DARPA DIRECTOR STEFANIE TOMPKINS: So I get to rejoin you now with the distinct pleasure of welcoming to DARPA Ahead Dr. Kath Hicks, the thirty fifth deputy secretary of protection of the US, becoming a member of us nearly in the present day.
All through her profession inside the Division of Protection, Dr. Hicks has offered steerage on international and regional protection coverage and technique, together with for future capabilities, abroad navy posture and contingency and theater marketing campaign plans. She’s additionally served as senior vp, Henry A. Kissinger chair and director of the Worldwide Safety Program on the Heart for Strategic and Worldwide Research, in addition to a senior fellow for that group.
If you happen to’ve been following her works since she was — since she was sworn in final yr, you already know that she cares deeply in regards to the points that we’re tackling right here at DARPA Ahead, points resembling advancing U.S. strategic capabilities, making certain the vibrancy of the U.S. analysis and growth innovation ecosystem and retaining expertise and bringing in contemporary views from throughout the spectrum of sectors and disciplines.
Dr. Hicks, welcome to DARPA Ahead, and thanks a lot for becoming a member of us in the present day.
DEPUTY SECRETARY OF DEFENSE KATHLEEN HICKS: Nice, thanks, Stefanie.
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I do know it has been mentioned at DARPA that in the event you do not invent the Web, you get a “B”. And so everybody works actually exhausting to attempt to earn their “A”, whether or not it is stealth or hand-held GPS or a vaccine platform utilizing mRNA expertise.
Whereas historical past all the time has the ultimate say, I will simply say that from my perspective after visiting DARPA headquarters this spring, the place I used to be briefed on a number of cutting-edge applications geared towards our most urgent safety challenges, primarily based on that, I’ve religion excessive marks shall be so as.
And Stefanie, I am particularly grateful for the imaginative and prescient you’ve got dropped at creating this DARPA Ahead collection of occasions, taking DARPA’s crown jewel of nationwide safety innovation on the highway, getting out of D.C. and connecting with present and rising scorching beds of science and expertise, analysis and growth, plugging into regional innovation hubs that do not typically have straightforward alternatives to interact with our protection mission however have a lot to contribute.
And it is clear why you are beginning within the mountain west, as a result of it is a spot the place innovation occurs on the intersection of business, academia and authorities -with path-breaking analysis and growth from Colorado State College and all alongside the entrance vary of the Rocky Mountains, with a vibrant non-public sector that features every thing from native startups engaged on battery applied sciences to multi-tech companies growing enterprise software program, and with the forward-thinking Fort Collins metropolis authorities that created its personal futures committee to look 20, 50, even 100 years out to identify challenges and seize alternatives.
It is simply the sort of combine that enables world-changing concepts to bubble up into existence, just like the pioneering power effectivity demonstration, FortZed, whose innovation concepts for a clear power era, distribution and use had been so compelling, they took root within the broader neighborhood.
That revolutionary spirit is strictly why I needed to talk with you in the present day, as a result of connecting with America’s many innovation hubs throughout the nation has been a precedence for me as Deputy Secretary of Protection. It is why I’ve engaged with researchers at Caltech who’re engaged on every thing from local weather and sustainability to area and autonomy, with biotechnologists in Boston who’re engineering novel medical therapies, with industrial tech entrepreneurs in Austin, Texas who’re utilizing 3D printing to interrupt the mildew of how we preserve plane and different mechanical methods, and with electrical engineers and engine designers in Detroit who’re determining methods to make our energy grids safer and our navy automobiles extra power environment friendly.
Like me and possibly a lot of you, they love rolling up their sleeves to crack open an issue and craft an answer nobody’s considered but and are desperate to lend their experience to assist remedy the largest challenges we face for the great of our nation and the world.
As you’ve got in all probability gathered during the last day and a half, within the Division of Protection, there is no scarcity of huge challenges that we’re excited about each day. We face a pacing problem within the Folks’s Republic of China, which is in the present day essentially the most consequential strategic competitor to the US on the worldwide stage. We face in Russia an acute risk to the worldwide system, as illustrated by its ongoing, brutal warfare of selection in opposition to Ukraine. We face persistent regional threats, like these emanating from North Korea, Iran, and violent extremist organizations. And we face threats that transcend nationwide and regional borders, together with pandemics like COVID-19 and local weather change.
To be clear, the US faces these many challenges with many strategic benefits, and also you’re certainly one of them. Throughout America, we’ve an extremely vibrant innovation ecosystem that’s the envy of the world. DARPA’s a part of it and so are all of you.
Due to this innovation ecosystem, which additionally attracts energy from our partnerships with like-minded associates and allies all over the world, we’re in a position to determine some actually depraved issues, like methods to resupply and reinforce Army and Marine Corps models unfold out on islands throughout half a hemisphere with capabilities like distributed additive manufacturing and proliferated low signature supply methods to allow them to function and be sustained it doesn’t matter what an enemy does or how contested the logistics surroundings will get, or how we combine sensors and fuse knowledge throughout each area whereas leveraging leading edge determination assist instruments to allow excessive tempo operations, a Joint All-Area Command and Management method that may make us even higher than we already are at joint operations and fight integration.
To assist us remedy these challenges, DARPA is doing what it is all the time executed effectively — trying over the horizon and round corners to prototype and experiment and drive ahead science and expertise breakthroughs for our nationwide safety.
For instance, DARPA’s engineered residing supplies program, the place you possibly can spray an algae-based substance onto a patch of filth and it grows right into a touchdown pad that is exhausting sufficient to soundly take off and land a helicopter on it, a possible sport changer for distributed forces working from distant islands within the Indo-Pacific and different austere environments. And there are a lot of extra revolutionary expertise areas we’re investing in, like resilient area architectures, superior engines, and hypersonics.
It is all a part of why, in President Biden’s Protection Price range Request for this coming fiscal yr, we have made the most important ever funding in analysis and growth, as a result of innovating and innovation and modernization is essential to constructing enduring benefit, a core pillar of our Nationwide Protection Technique.
After all, it is not simply in regards to the technological capabilities themselves. Equally vital is how we use our capabilities, via novel and revolutionary operational ideas and making idea design and growth a part of how we do prototyping and experimentation.
That is why we’re investing in artistic ideas and capabilities that make our forces tougher to focus on, whether or not within the air, on land or at sea, from the electromagnet spectrum — magnetic, excuse me, spectrum to area to our on-line world.
And we’re investing in novel capabilities and ideas that make it tougher for potential adversaries to use their very own methods to threaten our forces or inject uncertainty into these methods. Disrupting adversary kill chains, or what the navy calls C5ISRT, is a major focus.
For many years, DARPA has had this mindset, excited about ideas and capabilities collectively on the core of its use-inspired analysis and growth. The unique Assault Breaker program is a good instance. Within the late Seventies, DARPA built-in a number of applied sciences — lasers, electro-optical sensors, microelectronics, knowledge processors and radars — that would allow U.S. forces to strike battlefield targets with pinpoint accuracy.
The end result was what we now name precision-guided munitions, good bombs, however the US did not develop that expertise or others only for the sake of it. There was a transparent use case in thoughts, an operational idea that we might use it to pierce and disrupt the seemingly limitless methods of Soviet tanks and troops that we and our NATO allies would’ve confronted if the warfare broke out in Europe.
That mixture of ideas and capabilities, which was demonstrated within the early Nineteen Eighties in a method the Soviets had been positive to note, gave our opponents actual pause. It punctured their certainty within the effectiveness of their forces. The end result was efficient deterrence. We did not have to interrupt via any Soviet navy assaults as a result of we broke their confidence.
And the job does not cease with prototyping and experimentation. Greater than ever earlier than, we even have to consider what comes subsequent, like how will we transition our simplest prototypes to change into mainstream methods within the discipline, how will we take pockets of innovation and scale what they’re doing all through the protection enterprise?
It is not that we won’t do that, we will and we do, however it’s got to be simpler and it’s got to be sooner.
Take into consideration stealth plane, for instance. If you happen to evaluate when DARPA initiated the undertaking that led to the primary experimental stealth plane, Have Blue, to after we fielded an operational F-117 Nighthawk. That took almost a decade. It took one other decade for stealth expertise to be integrated into an operational B-2 bomber. And one other decade or two after that for stealth to change into mainstreamed throughout a lot of our fight plane fleet within the type of the F-22 and the F-35 stealth fighters.
Maybe that timeline was tolerable within the Chilly Warfare when our most important strategic competitor was comparatively lumbering and gradual. However in the present day we’ve to evolve sooner than the threats evolve, which implies our capabilities have to be designed and constructed to be versatile, adaptable, and interoperable from the start. We should maintain constructing and rising our enduring benefit.
Merely put, we do not have many years to attend for the newest and biggest ideas and capabilities to proliferate throughout our navy forces. Now we have to shrink that lab-to-fab timeline from many years to years and even months, which implies we have got to be considering early and infrequently about what occurs after DARPA approves an idea and prototypes a functionality. Who carries the ball ahead? And the way?
As we go ahead, larger collaboration, considering and appearing throughout sectors, throughout borders in shut coordination with our associates and allies shall be much more vital as a result of there’s a lot nice innovation occurring past our partitions, whether or not it is within the industrial sector or within the science and expertise ecosystems of different democracies. As a nation and along with these allies and companions, we’ve what it takes. And every other nation which may doubt our skill or ingenuity or dedication and resolve ought to suppose once more. This previous month ought to remind us of that.
Right here in Washington, August is often a fairly quiet month, however have a look at what has occurred. President Biden signed a bipartisan CHIPS and Science Act that may supercharge America’s semiconductor analysis, growth, and most significantly, manufacturing. We additionally acquired the largest growth of well being care and advantages for veterans and their households in many years, additionally bipartisan. And that is not even to say historic laws to decrease prescription drug prices, well being care prices, and power prices, and do essentially the most we have ever executed to fight the local weather disaster and enhance America’s power safety.
President Biden mentioned it greatest simply final week, “We’re the US and America and there’s nothing, nothing past our capability if we do it collectively.” And we, the individuals of the US, have it inside us to carry the creativity and focus and energy that is required to win the competitors for the twenty first Century.
So let me shut with a easy ask. Assist us deal with the challenges I’ve described in the present day, or higher but, assist us remedy the issues we’ve not even thought of but. Take into consideration how your experience will help make a distinction, as a result of it might find yourself making all of the distinction. As we within the Division of Protection confront our pacing problem. We’re in a persistent competitors for benefit. It is all arms on deck as a result of we all know our lead isn’t assured. Now we have to earn it consistently.
And whether or not you are inquisitive about the way forward for autonomous automobiles or powering the following era of communications applied sciences or constructing resilience within the face of a warming planet, at DOD we have got one thing for virtually everybody. Now we have a few of the most unbelievable issues to resolve and our mission is second to none.
It is not solely an opportunity to make a distinction, it is an opportunity to be a part of one thing larger than yourselves, to vary the long run for the higher, to make the world safer for everybody. Thanks.
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DR. TOMPKINS: Thanks, Dr. Hicks. And we’ve questions that’ll be coming in from the viewers, however whereas they catch up, I’ll use director’s privilege to ask certainly one of my very own, so —
You have just lately visited a number of authorities and analysis services across the nation and you bought to satisfy with individuals within the labs and focus on superior expertise priorities. Throughout these stops, you touched on a number of of the themes that you simply simply mentioned, together with collaborative — collaboration throughout totally different sectors and disciplines as important to U.S. strategic competitors. It is a — a key purpose for DARPA Ahead, as effectively. So what would you ask of these right here at DARPA Ahead, the researchers from throughout all of those totally different sectors and disciplines, to do to make sure we’re ready for the following nice nationwide safety challenges?
DR. HICKS: Properly, nice. Thanks a lot, Stefanie, and I am — I am trying ahead to the dialogue.
I’ve executed fairly a little bit of visiting all kinds of entities, together with our nationwide labs, that are true treasures within the innovation system that we’ve right here in the US. However whether or not it is there or with people within the industrial sector or universities — and — and I’ve met with people in all these communities — I believe what actually drives individuals ahead collectively is the mission. And what I’d ask is to maintain that mission deal with what we will accomplish collectively, assist to push us, as I mentioned in my remarks, to have a look at the fitting issues, take into consideration issues that possibly we’ve not already recognized. However you possibly can all the time go to DOD web sites and — and perceive very a lot what these challenges are we consider we face in — in — within the nation/state realm, and as I mentioned, lots of the trans-boundary points that we face like local weather change.
So perceive the issues, assist us get past our personal considering into, what are a few of the options which can be on the market? A lot of these options we all know, and more and more so, will come out of the non-defense sector merely due to the character of the challenges we face and the unimaginable vibrancy of the ecosystem past protection. So ensuring we will decrease our boundaries and work successfully with those that try to carry options is my problem, and what I ask individuals on the opposite facet of that seeming-fence to do is be prepared to interact and assist us perceive how we will slot in higher with the best way by which you’re employed to get options to the warfighter for ourselves.
DR. TOMPKINS: Thanks.
All proper, we’ve our first viewers query, and I’ll let you know up entrance, this can be a little bit unfair. I am actually glad they don’t seem to be asking me. Among the many many applied sciences that DARPA and the DOD are engaged on, which one can be your highest precedence?
DR. HICKS: Yeah, that’s unfair. So what I — I am not going to say it is the very best precedence. I’ll say on the prime of my record of challenges proper now’s ensuring that we will enhance velocity of determination high quality and velocity of determination and motion, and there are numerous totally different applied sciences that come collectively, numerous totally different organizational improvements and operational ideas that come collectively to make that sort of command-and-control velocity of determination enhance.
In order that’s a — on the prime of my record. Clearly, cloud enterprise, cloud functionality is a chunk of that. A.I. and — and ensuring we take greatest benefit of information, guarantee we’ve high quality knowledge and we do all of that in a accountable method. These are a few of the expertise areas I am targeted on to get to that operational finish state.
DR. TOMPKINS: What are some present or future navy operational challenges that you simply suppose may not be getting sufficient technical consideration to — to applicable — appropriately put together for them?
DR. HICKS: Sure, I discussed certainly one of them simply now. I — I will not linger on it, as a result of I simply talked about it, which is usually known as JADC2, which is simply, we need to actually make certain we’re even higher. , the US has such a powerful historical past of joint operations. We’re fairly good at it. We need to get even higher at it, and we all the time need to construct on benefit, and we predict we’ve an actual alternative there.
However one other I believe I’d spotlight is on bettering our skill to untether on gasoline, so ensuring we will function in actually distant environments. There’s numerous totally different applied sciences that may be introduced into play there. Autonomy is definitely a part of that. A inexperienced expertise by way of whether or not it is a — on the gasoline facet or on the, if you’ll, installations facet of issues. There’s numerous functionality there. So we have to be sure that we will function anyplace on the planet the place it is within the pursuits of the US to guard its residents or allies and — and — and pursue benefit. In order that requires us to not have these exhausting logistics tails. Additive manufacturing is one other functionality that may actually assist us there.
DR. TOMPKINS: And thanks for that. And we have been having some nice conversations already about altering a few of the assumptions and weaknesses in these provide chains and logistics.
So how are we leveraging our technological benefits to assist our Indo-Pacific companions to develop their very own protection capabilities?
DR. HICKS: Initially, AUKUS is correct on the prime of that, and for individuals who is probably not conscious, AUKUS is the U.S., Australia and Nice Britain coming collectively in an intentional strategy to deal with how we will obtain mutual benefit by sharing on the analysis and growth, and finally, manufacturing facet on expertise. There are a few totally different elements of that. The — the — the one huge — pillar one, it is known as — one huge space is undersea warfare functionality and ensuring we will mutually strengthen our undersea capabilities. Once more, that is an space of benefit for the US and its Western allies. So ensuring we will maintain that as an everlasting benefit would require us to proceed staying on the slicing fringe of that expertise.
There are many different expertise areas the place we predict there’s alternative for the three nations to work collectively to extra quickly advance and discipline — essential — discipline these capabilities. So I’d put AUKUS proper up on the entrance of that.
However we do not cease there. Now we have many different bilateral, trilateral, and even within the case of Asia, a quad method the place we’re consistently working with others on the operational challenges they face. I will say once more, a few of our Asia-Pacific companions are targeted greater than something on local weather change. So typically it is one thing like that the place their protection communities are very targeted on the existential danger, in the event that they’re island nations, as an example. And typically it is all the best way up on the greater finish of potential warfare, ensuring that they’ll defend themselves in opposition to something from hypersonic missile methods to nuclear capabilities that could possibly be put ahead, and every thing in between. We’d like allies and companions the place they’re on the issues they need to work on collectively. There’s numerous alternative in that. And we additionally, by taking that method, by specializing in making certain stability within the area somewhat than making an attempt to extend tensions, we change into the companion of selection for a lot of within the area. That protects us economically and it protects us in our safety realm.
DR. TOMPKINS: Thanks. So I imply, all of us acknowledge, and you’ve got already mentioned we’d like a brand new era of innovators to be enthusiastic about discovering options to nationwide safety challenges. , the most effective issues right here about DARPA Ahead is we’ve been partaking with graduate college students, with post-docs, with numerous younger college and — and — and younger researchers, and the power is simply super. Might you increase on the division’s efforts to broaden the expertise pipeline, and in flip, the DOD innovation ecosystem in order that we’re ready for these challenges that — that we’re trying ahead in direction of?
DR. HICKS: Positive.
So after I got here into this place and — and the Secretary and I sat down to speak via a few of our preliminary impressions from each being again right here — and we each have a — a fairly robust histories inside DOD — there have been a pair issues that basically stood out to us, and your query actually hits on the intersection of two of them.
One is that the division did not have a senior degree targeted set of processes or governance methods on workforce points. It is fairly gorgeous, truly. You — you typically will hear out of DOD leaders all through the many years — you already know, in fact individuals are our precedence, you already know, every thing is about individuals, however in the event you have a look at the best way we spend time and focus our efforts as leaders contained in the Pentagon, that was not manifesting the best way in — as an example, we had been spending time on weapons methods or possibly simply the general funds course of.
So to go after that, we established a Deputy’s Workforce Council, which I chair. The Vice Chairman and the Joint Chiefs of Workers helps me lead that and we work with the senior management all throughout the division to have a look at workforce points.
One other huge space I famous is that we had many fantastic flowers blooming on innovation throughout the division. It is a huge division, we’ve many actions underway that are very spectacular, however we weren’t taking a look at a system.
We nonetheless in all probability aren’t actually taking a look at a system however we need to get far more efficient so we will be taught from – simply as you are doing with DARPA Ahead right here – you are studying from one another inside DOD after which past DOD with these exterior our partitions.
However to try this, once more, we’d like some sort of strategy to join communities. And so I established an innovation steering group, which our Undersecretary for Analysis and Engineering now chairs. Now on the intersection of those two points comes the — what you may name the innovation workforce, tech expertise. Folks can body it up below it is, you already know, STEM however it’s past STEM expertise. It additionally contains how we take into consideration the acquisition workforce, those that are going out and making an attempt to find out what we purchase and the way we purchase, serving to those that are deciding what to purchase with how we purchase it.
And so I’ve established now an innovation (Tiger Staff — mission workforce), excuse me, Tiger Staff on the intersection of those two areas to take a fast have a look at all of the work that is been executed prior to now — and there’s a lot — what can we construct on rapidly?
Now we have numerous assist on Capitol Hill to assist us with every thing from direct rent authorities — so the primary query is, effectively, will we do — use the entire direct rent authorities that we’ve? The reply is not any. Some elements of DOD do higher than others. So how will we make use of the authorities we have already been given higher?
One other query is type of the place will we — do we all know the place we’d like the expertise and what expertise we’d like? Expertise identification can also be an enormous subject. Once more, some organizations have a superb sense of the tech expertise that they want, and I’ll level out that the analysis and engineering neighborhood is amongst people who’s superb at understanding the place their gaps are, however there are different elements of the division the place we do not, and I will level to issues like our — our knowledge and A.I. work, the place we actually are beginning to construct from a — a a lot newer base of understanding of what the division wants and develop out a plan for that workforce.
So it should take us a little bit time to work via these items however it will not take years. We’re aiming to get on a cycle that — for the following funds yr, that we — we’ve underway right here within the division. We may have various options to carry ahead to Congress of their subsequent legislative cycle — in different phrases, which — which can kick off within the spring.
We all know it is a problem, we all know it is exhausting to work with DOD, we all know typically it is exhausting to work for DOD. So we’re going in any respect items of that. Safety clearance course of reform is one other huge one which we all know is a problem.
And we simply actually applaud anybody who needs to come back work with us. We thanks for sticking with us and being so mission-driven, and now, we owe it to you to make it each a — a — a job that is rewarding, that you simply’re rewarded for monetarily, and that we will get you into in an inexpensive period of time.
DR. TOMPKINS: Thanks. I believe that is an ideal reply on which to finish the — the session. Now we have tons extra questions however we’re tremendous respectful of your time and really, very grateful that you simply had been capable of finding the time to be with us in the present day.
DR. HICKS: Properly, thanks, Stefanie. And once more, thanks for doing DARPA Ahead. It is an incredible occasion collection and I stay up for it persevering with for years into the long run.
DR. TOMPKINS: Good. Thanks.
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