Military Research and Development: Why - What - How?

WHAT IS MILITARY RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT?

The military R&D includes basic research, applied research and demonstrations/validation. The R&D in US DoD is extended with Test and Evaluation (T&E) which means engineering manufacturing development, testing and evaluation of components, systems, and system of systems, and operational system development (RDT&E).

For example, US DoD has invested the following in defence related RDT&E functions past 20 years:

Nevertheless the 11-14% annual investment to their RDT&E, the US DoD thinks that they have lost their technical advantage because the sensitive information has been stolen from their defence industry base of knowledge, more advanced civilian technology is used by adversary militaries and the challenges  within defence industry of US. 

Despite the previous innovations from microchips to GPS systems, the US DoD R&D control is loosening together with privatisation and globalisation. The new global R&D environment diffuses faster different technologies, has lower barriers to entry and provides easier access to scientific information.

European Union includes Research and Technology in Military R&D. They decided late 2016 to start investing in military-oriented research, namely electronics, advanced material, encrypted software, and robotics.  European Defence Agency (EDA) has recently established a defence capability development programme trying to improve cooperation between its members. EDA support the science and technology capability areas  with strategic research agenda aiming to identify potential technologies, assessing their possibilities in military utilisation and prioritisation of their funding.

European Union’s member states invest in military R&D about 1.4 % of their GDP (avg. 4% of their total defence expenditure ), where US is investing 3.32% and China 1.64% of their GDP.  See the trend in EU member’s investments in defence R&D below.

WHY ARMED FORCES DO R&D?

The rational and amount for Armed Force to invest in R&D can be analysed from their defence strategy:

• The US defence strategy is to dominate their possible adversaries by technical advantage being a Pathfinder or at least sustain their technical advantage by protective measures. Therefore, they have a significant base of research and development enterprises and defence industry that seek innovations to apply in military missions. Subsequently, they invest 3,32% of their GDP to military-related R&D.
• The defence strategy of EU members is mainly maintaining sufficient forces and build their capabilities more in an evolutionary manner, i.e., in smaller increments supporting their national industrial base. Therefore, the R&D investments in EU are parallel, competing and slowly applied in the defence industry. Subsequently, the EU members average R&D investment is below 1.5% of GDP.
• China is accelerating the evolution of its military force first by claiming asymmetric means of effect and secondly using its manufacturing power to gain the US technical advantage . Furthermore, they use efficiently the technical innovations made in the civilian sector to gain military effect. Subsequently, they use 1.64% of their GDP in military R&D (8-10% of their defence budget). 

The strategic analysis is based on Gattorna’s four postures illustrated in the following Figure.

In conclusion, the amount and focus of military-related R&D should be aligned with national or coalition specific military strategy. China has been gradually but steadily increasing theirs to gain more military might over the regional sources of energy and materials. European Union has been reawakening by Russian commercial and regional aspiration and is trying to gain some technical advance over Russian operational dominance in land warfighting. Despite their continuous investments in R&D, US has not been able to battle against the accelerated development of open information technology.

When considering the diverse levels of military RDT&E with some examples of different strategies, the following distribution in R&D emphasis may occur:

	Pathfinder US DoD/China	Protectionist US DoD	Evolutionary EU	Operational Russia
Basic Research	Governmental investment in foundational sciences. “Race for the Ring of Gyges.”[1]	Defending their existing Base of Knowledge	N/A	N/A
Applied Research	Boosting national engineering and technology competencies	Investing in critical applications: information, ISR, autonomous, guidance	Trying to improve alignment in applications development	N/A
Experimenting and Validation	Several experimental and prototype programmes parallel	Trying to find civilian solutions applicable to military	Open experimenting and validation sessions/exercises to all members and industry	N/A
Testing and Evaluation	System of Systems integration	Spiral development shortening the DevOps cycle	Permanent Test and Evaluation Environment to provide continuous and integrated improvement	Prototyping forces develop the cull capability (people, process, and technology)
Manufacturing Development	Using both civilian and defence industry to provide best products	Faster, cost-efficient, in-field	Normal government support to their national Defence Industry	N/A
Operational Development	Using innovations collected from field	Improving the use of existing and gradually evolving technology. Protecting their details and parameters from being captured.	Iterative roll-outs to training of troops	Systematic improvement of operations capabilities through training and lessons in operations

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[1] https://thediplomat.com/2017/08/china-has-its-darpa-but-does-it-have-the-right-people/

In conclusion, the military R&D methods and investments are guided by their strategies:

• Pathfinder establishes as wide as possible R&D in building national level dominance, and the applies it from basic research to operational development as fast as it can.
• Protectionist tries to prevent the adversaries from catching up their technical advantage by securing their bases of knowledge, improving the existing systems gradually and preventing the capture of their military equipment in the field.
• Evolutionary attempts to keep up with normal military development but with minimised investments. They prefer to buy their military systems from pathfinders/protectionists and focus on some niche areas of their national defence industry.
• Operational dominance seeker tries to improve their existing forces equipped with existing armament by training them, developing operational capabilities and improving their performance to fulfil the military missions better.

WHAT ARE THE FOCUS AREAS FOR MILITARY R&D?

The paper is using US DoD categorisation of military Research, Development, Test, and Evaluation (RDT&E) where European Research and Technology is included. The following table provides examples of contemporary focuses of some of the military R&D agencies within these categories.

	U.S. DARPA[1]	E.U. EDA[2]	Russia SFLMRD[3]	Sweden FOI[4]
Basic Research	Biomedical technology, ICT, tactical technology, materials, electronics	Materials and structures, Energy, technologies for components and modules		Security Policy, crisis preparedness and the safety and security of society
Applied Research	Aerospace systems, space technology, advanced electronics, C3, NEC, sensors	RF sensor technologies, Electro-optical sensors, CBRN protection, Guidance, and Navigation systems, CIS and Networks	coordination of activities of scientific organizations and high schools of the Ministry of Defence, scientific organizations of the Russian Academy of Science, other ministries and agencies	Aeronautics, CBRN, decision support and information fusion, electronic warfare, sensors, and signatures, underwater technology
Experimenting and Validating	Small business innovation research	Battle lab, modelling, and simulation	Create modelling and laboratory and experimental basis	Combat simulation, methodological and investigative support
Testing and Evaluation		System of systems, cyber research	scientific complex of the Armed forces, its composition, structure, and staff size with due regard to its actual needs	Weapons, protection, and security
Manufacturing Development		Aerial systems, ground systems, Naval systems
Operational Development	Mission support	Ammunition technology	study of the other most actual problems

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[1] https://www.darpa.mil/attachments/DARPA_FY18_Presidents_Budget_Request.pdf

[2] https://www.eda.europa.eu/industry-info/research-technology

[3] http://eng.mil.ru/en/science/sflmrd/about.htm

[4] https://foi.se/en/our-knowledge.html

Subsequently, the strategic emphasis can be seen in titles and the categories the military focus. The Russian SFLMRD is focusing on fulfilling operational needs and solving actual problems on the battlefield. On the contrary, DARPA is emphasising the basic and applied research with extension to small companies’ innovations.

The Pathfinder DARPA is investing in innovative technologies to gain strategic advantage, whereas the Swedish FOI is focusing on researching force protection, information technology, and security policies as support to evolutionary Defence Forces.

SOURCING OF THE DEFENCE RELATED R&D

GOVERNANCE OF MILITARY R&D

Military-related R&D is a part of holistic capability portfolio. The R&D functions are distributed through the life-cycle of each military capability, so the Commander in Chief can manage their development, acquisition, migrations, mid-life updates and disable. The portfolio has four folders arranged through the life-cycle: R&D, Development, Operation and Enemy capabilities. The portfolio should foresee 15 to 20 years ahead to have timely issued R&D tasks and their outcomes. 

RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT AS PART OF MILITARY FORCE GENERATION

The military R&D is executed through the life-cycle of military capabilities when they are generated and when improved during force utilisation. The traditional R&D is very material and technology-oriented, but there have also been enemy capability-oriented research (intelligence) and people and process development studies. The classic categories of research and development are basic, applied, experimenting, test, and evaluation, manufacturing development and operations development. They extend through the military capability life-cycle as pictured in the following Figure.

SOURCING OF RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT

Sourcing the military-related Research and Development are based on the strategic posture. More important it is for the strategic advantage closer it is to Armed Forces (USA). Additionally, more operationally oriented it is, closer it should be to troops (Russia). The following figure provides one example of R&D sourcing in case of evolutionary strategy. Shorter the loop in providing iterative improvements to troops in operation, closer the on-demand R&D needs to be the Test & Evaluation Environment. There are ongoing fields in R&D, for example, continuous improvement in CBRN protection performance, stability, and performance of propellants, capturing EW signatures, white-listing in cyber environment and features of enemy systems. These functions are typically in-sourced within the Armed Forces. More digitalized the force is, closer the test and evaluation environment is with the Armed Forces. Some countries (Finland) have, although, integrated teams in executing the continuous T&E in support of fighting forces. The manufacturing development is mainly outsourced to the defence industry. The military may facilitate the experimenting events or exercises, but the content is mainly provided by the Defence Industry (NATO CWIX). Defence Universities, Colleges, and Institutes are providing applied and basic research services in military sciences, but private and public universities, governmental R&D agencies, and coalition enterprises provide other areas of science. Despite the sourcing, the military capability portfolio provides a tool for short and long-term governance.

Scenarios for Nations to Gain Strategic Advantage in Military Force Generation

Strategic advantage through military might

Is it possible for a national state to gain strategic advantage over its confronting adversaries by investing in advanced sciences and military force generation? The following examples are promising:

• Gustavus II Adolphus (1594-1632) of Sweden, who manoeuvred with a combination of infantry, cavalry, and artillery (fire, manoeuvre, and protection) preferring movement and attack over fortification (Dodge, 1895). He was the first to use replication strategy when he standardised each arm to have pistols of the same calibre, same size swords with cavalry, same calibre muskets with infantry and first light, mobile, regimental artillery with a controlled variation of their calibre. (Lappalainen, 2001)
• Napoleon of France, who manoeuvred with army corps to allure enemy into the tactically weaker situation and used the combination of massed cavalry, infantry, and artillery to annihilate the superior adversary armies. (Clausewitz)
• Heinz Guderian of Germany, who combined panzer groups operational movement with close air support provided by the Stuka bombers of Luftwaffe exhausted and confused first Polish Armed Forces, then France and British combined forces and finally the Red Army of Soviet Union. (Guderian)
• James Abrahamson of USA got a task from President Reagan to gain strategic advantage against the Soviet Union in Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) posture. The advantage was called Strategic Defence Initiative (SDI) or “Star Wars.” The initiative was to use ground and space-borne high-energy arms to counter all Soviet Ballistic Missiles before they would hit their targets. The initiative was later proved too ambitious, but in effect, it made Soviet Union try to invest even more money to defence R&D, exhausted their resources and eventually was one of the cause for the disintegration of Warsaw Pact. (Fitzgerald, 2001)

If the ambition to gain strategic advantage in a confrontation over the adversary is studied with Gattorna’s strategic postures, the situation may appear like the following.

The Blue side may choose a low risk and reactive posture of evolutionary force development. This means that the Blue will gradually improve its forces about the same pace as they perceive the Red to accomplish with relational pace to technical advances and their national resources.  Most Armed Forces in Europe have adopted this strategy as they seek only to sustain enough threshold to prevent others from escalating conflicts. 

The Blue side may also choose operational performance as their core strategic advantage if they are not able to renew their arsenal in the pace of technological evolution. Operational performance means that Blue can arm more soldiers with average arms and train them to function better than an adversary. This higher risk but the reactive strategy was a choice for Warsaw Pact countries and previously China.

If the Blue has already gained a strategic advantage, they may adopt a protective posture, where Blue uses all ways possible to prevent the Red to improve their Armed Forces and shut the gap. The Blue may use economic ways, embargo, or constraint arms selling. The USA has behaved from this posture after the Network-Based Warfare.

If the Blue is resourceful enough and willing to take more risks in gaining a long-term advantage, they may adopt a pathfinder posture. Pathfinder goes after the edge of the technological development, applying their population or cultural strengths in a way the adversary has difficulties to follow. SDI was one of these intentions in the USA since the MAD was perceived so desolate.

Force generation system as a provider of strategic means

The military structure has three primary functions: Force utilisation, generation, and support. This paper focuses on force generation since there the military development strategy is implemented. The force generation draws material, technology, information and people from its society and indoctrinates them through exercising e to a military force. 

The following simplified model is used to analyse the requirements for society and supply chain concerning the Armed Forces capability to generate capable forces to achieve their strategic goals. Each area of force generation is considered in a layered framework consisting the following:

• Basic sciences layer consists of natural, formal and social sciences. The research is long-term and happens mainly in relation to Universities. The information provided at this level is applied to the following layers.
• Education and applied sciences layer consist of sciences that apply information in areas for example of engineering, business, healthcare, education, military, agronomy, architecture, energy, computing technology, forensics, management, micro-technology, applied mathematics and physics, and spatial sciences. It also provides the foundational competency for conscripts, recruits or draftees.
• Research and Development and Engineering layer create ideas, prototypes, experiments, concepts, and models that may be developed further towards products. This establishes the essential ability for the defence industry to implement innovations.
• Manufacturing layer fabricates the ideas to marketable products whether goods, devices, services, or applications, etc. The military is using both defence industry and commercial industry products in generating military capabilities. This layer provides COTS, GOTS or MOTS to be integrated into existing and developing a military system of systems.
• Military organisations and their partnering organisations take products from the manufacturers and integrate them with other parts of a system of systems (SoS). Military compose troops from soldiers and SoS components, train them to work together and exercise them to deliver effect, i.e., change the adversary’s behaviour in operations.

Three scenarios of gaining advantage from today towards future

This article provides three scenarios for the modern Blue force in seeking strategic advantage following the above principles: 

1. Connected Force scenario is a continuum of the current conventional weapons and warfare ways. Connections and different use of information are providing an opportunity to gain dominant operational superiority over the enemy. This is gained through developing and implementing as seamless 4th generation C4ISTAR system of systems that will improve the abilities of conventional sensors and manned weapons platforms. It may take next ten years to build this operational performance, and the gained strategic advantage may not last longer than 20 years since adversary will copy the technology eventually.
2. Unmanned Autonomous Systems (UAS) scenario presents a pathfinder strategy using conventional kinetic effect but abandoning the legacy platforms and replacing them with unmanned autonomous systems. These systems should be used in masses to provide both tactical and operational dominance over the adversary that is following the more evolutionary path and conventional platforms. A considerable number of small, cheap & autonomous systems are used in operations (ISR, Target Acquisition, Engagement, Logistics, etc.)  in all Domains (Land, Sea, Cyber, Air & Space). A human would become obsolete on the battlefield. It may take more than 20 years to build and arm the forces, but most probably the adversary would need 50 years to close the gap.
3. High Energy and micro-/nanodevices to create an effect scenario follows a pathfinder strategy but abandoning the legacy of kinetic weapons. Instead, there will be two legs for military effect: 

• Space-based high energy weapons to create deterrence against state adversary. A threat of massive annihilation of live force or basis of society will keep potential adversary ambitions at bay.
• Bio-mechanical/micro-/nano-device-based delivery of precise effect to counter organic or non-organic threats, insurgency, terrorism, or immigration threats. Chemical or biological ingredient delivered by a bio-mechanical, micro-device or nano-device to affect the function of the organic or non-organic system.

Requires only highly competent core of people to operate and integrate the system of systems since it relies heavily on autonomous vehicles. It may take more than 50 years to build the capability, but most probably the strategic advance may last over 50 years.

The study presumes that strategic advantage in national defence may be gained improving military operational performance. The military operational performance to annihilate the adversary’s ability to use forces is simplified into following features:

• Situational awareness,
• Manoeuvrability,
• Massing of effect and
• Protecting the forces against enemy effects.

The study does not consider the abilities to project the force, readiness, or ability to sustain an expeditionary force. The three scenarios are opened in the following table as force generation and capability building effort.

Strategy	“C4ISTAR Wars” More out from conventional weapons	“Drone Wars” New tactical mobility and massing of effect	“Energy/Nano Wars” Quantum leap for new Assured Mass and Precise Destruction
Capability	Operational dominance by connecting conventional sensors and arms with next-generation C4ISTAR systems as a military system of systems.	Pathfinder strategy to use a large number of small, cheap and autonomous systems to deliver conventional warheads.	Establish deterrence with space-based high-energy weapons. Use nanosized biomechanical devices for precise targets.
Effect	Detect sooner, decide faster and shoot more precise with conventional platforms and their kinetic warheads.	Extract the man from the battlefield and mass the kinetic effect delivered by small, cheap and autonomous vehicles.	Networked satellites created centered high energy beams to annihilate enemy formations. Biomechanical or nanodevices deliver precise strikes against organic or non-organic targets.
Time to Build	Less than ten years since technology is here, but competent integration is hard to gain.	Takes over 20 years to establish. The technology is there, but legacy thinking and culture are preventing faster adaptation.	Takes over 50 years to establish. The technology is almost there in civilian side, but it is a considerable effort from legacy military to dismiss all the conventional armament and human-based forces.
Time to sustain the advantage	Less than ten years since technology is available to all.	May provide up to 50 years of a strategic advantage since culture change is a challenge.	May provide over 50 years of a strategic advantage because requires significant investment and getting rid of legacy culture.
Manufacturing	Defence industry needs to integrate the System of systems, improve the MMI, ensure the migration and life-cycle management.	Defence industry needs to master additive and synthetic manufacturing, software-defined everything, using COTS components, using composites, nano-coating.	Lightweight, composite materials, clean room, space assembly, biology, medical, chemical laboratory.
Engineering and R&D	Both Armed Forces and Defence Industry needs competencies in integration, the system of systems engineering, system life-cycle management, programme management, virtual and augmented reality, NLP, and smart buyer.	The system of systems Engineering, artificial intelligence, pattern recognition, data analytics, modelling and simulation, big data, swarming intelligence, avionics.	System of systems engineering, energy harvesting and storing, biomedical engineering, nanomedicine, organic device engineering, bioengineering.
Applied Sciences and Education	Understanding and skills in the engineering of complex adaptive systems, software development, knowledge, and data management.	Information sciences, computer engineering, automation engineering, systems engineering	Beam propagation, laser beam production technologies, micro-electro-mechanical Systems, microfabrication, and nanotechnology.
Basic Sciences	No requirements	Artificial intelligence, quantum computing	Chemistry, biology, decision theories.

Conclusion

The aim of this short scenario building exercise is to show that a nation may adopt different approaches to its national defence but in the end only their cultural capabilities or massive resources can make things real. The cause for major friction is the mindset. Militaries seldom can adopt anything too far from their legacy since they are by nature sustaining and their appetite for risk is low.

In quest of building a strategic advantage, there needs to be a long-term strategy implemented through the society otherwise, for example, the investments at sciences level will appear futile if the acquired competencies are not applied eventually to generate force effects.

References

Bousquet, Antoine (2009): The scientific way of warfare. Columbia University Press. ISBN 978-0-231-70079-5
Fitzgerald, Frances (2001): Way Out There in the Blue: Reagan, Star Wars and the End of the Cold War. Simon & Schuster. ISBN 0-7432-0023-3.
Gattorna, John (2010): Dynamic supply chains. 2nd Edition. Pearson Education Ltd. Harlow. ISBN 978—0-273-73040-8
Gharajedaghi, Jamshid (2011): Systems thinking, managing chaos and complexity. 3rd Edition. Morgan Kaufmann, Burlington. ISBN 978-0-12-385915-0
Guderian, Heinz (2001): Pantzer leader. Reissue edition translated by Constantine Fitzgibbon. Da Capo Press. ISBN 978-0306811012
Lappalainen, Jussi, T. (2001): A hundred-year war. (Original in Finnish: Sadan vuoden sotatie). Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura, Helsinki. ISSN 0355-1768
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