Why would one military department--the Department of the Navy--retain for more than half a century an office led by a two-star admiral and dedicated to the execution and sponsorship of scientific research and technological innovation? One answer is obvious: The Navy and Marine Corps--indeed, all of the nation's warfighters--depend to a great extent upon technology for the capabilities that give them a combat advantage over the nation's adversaries. This is not to slight the valor, esprit, doctrine, or cunning of the operating forces. It is simply to note the nation's obligation to arm its warfighters with the best weapons and equipment America can devise.

At another level, however, it might seem that a military department should make do with science and technology from industry and universities, produced under federal leadership from the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health. And here the Department of the Navy (DON) seems to be different from its sister military departments. While the Departments of the Army and the Air Force invest in science and technology, neither of them approaches--historically or year-after-year today--the level of naval investment in the more basic, fundamental aspects of science.

So why is this naval investment a wise one? This account of the Department of the Navy's strategy for science and technology, with special focus on the discovery and invention component of the program, may help answer that question.

The Department of the Navy's Science and Technology Strategy for the 21st Century envisions that science and technology will "inspire and guide innovation that will provide technology-based options for future Navy and Marine Corps capabilities." Such innovation couples discovery and invention with exploitation, delivery, and--ultimately--deployment.

The exploitation and delivery part of the DON's science and technology program--where new ideas and techniques are put into practice, then transitioned into acquisition and operations--focuses on 12 "Future Naval Capabilities" (FNCs) selected by senior Navy and Marine Corps leaders.

The 12 FNCs are: autonomous operations, capable manpower, electric warships and combat vehicles, knowledge superiority and assurance, littoral antisubmarine warfare, littoral combat and power projection, missile defense, organic mine countermeasures, platform protection, time-critical strike, total ownership cost reduction, and warfighter protection.

The ONR (Office of Naval Research)-managed science and technology programs that address these FNCs are colloquially called "spikes," a term that evokes the concentration of effort and funds required to mature, demonstrate, and transition into acquisition the new technologies needed to field the capabilities postulated. Spikes account for roughly half of the Navy's total science and technology budget, predominantly in what are called the 6.3 (Advanced Development) accounts, with significant contributions from Applied Research (6.2) and lesser elements of Basic Research (6.1).

Successful achievement of the FNCs identified (and solution of technological problems related to more mature systems)--as well as the creation of opportunities for still other future capabilities the fleet and force may need--requires the continuous generation of new ideas. This is the task of the discovery and invention portion of the naval science and technology program. The Navy discovers and invents by leveraging global advances in knowledge and technology, by initiating investigations or spurring progress in areas of particular naval interest, and by maintaining national strength in areas that are uniquely naval in nature.

Program Motivation And Product Development

By its very nature, a program of discovery and invention is aimed at a future relatively distant from the immediate concerns of operational forces. New knowledge can sometimes make its way very quickly into practice, and remarkable findings can cause rapid and drastic changes of opportunity or even revolutions in military affairs. But the normal course from discovery and invention into fielded operational systems involves the gradual accretion of ability and confidence--and, of course, much experimentation.

Demonstration also is essential to gain the confidence of consumers who are being asked to give up proven practices for the sake of new capabilities. Once all the basics are in hand and the risk is clearly defined, new technology can be developed into products very rapidly, as today's information-technology marketplace clearly demonstrates.

But the evolution of something completely new, particularly when it involves contributions from scores of scientific fields, usually requires years if not decades. Offering such novel options is ONR's basic job.

Discovery and Invention

The DON's program of discovery and invention therefore focuses on the world far beyond the Future-Years Defense Plan (FYDP)--indeed, well beyond even Joint Vision 2020. It assumes (even as it backstops) the successful achievement and full integration of the capabilities the Navy expects to field by the end of the next decade, then asks how those capabilities of "the Next Navy and Marine Corps" may be augmented or extended through new knowledge and abilities for "the Navy and Marine Corps After Next."

For example, when ONR defined the "Naval Science and Technology Grand Challenges" it used the years 2030 to 2050 as the target years for completion. While one recognizes the total unpredictability of events over such a period, it is not at all unreasonable to ask scientists what they think might indeed be achievable, should the Navy set out to accomplish a goal over such a period, and then set a vector in the appropriate direction.

This is an example of what is meant in the ONR's vision statement by inspiring and guiding innovation. The same intellectual construct underlies all the new endeavors ONR starts--even the ones that are not all necessarily so grand, or focused on quite so distant a target.

The job after setting a target, of course, is equally challenging--to create an environment in which the creative brilliance of researchers does indeed move ONR toward its goal, and then either to build on success when it occurs, or have the courage to move quickly away from unpromising paths.

At issue for Rear Adm. Jay M. Cohen, the chief of naval research, and ONR, as for any mission agency, is how to formulate a program that not only has a good chance of scientific success, but that also will make positive contributions to the agency's goals in some future period for which those goals are poorly, if at all, defined. A reasonable approach, perhaps, is to rely on interaction between the best scientists and technologists--who have a sense for what may be possible--and the best strategists, who can outline possible futures within which one might determine what may prove useful. ONR then picks winners, or at least winning approaches. ONR also must use its funding to support the unique requirements and inherent characteristics of naval forces, and spend it in fields unlikely to be adequately advanced by industry or supported by other sponsors.

So what about strategy? While there are innumerable studies about the world beyond the time frame reflected in Department of Defense (DOD) guidance, perhaps the most useful for ONR's recent purposes have been: (a) the National Intelligence Council studies supporting Global Trends 2015 (which in turn supports the Quadrennial Defense Review); (b) the Defense Science Board's 1999 Summer Study on 21st Century Defense Technology Strategies (Nov. 1999); and (c) the Phase I Report on the Emerging Global Security Environment for the First Quarter of the 21st Century of the United States Commission on National Security/21st Century.

The 14 conclusions in the commission report--along with the considerable supporting research and analysis included--provide a broad framework within which to envision the types of specifically naval capabilities that may contribute most significantly to future national security.

Two overarching conclusions are: (1) Conflict among and within nations, and associated threats to U.S. national security, will involve a widening spectrum of activities, only some of which will be traditionally "military" in nature or even involve military assets; and (2) At the same time, the military will be tasked to participate in a significantly wider range of security-related operations, in collaboration with other sectors of the U.S. federal government, and in opposition to nontraditional opposing forces, some without state identities.

Future Naval Capabilities

There is nothing fundamentally new here. What may be significant is the likelihood of a significantly increasing degree of diversity and, thus, the requisite flexibility of military forces, always overlying the fundamental need for conventional military dominance. The Navy and Marine Corps strengths in this environment will remain their mobility, their ability to understand and control the maritime littoral environment and assure safe global access from the sea, and their ability to orchestrate the duration and strength of U.S. military influence on coastal regions and their populations. General perceptions derived from these various national-global studies can then be refined through debates, discussions, and dialogues with experts from the Navy Warfare Development Command, the Marine Corps Combat Development Command, the Center for Naval Analyses, the Strategic Studies Group, the CNO Executive Panel, the Naval Research Advisory Group, and similar organizations

How does one choose? Guidance on what is likely to occur in discovery and invention, absent anything ONR may choose to do, comes from a wide range of sources. The Phase I referred to earlier, for example, stresses that "the most striking innovations of the next quarter century will occur in three basic categories, and combinations thereof: ... information technology, biotechnology, and micro-electromechanics (MEMs)."

Few disagree with this contention. Indeed, the Defense Science Board (DSB) identified these same three areas of "explosive growth" (albeit with a broader definition of microsystems) as likely to form the basis for new military capabilities of the future. The DSB added a fourth area of comparable importance: materials and energy. ONR's role in such fields must be to leverage the expected (well-funded) discoveries and inventions, and in particular to exploit the interfaces among them and to catalyze exploitation toward naval-oriented applications when the principal thrust of intellectual advance is toward other needs (e.g., biotechnology for health).

To maintain adequate awareness of the available opportunities to exploit, and of areas where ONR funding is not needed, ONR staffs an International Field Office. It also encourages its program officers to remain personally active in research, to maintain close contact with their colleagues and principal investigators (and, through them, the international scientific and technical communities), and to participate in scientific conferences and committees.

ONR also provides a corporate laboratory, the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL), with base funding adequate to sustain a world-class capability in areas that DON and ONR leaders deem to be most fruitful. Similarly, ONR pays close attention to the shifts of investment within the Department of Defense--as the Air Force stresses space and moves away from manned aircraft, as the Army digitizes and lightens-up (with inevitable influence on Marine Corps systems), and as DOD guidance stresses certain fields such as information technology and nanoscience--with associated impact on cross-service defense technology objectives and DOD-sponsored programs such as MURIs (multidisciplinary university research initiatives)--or assigns primary responsibility for certain areas to individual agencies (e.g., chemical and biological defense to the Army, nonlethal weapons to the Marine Corps).

Balanced Investment

ONR programs also must be balanced against the investments of the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH), both of which have broader societal mandates than the mission agencies--but the NSF and NIH investments leave major gaps in technologies critical to the operations of the Navy and Marine Corps, and their peer-review practices tend to limit their ability to take certain kinds of risks.

Another very strong influence on ONR's investment strategy is exerted by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), which inherited from ONR a charter for supporting the broadest scope of very-high-risk, very-high-payoff defense science and technology efforts, along with the associated funding. In addition to working with DARPA to help define areas for investment, and to manage the resulting programs in partnership, ONR must be prepared to help incorporate advances from their programs into naval applications. Often, a path of investigation initiated by ONR or one of the other services proves sufficiently exciting that DARPA or other sponsors with fewer constraints and more money move in and dominate the field. In such instances the ONR strategy turns to leverage, augmented by careful selection of investigators to retain a major role in intellectual if not financial leadership.

Finally, the discovery and invention segment of the ONR program must seamlessly feed, complement, and extend the more mature work within the FNCs. It must develop opportunities for new FNCs. It must help resolve technological problems faced by the operating fleet and forces, and by the systems commands and program element offices. It must capitalize upon, and begin the process of maturing and exploiting, the discoveries and inventions arising from work that ONR and other offices and agencies have previously sponsored.

The innovation process is indeed a continuum, as fully recognized by ONR's strategy of integrated science and technology management. ONR cannot afford to let it become discontinuous, or to become captured by those compelled to accede to near-term needs. The goal is to provide posterity the same opportunities today's generation received from the wise visionaries who--even during World Wars I and II--focused on the long haul. Winning today's battle is, of course, of vital importance to all who serve at ONR. But this imperative does not detract from the mandate for one of the nation's premier centers of excellence in science and technology to sow the seeds that may one day help win the battle after next.