Military Transformation and the Defense Industry after Next

Though still adjusting to the end of the Cold War, the defense industry is now confronted with the prospect of military transformation. Since the terrorist attacks on 11 September 2001, many firms have seen business improve in response to the subsequent large increase in the defense budget. But in the longer run, the defense sector's military customers intend to reinvent themselves for a future that may require the acquisition of unfamiliar weapons and support systems. Joint and service visions of the military after next raise serious questions that require the attention of the Defense Department's civilian and uniformed leadership and industry executives alike: What are the defense industrial implications of military transformation? Will military transformation lead to major changes in the composition of the defense industrial base? This study employs network-centric warfare, a Navy transformation vision that is being adopted increasingly in the joint world as a vehicle for exploring the defense industrial implications of military transformation. We focus on three defense industrial sectors: shipbuilding, unmanned vehicles, and systems integration. The transformation to NCW will require both sustaining and disruptive innovation-that is, innovation that improves performance measured by existing standards and innovation that defines new quality metrics for defense systems. The dominant type of innovation needed to support transformation varies across industrial sectors; some sectors face more sustaining than disruptive innovation, while some sectors will need more disruptive than sustaining innovation as they supply systems for the "Navy after Next." Military transformation does not entail wholesale defense industrial transformation. In the systems integrations sector, much of the innovation required to effect networkcentric warfare is likely to be sustaining rather than disruptive. In the parts of the defense industrial base that build platforms, on the other hand, the standards by which proposals are evaluated for the Navy after Next will be somewhat different than the standards used in the past. As a result, transformation could significantly change the industrial landscape of shipbuilding. The unmanned-vehicle sector falls somewhere in between; because unmanned vehicles have not been acquired in quantity in the past, their performance metrics are not well established. Existing suppliers of unmanned vehicles will have a role in the future industry, but some innovative concepts and technologies may come from nontraditional suppliers, such as start-up firms. The U.S. Navy bears the responsibility of transforming itself. Internally, it must find ways to deconflict the needs of the current Navy and the "Next Navy" from the needs of the Navy after Next if industry is to support its long-term transformation requirements. Externally, pervasive organizational and political obstacles to transformation require that the Navy carefully manage its relationships with Congress and industry. Recognition that military transformation need not drive existing defense firms out of business will facilitate that task.