'Third offset' strategy calls for fresh thinking.

• Author: Mabbett, Artie
• Position: Industry Viewpoint

Seeking to gain a competitive advantage by changing the conditions of the environment is referred to as an offset strategy. Defense Department leaders in recent years have been discussing a "third offset" strategy.

Offset strategies are intended to overcome technological or quantitative military advantages of our adversaries. During the Cold War, the first offset was realized with a superior nuclear arsenal designed to avoid larger expenditures on conventional weapons. Later in the 1970's, smart weapons, sensors, targeting and control networks were introduced providing technological superiority to mitigate quantitative inferiority in conventional forces, the second offset.

In these times of declining defense budgets, and more importantly, the proliferation of advanced technologies by U.S. adversaries, particularly in the consumer electronics across the global market, the Defense Department is seeking to identify a third offset strategy to regain technological superiority and reverse the cost imbalance created by our adversaries' lower-cost systems.

This next offset strategy cannot rely on investments in exquisite costly systems. Instead, we must identify ways to leverage existing technologies and maximize the operational utility of development efforts.

In light of this drive to find innovative solutions, the Defense Department has pushed a re-invigoration of the innovative spirit of the United States by supporting organizations like the strategic capabilities office and Defense Innovation Unit-Experimental. Across all domains of the industrial complex it is safe to say that the United States is still a leader in innovation and technology development and we benefit from having some of the most creative and inventive people in the world. As such, technology development is not our biggest challenge in meeting our adversaries' military posture; fielding innovative technologies more rapidly and efficiently is the challenge we face today.

The defense community has fully embraced this challenge by investing in various technologies intended to truly change the battlespace, altering the playing field in order to maintain superiority. There is a strong tendency for the defense industry to search for that "special" technology or the "next big thing" to provide this offset.

As the previous two offsets have shown, technology is a necessary ingredient, but is just part of the overall strategy. Rather, technological superiority is an enabler of an...