitions Directorate located on Eglin Air Force Base, Florida. The 

Site C-86 range implements a variable height tower which will enable extended slant range 

measurements, full access to test range geography, optical turbulence distortion reduction, ground 

clutter elimination, and high value assets protection from over exposure to the elements in support 

of research, development, and testing of next-generation weapon seekers. This tower will support 

the delivery of active and passive seeker concepts to defeat adversaries in A2/ AD environments as 

well as urban target environments and long-range targets. In addition, warfighters from Air Combat 

Command and Air Force Special Operations Command will benefit from use of this tower in their 

drive to mature technologies for killing moving targets; testing of hard and deeply buried targets 

seeker development; wire-strike avoidance LADAR technique; helicopter burnout solutions; and 

sniper identification efforts. 

Congress has expanded the Section 219 infrastructure authority to permit the banking of 

research, test, development and evaluation funds in order to enable projects beyond minor military 

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construction and we are working diligently to determine the best path forward within Air Force 

processes to implement this authority. 

CONCLUSION 

Chairman, Members of the Subcommittee and Staff, thank you again for the 

opportunity to testify today on the Air Force's move toward strategic agility in capability 

development through reinvigorating development planning, maximizing the impact of our robust 

S&T program (game-changing, enabling, relevant, and rapid technologies), increasing efforts in 

experimentation and prototyping, and leveraging the contributions of our entire world class 

workforce and infrastructure. 

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Dr. David E. Walker 

Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Science, Technology, and Engineering 

Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Acquisition 

Dr. David E. Walker, a member of the Senior Executive Service, is Deputy Assistant Secretary of the 

Air Force for Science, Technology, and Engineering, Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Air Force 

for Acquisition, Washington, D.C. 

Dr. Walker is responsible for preparing policy, guidance, and advocacy for the Air Force's annual $2 

billion science and technology program. He provides annual testimony to Congress, technical advice and 

counsel to the Air Force Acquisition Executive, and the Air Force's science and technology 

recommendations to the Office of the Secretary of Defense. In addition, Dr. Walker is responsible for 

overseeing a broad range of engineering and technical management policy spanning systems 

engineering; environmental safety and occupational health; industrial preparedness; and functional 

management of more than 14,000 military and civilian scientists and engineers. 

Dr. Walker retired from an active-duty Air Force career as a colonel in 2006. As a master navigator, he 

has more than 2,700 hours in 65 different types of aircraft including the RF-4C and the F-15E. He 

served in a variety of assignments in operations, developmental test and evaluation, science and 

technology and the Air Stall 

Prior to his current position, Dr. Walker served as Associate Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Air Force 

(Acquisition Integration), Washington, DC. 

EDUCATION 

1979 Bachelor of Science degree in aerospace engineering, University of Texas at Austin 

1980 Master of Science degree in aerospace engineering, University of Texas at Austin 

1984 Squadron Onicer School, Maxwell Air Force Base, Ala. 

1991 Air Command and Staff College, Maxwell AFB. Ala. 

1994 Doctor of Philosophy degree in Aeronautical Engineering, Air Force Institute of Technology, WrightPatterson AFB. Ohio 

1997 Air War College, Maxwell AFB, Ala. 

1999 Advanced Program Manager Course, Defense Systems Management College, Fort Belvoir, Va. 

2009 APEX Senior Executive Orientation Program, Washillb'lon, D.C. 

201 0 Air Force Enterprise Leadership Seminar, Darden School of Business, University of Virginia, 

Charlottesville 

2011 CAPSTONE, National Defense University, Washington, DC 

2012 Senior Managers in Government, Harvard Kennedy School, Cambridge, Mass. 

CAREER CHRONOLOGY 

I. February 1980- October 1980, Student, undergraduate navigator training and Tactical Navigation Course, 

Mather AFB, Calif. 

2. October 1980- June 1981, Student, RF-4C Replacement Training Unit, 33rd Tactical Reconnaissance 

Training Squadron, Shaw AFB, S.C. 

3. June 1981- May 1984, RF-4C Weapon Systems Officer, 38th Tactical Reconnaissance Squadron, Zweibrucken 

Air Base, West Germany 

4. June 1984- July 1984, Student, Squadron Officer School, Maxwell AFB, Ala. 
125 

5. August 1984- June 1985, Instructor Weapon Systems Officer, 16th Tactical Reconnaissance Squadron, Shaw 

AFB, S.C. 

6. June 1985 -June 1986, Student, Air Force Test Pilot School, Edwards AFB, Calif 

7. June 1986- January 1987, Experimental Test Navigator, 6512th Test Squadron, Edwards AFB, Calif. 

8. February 1987- November 1988, Experimental Test Weapon Systems Officer, F-15 Combined Test Force, 

Edwards AFB, Calif 

9. November 1987- July 1990, Executive Ofticer to the Commander, Air Force Flight Test Center, Edwards 

AFB,Calif. 

10. August 1990- June 1991, Student, Air Command and Staff College, Maxwell AFB, Ala. 

II. June 1991 -June 1994, Doctoral Student, Air Force Institute of Technology, Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio 

12. July 1994- May 1995, Chief, Instructor Training, Curriculum Development, USAF Test Pilot School, 

Edwards AFB, Calif. 

13. May !995 -July 1996, Deputy Commandant, Air Force Test Pilot School, Edwards AFB, Calif. 

14. July 1996- June 1997, Student, Air War College, Maxwell AFB, Ala. 

15. July 1997- June !998, Deputy Chief, Common Systems Division, Directorate of Global Power Programs, 

Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Acquisition, the Pentagon, Washington, D.C. 

16. June 1998 -August !999, Chief, Agile Combat Support Division, Directorate of Global Power Programs, 

Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Acquisition, the Pentagon, Washington, D.C. 

17. August 1999 -June 200 I, Director, Air Vehicles Directorate, Air Force Research Laboratory. WrightPatterson AFB, Ohio 

18. June 2001- July 2003, Commander, 412th Operations Group, Edwards AFB, Calif. 

19. July 2003- July 2006, Vice Commander, Air Force Research Laboratory, Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio 

20. July 2006- September 2008, Director, Material and Manufacturing Directorate, Air Force Research 

Laboratory, Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio 

21. September 2008 - May 20 II, Associate Director of Programs, Deputy Chief of Staff for Strategic Plans and 

Programs, Headquarters U.S. Air Force, Washington, D.C. 

22. May 2011 -August 2012, Associate Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Air Force (Acquisition Integration), 

Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Acquisition, the Pentagon, Washington, D.C. 

23. August 2012- present, Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Air Force (Science, Technology and 

Engineering), Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Acquisition, the Pentagon, Washington, D.C. 

AWARDS AND HONORS 

Meritorious Executive Presidential Rank Award 

Associate Fellow, American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics 

Legion of Merit with two oak leaf clusters 

Meritorious Service Medal with two oak leaf clusters 

Air Medal 

Air Force Commendation Medal 

Air Force Achievement Medal 

Distinguished graduate, ATC Commander's Cup, and Ira Hosek Flying Trophy, Undergraduate Navigator 

Training 

Top Gun, Tactical Navigation Course 

Distinguished Graduate, RF-4C RTU 

Distinguished Graduate and Outstanding Contributor, Squadron Officer School Distinguished Graduate and 

Raymond L. Jones Award, USAF Test Pilot School Distinguished Graduate, Air Command and Staff College 

(Current as o.fSeptember 20 I 2) 
126 

Statement by Arati Prabhakar 

Director, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) 

Before the 

Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities, 

Armed Services Committee, U.S. House of Representatives 

Department of Defense Fiscal Year 20 17 Science and Technology Programs: 

Defense Innovation to Create the Future Military Force 

February 24,2016 

NOT FOR PUBLICATION UNTIL RELEASED BY THE SUBCOMMITTEE 
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Chairman Wilson, Ranking Member Langevin and Members of the Subcommittee, 

thank you for the opportunity to testifY before you today. I am Arati Prabhakar, 

Director of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, better known as 

DARPA. It is a pleasure to be here with my colleagues from across the Department 

of Defense (DoD) Science and Technology (S&T) community, with whom we 

work closely throughout the year. 

For nearly six decades, DARPA has played a particular role in this community of 

government innovators, and in the larger U.S. technology ecosystem: to pursue 

extremely challenging but potentially paradigm-shifting technologies in support of 

national security. In my testimony today I will describe a number of DARPA 

programs at various stages of maturity, including some whose products are already 

being adopted by the military Services and are already making a difference for our 

warfighters; some that are advancing through the challenging technological frontier 

that separates the seemingly impossible from the doable-a stage of work that in 

many ways is the heart and soul of DARPA; and some that are in their earliest 

phases of development but whose potential to radically change the technological 

and security landscape is so great that they are already influencing the 

Department's strategic thinking. 

But before I dive into those details, I would like to briefly convey a more personal 

sense of what is going on at DARPA-an agency that is, after all, not just a 

collection of programs but a team of about 200 extraordinary individuals. It is a 

team whose collective energy not only propels DARPA but also invigorates people 

across the wide community with which we work-defense companies large and 

small, commercial startups and major firms, universities, government agencies and 

labs, and our close partners across DoD. It is a team that revels in the opportunity 

to attack pressing, nearly intractable problems-all in the context of public service. 

So let me say in advance, rather than waiting until my closing as is traditionally the 

case, how much I and my colleagues at DARPA appreciate the ongoing support 

and trust that this committee and subcommittee have bestowed upon DARPA. I am 

fully committed to ensuring that, just as past investments in DARPA helped secure 

our Nation by repeatedly bending the arc of technological history, so today's 

investments will give rise to capabilities that will protect our Nation and project 

our interests for many decades to come. 
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A CHANGING WORLD 

Our senior military and civilian leaders face a world of kaleidoscopic uncertainty 

today and into any foreseeable future. The daily fare is a noxious stew of violent 

extremism, terrorism and cross-border criminal activity. At the same time, the 

actions and the intentions of nation states in every region also demand our focus 

and attention. The Department has embarked on an important shift in recent years 

to reenergize its ability to invent, experiment with and operationalize advanced 

military capabilities that will be critical to deter and defeat if necessary the 

emerging great powers of this century. DoD's Third Offset Strategy and its Long 

Range Research and Development Plan (LRRDP) embody this important shift. 

DARPA has participated by sharing its future perspectives on technology, and 

many programs across the DARPA portfolio will demonstrate the critical core 

technologies for these new strategies. l will discuss a number of these programs 

today. 

In addition to the geopolitical landscape, the other global context for our work is 

what's happening in the world of technology itself. The United States is still the 

largest investor in R&D around the world today. But unlike past decades, we are 

not alone in our excellent scientific and technical capabilities. With their rising 

investments, several other nations have first-rate people, labs and industries in 

various fields. Within the United States, the private sector currently spends $2 for 

each $1 the Federal Government spends on R&D, and ofthat federal share, a 

declining percentage is for defense. It is easy to mourn the passing of an era-now 

many decades ago-when these trends were reversed. But in fact, they reflect 

vitally important economic progress both within our Nation and around the world. 

Our challenge at DARPA and in DoD is to create a significant advantage for 

military and national security purposes against this competitive, shifting backdrop. 

Two principles guide our thinking at DARPA in this regard. One key concept is 

that the most powerful defense systems will come from the tight integration of the 

leading edge of commercial technology with highly specialized military 

technologies. You will see this approach in many of our programs, from tablets 

with added encryption for close air support, to state-of·the-art digital electronics 

with added DoD-unique radio chips for leapfrog radio frequency (RF) systems. 

The second is the understanding that U.S. military success will lie in building 

systems that are designed to evolve, grow and adapt, rather than counting on 

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technologies that other actors can't get for decades, as in the past. This compels us 

not just to design a new point of capability, but to design new curves of expanding 

capability over time. And again, you will see this theme throughout our programs. 

The agency's current strategic framework and descriptions of our major areas of 

investment are outlined in " 

which also describes DARPA's approaches to ensuring that advances are 

successfully transitioned to the military Services, commercial enterprises or other 

research entities for further development in ways that best serve U.S. national 

interests. Rather than restating those basics, I'd like to focus my testimony today 

on a number of individual endeavors within DARPA's portfolio of more than 200 

active programs. What follows are brief descriptions and progress reports for 

programs within each ofDARPA's three major investment areas-Rethinking 

Complex Military Systems, Mastering the Information Explosion, and Nurturing 

the Seeds of Technological Surprise-broken into groups representing each of the 

three degrees of maturity I mentioned earlier: already being piloted or used 

("Adoption and Impact"), currently in development ("Technical Progress") and 

fresh investment directions ("New Opportunities"). 

DARPA'S INVESTMENT PORTFOLIO 

Rethinking Complex Military Systems 

The unparalleled technological capability that has enabled U.S. military and 

security superiority comes with a price: spiraling increases in complexity. Today, 

many high-end military platforms are so complex they take decades to produce and 

years to upgrade. In a world in which pace is inexorably increasing, and in which 

other economic and manufacturing sectors have recognized the benefits of systems 

modularity, rapid-fire iterative improvements and faster hardware- and softwaresystem upgrades, the military's current approach to managing complexity is 

inadequate. It risks leaving the Nation vulnerable to adversaries developing more 

nimble means of adopting technology. 

Today DARPA is turning the tables on complexity, creating engineering 

architectures and approaches that deliver significantly greater combat power, but 

with a technical elegance that also allows for flexibility in the field and fast 

upgrades. 

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Adoption and Impact 

Communications Under Extreme RF Spectrum Conditions (CommEx) 

DARPA's CommEx program is developing technologies that can characterize the 

jamming environment and then actively suppress enemy jamming, so aircraft can 

still communicate with each other in a highly contested RF environment. Initial 

components of CommEx technology are part of a planned upgrade to the widely 

used Link 16 air-to-air data network. 

Cognitive Electronic Warfare (EW) 

DARPA's Advanced RF Countermeasures (ARC) and Behavioral Learning for 

Adaptive Electronic Warfare (BLADE) programs are investing in the technologies 

needed to rapidly react to dynamic electromagnetic spectrum signals from 

adversary radar and communications systems. These programs are applying 

machine learning-computer algorithms that can learn from and make predictions 

from data-to react in real time and jam signals, including new signals that have 

not yet been cataloged. DARPA is working with the Services to transition 

technologies derived from the field of cognitive electronic warfare into the F-18, F35, Army Multi-Function EW program, and Next Generation Jammer. 

Power Efficiency Revolution for Embedded Computing Technologies (PERFECT) 

DARPA's PERFECT program is developing revolutionary approaches to 

improving the energy efficiency of DoD computational systems, an improvement 

that will embed significantly increased computing capabilities including modern 

learning algorithms on power-limited platforms such as UAVs. Resulting 

technologies are transitioning to both commercial and government users, with the 

National Reconnaissance Office adopting them for new, radiation-hardened circuit 

architectures that enable extremely high data-throughput next-generation space 

systems. A consortium of companies including Google, HP and Oracle, is pursuing 

power-efficient open-source hardware, such as R ISC-V open-source cores 

developed in part with PERFECT funding. 

Aircrew Labor In-Cockpit Automation System (ALIAS) 

DARPA's ALIAS program is developing a tailorable drop-in kit that would add 

high levels of automation into existing aircraft and reduce the demand for on board 

crew. The program is leveraging the considerable advances that have been made in 

aircraft automation systems over the past 50 years, as well as the advances that 

have been made in remotely piloted aircraft technologies, to help shift and refocus 

pilot workloads, augment mission performance and improve aircraft safety. 

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DARPA will be working with the U.S. Army Utility Helicopters Project Office to 

test ALIAS technologies on the Blackhawk platform for potential transition of 

enhanced automation capabilities to the Army utility helicopter fleet. Among the 

project's goals are improved handling qualities, improved safety and system 

reliability and the ability to add apps to introduce new functionality and 

capabilities into the fleet. 

Persistent Close Air Support (PCAS) 

Close air support (CAS) has long been delivered to warfighters on the ground by 

those in the air through coordinating strike details with paper maps and voice 

communications over a radio. The PCAS program set out to bring the power of 

digital technology to dramatically improve CAS, starting by adding encryption and 

military radios to commercial Android tablets and designing easy, nonintrusive 

upgrades for aircraft. Today, simple versions have been adopted and used in 

theater, and more fully integrated versions have been demonstrated with Service 

partners. 

The ground component of the PCAS system was first put through its paces by 

Marines in combat in Afghanistan, with DARPA providing more than 500 systems 

for testing. Marines in theater subsequently adopted the tablets in the thousands, 

and field reports documented dramatically improved navigation, situational 

awareness, fire coordination and communications. Marines are currently using this 

technology in operations in the U.S. Central Command Area of Responsibility. 

DARPA has also successfully tested the full PCAS prototype system in a U.S. 

Marine Corps infantry/aviation training exercise. That demonstration marked the 

first successful integration of automated, digital, real-time coordination capability 

into a military aircraft system, including tube-launched munitions, digital data links 

and advanced software in support of ground forces. Ground forces requested a 

strike with a few taps on a tablet, and the aircrew delivered digitally confirmed 

strike four minutes later. 

This past summer, DARPA demonstrated its PCAS system on an A-1 0 

Thunderbolt II attack aircraft, marking the system's debut on a U.S. Air Force 

platform. The tests, which involved 50 successful sorties near Nellis Air Force 

Base in Nevada, showed that a warfighter serving as a joint terminal attack 

controller (JTAC) on the ground could, in seamless coordination with a pilot, 

conduct a CAS operation with each party seeing exactly the same information 

about the target. The system also featured collateral damage calculation and 

friendly force location information that could enable improved safety in CAS 

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operations. In addition, to test the portability of the aircraft component of PCAS, 

DARPA worked with Army and Army Special Operations partners to perform 

ground-based demonstrations of the PCAS system on both a helicopter and 

unmanned aircraft. Army Special Operations Aviation Command is evaluating 

PCAS for adoption in air-ground capabilities. 

Long Range Anti-Ship Missile (LRASM) 

DARPA and the Office of Naval Research (ONR) collaborated to develop the 

Long Range Anti-Ship Missile (LRASM), an advanced anti-ship missile capable of 

operating at extended ranges with reduced dependency on intelligence, surveillance 

and reconnaissance (ISR). The collaboration began as a technology demonstration 

effort in early 2009. The first two flight tests were conducted in the fall of2013, 

during which all demonstration objectives were met. To ensure speedy and 

seamless development and deployment of this new capability, DARPA created and 

at first led a LRASM Deployment Office (LDO) with the Navy and Air Force, as 

LRASM transitioned to a Navy Program of Record. A third flight test, conducted 

in Febmary 2015, further assessed technical maturity. This past December the 

Navy took over the LDO directorship, marking the successful transition of a model 

collaborative effort to address a pressing strategic need. 

Technical Progress 

Unmanned Surface Vessel for Long-Duration Missions 

The Anti-Submarine Warfare (ASW) Continuous Trail Unmanned Vessel 

(ACTUV) program has designed, developed and constructed an entirely new class 

of ocean-going vessel-one able to traverse the open seas for months and over 

thousands of kilometers without a single crew member aboard. The 130-foot ship 

is designed to robustly track quiet diesel electric submarines. But of broader 

technical significance, it embodies breakthroughs in autonomous navigational 

capabilities with the potential to change the nature of U.S. maritime operations. 

Specifically, ACTUV is endowed with advanced software and hardware that 

enables full compliance with maritime laws and conventions for safe navigationincluding international regulations for preventing collisions at sea, or COLREGSwhile operating at a fraction of the cost of manned vessels that are today deployed 

for similar missions. ACTUV was recently transferred to water at its constmction 

site in Portland, Ore. It is scheduled to be christened on April 7, with open-water 

testing to begin this summer off the California coast. 

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Space Robotics and Modular Systems at Geosynchronous Orbit 

DARPA's Phoenix program is developing innovative technologies and systems 

that will make it possible to reimagine operations in geosynchronous Earth orbit 

(GEO), 35,000 kilometers above the Earth. This is the orbit where the highest 

priority military satellites operate, and commercial satellites there generate over 

$100 billion annually in revenue. DARPA is developing a variety of space robotics 

technologies, including assembly, repair, asset life extension and refueling in the 

harsh GEO environment; low-cost modular satellite architectures that can scale 

almost infinitely; and a standardized payload orbital delivery (POD) mechanism 

designed to safely carry a wide variety of separable mass elements to orbitincluding payloads, satlets and electronics-aboard commercial communications 

satellites. Phoenix has now ground tested the world's first modular satellite, called 

eXCITe, and prepared it for launch in 2016. In addition, a prototype of a POD 

mechanism to deliver low-cost rideshare to GEO has also been constructed and is 

being readied for launch in mid-2017. 

High-Capacity Wireless Communications for Remote Environments 

Troops in remote forward operating locations typically lack the benefit of a reliable 

communications infrastructure. And while satellite communications services can 

provide some capacity to remote areas, they cannot provide the high-bandwidth 

communications needed to support the amount of data generated by emerging ISR 

systems. DARPA's Mobile Hotspots program is developing a scalable gigabit-persecond (Gb/s) communications backbone that can be carried on UAVs to connect 

dismounted warfighters with forward operating bases, tactical operations centers, 

ISR assets and fixed communications infrastructure. This past year the program 

made significant progress by building low-power millimeter-wave radios small 

enough to be carried on UAVs, and demonstrating that these can communicate at 

tactically relevant ranges at Gb/s rates. We expect to demonstrate a full network 

built upon these radios later this year in a major Marine Corps exercise. 

In related work, DARPA's 1 OOG program is developing the technologies and 

system concepts to project fiber-optic-class 100 Gb/s airborne data links at ranges 

of200 kilometers air-to-air and 100 kilometers air-to-ground from high-altitude 

long-endurance aerial platforms. Computationally efficient signal processing 

algorithms are also being developed to meet size, weight and power limitations of 

host platforms. Recent progress included a demonstration of key components 

pertonning to levels suitable to meet overall lOOG system goals, during which 

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DARPA performers set several millimeter-wave modulation and transmission 

records. The technologies are currently being integrated into a full 100 Gb/s 

system, to be followed by flight testing. 

City-Scale Nuclear and Radiological Monitoring 

Terrorist attacks involving dirty bombs or nuclear devices remain a potentially 

catastrophic threat to security, both at home and abroad. Today, we lack a 

continuous, wide-area ability to detect such dangers. To that end, DARPA's 

SIGMA program is developing a networked detection capability that combines 

sensors and fusion algorithms to enable continuous monitoring of radioactive 

sources of interest at city-wide scales. The sensors are the size of a smart phone, 

inexpensive (less than $400 apiece, which is I 0 to 20 times less than equivalent 

sensors today), and can detect both gamma and neutron radiation, the unique 

signatures of radiological and nuclear weapons. A network of such sensors 

deployed across multiple locations could quickly determine if an anomalous 

reading indicated a potential threat and provide the foundation for a critical layer of 

defense against weapons of mass terror. 

System of Systems for Air Superioritv 

In recent years, DARPA has started a collection of programs that aims to develop 

and demonstrate technologies that together can dramatically advance air combat 

capabilities against sophisticated adversaries by coordinated deployment of 

distributed assets with diverse capabilities rather than reliance on densely 

consolidated capabilities on large, expensive and unwieldy platforms. Key to these 

efforts is the approach of integrating new capabilities with existing systems to 

achieve cost leverage against near-peer adversaries and to continuously progress 

faster and at lower cost than traditional monolithic platform-based approaches. 

DARPA's System of Systems (SoS) Integration Technology and Experimentation 

(SoSITE) program is developing novel architectures-combinations of different 

types of aircraft, weapons, sensors and mission systems-that distribute air warfare 

capabilities across a large number of interoperable manned and unmanned 

platforms. In the last year, we developed an analytical capability to compare the 

mission performance and cost leverage of alternative architectures and found 

several promising approaches to achieving air dominance in highly contested 

environments. The technical and operational risks associated with these approaches 

are being analyzed this year to provide the basis for our flight experimentation 

program in the next phase of the program. 

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The Distributed Battle Management (DBM) program is one key component of the 

Agency's system-of-systems vision. Current battle management systems offer only 

limited automated aids to help warfighters comprehend and adapt to dynamic 

situations. Adding more elements to the SoS architecture-more unmanned 

aircraft, missiles and mission systems-will exacerbate the battle management 

challenge, as will the degraded communications of a highly contested environment. 

The DBM program seeks to develop appropriately automated decision aids to 

assist airborne battle managers and pilots manage air-to-air and air-to-ground 

combat. In the initial phase of the program, we developed algorithms to 

disseminate hostile track data using limited communications across tactical data 

links. These algorithms achieved high accuracy while requiring less 

communications capacity then standard approaches. We also developed algorithms 

for automatic control of UA Vs in conducting air-to-air and air-to-surface 

engagements. In the next phase of the program, these algorithms will be integrated 

with appropriate human-computer interfaces. The resulting capability will be 

evaluated by pilots and operators in a virtual simulation environment. 

New Opportunities 

Maritime System of Systems 

DARPA has made important technical progress towards future air dominance 

through the development of a systems-of-systems approach. Now, through its 

Cross Domain Maritime Surveillance and Targeting (CD MaST) program, DARPA 

is extending this model into the maritime domain. The program will be developing 

technologies to disaggregate various functions across multiple lower cost, 

upgradable and in many cases unmanned platforms on the sea surface and 

underwater. By distributing the functions of position, navigation and timing; 

communications; command and control; and networking and logistics across large 

expanses, this architecture will force the adversary to defend a very wide area at 

high cost, inverting the cost curve for securing the maritime environment. 

Leading-edge Electronics with Built-in Trust 

Under the hood of every military system are the electronic components that are its 

brains, eyes and ears, but DoD has struggled for decades with contradictory 

demands in designing, sourcing and maintaining these vital components. Military 

systems need the most capable integrated circuit (!C) technology to do their 

phenomenally difficult computational or signal-processing tasks with the limited 

power available on a missile or aircraft. Yet designing custom lCs continues to 

grow more complex, and fewer teams are able to commit the time and money for 

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custom design, even in the commercial world. At the same time, security is 

essential for military applications but semiconductor production has globalized, 

with diminishing U.S.-owned, U.S.-sited production capacity at the leading edge of 

technology, and supply chains now crossing multiple national borders. And while 

lC technology progresses at a pace set by the commercial sector, DoD needs access 

to components for decades. To address this group of challenges, DARPA is 

building a cluster of programs aimed at creating new options for DoD. 

DARPA's Trusted Integrated Circuits (TRUST) program is developing 

technologies that will ensure the trustworthiness ofiCs used in military systems, 

even when those components have been designed and fabricated under untrusted 

conditions. TRUST makes a radical departure from conventional verification 

approaches, using advanced metrics to identify with increasing efficiency ICs that 

have been maliciously attacked while reducing the incidence of declaring good 

circuits to be bad. 

The Supply Chain Hardware lntegrity of Electronics Defense (SHIELD) 

program aims to eliminate counterfeit ICs from the electronics supply chain by 

inserting into the packaging of these components minuscule "dielets"--chips tinier 

than a grain of salt, with embedded encryption, sensors, near-field power and 

communications capabilities-to detect any attempt to tamper with the relevant 

electronics. Dielets are being designed to incorporate passive, unpowered sensors 

capable of capturing attempts to image, de-solder, de-lid or image the IC; 

mechanical processes that make the dielet fragile and prevent intact removal from 

its package; and a full encryption engine and advanced near-field technology to 

power the dielet and provide communications, to make counterfeiting too complex 

and time-consuming to be cost effective. 

DARPA's Integrity and Reliability oflntegrated Circuits (IRIS) program is 

developing techniques to provide system developers the ability to derive the 

function of digital, analog and mixed-signaliCs non-destructively, given limited 

operational specifications. These techniques include advanced imaging and device 

recognition of deep-sub-micron circuits, as well as computational methods to 

determine device connectivity. The program is also working to better understand 

circuit aging systems and to produce innovative methods of device modeling and 

analytic processes to determine the reliability of integrated circuits by testing a 

limited number of samples. Resulting technologies will help ensure that DoD 

microelectronics reliably perform as expected and only as expected by revealing 

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potential compromises due to manufacturing defects, counterfeiting or the addition 

of malicious components. 

The Circuit Realization at Faster Timescales (CRAFT) program seeks to develop 

new fast-track circuit-design methods, multiple sources for IC fabrication and a 

technology repository that will facilitate reuse of proven solutions. To achieve its 

goals, CRAFT seeks to shorten the design cycle for custom integrated circuits by a 

factor of 10 (on the order of months rather than years); devise design frameworks 

that can be readily recast when next-generation fabrication plants come on line; 

and create a repository so that methods, documentation and intellectual property 

need not be reinvented with each design and fabrication cycle. 

Mastering the Information Explosion 

The accelerating growth of digital data, and the Nation's increasing reliance on 

infonnation systems in every sector of society, present a challenge and an 

opportunity. The opportunity is to derive from this massive trove the myriad 

associations and causalities that, once unveiled, can provide insights into 

everything from the predicted arrival of a new strain of influenza to the plans for a 

terror attack halfway around the globe. The challenge is how to separate these 

valuable signals from noise, and how to be able to trust the information and 

information systems upon which we now rely for virtually every function. 

DARPA is developing novel approaches to deriving insights from a wide variety of 

datasets, and is developing technologies to ensure that the data and systems with 

which critical decisions are made are trustworthy. 

Adoption and impact 

Research on Fresh Approaches for Computer Security 

DARPA's Clean-slate design ofResilient, Adaptive, Secure Hosts (CRASH) 

program was a basic research effort that designed new computer systems that are 

highly resistant to cyber attack. The technology development has recently 

concluded, and CRASH-developed software is now being incorporated in the 

commercial and military arenas. One university performer started a company based 

on CRASH research; this led to an announcement from HP in September 2015 that 

its new line of printers would feature this software to enhance their security. 

DARPA is coordinating transitions to the Navy and the Defense Information 

Systems Agency (DISA). For example, the aforementioned software is now being 

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transitioned to the Naval Surface Warfare Center to protect shipboard control 

systems from cyber attack, and other CRASH software is being transitioned to 

offer similar protection for DoD command and control servers. Additionally, the 

Department of Homeland Security and the Air Force Research Laboratory have 

been working together to test and evaluate CRASH technology in multiple devices. 

Because the cyber-attack surface is vast and diverse, each of these transitions 

makes a contribution to the Nation's cybersecurity by taking a class of threats off 

the table. 

Active Authentication 

Passwords are cumbersome and imperfect authentication systems for use on 

information systems, and most systems have no way of verifying that the user who 

was originally authenticated is the user still in control of the keyboard. DARPA's 

Active Authentication program is addressing this problem by developing novel 

ways of validating identity-ways that focus on unique aspects of the individual 

through the use of software-based biometrics, including behavioral traits such as 

subtleties in keystroke style or screen-swipe patterns. Although these biometrics 

may never completely replace passwords, they can provide an added layer of 

assurance of a user's identity-and DARPA-developed systems have begun to 

make their way into commercial products, where they are already in use by 

millions of users. One version, for example, has been incorporated into Google's 

new Android behavioral authentication system announced last June; others are 

being piloted by several banks in the United States and Europe, where they have 

helped secure more than 1.5 million transactions; and yet others are being explored 

by the National Institute of Standards and Technology for possible use within the 

National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace (NSTIC). 

Language Translation and Analysis 

DARPA has a long and storied history of breakthroughs in voice recognition, 

translation and language processing, including seminal contributions to the 

technology that eventually became Siri. More recently, a number of DARPA's 

language programs have transitioned to the military Services and other outlets 

where they are making a difference, including: 

The Broad Operational Language Translation (BOLT) program aimed to enable 

communication with non-English-speaking populations and identifY important 

foreign-language information by allowing English-speakers to understand foreignlanguage sources of all genres, including chat, messaging and informal 

conversation and providing English-speakers the ability to quickly identify targeted 

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information in foreign-language sources using natural-language queries. U.S. 

Special Operations Command and U.S. Central Command have both actively been 

using BOLT since some of the program's earliest iterations several years ago. It 

has also been used extensively in theater, including by U.S. forces in South Korea 

and by DoD, the National Security Agency and other U.S. Government agencies. 

Currently, U.S. Army Africa is using it as well. 

DARPA's Multilingual Automatic Document Classification, Analysis and 

Translation (MADCAT) program was launched to develop technologies that can 

automatically convert foreign language text images into English transcripts, 

eliminating the need for linguists and analysts while automatically providing 

relevant, distilled, actionable information to military command and personnel in a 

timely fashion. It is currently in use by the Defense Language Institute and with 

U.S. Forces Korea. 

The Rapid Automatic Transcription of Speech (RATS) program was designed to 

create algorithms and software for determining whether a communications signal 

includes speech or is just background noise or music, identifying the language 

being spoken and whether the speaker is an individual on a list of known speakers, 

and recognizing specific words or phrases from a list of terms of interest-even 

when communication channels are extremely noisy and/or highly distorted. RATS 

is at various stages of testing and transition by the U.S. Air Force, U.S. Navy, 

Special Operations Command, National Security Agency, Central Intelligence 

Agency, Federal Bureau oflnvestigation and Joint Interagency Task Force South. 

DARPA's Deep Exploration and Filtering ofText (DEFT) program was designed 

to use artificial intelligence to enable defense analysts to more efficiently find 

actionable information in large volumes of documents and to help analysts move 

from limited, linear processing of huge sets of data to a nuanced, strategic 

exploration of available information. DEFT technology capable of interpreting 

human language and converting it to machine-readable knowledge-base entries has 

been transitioned to the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, the Air Force Research 

Laboratory, and other activities. 

Technical progress 

High-Assurance Cyber Military Systems (HACMS) 

Embedded processors are the ubiquitous computational brains in DoD systems, but 

along with their valuable capabilities comes an ever-growing attack surface for 

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cyber malfeasance. DARPA's HACMS program is developing tools and methods 

for the design and construction of high-assurance cyber-physical systems-scaling 

the mathematics of formal methods to create devices effectively "unhackable" for 

specified properties. DARPA has applied these techniques initially to a Little Bird 

helicopter, using a HACMS microkernel to give the mission computer a cyber 

retrofit. In a flight test, a red team was unable to attack the helicopter's controls, 

despite the fact that the team was given access to the platform and its software, 

including its source code. 

Cyber Grand Challenge (CGC) 

It typically takes months or years for a software bug to be identified and patcheda period of time increasingly being taken advantage of by digital miscreants, and a 

vulnerability window not likely to shrink as long as the process for identifying and 

repairing such flaws remains mostly manual and artisanal as it is today. CGC is a 

DARPA-sponsored competition that aims to accelerate the development of 

automatic defensive systems capable of reasoning about flaws, formulating patches 

and deploying them on a network in real time. By acting at machine speed and 

scale, these technologies may someday overturn today's attacker-dominated status 

quo. Seven teams from across the United States qualified last year to compete in 

the CGC final event, which will take place August 4, 2016, live on stage, colocated with the DEF CON 24 conference in Las Vegas. 

Mining and Understanding Software Enclaves (MUSE) 

DARPA's MUSE program seeks a radical rethinking of the way we conceive and 

maintain software, by integrating foundational ideas from formal methods and 

machine learning to an ever-growing corpus of open-source software. The 

techniques being developed under MUSE are intended to discover deep semantic 

properties from the programs found in its corpus. These properties drive two 

distinct analytic tasks. The first enables automatic identification and repair of 

software bugs by recognizing anomalous structure based on properties found in 

similar previously analyzed programs; the second synthesizes new software 

behavior from existing corpus elements based on formal specifications. To date, 

DARPA has assembled a software corpus of more than 20 terabytes and has 

successfully applied its technologies to automatically synthesize a provably correct 

implementation of sophisticated cryptographic protocols such as Advanced 

Encryption Standard (AES), and repair well-known security vulnerabilities such as 

Heartbleed. 

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New opportunities 

Cybersecurity for the Grid 

Across the United States, some 3,200 separate organizations own and operate 

electrical infrastructure. The widely dispersed nature of the Nation's electrical grid 

and associated control systems has a number of advantages, including a reduced 

risk that any single accident or attack could create a widespread failure from which 

it might take weeks to recover. Since the late 1990s, however, cost pressures have 

driven the integration of conventional information technologies into these 

independent industrial control systems, resulting in a grid that is increasingly 

vulnerable to cyber attack, either through direct connection to the Internet or via 

direct interfaces to utility information technology systems. DARPA's recently 

launched Rapid Attack Detection, Isolation and Characterization Systems 

(RADICS) was created to develop automated systems that would help cyber and 

utilities engineers restore power within seven days of an attack that overwhelms 

the recovery capabilities of power providers. RADICS's goals include the 

development of advanced anomaly-detection systems with high sensitivity and low 

false-positive rates, based on analyses of the power grid's dynamics; the 

development of systems that can localize and characterize malicious software that 

has gained access to critical utility systems; and the design of a secure emergency 

network that could connect power suppliers in the critical period after an attack. 

Changing the Security-Privacy Trade-off 

DARPA's Brandeis program will explore technologies that could help break the 

tension between maintaining privacy and being able to tap into the huge value of 

data. Rather than having to trade off between these important goals, Brandeis aims 

to build a third option, enabling safe and predictable sharing of data while reliably 

preserving privacy. Assured data privacy could help open the doors to a number of 

security-relevant goals, from collections of publicly available data that can help 

predict military movements or emergency situations to early evidence of cyber 

attacks on shared networks-applications that in some environments could be 

difficult to fully implement without assurances of privacy. 

Communicating with Computers 

A new and powerful wave of artificial intelligence (AI) is sweeping commercial 

and military applications today. Based on recent major advances in machine 

learning-research that was sponsored in part by DARPA-this generation of AI is 

fueling tlelds as disparate as search, self-driving cars and financial trading in the 

commercial world and battle management, electronic warfare, cybersecurity and 

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information operations in the national security realm. I have touched on some of 

these examples in my testimony today. 

Despite this significant technical progress, however, the ways in which we humans 

interact with machine systems are still quite limited compared to human-to-human 

interactions. DARPA's Communicating with Computers (CwC) program is a basic 

research effort to explore how to facilitate faster, more seamless and intuitive 

communication between people and computers-including how computers 

endowed with visual or other sensory systems might learn to take better advantage 

of the myriad ways in which humans use contextual knowledge (gestures and facial 

expressions or other syntactical clues, for example) to enrich communication. 

Ultimately, advances from this program could allow warfighters, analysts, logistics 

personnel and others in the national security community to take fuller advantage of 

the enormous opportunities for human-machine collaboration that are emerging 

today. 

Nurturing the Seeds of Technological Surprise 

From its earliest days, DARPA has scoured the research community for new 

science and engineering insights and invested in programs to reveal radically 

advanced technological capabilities from those fertile research areas. That tradition 

holds true today. 

Adoption and impact 

Additive Manufacturing for Performance Applications 

Despite its revolutionary promise, additive manufacturing is still in its infancy 

when it comes to understanding the impact of subtle differences in manufacturing 

methods on the properties and capabilities of resulting materials. Those 

uncertainties have slowed the reliable mass production of additively manufactured 

structures with demanding specification requirements, such as structural 

components for aircraft and other military systems. To overcome this problem, 

DARPA's Open Manufacturing (OM) program is building and demonstrating rapid 

qualification technologies that comprehensively capture, analyze and control 

variability in the manufacturing process to predict the properties of resulting 

products. Success could help unleash the potential time- and cost-saving benefits 

of advanced manufacturing methods for a broad range of defense and national 

security needs. 

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DARPA's OM framework and data schema are already being used by the Navy in 

their efforts to produce flight-critical metallic components with an additivemanufacturing-certified Technical Data Package, with plans to field a set of flightcritical metallic components for the V -22, H-1, and CH-53K platforms by 

2017. Manufacturing pedigree considerations, such as a baseline set of standards 

and schema for additive manufacturing data collection, are being provided by the 

OM Manufacturing Demonstration facilities at Penn State and the Army Research 

Laboratory. In another application, advanced manufacturing approaches for 

bonded composites could enable aircraft wings and fuselages, for example, to be 

built and joined together without the thousands of rivets and fasteners currently 

required, significantly reducing manufacturing costs and time and lowering 

operating costs by making aircraft lighter. 

Accurate, Specific Disease Diagnostics on the Spot 

The challenge of tracking the spread of infectious disease is exacerbated by the fact 

that the only way to know precisely which pathogen ails a patient is to draw blood, 

send it to a lab, and often wait days to hear the result. The Mobile Analysis 

Platform (MAP) point-of-care diagnostic device is a simple, rugged, handheld, 

battery-operated instrument that rapidly identifies a range of infectious diseases. 

Developed under DARPA's Prophecy program, it enables low-cost and robust 

molecular diagnostics within 30-45 minutes in areas where neither a laboratory nor 

a secure cold chain is available. And because the device provides instant wireless 

transmission of test results and location data, it can provide invaluable real-time 

epidemiological data during outbreaks offast-moving diseases such as Ebola. 

DARPA is already engaged in clinical testing ofthe device with the Naval Health 

Research Center and the U.S. Military HIV Research Program, and will conduct 

testing with the Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory this year during military 

exercises in the United States and West Africa. In addition, DARPA recently 

initiated development of a MAP assay for Zika virus. 

Biologists, Start Your Startups! 

For many of the technologies driven by DARPA's Biological Technologies Office, 

the path to impact runs through commercialization. Several recent examples point 

to early progress in this regard. 

DARPA's Autonomous Diagnostics to Enable Prevention and Therapeutics 

(ADEPT) program is creating a new technology base to outpace the spread of 

natural or engineered diseases and toxins through the development of rapid 

diagnostics, novel vaccines, new methods for drug delivery and entirely new 

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approaches to providing populations with antibody-derived immunity. Among 

other technology and business successes resulting from ADEPT are a DARPAenabled spin-off that has since received more than $25 million in venture funding 

for further development of a novel diagnostic platform and another small biotech 

company for which DARPA provided the initial research funding that went on to 

receive venture funding to continue development of tissue-integrated 

biocompatible sensors. 

DARPA's Microphysiological Systems (MPS) program-better known as the 

Agency's foray into "organs-on-a-chip" technology-is developing a platform that 

uses engineered human tissue to mimic human physiological systems as a means of 

testing the safety and effectiveness of candidate dmgs, vaccines or other 

biomedical countermeasures. In one of many applications, two DARPA performers 

are collaborating to understand the liver toxicity that can be caused by biological 

therapeutics-a common reason why otherwise promising drug candidates fail in 

clinical trials. Among the program's business successes are a start-up microfluidics 

company spun offfrom the research that DARPA had funded, which has since 

gone on to raise more than $10 million in venture funding. 

DARPA's Dialysis-Like Therapeutics (DLT) program is developing a portable 

device that separates harmful agents from human blood and then returns the 

cleansed blood to the body in a manner similar to dialysis treatment for kidney 

failure. The resulting device could remove pathogens from the bloodstream, 

thereby reducing the morbidity and mortality from infection. DARPA invested in a 

promising core technology and supported studies that proved its feasibility, which 

led to the spin-off of a new biotechnology company that is now using venture 

funding to scale up and file for FDA medical device approval. 

Technical progress 

Revolutionizing Prosthetics 

Over the past year, DARPA has built on previous work in its Revolutionizing 

Prosthetics program to achieve several new and groundbreaking advances that 

promise to make a difference for wounded warriors and for countless other people 

with disabilities. Earlier work developed a sophisticated, modular prosthetic arm 

that could be easily controlled by the user-a prosthetic that earned Food and Drug 

Administration approval-and demonstrated the first direct, real-time decoding of 

neural motor control signals from patients to operate such an ann with near-natural 

control. A newer focus has been on providing users of prosthetics limbs with a 

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sense of touch by sending tactile information from mechanical fingertips to the 

brain. In September, DARPA reported its first success in this domain, when a 28-

year-old man who had been paralyzed for more than a decade as a result of a spinal 

cord injury became the first person to "feel" physical sensations through a 

prosthetic hand directly connected to his brain. The advance points to a future in 

which people living with paralysis or missing limbs will not only be able to 

manipulate objects by sending signals from their brain to robotic devices, but will 

also be able to sense precisely what those devices are touching. 

New Tools to Fight Ebola 

The FY 2015 Consolidated and Further Continuing Appropriations Act provided 

funds for DARPA to pursue technologies relevant to the Ebola outbreak, 

leveraging platform capabilities in the ADEPT program that aims to outpace 

infectious diseases. As a result of that additional support, DARPA was able to 

achieve a number of milestones in quick order, including completion of a study 

showing that a novel DNA-based vaccine could protect non-human primates 

against a lethal Ebola challenge, completion of a Phase I human safety trial for a 

DNA-based vaccine, identification of highly protective antibodies retrieved from 

U.S. Ebola survivors, commencement of manufacture of a protective Ebola 

antibody, and successful demonstration of potentially therapeutic levels of DNAencoded Ebola antibodies in small animals. 

Harnessing Extreme Physics 

Through a number of ambitious basic science programs, DARPA is pushing the 

limits of the physical sciences, opening new possibilities for ultra-precise 

measurements and unprecedented control over fundamental phenomena. Among 

them: 

The science of quantum communications-in which single photons from entangled 

photon pairs are transmitted over a distance-offers the possibility of 

unconditionally secure communication because the act of measuring a quantum 

object necessarily changes it. For quantum communications to be practical, 

however, several technological barriers must be overcome. DARPA created the 

Quiness program to investigate novel technologies capable of high-rate, longdistance quantum communications. Recent demonstrations through Quiness of 

technologies to capture, manipulate and re-transmit photons without in effect 

measuring them are truly significant. This is because theorists in Quiness were able 

to prove from fundamental quantum principles that such "quantum repeater" 

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technologies are the only way to achieve quantum communications over transcontinental distances. 

Many defense-critical applications-the Global Positioning System (GPS) and the 

Internet, for example-demand exceptionally precise time and frequency 

standards. Today's systems, however, rely on 1950s atomic physics technologies. 

Recent advances in optical atomic systems give promise to a new generation of 

optical atomic clocks and quantum metrology that stands to transform numerous 

DoD applications. The Quantum-Assisted Sensing and Readout (QuASAR) 

program is developing new quantum control and readout techniques to provide a 

suite of measurement tools that will be broadly applicable across disciplines, with 

likely applications relating to biological imaging, inertial navigation and robust 

global positioning systems. Recently the program demonstrated the world's most 

accurate clock with a total uncertainty of 2 parts in 1018, or about I 0,000 times 

better than GPS clocks. This means that if the clock began ticking at the Big Bang 

nearly 14 billion years ago it would be accurate to better than one second today. 

Clocks of this caliber could lead to improved positioning and navigation, and 

enable novel imaging and geological sensing techniques. 

DARPA's Ultrafast Laser Science and Engineering (PULSE) program is 

developing the technological means for engineering improved spectral sources, 

such as ultra-fast optical lasers-advances that in tum could facilitate more 

efficient and agile use of the entire electromagnetic spectrum and generate 

improvements in existing capabilities such as geolocation, navigation, 

communication, coherent imaging and radar, and perhaps give rise to entirely new 

spectrum-dependent capabilities. Recent PULSE demonstrations include 

synchronization of clocks with femtosecond precision across kilometers of 

turbulent atmosphere, corresponding to a 1,000-fold improvement over what is 

possible using conventional radio-frequency techniques. 

New opportunities 

Neural Engineering Systems Design 

The science fiction dream oflinking the brain directly to the outside world has in 

recent years started becoming a reality-initially through the development of 

implantable medical devices such as deep brain stimulators used today to treat 

Parkinson's disease and other conditions and, more recently, through work by 

DARPA and others to develop brain-machine interfaces that allow amputees and 

people living with paralysis to operate robotic prosthetic arms and hands with their 

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thoughts. Even state-of-the-art brain-machine interfaces, however, have relatively 

small capacities compared to the enormous computing power oftoday's digital 

systems and of the brain itself-a situation that has been likened to two 

supercomputers trying to talk to each other through an old 300-baud modem. 

DARPA's Neural Engineering System Design (NESD) program stands to 

dramatically enhance research capabilities in neurotechnology and provide a 

foundation for new therapies and other capabilities by developing small, 

implantable systems that can communicate clearly and individually with any of up 

to one million neurons in a given region of the brain. In addition to that hardware 

challenge, NESD aims to develop the advanced mathematical and neurocomputation techniques to transcode high-definition sensory information between 

two contrasting languages-the brain's cortical neuronal representations and the 

ones and zeros of electronic systems-and then compress and represent those data 

with minimal loss of fidelity and functionality. 

All the Light We Cannot See 

Light that enters the eye or the lens of a camera canies much more infonnation 

than is typically retrieved by viewers, including numerous details about where it 

has been and what it has experienced. DARPA's Revolutionary Enhancement of 

Visibility by Exploiting Active Light-fields (REVEAL) program seeks to unlock 

information in photons that cunent imaging systems discard. The program is first 

developing a comprehensive theoretical framework to enable maximum 

information extraction from complex scenes by using all the photon pathways of 

captured light and leveraging light's multiple degrees of freedom. This framework 

will then be used to guide the development of new imaging hardware and software 

technologies. Those technologies will be tested against a challenge problem that 

calls for full 3D scene reconstruction from a single viewpoint-a rendering that 

today requires inputs from multiple viewpoints. Such an ability could enhance 

situational awareness for troops, potentially allowing them to reconstruct, from a 

single vantage point, a complex scene including objects or people not visible by 

line-of-sight viewing. 

Designing Complex, Dynamic Systems 

DARPA's Complex Adaptive System Composition and Design Environment 

(CASCADE) program has a seemingly esoteric but ultimately practical goal: to 

advance and exploit novel mathematical techniques to gain a deeper understanding 

of system component interactions, a unified view of system behaviors and a fonnal 

language for composing and designing complex adaptive systems. Conventional 

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modeling and design tools invoke static 'playbook' concepts that do not adequately 

represent the complexity of, say, an airborne system of systems with its constantly 

changing variables, such as enemy jamming, bad weather or loss of one or more 

aircraft. CASCADE aims to fundamentally change how systems are designed to 

enable real-time resilient response within dynamic, unexpected environments. 

KEEPING DARPA VIGOROUS 

DARPA's leadership takes seriously its responsibility to encourage the Agency's 

culture of high-risk, high-reward innovation and its ability to execute rapidly and 

effectively. Toward that end, we continue to experiment with better ways to reach 

new performers through, for example, the "EZ BAA" process launched by our 

Biological Technologies Office last year, which greatly simplifies the process by 

which performers can get on contract with DARPA for efforts ofup to $750,000. 

The EZ BAA is especially helpful in reaching those unfamiliar with defense 

procurement. 

We also continue to use our prize authorities. Prize authorities were crucial to the 

success of the DARPA Robotics Challenge, our three-year push to accelerate 

progress in ground robotics for humanitarian assistance and disaster relief, which 

held its finals in California last summer. We are also using our prize authorities to 

run DARPA's Cyber Grand Challenge, which has been working to speed the 

development of automated cyber defense capabilities and will hold its final 

competition in August, when seven extremely talented teams will have their 

computers face off against one another at an event that is expected to draw 

thousands of spectators. In addition, we continue to use the prize mechanism for 

smaller efforts, such as last year's competition to model the spread of 

Chikungunya, a mosquito-borne infectious disease. 

Of course, at the center of DARPA's success is an abiding commitment to 

identify, recruit and support excellent program managers-extraordinary 

individuals who are at the top oftheir fields and who are hungry for the 

opportunity to push the limits of their disciplines during their limited tenns at 

DARPA. I am most grateful for the critical support this Subcommittee provided in 

authorizing the II 01 hiring mechanism, extending it, and in FY 2015 expanding 

DARPA's ability to use it. That authority has proven invaluable to our ability to 

attract some of the finest scientists, engineers and mathematicians to the important 

work of public service and national security. The 110 I experiment has now been 

running since 1999 and has clearly proven its benefits to DARPA and the Nation. 

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After 16 years of annual uncertainty about its ongoing availability, we would 

appreciate your support to make this authority permanent. 

DARPA'S BUDGET 

The President's FY 2017 budget request for DARPA is $2.973 billion. This 

amount is the same as that requested tor FY 2016 and $1 05 mi Ilion more than the 

$2.868 billion appropriated for FY 2016. To put these numbers in context, from 

FY 2009 to FY 2013 DARPA's budget eroded significantly through a series of 

reductions, including the 8 percent across-the-board sequestration cut in FY 2013. 

The total reduction to DARPA's budget from FY 2009 to FY 2013 was 20 percent 

in real terms. With modest increases in FY 2014 and 2015 and a slight decrease 

for FY 2016, DARPA's budget has not fully recovered, but it has been more 

stable. 

I ask for your full support of the President's budget request for FY 2017 so that 

DARPA can continue to deliver on its vital mission. 

CONCLUSION 

As the programs I have highlighted today illustrate, DARPA's commitment to 

bolstering national security encompasses an extraordinary range of technologies 

and scientific domains, spanning dimensional scales from the atomic to the 

celestial, time scales from attoseconds to decades, spectral scales from radio waves 

to infrared to gamma rays, and-in its most recently created technical officebiological scales from genes and proteins to neurons and organs to infectious 

diseases and global health. Every day, the people of DARPA come to work to 

probe and push on those various frontiers. And despite the daunting security 

challenges around the globe that spur our work, the atmosphere within our agency 

is persistently one of excitement and even joy-a reflection of the fact that 

DARPA is obsessed not with problems but with solutions. 

A highly functional, effective and spirited organization does not happen by 

accident. We within DARPA work at it constantly, drawing our inspiration from 

the amazing, ever-evolving world of technology and from a deep desire to serve 

our Nation. So I will close this testimony where I started, thanking you for your 

support and your trust. Both are vital to achieving our mission. I will be pleased to 

respond to your questions. 

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Arati Prabhakar 

Director, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency 

Arati Prabhakar is the director of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. 

Dr. Prabhakar has spent her career investing in world-class engineers and scientists to create new 

technologies and businesses. Her first service to national security started in 1986 when she joined 

DARPA as a program manager. She initiated and managed programs in advanced semiconductor 

technology and flexible manufacturing, as well as demonstration projects to insert new semiconductor 

technologies into military systems. As the founding director ofDARPA's Microelectronics Technology 

Ottice, she led a team of program managers whose efforts spanned these areas, as well as 

optoelectronics, infrared imaging and nanoelectronics. 

In 1993, President William Clinton appointed Dr. Prabhakar director of the National Institute of 

Standards and Technology, where she led the 3,000-person organization in its work with companies 

across multiple industries. 

Dr. Prahhakar moved to Silicon Valley in 1997, first as chief technology officer and senior vice 

president at Raychem, and later vice president and then president of Interval Research. From 2001 to 

2011, she was a partner with U.S. Venture Partners, an early-stage venture capital firm. Dr. Prabhakar 

identified and served as a director for startup companies with the promise of significant growth. She 

worked with entrepreneurs in energy and cfliciency technologies, components for consumer electronics, 

and semiconductor process and design technology. 

Dr. Prabhakar received her Doctor of Philosophy in applied physics and Master of Science in electrical 

engineering from the California Institute of Technology. She received her Bachelor of Science in 

electrical engineering from Texas Tech University. She began her career as a Congressional Fellow at 

the Office of Technology Assessment. 

Dr. Prabhakar has served in recent years on the National Academies' Science Technology and Economic 

Policy Board, the College of Engineering Advisory Board at the University of California, Berkeley, and 

the red team of DARPA's Defense Sciences Research Council. In addition, she chaired the Efficiency 

and Renewables Advisory Committee for the U.S. Department of Energy. Dr. Prabhakar is a Fellow of 

the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, a Texas Tech Distinguished Engineer, and a 

Caltech Distinguished Alumna. 
QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MEMBERS POST HEARING 

FEBRUARY 24, 2016 

(153) 

QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MR. WILSON 

Mr. WILSON. In your opening statement, you mentioned some work on swarming 

air vehicles. Could you provide some more details on that work so we can understand how that work, and what the Department is thinking about its applications 

and potential countermeasures? 

Mr. WELBY. The Navy is pursuing science and technology efforts in autonomy and 

unmanned systems for naval operations. In 2015, the Navy demonstrated swarming 

unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) as part of the Low-Cost UAV Swarming Technology (LOCUST) program. The demonstrations are an important step on the way 

to the 2016 ship-based demonstration of 30 rapidly launched autonomous, swarming 

UAVs. 

The LOCUST program includes a tube-based launcher that can send multiple 

UAVs into the air in rapid succession. Information-sharing between the UAVs enables autonomous collaborative behavior in either defensive or offensive missions. 

This autonomous behavior will allow for the UAVs to adapt to changing adversary 

conditions to include countermeasures. Additionally, with the goal of low-cost, the 

program aims to ‘‘bend the cost curve’’ in our favor, especially when employed 

against conventional weapon systems. 

Because the launcher and the UAVs themselves have a small footprint, the technology could enable swarms of compact UAVs to be launched from ships, tactical 

vehicles, aircraft, or other unmanned platforms. Depending on a range of payload 

options, a wide variety of missions can be enabled ranging from surveillance to 

strike. 

Mr. WILSON. For each of you, how well do your service’s science and technology 

strategies also integrate long-range planning for the facilities, people, and infrastructure needed to support the technical missions of your organizations? 

Mr. WELBY. Within the Department, ASD(R&E) continues to provide oversight of 

the Department’s comprehensive S&T investment portfolio through the Reliance 21 

framework. Reliance 21 provides a forum to synchronize, coordinate, and deconflict 

Service and Agency S&T activities. In the last year, we improved joint planning and 

coordination of S&T activities among the Department’s senior S&T leadership to 

achieve efficiencies and improve the effectiveness of our support to the operating 

force. This collaborative process captures the interests and activities of the entire 

R&E enterprise and all our partners in a collection of 17 Communities of Interest 

(COIs). The COIs maintain awareness of their portfolio areas by reviewing and assessing the alignment of current and planned R&E programs, identifying gaps, and 

helping to prioritize R&E funding efforts to meet the technical challenges of the 

DOD in their respective portfolio area. Each Reliance 21 COI represents a specific, 

cross-domain technology area with a rotating steering group lead, and draws upon 

subject-matter experts from across the Department working in the relevant technology area. The Reliance 21 framework, its S&T Executive Committee, and technology area COIs are key mechanisms that support ASD(R&E)’s integrated oversight of the Department’s S&T investments. 

Mr. WILSON. Could you highlight a few areas where the Long Range Research and 

Development Program for Ground Combat is likely to suggest focusing additional investments? 

Ms. MILLER. The Long Range Research and Development Planning Program for 

Ground Combat (LRRDPP–GC) is an ongoing OSD study that is led by the Assistant 

Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering. The LRRDPP–GC is focused on 

ground combat technologies that can be incorporated into developmental programs 

over the next five years and acquired and fielded in quantity within 15 years. It 

assesses capabilities within the following general areas: future conventional combat; 

future unconventional combat; future urban combat; combat operations conducted 

with traditional and non-traditional partners; sustaining combat capabilities in 

highly challenged cyber- and spectrum-denied environments; and future operations 

on human terrain. Until this study is completed, however, it would be premature 

to speculate on particular investment recommendations. 
154 

Mr. WILSON. For each of you, how well do your service’s science and technology 

strategies also integrate long-range planning for the facilities, people, and infrastructure needed to support the technical missions of your organizations? 

Ms. MILLER. The Long-range Investment Requirements Analysis (LIRA) helps 

Army Science and Technology (S&T) facilitate more informed program planning and 

budget decisions by looking out over the next 30 years. The LIRA has put additional 

rigor into the development of the Army’s budget submission, creating an environment where the communities who invest in all phases of the materiel lifecycle work 

together to maximize the Army’s capabilities over time and strengthen the ties between the S&T community and their Program Executive Office (PEO), Requirements community, sustainment and installation partners. While the facilities, people, and infrastructure are not currently a significant part of the LIRA process, this 

planning has allowed the laboratory directors to better understand their long-term 

needs in these areas. As we move forward with future LIRAs, we will look at further 

integrating laboratory and research and engineering facilities, people, and infrastructure needs into the process. 

Mr. WILSON. For each of you, how well do your service’s science and technology 

strategies also integrate long-range planning for the facilities, people, and infrastructure needed to support the technical missions of your organizations? 

Admiral WINTER. The Naval Science and Technology (S&T) Strategy uses a broad 

investment approach that leverages long-term, targeted basic research and applied 

research to give talented scientists and engineers in government, academia and industry, the flexibility to pursue new discoveries and promising ideas to support development of new capabilities for the warfighter. 

The labs, like other government entities, continue to struggle with competition for 

highly skilled S&T and support personnel given the salaries and benefits offered by 

industry and academia. However, workforce planning and development is fairly decentralized so that S&T laboratory directors have sufficient influence on the size 

and shape of their workforce. 

The basic building block for the future workforce is a robust, strategic commitment to Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) education and 

talent-development to nurture and sustain a well-educated, highly-experienced and 

motivated workforce. Through Section 219 of the Duncan Hunter National Defense 

Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2009 (Public Law 110–417, 122 STAT. 4356), the 

Naval Innovative Science & Engineering (NISE) Program makes funds available to 

Navy laboratories and warfare centers to support in-house workforce efforts. This 

has been important in expanding the technical capabilities of the STEM workforce, 

through hands-on work, as well as in providing training and advanced degrees. 

NISE efforts have provided breakthrough research and have been responsible for 

maturation and transition of technology to the warfighter and programs of record. 

NISE has encouraged cross-organizational multi-disciplinary projects that include 

partnerships with academia and industry. 

The aging and deteriorating portions of Navy laboratories and warfare centers 

threaten their ability to successfully address their mission of discovering and developing future technology. Navy laboratories and warfare centers face the additional 

challenge of competing with other Military Construction priorities, such as docks for 

fleet ships, base housing and base hospitals. As technology rapidly advances, laboratory building construction costs continue to grow. 

The infrastructure challenges faced by laboratory directors include limited availability of maintenance, repair and construction funding; and reduced capacity of 

centralized facilities contracting/management functions (also due to limited funding). As a result, our S&T laboratory directors cannot effectively plan for or ensure 

the long term readiness of S&T facilities and infrastructure. Additionally, our aging 

facilities and recapitalization challenges also impact our ability to recruit and retain 

highly skilled S&T and support personnel, mentioned above. 

Mr. WILSON. For each of you, how well do your service’s science and technology 

strategies also integrate long-range planning for the facilities, people, and infrastructure needed to support the technical missions of your organizations? 

Dr. WALKER. The strategic goals in the Air Force Science and Technology (S&T) 

Strategy (2014) provide for integrated long-range planning for the people, facilities, 

and infrastructure necessary to support the Air Force S&T enterprise. Three of the 

seven strategic goals are specific to these vital areas. All of these strategic goals inform the efforts carried out under the Air Force Research Laboratory’s Strategic 

Plan. Our strategic focus on long-range planning ensures our S&T enterprise can 

be successful now and into the future. 

Mr. WILSON. For each of you, how well do your service’s science and technology 

strategies also integrate long-range planning for the facilities, people, and infrastructure needed to support the technical missions of your organizations? 
155 

Dr. PRABHAKAR. Within the Department, ASD(R&E) continues to provide oversight of the Department’s comprehensive S&T investment portfolio through the Reliance 21 framework. Reliance 21 provides a forum to synchronize, coordinate, and 

deconflict Service and Agency S&T activities. In the last year, we improved joint 

planning and coordination of S&T activities among the Department’s senior S&T 

leadership to achieve efficiencies and improve the effectiveness of our support to the 

operating force. This collaborative process captures the interests and activities of 

the entire R&E enterprise and all our partners in a collection of 17 Communities 

of Interest (COIs). The COIs maintain awareness of their portfolio areas by reviewing and assessing the alignment of current and planned R&E programs, identifying 

gaps, and helping to prioritize R&E funding efforts to meet the technical challenges 

of the DOD in their respective portfolio area. Each Reliance 21 COI represents a 

specific, cross-domain technology area with a rotating steering group lead, and 

draws upon subject-matter experts from across the Department working in the relevant technology area. The Reliance 21 framework, its S&T Executive Committee, 

and technology area COIs are key mechanisms that support ASD(R&E)’s integrated 

oversight of the Department’s S&T investments. 

QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MR. LANGEVIN 

Mr. LANGEVIN. How you are you working with the Strategic Capabilities Office? 

Mr. WELBY. When clearances allow, ASD(R&E) personnel monitor Strategic Capabilities Office (SCO) efforts to avoid the potential for duplication and looks for opportunities to collaborate. To that end, ASD(R&E) personnel currently participate in biweekly SCO enterprise VTCs, and SCO is now partnering with ASD(R&E) on the 

Small Satellite Communications Network Joint Capability Technology Demonstration initiated in FY 15. 

ASD(R&E) personnel periodically brief SCO on relevant technologies when there 

are opportunities to assist SCO to achieve its objectives. The latest example is an 

upcoming briefing on hand held link 16-effort. 

Mr. LANGEVIN. How do the S&T and intelligence communities work together to 

drive an informed investment strategy? How are S&T programs prioritized in order 

to meet threats now, and those in the mid and long-term? 

Mr. WELBY. The Science and Technology (S&T) and Intelligence Communities (IC) 

collaborate through a number of efforts to develop an informed strategy. These efforts include development of an annual Intelligence Needs Plan (INP), routine liaison with a number of individual agencies, and close engagement with the Director 

of National Intelligence’s S&T and weapons-related IC. 

The INP is a formal document that provides the IC’s, OASD(R&E)’s, and the S&T 

Executives’ intelligence requirements for current programs, as well as intelligence 

requirements and gaps that need to be filled to begin developing capabilities to mitigate near-term and emerging threats. The value of the INP for the Services and the 

S&T Communities of Interest is that the INP is the means to ensure that S&T intelligence needs are represented in the IC’s planning. 

Liaison with various intelligence agencies, through both the Defense Intelligence 

Officer for S&T and numerous agency liaison and support officers, occurs on a regular basis to inform ongoing S&T efforts and development of longer-range priorities. 

As an example, ASD(R&E) in collaboration with the acquisition community and the 

IC, collects data on U.S. and threat systems to identify and assess potential strategic, operational, and tactical vulnerabilities across the near-, mid-, and far-term. 

The issues identified through these assessments are prioritized based on the expected impact to operational success. These assessments also highlight areas where 

insufficient information is available on adversaries’ capabilities. These intelligence 

shortfalls are then communicated back to the IC to inform the development of collection requirements through the Intelligence Needs Plan. 

Mr. LANGEVIN. How you are you working with the Strategic Capabilities Office? 

Ms. MILLER. The Army Acquisition Executive and DASA Research and Technology 

hold regular meetings with Director, SCO to ensure our efforts are synchronized. 

Additionally, the SCO directly engages subject matter experts at the Army labs and 

centers. One example of SCO leveraging current Army S&T investments is with our 

Extended Range Cannon Artillery (ERCA) effort and subject matter expertise at the 

US Army Armament Research Development and Engineering Center (ARDEC) to 

evaluate and demonstrate firing the OSD-funded, Navy-developed Hypervelocity 

Projectile from an Army powder gun. The SCO is also leveraging Army S&T investments and subject matter expertise at the Aviation and Missile Engineering Research and Development Center (AMRDEC) to evaluate and demonstrate repurposing of existing missile technologies in the area of Fire Support. 
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Mr. LANGEVIN. How do the S&T and intelligence communities work together to 

drive an informed investment strategy? How are S&T programs prioritized in order 

to meet threats now, and those in the mid and long-term? 

Ms. MILLER. Understanding the current and projected threat environment is essential as we develop future capabilities and our investment strategy. To this end, 

we are engaging the National Ground Intelligence Center, the Army G2 and the Office of Technical Intelligence at OSD to remain aware of projected future threats 

and identify areas of interest for future assessment. Our red teaming/vulnerability 

analysis activities and our technology wargaming are also fostering closer ties between S&T and the intelligence community while providing insights into potential 

areas for future investments. 

Mr. LANGEVIN. How do the S&T and intelligence communities work together to 

drive an informed investment strategy? How are S&T programs prioritized in order 

to meet threats now, and those in the mid and long-term? 

Admiral WINTER. The Naval S&T community maintains a robust Science and 

Technology Intelligence Liaison Officer (STILO) program. These full-time liaison officers are embedded in 25 naval systems commands, warfare centers, laboratories, 

and university affiliated research centers, ensuring the flow of threat information 

from intelligence community (IC) to the science and technology (S&T) community. 

These liaisons also serve to connect intelligence analysts with technical subject matter experts from the Naval S&T community to assist the IC in assessing the maturity and implications of scientific developments by adversaries. Additionally, STILOs 

have the authority to formally task the IC with intelligence production requirements 

in support of Naval S&T. 

U.S Naval forces require a broad spectrum of core capabilities to assure access 

to the global maritime domain. Consequently, the Naval Science and Technology 

(S&T) strategy invests in a balanced and broad portfolio of promising scientific research and innovative technology in the United States and around the world. 

Science and technology investment balance, to address near-term and mid-to-longterm priorities, is provided by the Navy S&T Strategy and guidance from the Navy 

Research, Development, Test & Evaluation (RDT&E) Corporate Board. There are 

four components of the investment portfolio. 

• Discovery and Invention (D&I) makes up 50% of the portfolio and includes basic 

research (6.1) and early applied research (6.2) to address long term priorities. 

• Leap-Ahead Innovations make up 12% of the portfolio and includes Innovative 

Naval Prototypes and the majority of SwampWorks efforts. This component of 

the technology portfolio defines the future of naval warfighting. 

• Technology Maturation makes up 30% of the portfolio to deliver critical component technologies to naval acquisition programs. This includes Future Naval 

Capabilities, which mature in a two- to four-year time frame into products from 

the late stages of applied research (6.2) and advanced technology development 

(6.3). 

• Quick Reaction makes up 8% of the portfolio by responding to urgent technology 

needs and solves problems for warfighters in the near-term. This includes funds 

for TechSolutions, as well as Navy and Marine Corps experimentation. 

The Naval S&T strategy is to discover, develop and deliver decisive naval capabilities, near to long term, by investing in a balanced portfolio of breakthrough scientific research, innovative technology and talented people. 

Mr. LANGEVIN. How you are you working with the Strategic Capabilities Office? 

Dr. WALKER. The Air Force is in dialogue with the Strategic Capabilities Office 

(SCO) to determine areas where our S&T enterprise can coordinate and leverage 

SCO efforts. The Air Force also has a liaison position within the SCO to facilitate 

communication. 

Mr. LANGEVIN. How do the S&T and intelligence communities work together to 

drive an informed investment strategy? How are S&T programs prioritized in order 

to meet threats now, and those in the mid and long-term? 

Dr. WALKER. The Air Force S&T planning process brings together diverse groups 

of stakeholders to ensure our S&T efforts are well understood and aligned with Air 

Force priorities. This includes maintaining a robust research component that pushes 

the technological state of the art across a range of areas for potential military application as well as being responsive to near-, mid-, and far-term technology needs as 

expressed by the intelligence, operational, and acquisition communities. Air Force 

S&T planning is integrated into the Air Force’s strategy, planning and programming 

process (SP3) to ensure S&T investments address areas of research and development consistent with time-phased Air Force priorities. 

Mr. LANGEVIN. How you are you working with the Strategic Capabilities Office? 

Dr. PRABHAKAR. When clearances allow, ASD(R&E) personnel monitor Strategic 
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Capabilities Office (SCO) efforts to avoid the potential for duplication and looks for 

opportunities to collaborate. To that end, ASD(R&E) personnel currently participate 

in bi-weekly SCO enterprise VTCs, and SCO is now partnering with ASD(R&E) on 

the Small Satellite Communications Network Joint Capability Technology Demonstration initiated in FY 15. 

ASD(R&E) personnel periodically brief SCO on relevant technologies when there 

are opportunities to assist SCO to achieve its objectives. The latest example is an 

upcoming briefing on hand held link 16-effort. 

Mr. LANGEVIN. How do the S&T and intelligence communities work together to 

drive an informed investment strategy? How are S&T programs prioritized in order 

to meet threats now, and those in the mid and long-term? 

Dr. PRABHAKAR. The Science and Technology (S&T) and Intelligence Communities 

(IC) collaborate through a number of efforts to develop an informed strategy. These 

efforts include development of an annual Intelligence Needs Plan (INP), routine liaison with a number of individual agencies, and close engagement with the Director 

of National Intelligence’s S&T and weapons-related IC. 

The INP is a formal document that provides the IC’s, OASD(R&E)’s, and the S&T 

Executives’ intelligence requirements for current programs, as well as intelligence 

requirements and gaps that need to be filled to begin developing capabilities to mitigate near-term and emerging threats. The value of the INP for the Services and the 

S&T Communities of Interest is that the INP is the means to ensure that S&T intelligence needs are represented in the IC’s planning. 

Liaison with various intelligence agencies, through both the Defense Intelligence 

Officer for S&T and numerous agency liaison and support officers, occurs on a regular basis to inform ongoing S&T efforts and development of longer-range priorities. 

As an example, ASD(R&E) in collaboration with the acquisition community and the 

IC, collects data on U.S. and threat systems to identify and assess potential strategic, operational, and tactical vulnerabilities across the near-, mid-, and far-term. 

The issues identified through these assessments are prioritized based on the expected impact to operational success. These assessments also highlight areas where 

insufficient information is available on adversaries’ capabilities. These intelligence 

shortfalls are then communicated back to the IC to inform the development of collection requirements through the Intelligence Needs Plan. 

QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MR. NUGENT 

Mr. NUGENT. The Office of Naval Research is conducting groundbreaking research 

into the dangers of working for prolonged periods of time in extreme high and low 

pressure environments. I want to give you an opportunity to talk about the innovative solutions being developed under your leadership to prepare our forces for these 

extreme conditions. Can you describe the extreme pressure conditions these warfighters are operating in? Who in the Navy gets exposed to these conditions? Beyond 

preparation for a dive, I was amazed to learn that your research is developing treatments for those who suffer adverse effects of prolonged atmospheric pressure in the 

past. Would you please tell us a little bit about that treatment portion of your work? 

Is the limitation of your research one of technology or of funding? In other words, 

could the Warfighter Sustainment program do more to prevent and treat service 

members exposed to extreme environments with an increase in funding in fiscal 

year 2017? 

Admiral WINTER. The Office of Naval Research (ONR) has a longstanding history 

of supporting undersea warriors, including Navy Divers, SEALs, and submariners, 

through the Undersea medicine program, one of the five ONR ‘‘National Naval Responsibilities’’. The missions include deep dives to work on the ocean floor, clandestine transits in cold, dark waters, and long durations in the confines of the submarine. The Undersea Medicine Program comprises the science and technology efforts to overcome human shortfalls in operating in this extreme environment. 

One threat faced by both undersea operators and aviators is decompression sickness (DCS), as a result of the body absorbing and releasing nitrogen and other gases 

with changing atmospheric pressure. Research is underway to better understand the 

causes of DCS and to develop pharmaceutical interventions to prevent and treat 

DCS. A theory that has derived from ONR supported research is that the extreme 

pressures cause small pieces of our body’s cells called microparticles to break off and 

enter the blood stream. These microparticles are thought to act as a nucleus for the 

formation of gas bubbles. This finding lends itself to further research to understand 

how microparticles can be effectively treated. The program is also supporting development of injectable substances that can absorb the extra gases in the blood stream. 
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The high pressures also affect the way the body responds to oxygen. Oxygen toxicity seizures and lung damage can occur when operators are exposed to abnormally 

high levels of oxygen while, for example, using a clandestine rebreather to avoid a 

bubble trail. Undersea Medicine is exploring the repurposing of FDA-approved epilepsy and asthma drugs to treat these conditions. Recent findings with an animal 

model have demonstrated that a high-fat dietary supplement can delay the onset 

of oxygen toxicity seizures and are now moving to human testing. 

Conversely, hypoxia, the condition when the body can’t acquire enough oxygen is 

a concern with breathing equipment use, high-altitude mountain operations, and 

casualty evacuations. A ‘‘Hypoxia Alert and Mitigation System’’ is under development for aviators and medical personnel to prevent and treat hypoxia. 

Undersea Medicine is also addressing the increased operational focus being placed 

on undersea clandestine operations. Undersea Human Performance efforts apply advancements in the understanding of the human mind and body to the areas of 

human-systems integration, underwater situational awareness, and maintaining 

physical and cognitive readiness. For the first time, researchers from Navy laboratories are measuring the unique nutritional and metabolic demands of the SEAL 

Delivery Vehicle operators and will be conducting biometric assessment and performance modeling during cold water training evolutions. Collaboration between 

Naval Special Warfare and the research community have highlighted nutrition, hydration, respiration and thermal stress as key areas of future investigation. 

The Navy supports the President’s budget. If additional funds were available, investments could allow groundbreaking new research in genetics, synthetic biology, 

neuroscience, and physiology to be applied to the undersea domain. Examples of 

specific areas that could be addressed include understanding how these extreme environmental exposures affect the genes of the operators, analyzing the effects of undersea operations on the gut microbiome, and determining the effectiveness of virtual reality training for underwater missions. Further investments would also enhance the unique Undersea Medicine infrastructure of personnel and facilities in 

academia, industry and the Navy laboratories. 

QUESTIONS SUBMITTED BY MR. CASTRO 

Mr. CASTRO. What additional paths do you see aside from ROTC programs, to recruit young men and women into STEM jobs within the Federal Government? 

Mr. WELBY. The Department has multiple avenues available to engage with young 

men and women interested in working with DOD in STEM-related positions. The 

Science, Mathematics And Research for Transformation (SMART) Scholarship for 

Service Program provides students pursuing an undergraduate or graduate degree 

in STEM disciplines the opportunity to receive a full scholarship and employment 

by the Department upon degree completion. In addition, the Department participates in the Federal-wide Pathways Program, which provides opportunities for internships, recent-graduate hiring, and the Presidential Management Fellows (PMF) 

program. All three opportunities provide mechanisms for students to engage with 

the DOD in STEM-related positions that can lead to hiring. 

The DOD Labs also have their own programs that may lead to hiring. For example, both the Army and the Navy labs have a science and engineering apprentice 

program that may lead to a formal hiring arrangement. In addition, the Labs are 

able to leverage their flexibilities as Science and Technology Reinvention Laboratories (STRLs) to hire through their specific authorities such as Direct Hire Authority, non-competitive transition to full-time positions, and others. In addition to the 

DOD Labs workforce initiatives, the Human Capital Initiatives (HCI) office within 

OUSD(AT&L) focuses specifically on the acquisition workforce. Broader workforce 

initiatives take place in OUSD(P&R). 

Finally, for recruitment, the DOD participates in multiple career fairs, college 

campus recruiting events, and mentorship programs. All of these activities are opportunities for the Department to promote STEM-related positions and directly engage with interested students. 

Mr. CASTRO. What additional paths do you see aside from ROTC programs, to recruit young men and women into STEM jobs within the Federal Government? 

Ms. MILLER. Hiring a diverse and highly-qualified STEM workforce is critical; 

however, the harder challenge is ensuring the Army has a STEM-literate workforce 

not just in STEM jobs but across the entire ecosystem supporting the Warfighter. 

The Army provides various methods, beyond R.O.T.C., that work to bring in outstanding talent—not just for immediate hiring needs but also for our long-term 

workforce needs. We use various ways to engage young men and women and introduce opportunities within the Army so that we may attract the right talent that is 
159 

uniquely qualified for each requirement. These methods include providing scholarships, mentorship, and unique hands-on experiences; however selecting and recruiting specific personnel for our science and technology laboratories is done directly at 

the laboratories themselves. This is intentional so as to ensure that our labs have 

the right people, at the right time and where they are needed so that our labs and 

researchers are uniquely qualified for their areas of interest and responsibility. 

Some of the paths our laboratories use to bring in the right people are the direct 

hiring authorities that allow us to recruit and bring onboard some of the most highly qualified STEM talent entering the workforce. We also have short term training 

initiatives that provide existing personnel with the skills to fill jobs and recruit from 

within. One program that we successfully use is the DOD Science, Mathematics and 

Research for Transformation (SMART) Scholarship for Service retention program. 

SMART has proven to be a very successful model to recruit young talent to work 

for DOD. Additionally, we use research grants to our academic institutions, inclusive of our historically black colleges and universities as well as our minority serving institutions, to work with us on some of our hardest technical challenges. These 

research investments help introduce young and promising students to the many opportunities available to them within Science & Technology workforce. Lastly we invest in our future researchers and leaders by providing them access to our research 

facilities and STEM professionals at a young age through the Army Educational 

Outreach Program (AEOP). AEOP is executed under a cooperative agreement that 

brings together our Government, industry, and academic partners to provide students access to our laboratories and research centers for STEM enrichment activities, provide one-on-one mentorship opportunities through apprentice programs and 

reward student achievements in research through competitions, all while introducing students to the world of DOD research. One of the main objectives of AEOP 

is to build the diverse and highly qualified talent pool for which our work depends. 

Mr. CASTRO. What additional paths do you see aside from ROTC programs, to recruit young men and women into STEM jobs within the Federal Government? 

Admiral WINTER. In addition to science, technology, engineering, and mathematics 

(STEM) opportunities available through the Navy Reserve Officers Training Corps 

(ROTC), the U.S. Naval Academy and other programs leading to a commission in 

the officer corps, there are numerous enlisted ratings offered through Navy Recruiting Command, focusing on STEM-related occupations. 

To attract, recruit, develop, and retain bright, talented young men and women 

into STEM fields within the civilian workforce, the Department of the Navy (DON) 

administers and participates in a number of programs overseen by the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), and managed by the Office of the Secretary of Defense 

(OSD), the Office of Naval Research (ONR), and the individual naval laboratories 

and warfare centers. 

OPM provided federal agencies the means to solicit and select high school, undergraduate, and graduate students into the Pathways Programs via USAJOBS. The 

DON participates in the Pathways Internship and Recent Graduates Programs overseen by the Department of Defense (DoD) per the memorandum of understanding 

with OPM. While the Pathways Programs have served as a pipeline, they have presented some challenges. Hence, we are anxiously awaiting the publication of the federal register update that will allow the implementation of National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) 2015 Section 1105, Temporary Authorities for Certain Positions 

at Department of Defense Research and Engineering Facilities, and NDAA 2016 

Section 1104, Modification to Temporary Authorities for Certain Positions at Department of Defense Research and Engineering Facilities. Section 1105 establishes 

a pilot program for direct hiring authority for the laboratory directors of specified 

laboratories for STEM undergraduate or graduate students on a temporary or term 

basis, for up to three percent of a laboratory’s scientific and engineering positions. 

This authority will provide flexibility for students and for the Navy sponsoring activities to recruit and temporarily employ the ‘‘best and brightest.’’ Section 1104 of 

the NDAA 2016 provides additional flexibility which allows for the non-competitive 

conversion to permanent appointments upon successful completion of undergraduate 

and graduate education. 

The DON also uses the DOD Science, Mathematics & Research for Transformation (SMART) Scholarship Program, a scholarship-for-service program through 

which the DOD provides scholarship funds for undergraduate and graduate STEM 

students at over 200 universities and colleges, including Historically Black Colleges 

and Universities and other Minority-Serving Institutions (HBCU/MIs). SMART students are mentored by scientists and engineers while working in the DOD laboratories and facilities during the summer months. Students gain valuable experience 

that often leads to an opportunity for full-time post-graduate employment with 

those laboratories and facilities. 
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ONR funds two internship programs, the Science and Engineering Apprenticeship 

Program (SEAP) for high school students and the Navy Research Enterprise Internship Program (NREIP) for college and graduate students. Both programs offer summer internships that allow students to perform hands-on research alongside Navy 

scientists and engineers at 36 participating laboratories and warfare centers across 

the country. In 2015, SEAP funded over 300 high school students for 8-week internships and NREIP funded over 425 undergraduate and 125 graduate students for 10- 

week internships. These programs offer invaluable real-world STEM research experience as mentors provide meaningful work that fosters the interns’ interest in 

working for the DON upon graduation. 

The Naval Research Laboratories and Navy Warfare Centers also benefit from 

post doctoral candidate fellowships offered through the National Research Council 

and American Society of Engineering Education (NRC and ASEE). These one-to-twoyear appointments allow recent Ph.D. graduates invaluable opportunities to perform 

research at our laboratories. These opportunities, coupled with the direct hire authority enacted by Congress for advanced degrees, will enable us to hire researchers 

with skills and interests that align with DON needs. 

This continuum of programs was strategically designed to attract, recruit, and develop students from across the education spectrum. We must remain pro-active in 

these efforts. Therefore, we continually assess the performance of each of these programs and the quality of the students we are attracting, to ensure the programs 

and students meet the current and long-term STEM workforce requirements. 

Mr. CASTRO. How does the Air Force STEM Outreach Office work to attract more 

minorities and women into STEM? 

Dr. WALKER. In FY15, targeted programs impacted over 11,000 children from 

underrepresented schools. Also in FY15, we impacted over 1,700 female students 

through programs specifically targeting this audience. The Air Force conducts 2000+ 

STEM outreach events per year, leveraging local, state and federal organizations to 

reach 200,000 students and teachers across the United States, mostly concentrated 

around 29 Air Force installations. 

In FY16, our base-level K–12 STEM programs have planned over 180 activities 

targeted to underrepresented groups. We have also undertaken an initiative to find 

more ways to coordinate with the AF Diversity Office to enhance and increase the 

effectiveness of the programs directed at underrepresented groups. We recently supported the POTUS-sponsored program, My Brothers’ Keeper, Week at the Labs, in 

which our Air Force locations opened our doors to minority children for half-day programs of tours and events. 

Mr. CASTRO. What additional paths do you see aside from ROTC programs, to recruit young men and women into STEM jobs within the Federal Government? 

Dr. WALKER. One path the Air Force uses is the scholarship for service Science, 

Mathematics And Research for Transformation (SMART) Program. Over the past 9 

years, the Air Force has sponsored 640 scholars in the SMART Program. There are 

337 individuals that have completed their service commitment and 87 percent of 

them continue to work for the Air Force. The Air Force also has numerous internship programs that are used to attract and recruit STEM talent to an Air Force career. 

Mr. CASTRO. What additional paths do you see aside from ROTC programs, to recruit young men and women into STEM jobs within the Federal Government? 

Dr. PRABHAKAR. The Department has multiple avenues available to engage with 

young men and women interested in working with DOD in STEM-related positions. 

The Science, Mathematics And Research for Transformation (SMART) Scholarship 

for Service Program provides students pursuing an undergraduate or graduate degree in STEM disciplines the opportunity to receive a full scholarship and employment by the Department upon degree completion. In addition, the Department participates in the Federal-wide Pathways Program, which provides opportunities for 

internships, recent-graduate hiring, and the Presidential Management Fellows 

(PMF) program. All three opportunities provide mechanisms for students to engage 

with the DOD in STEM-related positions that can lead to hiring. 

The DOD Labs also have their own programs that may lead to hiring. For example, both the Army and the Navy labs have a science and engineering apprentice 

program that may lead to a formal hiring arrangement. In addition, the Labs are 

able to leverage their flexibilities as Science and Technology Reinvention Laboratories (STRLs) to hire through their specific authorities such as Direct Hire Authority, non-competitive transition to full-time positions, and others. In addition to the 

DOD Labs workforce initiatives, the Human Capital Initiatives (HCI) office within 

OUSD(AT&L) focuses specifically on the acquisition workforce. Broader workforce 

initiatives take place in OUSD(P&R). 
161 

Finally, for recruitment, the DOD participates in multiple career fairs, college 

campus recruiting events, and mentorship programs. All of these activities are opportunities for the Department to promote STEM-related positions and directly engage with interested students. 

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