The Pentagon’s budget may be under fire, but fortunately for military scientists, the department’s annual $2 billion investment in basic research is expected to enjoy immunity.
“It will remain in a very good posture for the next five or six years,” said Zachary Lemnios, director of defense research and engineering at the Pentagon. “That said, the challenge is to get that community, both our researchers and our laboratories, and the researchers that we fund throughout academia, focused on game-changing concepts for the future.”
Military labs also feel growing pressure to push technologies that have relevance in the battlefield.
“It will become even more important that I stay engaged with the major commands and understand what they want so that we can keep our technology focused,” said Maj. Gen. Ellen Pawlikowski, commander of the Air Force Research Laboratory.
Pawlikowski said she welcomes the scrutiny. “The more feedback I can get about what we’re doing and its value to the Air Force, I think the better we can be,” she said. “I think it will help give me some motivation, an incentive to really sharpen our pencil and really take a hard look at where we are spending our dollars and making sure we are not doing things inefficiently.”
Like every other Defense Department organization, labs are being asked to cut administrative costs so more money is available for actual research.
“I want as many scientists and engineers and science and technology dollars applied to doing real science than to covering more people in my headquarters, for example,” she said. “I’d like to think it’s going to make us more efficient, and will perhaps help us to be even more successful in delivering capabilities that are affordable to the Air Force.”
Rear Adm. Nevin P. Carr Jr., head of the Office of Naval Research, said one of his biggest challenges is ensuring that dollars are spent in the smartest possible way and that the research is connected to products that the Navy will ultimately use.
“We’re all experiencing downward pressure and we’re obligated to make sure we’re justifying every dollar and making every dollar count,” he said.
Carr is directing his staff to stay in contact with the fleet and with program managers so that the lab’s focus and investments are shaped by what sailors and marines need. But he cautioned that ONR is not giving up on high-risk scientific pursuits. “Basic research, by definition, is research for which there may not be an application yet.”
Advances in cell phones, for instance, resulted from the efforts of a Navy researcher who 20 years ago figured out how to economically produce gallium arsenide, an essential element that is used in microchips. “There wasn’t an immediate connection to a cell phone or solid-state radar, but it opened up all the doors to those possibilities,” he said. “That’s the challenge, but also the promise, of basic research.”
ONR also is focusing on transitioning technology from the lab to fielded products.
“Not everything will transition. If it does, we’re not trying hard enough — we’re not far enough out there on the edge,” he said.
But striking that balance between pushing innovation and staying connected to present day realities can be difficult, said John M. Miller, director of the Army Research Laboratory.
“We never turn down requests for help from our Army in the field,” said Miller. “But at the same time, we have to be able to do that and maintain an emphasis with an eye to the future. We cannot walk away from our long-term basic research mission because if we don’t do it, there is no one else in the Army to do it.”
The lab has established a relationship with the National Academy of Sciences, which taps multidisciplinary researchers to serve on panels that review ongoing projects. They make recommendations to invest in particular discoveries. One of the recent panels in the sensors and electronic devices directorate recommended the Army increase investments in graphene, a carbon nanotube that is unraveled into a single layer of atoms. The material has potential applications for next-generation electronic and sensing devices.
Other Defense Department labs have similar arrangements.
“What we’re trying to do is to make sure that we don’t get surprised,” said Pawlikowski. “We don’t want one of our adversaries to discover and explore and exploit a new technology before we do. We want to be the ones that surprise them.”
Though some fear that the United States is losing the innovation war, the military research leaders insist that the nation is not falling behind.
“I’m not worried that we’ve lost our ability, but I do know that it’s going to be more challenging for us to stay ahead because the rest of the world has learned from us,” Pawlikowski said. “We haven’t gotten worse, but the rest of the world has gotten better.”
Last year, more than 50 percent of the nation’s new patents were issued to non-U.S. companies. In addition, more than half of U.S. advanced degrees were awarded to non-U.S. citizens.
“On a global level, there are some other countries that have a lot of momentum,” said Carr. “We’re still the world’s leader in technology. People recognize we need to take steps to stay there.“
Maintaining current levels of research funding will be helpful to advance U.S. technology, officials said. But there are other challenges, such as falling technology barriers. In the area of cyberspace, for example, adversaries do not need a supercomputer to wreak havoc, Pawlikowski said. Anyone can buy a PC off the shelf and use it to attack networks and infrastructure.
The Office of Naval Research has established an organization called ONR Global, which has deployed offices around the world to keep an eye on international scientific advancements through open-source means. “It helps us to watch and see if significant funding or attention is increasing in a particular area, like power and energy, or metamaterials, which may one day lead to the ability to reduce the signature of certain things, whether it’s acoustic or visual,” explained Carr.
Military officials often point out that the Pentagon no longer drives the technology train. Today, the private sector funds nearly 75 percent of the nation’s R&D efforts.
“It’s more incumbent on us to leverage what’s going on in the commercial world,” Carr said.
Lemnios expressed a desire to work more closely with industry in the future.
“I look at the way the department has done business and I look at the way the private sector has done business and I see two very different models,” said Lemnios. “I’m trying to get the innovation cycle of the department and our contractor base on par with what we see in industry.”
The Defense Department reimburses industry about $3 billion a year for its internal research and development investments.
“We can make those core investments, and we have, but it’s really up to industry to drive the cost curve,” Lemnios said. “We have to rely upon the best and the brightest minds in industry and academia to come together and provide concepts and solutions that we can actually procure. We have to procure those at reasonable costs, on reasonable timelines, in quantities that the department needs.”
Besides seeking to strengthen investments in science and technology, Lemnios wants to recruit bright researchers who have good ideas. To do that, he engages daily with the academic community, he told reporters in Washington.
“It’s easy in this town to get sort of lost in the budget drill,” he said. “I’m always looking to find who out there has an idea that we should be sponsoring.”
The Defense Department, said Lemnios, has plenty of money, but could use more innovative ideas.
“The challenge I have as the chief technology officer for the department is to make sure that we’re not only responding to the immediate needs of the combatant commanders, but we also have in place the science and technology threads that will bring those ideas that the department and the nation need for the next decade,” he said.
The Defense Department has been examining its technology strengths and weaknesses through a series of studies. It has identified several non-traditional scientific areas that require attention, such as social network analysis and cyberscience, Lemnios said.
Robotic technology is another key area of emphasis, said Miller, of the Army Research Laboratory. The lab also is exploring neuro-ergonomics, a new discipline in which scientists are seeking to better understand how soldiers and commanders process information.
Computer scientists and electrical engineers will have to collaborate with research psychologists and neuroscientists to design complex communication systems.
To pursue these efforts, the ARL will be seeking a new facility for high performance computing. Scientists are still working in the same building at Aberdeen Proving Ground, Md., that housed the nation’s first electronic computer, called ENIAC, which was built during World War II.
High-performance computing also is essential in developing next-generation materials for vehicle and soldier ballistic protection, Miller said.
One of the hurdles for military labs is their aging infrastructure and equipment, Miller said
The Naval Research Laboratory is facing similar challenges, said Carr.
“When it comes to shore infrastructure, we’re competing with piers, hangars and runways. That’s very tough competition,” Carr said.
The Defense Department does not provide funding to maintain and recapitalize laboratory infrastructure, officials said. Lab leaders pursue creative ways to fix their facilities, often taking money out of their research accounts. It is a constant struggle, they said.
But Miller said he has not received an indication that there will be any reductions in science funding. “I expect there will be some challenges there, if not directly in mission dollars then in the funding that comes from program managers and [program executive officers] who will start feeling the pinch sooner than the labs,” he said. “We’re well-positioned to move forward in that environment,” he added.
In the newer research areas, including robotics, neuro-ergonomics and network science, Army Research Laboratory officials have signed agreements with commercial and academic teams to allow scientists to share lab space and collaborate with the private sector.
“We don’t do it all ourselves,” Miller said.