Pentagon Says “Software” May Decide Who Wins The Next War

By Kris Osborn, President, Center for Military Modernization

(Washington D.C.) The future of stealth fighter jets, robotic attack vehicles, missile guidance systems, tank target acquisition and even ICBM performance are merely a few of the many things largely reliant upon continuous software modernization.

Recognizing this, and the ever-increasing pace of technological change, the Pentagon is making a specific and decided push to reshape the way it acquires, modernizes, integrates and operates software. Much of the strategy aligns with the Pentagon’s longstanding effort to ensure technological upgrades of key weapons systems keep pace with the changing threat landscape and rapid technological advancement.

Keeping pace with software modernization, senior Army leaders explain, requires rapid, continuous modifications in alignment with the pace of change on an ongoing basis without having fixed “increments” or software drops spread out by years in between. The Under Secretary of the Army, Gabe Camarillo, described this as “agile software development.”

“We are now conducting several pilots across the software requirements development and testing communities to establish a process that streamline the requirements definition base, implementing early testing of incremental deliveries and maximizing automation as much as possible,” Camarillo told reporters recently when talking about the service’s fast-evolving combat network.

Camarillo cited the Army’s fast-evolving Robotic Combat Vehicle program as evidence of how “agile” software acquisition and development can quickly improve key performance parameters. Rapid integration of new software, for example, can improve the sensing, targeting and surveillance capacity of armed robots in need of quickly confirming or identifying threat information. Camarillo’s reference to “automation” also seems quite significant, as advances in computing and autonomy can, for instance, speed up and improve the pace and accuracy with which a robotic vehicle can acquire and then “verify” emerging targets.

“With the Robotic Combat Vehicle….. for the first time, our software modules are controlled via a single open architecture,” Camarillo said.