Defense

‘National security ecosystem’ should embrace agility in workforce, Navy undersecretary says

Navy Undersecretary Thomas Modly believes the key to implementing the new national defense strategy, not to mention prevailing in any future conflicts, is agility.

“In a word, I believe the National Defense Strategy calls for a Navy and Marine Corps team in which agility is the defining characteristic,” Modly said at a Feb. 23 AFCEA lunch. “It is a term which describes the overall organizational quality that has determined and will determine who and what survives in any increasingly complex, competitive, rapidly changing and unpredictable environment. This is the environment we face today, so I think we will ultimately be judged on how well we transition our forces and our supporting organizations … to a future in which agility is the defining characteristic.”

He backed up that idea with some interesting evidence: Word count. He counted the number of times certain words appeared in the national defense strategy document, presenting a kind of analog word cloud, the data behind the visualization. Modly noted that the words “agile” or “agility” were only mentioned six times, far fewer than “lethality,” which appeared 15 times; “competition” or “competitor,” which appeared 37 times; or “defend” and “defense,” which appeared 44 times.