This threat doesn’t come from multibillion-dollar next-generation aircraft dropping precision-guided bombs on open battlefields. Instead, it comes from cheap, commercial drones dropping low-tech explosives during urban battles. To take back the initiative, the Army should deploy current drone technologies to empower soldiers to address some of the fundamental challenges of urban warfare.

The range of challenges in urban environments is broad. It includes looting, civil disturbances, insurgences, and other levels of conflict where military forces may be sent to conduct stability operations, such as counterterrorism, counterinsurgencies and peacekeeping. For the most part, these are the types of urban operations the U.S. military conducted in Iraq from 2005 to 2010.

On the other end of the spectrum is higher intensity urban warfare where enemy forces control most of the environment and military forces must fight to retake a city. These are the destructive battles seen in the past like Stalingrad, Manila, Hue and Fallujah. It is also what we have seen in battles within Syria and Iraq in the last five years, such as those in Aleppo, Raqqa and Mosul.

The enemy defender generally has the advantage in urban combat. The defender can hide — both physically within the protection of buildings and among the civilian population.

With the ability to hide, defenders can negate many of the capabilities that give our military forces the advantage in other environments like using aerial assets to identify and target enemy personnel so they can be attacked by artillery and aircraft. Defenders can also prepare fortified positions in every building, on every rooftop, and in every room to engage attackers at the range of their choosing, usually at the up-close-and-personal range, which strips away our ability to attack them at long range.

Identify, conceal, protect

Some of the fundamental challenges of high-intensity warfare in cities are exposure and identifying enemy forces.

The physical infrastructure of urban environments creates obstacles that canalize attacking forces into narrow movement corridors; produces dead space — areas where attacking forces cannot see or engage — around every building; and requires attacking forces to be prepared to engage threats not just to their front, but from every direction.

Each of these features increases the risk to attacking forces of being seen and engaged. To mitigate these risks, military forces often are required to resort to building-by-building clearing, including hitting the buildings with high explosives to cover friendly forces.

The defender’s ability to hide in the buildings and among the population makes it difficult to identify legitimate military targets. Many urban battles in the past have seen weaker defenders taking advantage of the restrictions of international humanitarian laws by operating from protected sites like hospitals and churches. ISIS also used human shields during the battles in Raqqa and Mosul to prevent the use of air and artillery strikes on their positions.

In Mosul, the world saw ISIS deploy commercial drones as grenade launchers, kamikaze bombers, decoys and aerial “eyes in the sky,” increasing their ability to find, target and attack Iraqi security forces.

The military use of drones is not new. Scientists experimented with armed, unmanned aerial vehicles in World War I. But ISIS took the Iraqi and U.S. Army by surprise in their use of commercial drones.

Many now believe the next step in drones’ battlefield evolution will be the use of swarms. A swarm is a large group of drones flying and operating as a single unit. Groups of drones working together have already been put to civilian use, such as the flag flying behind Lady GaGa during the Super Bowl. Unlike the extremely expensive drones currently found in most U.S. military ground units, like the [AeroVironment RQ-11] Raven, swarms can be made of up of inexpensive devices. A swarm can also lose many of its individual drones with little impact on its ability to accomplish the mission.

There are three immediately apparent ways swarms could assist with the challenges of target identification and exposure.

First, drone swarms could identify enemy and civilians in the urban environment. Each building becomes a problem for attackers in high-intensity urban warfare. The rooftops, windows on the higher levels, and doorways of each building can become positions to shoot at approaching attackers. A swarm of drones could converge on the building about to be attacked and report (to include real-time video) on people on top of, in, or around the building. The swarm’s ability to fly around a building and see in every window or door and on the rooftop could significantly reduce the need to shoot at the building to cover attacking forces, identify exactly where to shoot or not to shoot, and even prevent an enemy shooter from engaging the attacking forces. A swarm of drones flying on top of or into someone will, at a minimum, disrupt their plans.

Second, drone swarms could provide concealment for attacking forces. The clear challenge for the attackers is that they can be seen and targeted. A drone swarm could be equipped with smoke-producing devices and literally create a cloud in advance of attack forces preventing defenders from seeing them until they are in the building.

Third, drone swarms could provide some protection for attacking forces. If attackers can be seen, they can be shot at. A wall formed by a drone swarm flying directly in front of or around an attacking group of soldiers could provide some protection from incoming bullets. The effectiveness of the wall or cocoon of drones would depend on many variables, but a self-healing formation of drones could provide a small window of time for soldiers to transit the defender’s kill zone.

The most relevant modern example of the difficulty of urban warfare for an attacker is the Mosul case of snipers firing from the top of a building. Even an untrained sniper team in a protected and elevated position can see, shoot at, and kill attackers with ease. The options to return fire for the attacker are generally limited to mortar, artillery or air strikes. There is little to no ability to know what or who is inside the building. The three swarm options discussed above could address this dilemma.

Avoiding ‘slaughterbots’

Many unanswered questions about the use of drones remain, especially regarding autonomous weaponized systems. The recent short fiction video “slaughterbots” highlighted many of the fears held by organizations about the dangers of the continued development of drone swarms. But, even nonlethal uses of swarms — with humans in the loop — could fundamentally change the tactics used in urban warfare.

The difficulty of the technical requirements of these swarm tactics should also not be underestimated. Loiter time, coding variables, network architecture, security, and other issues would have to be addressed. The intellectual effort of understanding how to use cheap, and perhaps expendable, drones to complement current urban warfare tactics is the key.

Warfare has always been a battle of asymmetry. The Iraqi military tried to counter ISIS by using their own commercially purchased drones, but mostly single platforms for limited urban warfare purposes. Drone swarms could be used to address the fundamental challenges and alter the basic tactics for attacking forces in urban combat.

Major John Spencer is an Army infantryman and deputy director of the Modern War Institute at the U.S. Military Academy in West Point, N.Y. He looks forward to connecting via his Twitter, @SpencerGuard.

The intent of this ambitious undertaking is to create the mechanism for rapidly identifying gaps, determining capabilities and spurring industry to bring forward new concepts around six priorities. These include next-generation combat vehicles, air and missile defense, soldier lethality, improved long-range precision fires, vertical lift platforms, and a mobile and expeditionary Army network. These priorities have been topics of intense discussion over several years, so there were few surprises about the focus.

From my perspective, the concept should have broad industry support, as the intent is to streamline the delivery of needed capabilities to the warfighter. I would further argue that improving the quality and speed of capabilities delivery is much needed and long overdue.

This is not the first time that Army leadership has unveiled a new initiative aimed at fixing acquisitions. The mechanism for how the government buys warfighting capabilities could and should work better. To illustrate this point, it’s been more than six years since the Army secretary first talked about changes to the tactical radios program, and while there is evidence of this change providing value in the field today, there’s more work to be done.

While the programs that are caught in perpetual do-loops often involve technology, the issue is not fundamentally a technology problem—it’s a process problem.

The Army is being careful when realigning responsibilities under a new Command, being mindful not to create new layers of oversight that could impede the path to success. Importantly, the Army also needs to “bake-in” industry collaboration from the start as they create this new model of rapid fielding.

What’s the best model?

Unfortunately, there are few models that the Army can emulate or adapt for the current need. The Rapid Capabilities Office (RCO) is held up as a possible blueprint, given past successes at filling gaps. But, there’s a notable difference between filling gaps and fielding capabilities at scale.

As the Army stands up the Modernization Command within a year’s time, it faces some daunting, yet addressable challenges. The “big rocks” as I see them are:

• Scale—As noted with the RCO and other possible acquisition models (such as SOCOM for example), the Army needs capabilities that can be developed and fielded on an enormous scale. While there are many examples of excellent innovative technologies that work perfectly in smaller units, few can be scaled +10X to meet the needs of “big Army.”

• Integration with existing tactics, techniques and procedures (TTPs) —A challenge closely related to scale, new capabilities must either fit with, or require adaptation to, the Army’s tactics, techniques and procedures. I know from experience, changing doctrine requires process and culture change. Neither of which are done easily or quickly, but the importance of integration cannot be overlooked.

• Accelerate pace of current programs—The Army has many mature programs currently underway, and, in some cases, those programs are capable today of delivering value to the warfighter. It’s understandably difficult to suppress the urge to wait on something because there’s a possibility that a better option may soon be ready. Speaking from a tactical radios perspective, we’ve experienced that “start-stop-change-pause” dynamic firsthand. Nothing will deter small business innovators (which the Army says it needs) more than customer uncertainty, as they don’t have the capital to wait for an order.

Collaboration Is key

The Army cannot solve this challenge alone and industry must be ready to do its part to support the Modernization Command. A good start would be to refine and streamline—within a legally viable model—the way in which Army gets inputs from industry. Talking with industry should start before requirements are set to ensure industry is able to at least meet the requirements threshold. Too often programs are delayed because requirements have been set that go far beyond what industry is able to provide at a given time.

Industry days and engagement with associations, such as AUSA and AFCEA, can help the Army keep industry informed. Likewise, the media can be valuable messengers and the Army has been quick to use the power of the press in the past. Communication, however, is needed early and often to ensure that industry is not only tracking, but is also doing its part to support where the Army is going on force modernization.

Maj. Gen. Dennis Moran (ret.) is the vice president of Government Business Development for Harris Corporation.

While it was not part of the exchange between lawmakers and officers, the Army remains in a exposed position on the ridgeline, largely because of change. Emerging threats, new capabilities and tactics, and evolutions (or revolutions) in technology are just a few of the dynamic factors that impede progress and frustrate all parties involved: lawmakers, Army leadership, industry and, of course, those who rely on technology for their mission — the war fighters.

Change is not easy and what the Army has been undertaking with its network strategy — fundamentally a migration from narrowband to advanced and highly capable wideband technology — can best be described as a paradigm shift. The fact remains, however, that the capabilities currently provided by wideband radios are a game changer that enhances our fighting forces. It’s for good reason that we should sprint — not walk — forward to put this capability in the hands of the war fighter.

That’s a statement the Army and members of Congress (not to mention war fighters) can agree with, but the questions are how and why aren’t we closer to success? The answers to both: change.

Change as a barrier to progress

Looking at the “why” question, just when the Army appears close to fielding a technology that meets operational requirements, something happens that necessitates changing those requirements. A good example of this dynamic is the Mid-Tier Networking Vehicular Radio (MNVR) program, which was one of the proposed programs the Army pegged to be halted. The MNVR system met or exceeded program requirements, but one of the designated MNVR waveforms did not address emerging operational requirements that can be met by the HMS Manpack radio still in procurement.

So here’s a radio system that is fully developed, tested and ready for fielding — that because of changes in requirements is no longer sufficient for the Army’s current needs. Sensibly, the funding for that program may being shifted to the HMS Manpack program, which has a vehicle-configuration variant that can more than meet the MNVR mission need.

The ability to change is key

But while change is disruptive and challenging to manage, particularly when developing technology that must work every time, the technology itself offers solutions that put us all closer to success than we might think. A viable and “ready now” answer to the “how” question is another paradigm shift: the software-defined radio (SDR).

I’ve talked about SDR technology before, noting that its architecture makes radios quickly and far more easily adaptable and upgradeable, often done remotely and without the logistical burden of hardware changes. The move from narrowband SINCGARS to SDR wideband two-channel radios represents a massive upgrade in capabilities that fundamentally changes how our war fighters fight — and that change could not have happened were it not for the development of the software defined core architecture.

When we consider that software-defined radios enable war fighters to exploit feeds from unmanned aerial vehicles, transmit data (images and video) to aircraft, and use SATCOM and SIGINT capabilities, there’s a lot of change to consider as the actual adoption of that technology into doctrine — tactics, techniques and procedures (TTPs). This requires an iterative process and that takes time.

To date, the Army has been making progress on building out the technology components of the modern battlefield network in a methodical fashion. For more than six years, the Army Network Modernization strategy has evolved, advancing the over-arching network capability and adding key lower-tier technologies, some of which have drawn praise from the war fighters accustomed to SINCGARS. These latter elements include the multichannel handheld (Rifleman Radio) and the HMS Manpack, which are now in various stages of procurement.

The HMS Manpack has proven its effectiveness through multiple tests, offering huge improvements over currently fielded radios in all areas: weight, range, battery life and capability. Because the HMS Manpack SDR technology is mature, refinements and adding new capabilities — like incorporating the WNW mid-tier waveform — do not require major surgery. In other words, tackling the technology challenges are less daunting and lower risk for the Army, thus the process for getting the radio through the testing gauntlet can and should be streamlined. Already, at least one major Coalition partner nation has procured the same radios that the U.S. Army is evaluating for the HMS Manpack program.

Let’s get going

What’s perhaps unappreciated, but should be noted, is that the technology and industry have become far more adaptable over the last decade, and those factors will combine to help the Army work through its network challenges.

In addition to advancements in technology, one of the positive changes that has also occurred over the last decade is the way that some in industry approach the changing market with a willingness to invest company dollars on R&D in order to shorten the cycles between the development and fielding of new capabilities. The maturity of breakthroughs like software defined technology was possible, in large part, due to the investment by industry to continuously evolve the technology.

Speaking from experience, shifting to a new model for development is hard work and takes commitment by industry and the customer to see it through. Adding to this challenge is the dynamic of sprinting forward on a development program only to have requirements change as war fighters’ needs and threats evolve. But that ability to pay and then pivot is what the customer needs and we’ve delivered.

While this fact may have been lost in the recent hearing, there’s a lot to the technology that works today and is adaptable for tomorrow. Let’s now get to work on getting this needed capability into formation.

Maj. Gen. Dennis Moran (ret.) is the vice president of Government Business Development for Harris Corporation.

In the FY17 NDAA, the final bill had an entire section (951) devoted to “enhanced security programs,” which included requirements on insider threat detection capabilities. This year’s House version contains no Section 951 — and very little language about insider threats throughout the version that passed in July.

The House emphasizes only two areas of insider concern: 1) ‘green-on-blue’ attacks by military partners overseas; and 2) operations by nations such as China and Russia aimed at espionage and exploitation of technologies and institutions. These are indeed important provisions. However, there is nothing in the House version that addresses insider threats as the term has come to be known today: threats from insiders who have knowledge and access to proprietary systems that allow them to bypass security measures through legitimate means.

The Senate bill, however, focuses directly on insider threats — what it sees as the inability of the U.S. Department of Defense to “orchestrate the creation of an integrated, automated, enterprise-wide insider threat detection and analysis capability.” It goes on to say that it is concerned that “the Department’s leadership has not realized the level of resource commitment and time that will be involved in creating digital access and analysis capabilities to the data collected and held by all the different functional organizations — counterintelligence, personnel security, human resources, physical security, combatant commands…”

This language goes to the heart of a serious challenge at DoD — namely, the inability of the department to access and integrate data to effectively and efficiently prevent malicious and accidental insider incidents. However, Senate authorizers did not address several other areas of critical importance:

• Data quality: Much of the data provided to security and insider threat programs is woefully incomplete or filled with ‘false positive’ alerts. A strategy should be considered to improve the DoD’s access to the right data to help make decisions.
• Non-network behavior: The Department continues to invest heavily in cybersecurity tools to detect anomalous behavior on the network. But as any insider threat analyst will tell you, detection of network incidents is only part of the solution. Insiders intent on stealing material or damaging the department in some other way generally exhibit behaviors of concern best detected in the personnel-security and human-resources realms. Yet the CIOs who are responsible for network security are often given the job of overseeing the creation of insider threat detection programs. Insider threat money flows to CIO shops, not to personnel security, HR or other appropriate units.
  
• Risk-based approaches: Related to the above challenge is the need to coordinate the many ongoing research projects to determine key insider risk indicators and other insider threat causes and effects on the assumption that understanding where risk lies will improve resource allocation. Some agencies, such as the Defense Security Service (which runs the Defense Insider Threat Management and Analysis Center) are doing great work in this area, but it is striking that neither NDAA version talks about risk-based approaches to insider threat reduction.
  

What’s needed is a holistic risk-based approach to insider-threat mitigation. Technology exists today revolving around a ‘whole person’ probabilistic model that analyzes individual trustworthiness using a wide array of information — not just narrow data on network or device activity. The model can reason like a team of experts and ‘connect the dots’ like a team of analysts without ever needing sleep, food or vacations.

It’s hard to know yet what the final NDAA will look like when it heads to the President’s desk later this year. At this stage, however, we cannot ignore the odd lack of real emphasis on insider threat program improvements, especially when comparing the FY18 draft language to the FY17 NDAA. We have no reason to believe that insider threats will become less of a problem in the future. Quite the reverse, in fact. The final NDAA ought to address this important issue with specific language.

Tom Read is Vice President for Security Analytics at Haystax Technology.

Kendall saw a video from a tactical unmanned aerial vehicle and asked a simple question: Who was performing its PED? That is a Defense Department acronym standing for “processing, exploitation and dissemination,” which, in laymen’s terms, means taking the intelligence available and making it useful for those that need it.

The story, retold at a recent event by Lt. Gen. Jack Shanahan, director for defense intelligence at the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, underscores a major problem currently impacting DoD. The Pentagon has effectively learned how to gather an untold amount of intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance information. However, processing that information in a way that provides analysts actionable value is critical yet often challenging. Without that step, the information can quickly lose value due to inaccessibility or formatting issues that can slow down the analysis process, or leave valuable information unexploited. What value is the collection of ISR data without the ability to expose it to the intelligence analysis process?

How should DoD tackle this problem?

Faced with too much data to analyze, DoD officials could just hire more analysts, right? The Trump administration has indicated it will increase defense spending, so why not use that money to increase staffing levels in intelligence?

As a former Army intelligence analyst, I can say that this would not the best approach. Simply put, intelligence analysis does not scale effectively as it relates to massive amounts of ISR data. Even if the military could double its intelligence personnel overnight, the department would still face a large data backlog. The issue is not the number of people working with ISR data, but instead how effectively those analysts can exploit, understand and assimilate it in an all-source environment to support the mission.

While analytic tools often present data in a way that helps analysts derive context, these same tools are not effective with massive amounts of technical data. That leads, in part, to the ISR data backup that has accrued. Intelligence analysts are faced with spending more time deciphering this information to determine its value for a specific topic.

To its credit DoD has recognized this problem and is taking steps to improve it. The remedy is not just adding more people, but also adding the right technology. In this case that technology is deep learning.

What is deep learning?

Deep learning is a type of machine learning that trains a computer to perform human-like tasks. That includes things such as recognizing speech, identifying images or making predictions. Instead of organizing data to run through predefined equations, deep learning sets up basic parameters about the data and trains the computer to learn on its own by recognizing patterns that use many layers of processing. What deep learning can do for DoD is remove a number of seemingly mindless tasks from the workload of analysts, thus allowing them to identify and focus their efforts on the portion of information relevant to their job at hand.

Deputy Defense Secretary Bob Work sees the value this provides. In April, he established the Algorithmic Warfare Cross-Functional Team to accelerate the DOD’s integration of big data and machine learning with an initial goal of reducing the human burden of analyzing tactical unmanned aerial system and mid-altitude full-motion video data.

To fully empower human intelligence analysis, DoD leaders must also consider how the data is presented to an end user. Likely, current systems do not present data in a way that is easy to consume. Analysts need to be able to understand what they are looking at, what is the context and how can that data help guide critical decisions.

The most effective, modern data analytics programs can present information in simple, concise ways, guided by deep learning capabilities. While working as an intelligence analyst, our time was spent looking at hard copy reporting or keyword searching through databases. Those days have thankfully come to an end, but as ISR data continues to grow so does the need for improved capabilities. The technologies that sufficed even a few years ago are no longer enough.

Defense and intelligence officials have already identified the problem. With the right investments, intelligence analysts can be empowered to effectively analyze ISR information as it comes in, integrating it into all-source intelligence products allowing for improved decisions that can better safeguard warfighters and the citizens they protect.

Jen Dunham is a solution architect in SAS’s Security Intelligence Global Practice. She formerly worked as an all-source intelligence analyst in the U.S. Army.

The term digitization has been bantered about for a while now, and a uniformly accepted definition seems to be illusive. In general terms, digitization refers to the movement that converts physical elements into ones and zeros that are the essence of anything digital. The management consultants at PWC refer to digitization as a “mega trend,” and for good reason. Computers, the internet, cellphones and smartphones, tablets, connected cars, and all of the Internet of Things have and will continue to transform how we perform our duties. In fact, this phenomenon has reached a point where it is a requirement for and threat to our nation’s economy and national security.

Digitization is not a new issue for the military and intelligence communities. In fact, it can be traced back to the early to mid-90s! That drew out the concept of the digital battlefield, which became a hot topic for investigation and research. Since then, the concept was presented as well as discussed, and strategic questions were asked about the issues and opportunities digitization presented to our military and intelligence communities. The defense industry entered with their research, analysis and development of everything from theories and concepts to products and services. It would be nearly impossible to put a dollar figure on what has been spent pursuing this subject matter, much less project what will be spent if digital technologies continue to advance at an ever-increasing pace.

As the United States moves to rebuild and modernize the military and intelligence communities, an increased amount of efforts should be placed on reeducating, mentoring and supporting the digitization changes that are impacting our leaders. I found a statistic that suggests the average age of a colonel is 45. That would put their high school graduation around 1989-1991. During that same general time frame, CERN scientists (Tim Berners-Lee, Robert Cailliau and others) started an initiative that would create what we all know today as the World Wide Web.

As our current military and intelligence leaders retire, those that replace them will be much more familiar with the internet and technology in general. The increased familiarity will likely bring about dramatic changes in the way our military operates and officers think and strategize about conflict, defense and intelligence. Familiarization with technology promotes a level of comfort that is difficult to achieve with those that did not grow up with the internet. As new technologies are developed and introduced at an ever-increasing rate, increased change will undoubtedly occur.

Artificial intelligence, robotics, IoT sensor networks, and virtual and augmented reality are just a few of the areas of technology that will likely have a dramatic impact to our military and intelligence organizations in the next few years. We should also remember they all come with cybersecurity implications as well — which is both an issue and an opportunity. The U.S. has long led the world in technology development and utilization. In the coming decade, that leadership is likely to be continuously challenged. One area where the challenge might be the greatest is in military leadership strategy and thinking when it comes to the integration and use of emerging technologies.

Clearly, the U. S. Department of Defense (particularly the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA) is an innovative leader in the research and development of advanced technologies. Perhaps it is time to give a little more attention to all the critical areas of importance impacted by those breakthroughs in technology. Specifically, the men and women that serve. This is not a one-off type activity. The characteristics of technological advancement now make this a continuing effort. It also increases the level of importance of this continuous updating of technological general knowledge, skills and know-how!

When you examine the impact of changing political conditions worldwide and the rapid advancement of technology, you begin to get an idea of the magnitude of change that is taking place today and likely to continue for years to come.

[A force in flux: Military adjusts to emergent domains of warfare]

Things certainly happen faster in the ever-changing digital battlefield and associated intelligence domain. New operating concepts and procedures are being developed and in some cases field-tested as they are coupled with functioning prototypes that are continuously emerging from startups and traditional defense industry suppliers as well as nontraditional sources. Stop for a moment and consider the efforts required to adapt to the future of conflict.

The likely transformation of the classical tactics of warfare will certainly be a focus of scholars for years to come. One can only wonder what is actually taking place that is not public and unlikely to become public for years or even decades. All of this has led to a very interesting thought: Perhaps the greatest challenge for our military and our intelligence community is to accelerate their efforts so they may achieve and remain one step ahead of the conflict transformation we are experiencing today.

Are existing policies and regulations impeding our military’s and intelligence community’s ability to respond and react in a near-real time manner that is a fundamental requirement today? That seems to be a concern that has been working its way to the forefront for the last few years and appears to be on its way to the top of multiple lists.

Singularity is defined in the Merriam-Webster dictionary as:

1. Something that is singular: such as

• a separate unit.
• unusual or distinctive manner or behavior: peculiarity.

2. The quality or state of being singular.

3. A point at which the derivative of a given function of a complex variable does not exist but every neighborhood of which contains points for which the derivative does exist.

4. A point or region of infinite mass density at which space and time are infinitely distorted by gravitational forces and which is held to be the final state of matter falling into a black hole.

While a few of these apply, the problem is directly related to “a separate unit.” Currently, multiple technologies are poised to enter their accelerated adoption and advancement stages of their evolution. What is most interesting about this period is how one, single technology enables advancement in one or more other technological capabilities, products and services. A dozen emerging technologies have been evaluated in isolation. In order to see the real implications, cross-technology applications must be explored. This requires we break down the walls (go cross-department) that isolate these individual technologies.

And believe it or not, cyber is still not fully integrated in some functions/areas of the military.

It would be wise for every organization to conduct luncheon briefings; invite other departments working on emerging technologies to present a 10-minute overview (hold them to 10 minutes) of their efforts. Focus on the application areas and unique contributions their area of technology has. Everyone remains until the end of lunch to answer questions and schedule any followups that are necessary.

The unique characteristics of this period of technological advancement makes this a strategic imperative! Failure to do so will impede our abilities to advance our military capabilities at the pace necessary to stay ahead of the growing number of threats that we face today and in the near future!