Future Pentagon investments to reshape defense industry.

• Author: Tiron, ROxana
• Position: UPFRONT

Despite being heavily committed in the Middle East, Defense Department officials argue that long-range investment decisions must begin now if the military is to have crucial capabilities 20 years down the road.

Officials believe the paramount obstacle to developing critical defense technologies is the shortage of specialists who are educated across the sciences. Both Pentagon leaders and industry representatives, who lament the dearth of domestic scientists and engineers, have emphasized this point.

Ron Sega, director of defense research and engineering, "fought quite a battle over the past six months to put into effect a national defense education program," recounted Sue Payton, acting deputy director in Sega's office. "It outlines seven critical areas of education with a funding profile over $155 million across the future-years defense plan."

The hot areas in need of expertise--ranging from associate degrees to PhDs--are chemistry, physics, applied mathematics, biology, computer science, all facets of engineering, project and program management, cognitive and human-factors science, and language, Payton said. "We must invest in the future and we must invest today," she urged at a conference organized by the American Institute of Astronomics and Aeronautics.

Counting off the critical investments, Payton considers the improvement of intelligence analysis the second-most important factor after education.

The military will need ground- and foliage-penetrating radars, she said, as well as technology to enable soldiers to detect color and chemical changes in the environment.

"Achieving persistence in surveillance is part of that, and that enters into the whole area of ubiquitous unmanned systems," she said. In order to maximize intelligence gathering, the Pentagon is working with Singapore on the idea of an unmanned surface vehicle with a sensor-to-shooter capability "to be used in conjunction with our coalition partners."

The software industry, meanwhile, has to develop high-speed processing for all kinds of surveillance methods and information gathering, she said.

The department also has to invest in anti-jamming capabilities, because the enemy's technology will become "tougher" and able to jam navigation systems, Payton explained.

Ranking high on the list of investments are biometrics and the ability to mine databases that contain such information, Payton said. In the same vein, "the whole area of biomedical investment is going to skyrocket,"...