Bringing Defense into the Information Economy
Abstract
The U.S. defense establishment lives in a parallel universe from the American economy. In the larger economy, tumbling costs of information technology (IT) and high returns on IT investments are yielding important gains. Business, generally speaking, is producing more and performing better with less. In contrast, the costs of defense capabilities are going up, sharply. This is not because defense is failing to use IT; on the contrary, the IT content of the weapons, platforms and sensors that make up U.S. defense capabilities is steadily expanding. Yet, despite this, the downward cost trends prevalent in the economy at large are not evident in defense. This anomaly has to be understood and fixed if national security is to be affordable and if national strategy is to be aligned with national strengths.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Mar 01, 2006
- Accession Number
- ADA450117
Entities
People
- David Gompert
- Paul Bracken
Organizations
- National Defense University