U.S. Military Races to Stay Ahead of China's Tech

Efforts like the Third Offset Strategy invest in new tech like lasers to keep the military's advantage.

An electromagnetic railgun prototype aboard a U.S. Navy vessel in San Diego. Rail gun weapons one area the U.S. military is maintaining its advantage in military tech. KRISTOPHER KIRSOP/U.S. NAVY

Secretary of Defense Ash Carter said Friday the U.S. military has lost some of its technological edge against China, but he is optimistic that his department’s new investments and innovation efforts will ensure “the U.S. military remains the best.”

Carter said during a conference hosted by Defense One in Washington, D.C., that China “has improved its economy, the standard of living of its people. And with that comes an advance in its military capabilities, there’s no question.”

“We are always watching the deterrent equation there,” Carter said.

The Pentagon's Strategic Capabilities Office is boosting the military with next-generation weapons, as its director, William Roper, says the U.S. can no longer count of having technology the rest of the world doesn’t have. Roper says other nations are trying to imitate America’s networking technology that coordinates ships, planes and other weapon systems, for instance, but the U.S. still has an edge because it has learned to operate as a connected military.

“They can get the technology right on paper, but being trained to use that in a war is a different matter,” he says. “The big thing we see is countries that have modernized in recent years have used our operations in the Middle East as a chance to watch how we project power. They have tried to diagnose things where we have vulnerabilities. It can be difficult for someone who has microanalyzed that to prepare if our playbook changes, and we believe that is achievable.”

Andrew Maclary, an analyst with Govini market research firm, says the top spending areas where the U.S. competes with China to maintain its advantage in military tech are “cybersecurity and hypersonic technologies,” including rail gun weapons and advanced propulsion.

It is still too early to tell whether the increased focus on new technology will effectively keep America’s edge, says Elbridge Colby, a national defense analyst with the Center for a New American Security think tank in Washington.

“We are looking at a tough – and in some respects very tough – military situation for the U.S. in Asia by the 2020s,” says Colby, a former adviser to the defense secretary and to Congress.

The Defense Department is also more aware of the risks to its networks and research data. Between 2010 and 2014, measures like network defenses and securing data centers became the military’s top cybersecurity spending areas, according to a survey of military spending conductedby Govini.

Mike Basore, a federal marketing director at Dell, said during the conference that government can best protect its networks by continuing this increased focus of anticipating what a hacker will do. Alluding to data breaches of business and government networks, he said "205 days is the average infection before it's discovered."

"Think of the damage that can be done in that time,” Basore said.

(Source : usnews.com)

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