Defense Dept. fails to capture available technologies.

• Author: Erwin, Sandra I.
• Position: ANALYSIS

IN THE RACE TO SECURE THE LATEST AND GREATEST technologies from the private sector and university labs, the Pentagon often comes up short, experts contend. The fault stems, not surprisingly, from beltway politics and the Pentagon's intransigent procurement bureaucracy.

As the government's biggest spender, the Pentagon is a natural magnet for technology entrepreneurs. In recent years, the Defense Department has actively courted businesses and academia to come forward with innovative technologies that it needs urgently on the frontlines, such as bomb neutralizers, protective gear for troops and lightweight truck armor.

Novel and potentially useful technologies are out there to be grabbed, but unless the Pentagon makes it easier for companies and universities to communicate with the decision makers, it will be left behind, says Stephen E. Cross, director of the Georgia Tech Research Institute at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta. He serves on various Pentagon technology advisory panels.

Organizations such at GTRI, which are not entirely dependent on government contracts for their survival, generate a steady stream of technologies that the Pentagon could tap, without having to pay seed money.

For the Pentagon, "funding is not the biggest challenge," Cross says. "It's fielding capabilities fast enough based on what the adversaries are doing." In critical areas, such as explosives detection and countermeasures against roadside bombs, the system conspires against the military's needs. "We take months to think through counter actions. The defense industry takes months. The terrorists take hours or days ... We see how quickly enemies can use commercial technologies. So we need to be much faster."

To tackle this problem, the Pentagon created new agencies such as the "defeat improvised explosive device organization" and the "rapid equipping force." But there are fundamental obstacles in the system that, no matter what these agencies do, will keep innovation out of the Defense Department's reach.

"It's difficult to introduce disruptive innovation into the Defense Department," says Cross. "You have to get it into the acquisition process, and it's just very difficult to do."

Universities frequently develop military-relevant technologies that the Defense Department doesn't have to pay for, says Cross. "More and more research is being funded internationally. We can tap into that research and bring it to the Defense Department."

Cross says he...