Electronic warfare

Advanced tech needed for 'inevitable' high-end conflict

While initiatives such as the "third offset strategy" — despite seemingly being couched in so-called great power competition and developing tools for overmatch and offense — are actually aimed at ensuring conventional deterrence and peace, there is recognition that these capabilities are necessary to procure and operationalize in case a conflict ensues with another near-peer competitor. 

However, a fight in a highly contested environment, which differs from the permissive counterinsurgency environments in which U.S. forces have fought for 15 years, is inevitable. “This future fight — and this is where I’ll say this is my opinion — a future fight that is inevitable, non-permissive operations in high-end contested and degraded operational environment — to me this is not a matter of if but when and we’re not as well prepared for it as we would like to be, which is why the [future] budget does put a lot of emphasis on those high-end technologies,” Lt. Gen. Jack Shanahan, director for defense intelligence (warfighter support) at the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, said Thursday at a breakfast hosted by the National Defense Industrial Association.