The Pentagon Needs A Software Update—Literally : War on the Rocks , March 10 , 2025
March 10, 2025
War on the Rocks
The Pentagon Needs A Software Update—Literally : War on the Rocks , March 10 , 2025
March 10, 2025
War on the Rocks
From the document: "A memo from the Secretary of Defense on how to buy software could finally herald the Pentagon’s entrance into the information age. Or, like so many other acquisition reforms of the past, it could just as easily be overtaken by inertia and founder on the rocks of the bureaucracy. The stakes for getting this right couldn’t be higher. Software offers perhaps the most compelling way to close current and future gaps between the United States and its adversaries.
Sixty years after the pronouncement of Moore’s Law, the Department of Defense still struggles with the implications of unfettered advances in commercial technology. Though the Pentagon has historically been a research and development leader, recent decades have seen federal acquisition processes and culture lag far behind commercial advances in information technology. As commercial software continues to transform global business, the slow government rate of adoption risks holding back our national security. A change in mindset and approach is urgently needed to supercharge defense by taking advantage of the revolutionary changes occurring in the commercial market.
Whether one calls it artificial intelligence, data analytics, autonomy, virtualization, or advanced computing, commercial software is the engine driving these advancements. This is perhaps the logical next step in the march of information technology, where processing speeds have exponentially increased while the price of electronic storage continues to decline. These trends have enabled the creation of ever more complex and larger amalgamations of software code, finding new uses for the vast amounts of data being created by the proliferation of sensors around the world and in space. What may be even more important than this data explosion are the opportunities being created by how humans interact with this software. The national security implications of all of this are profound."
Authors - Greenwalt, Bill, Clark, Samantha, Little, GregSubjects
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