Innovation and the defense industrial base.

• Author: McKinley, Craig R.
• Position: President's Perspective

* Secretary of Defense Ash Carter generated quite a buzz during his recent trip to Silicon Valley, and for good reason. It has been a generation since former Secretary Bill Perry traveled to this recognized home of high-tech innovation.

When Perry made his trip in 1996, the information technology revolution had only just begun. A lot has changed since then, making Carter's trip especially noteworthy. Today, our entire world has been transformed by advanced mobile communications and information technology.

From the vantage point of the president's desk here at NDIA, together with Chairman Arnold Punaro, we commend the trip and the secretary's interest in working on the department's relationship with private industry, whether traditional defense suppliers or Silicon Valley.

As former NDIA Senior Fellow Brett Lambert explained to Congress last year, the defense industrial base is more financially complex, more global, and more commercial than ever before. In an earlier era, government agencies and labs made up the majority of global research-and-development spending, but today the situation is inverted, with global private investment distantly outpacing U.S. public sector R&D spending.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and the labs still do outstanding work investing in leap-ahead, next-generation weapon systems and defense-unique capabilities, such as rail guns and directed-energy weapons. But these efforts tend to specialize in items left aside by private commercial R&D investment. In other technology sectors, the defense sector companies leverage the tools and systems with defense applications that non-defense, commercial, high-tech innovators are busy developing.

We want what the secretary wants: the world's most innovative and capable industry servicing the needs of U.S. war fighters. In fact, NDIA's top mission is to advocate for cutting-edge technology and superior weapons, equipment, training and support for war fighters and first responders.

Unfortunately, some unhealthy rhetoric--not coming from Carter, the Pentagon, or from our industry--is that Silicon Valley is a vibrant source of technological innovation while the contemporary defense industry is not.

Nothing could be further from the truth. After serving as the under secretary of defense for acquisition, technology and logistics, and then as deputy secretary of defense, no one knows better than Carter that the traditional defense industry includes some of the most...