happy easter and welcome to this weekend of defense news i'm vago muradian. for years the navy has maintained a six-month deployment cycle now they are stretching seven, eight and ten months. plus we look at the current health of the defense industry. but first in its recent strategy the we talk about defense strategies. according to one strategist for all of its thoughtfulness they have failed to address how information -- than no technology and new materials will change warfare. how the changes in -- will

interact with one another that cannot be controlled by the united states and much less the u.s. military. the man raising the red flag is lynn wells. director of the center for technology and national security policy at the national defense university. dr. wells welcome back to the show. there thank you very much. great to be here. >> why is this important? what are the biggest development development that's will be shaping the future? >> this is important because of the collective impact. if you look at information technology. these are not only enabling the importance of cyber space and network capabilities but they are changing the winners and losers in the economy. they are changing political power structures. most importantly they are changing the way our children think. these are issues for ambassadors, for policymakers, commanders not just for the techies. >> what are some in your view the bigger threats and the biggest opportunities that will be presented? >> i think some of the biggest

threats are that we to not understand where some of the emerging challenges are coming from. some people have done some studies that said decades ago that the u.s. did about half of the scientific research in the world and the d.o.d. research is maybe 5% of that. maybe 40 researchers in the world. now people are saying it's 1 out of 800. >> so it's not just a manpower issue. how much of this is also what you discuss is a geotechnology issue. that it's not all evenly globally distributed and the united states is not the center of it. >> i also think for example that the u.s. has benefited having silicon valley here in the united states. not only the brain power that is attracted here but the spinoffs from academia and the interactions between academia

and business and military. we've had the benefit of that geotechnology. this is disbursed around the world. what kind of impact will that have? >> these changes are emerging at enormous speed and parallel as you note. but the structure you spent your life in tends to deal with problems in a linear way. is the system suited to address some of the developments in the pace that they are developing? >> so i think they can be if leaders factor in the pace of change. for example, information technology in the eight years to 2020 the strategy is focused. if you believe that computer power cost is doubling about every 18 months that is 5,000% change in that one factor. in this time period. and bio technology is changing even faster. if we accept linear projection

where is the world is going, it will not be suited for us. the other thing we have to do is demand more cross cutting looks. respect institutions -- respected institutions like the national intelligence board are doing in-depth studies. we need to look across all the pieces and see how they fit together. that is one thing our national security structure doesn't do very well. >> what are some of the changes you would propose to get a better handle on this? specific changes we need to embrace and adopt. >> the first thing as people look at the studies the architectures things like that. invite some out of the box thinking into the process. we've already seen how this change is possible. the defense has adopted things like fully burden cost of fuel for the basis of its energy decisions. energy efficiencies keep performance per ramties. the system can do this if we factor it in.

>> you mentioned this earlier in terms of what is it's not a techy issue anymore. it is an issue for strategist and planners. and yet the system not to be disrespectful to anybody in the system, but looks at some of the tech things as geeky things and we are war fighters. that is not our concern. what are some of the cultural changes that need to take place to have a far greater number of people to start take these factors into consideration in their fundamental plan? >> the chairman is emphasizing look what constitutes the american way of war. the american way of war has been under pinned by technology for a long period of time. it's important for the warrior to look at the extent to which that under pinning is going to change going forward. this is not an thetical to the way of the warrior. it's inherent part. even as we recognize the factors in the way wars are

fought, technology has an impact. it's perfectly legitimately if you will. >> do you think there is a generational shift where a younger generation is much freer and open to technology? >> i think that is true. one of the concerns is we have a cyber conference for example. the national defense university. one of the questions i usually ask is how many people here under 35. usually get single digit hands. then i ask what does it -- what would you like to tell us? one of the interesting things recently was a 26-year-old who had been involved in reporting the arab spring and using blogs and facebook and social media, whatever. my question was what is the next big thing? her answer was at 26 i'm too old. ask the high school kids. and so we need to reach down further into this generation

and understand what their thinking is. >> let me ask you also now a technology question. the united states for longest time and the pentagon itself was really one of the world's leading drivers of technology. but it's increasingly not the case. what does that shift mean and bode for the future of the u.s. military capabilities? >> i think you see in things like the experiments the army is doing with the commercial mobile devices. the understanding of -- >> using the smart phones as a distributed system as opposed to rigid structure architectural system. >> security is a clear feature. one of the things we are learning out of the arab spring and out of syria and other places is that the other side can use this open information against us or against other people. it's not entirely a plus for us. we need to be smart about how we will use it. we need to recognize that the

changes in the commercial marketplace in some areas information technology being one, bio technology is changing faster than information, and you look at things like synthetic biology. enormous promise, but enormous ethical and risks to it. we need to reach out beyond our own boundaries and understand what that is. >> lynn, thank you for joining us. coming up the defense

defense spending is being cut as part of a broader plan to reduce america's record debt. but less military funding for research, development and production could hurt the u.s. defense industrial base and its highly-skilled work force that are critical for u.s. national security. michael o'hanlon of the brookings think tank authored a report last year, the national security industrial base, a crucial asset for the united states whose future may be in jeopardy that looks at trends and futures of the industrial base. but a lot has changed since then, including a new budget and more cuts. michael is also the author of a brand new book, "bending history" that's about the obama administration's foreign policy. welcome back, michael. but today for purposes of our discussion, we're going to be talking about the industrial base. how healthy is the industrial base and what really concerns you going out into the future given some of the cuts that we've seen over the last few months? >> well, you know, i think the industrial base is obviously a lot smaller. we've all learned the history and lived the history of the last supper and the post cold

war drawdown and everything else that's been associated with these trends. but i think the last decade has been tolerable, it's been okay. it hasn't necessarily by great for the equipment inventories of the services which remain aging and not fully replenished, but the amount of money that's been pumped into the industrial base and some of the big high profile lines, spider lines, ground combat vehicles, they've done okay. i think the bigger issues have to do with where we go from here because in a sense the industrial base has always taken second seat at best, second tier to strategy and broader force posture decisions and we've just assumed the industrial base would adapt and fall in place and find a way to generate the capacity we needed, that's a bit of an unfortunate way of doing business when technological supremacy is actually at the core of our military excellence and our strategic posture in the world. we always talk about the importance of our all-volunteer force as we should, and that we have the best men and women in

uniform of anywhere on the planet, but we should also remember that equally important to our military success has been the quality of our technology and our weaponry and yet we assume that will take care of itself. so what i'm troubled about is not so much of where we stand at this particular moment. what i'm concerned about is the fact that we are seeing the possibility of sequestration in a world where, of course, we're down to really lockheed martin being the preimminent producer of fighter jets with very little help, with the exception of an occasional f-18 here and there, from anybody else, where in a world where now that we've built a lot of strykers and m- raps it's not clear what kind of ground combat vehicle we'll build next. and the hedging strategies for keeping alive key subcontractors, key supplier chains, key technology or competencies are not very well developed. we've always shied away from those because we look at what other economies do and not what

we do. we assumed these things would take care of themselves. that's where i have my greater concern. >> i would like you to take to the question, the administration in the new strategy did for the first time, to the gratification of many did talk about the defense industrial base is actually a very critical factor in the nation's national security future. they made a couple of decisions, for example, putting a bomber program in there to give sort of high-value work to the industry. is what the add administration rhetoric as far as you're concerned or is it something that's going to lead to folks thinking more strategically about the future of the industrial base? >> it's more than rhetoric and i welcome it as a first step, but it's only a first step. the hard questions here tend to be sector by sector. it tends to be when you see a capacity about to disappear, i don't mean so much whether we're building a bomber, i mean whether we can produce a certain high caliber optics or whether or not we can produce emp semi hardened conductors. more specific things. one of the tools we have

available to retain core capabilities. you could even go one step beyond that. you could say look at rare t grateful the chinese gave away their hand that they are willing to play handball, that's a component, to give raw material to a country like japan or even us in the event of a foreign policy scwawbl. these are the more specific areas where the hard decisions are made, not whether or not we build a bomber. i understand the argument for starting a new bomber concept earlier than previously anticipated, but to me that's sort of the high profile, high visibility stuff. the really interesting core technologies have to do with how you make the stealth surfaces for any stealthy aircraft or how you make jet engines or how you integrate avionics in a platform that's already been deployed. those are sort of the one-tier, lower, more specific kinds of questions that we need to get better at addressing where i don't know the administration has really pushed the envelope very far yet.

>> and clearly your point is well taken that the chinese really did overplay their hand which is what got everybody concerned in looking at alternate sources of rare earths. but let me take you in the sort of last minute that we've got here, what is your prognosis -- we're going to have to save money, we're going to have to cut defense spending, what's cut defense spending, what's the best la overall the obama strategy and budget was a reasonably prudent way to minimize the pain associated with taking $487 billion out of a 10-year plan. but on the procurement side, i would offer one modest criticism which is that we saw the typical tendency of many administrations in the past that was, again, exemplified here which is to delay, delay, delay as your primary method of making acquisition changes and saving money in the five-year plan. it doesn't really save you

money down the road. i would have liked to have seen some more decisive thinking on a couple of programs. let me take one example, the latorial combat ship. i don't think it's turning out to be the program we wanted. instead of building 55 or so, i would probably build 15 or 20, maybe even consider thed coast guard's national security cutter for the prototypes if they don't work out as well as they'd like and building a whole different inventory of fast ships that are cheaper, more expendable, that can carry good sensors and do a lot of the shallow water kind of operations we wish and have the latorial combat ship be those in floatillas, like stiletto or seahawk in that decision. that's a real decision as opposed to saying let's delay the lcs, let's delay the f-35, let's, you know, sort of slow down the number of submarines we buy in the five-year plan. it was a little bit too much of punting the ball down the road which is not always terrible

policy, but as a matter of how to keep the industrial base healthy, tends to drive up unit costs and it's not the optimal way to proceed in this kind of environment. >> michael, thanks so much for joining us. we really appreciate it. up next, the wars are winding down, so the decision was made,

we were making a move. we had too. we knew that if we came in too high it would cost us big time. we had to stay low. and boy did we. we locked it in and rode that low rate from navy federal credit union all the way to our first house. it's a split level ranch. it's so cute. three and a half million members. three and a half million stories. navy federal credit union.

just a few weeks ago we were abig board u.s.s. enterprise for the 22nd and final deployment and everyone was talking about how long the ship was going to be at sea. the navy has long sought to cap deployments to six months, as fleets shrink, deployments are getting long. one is seven months and one amphibious assault ship stayed out for 10 1/2 months. once enterprise retires later this year, the problem expects to get worse. the navy will have 10 large carrierings until gerald ford

enters service. sam, welcome aboard. >> thanks, vago, thanks for having me. >> is there anything the navy can do at all about controlling the length of deployments at the end of the day? >> not too ,'qó longer. we're also seeing a lot of evidence that the turn around time between deployments is shortening. there's been two carrier strike groups that have gone out after very abbreviated stays at home. those are the carl vinson and the enterprise strike group. also there was the baton amfibious ready group that returned in february and they did a 10 1/2-month long deployment that was an operational extension and that is one of the longest deployment in decades. the navy recently announced in february that there would be 11 ships over the next two years doing eight month long deployments and eight month long deployments, scheduled deployments to meet their presence requirements. >> that goes to a surge is what it used to be in the past. >> exactly. and those in the past, deployments of that length had

been for wars and crisis, these are scheduled deployments. if there is a crisis, sailors and their families can expect them to be gone even longer. >> and basically it's all driven by central command and combatant commands around the world. >> that's correct. so the navy is doing its best to manage the training, equipping of those ships and the preparations, but ultimately they're having to support the combatant commanders. >> but isn't it almost a linear, you know, the smaller the fleet gets, the longer the deployments are going to grow. is there a fear that deployments are going to get even longer than they are now? >> yes, absolutely. and it is simple math. it's very likely from what we're seeing right now is that the deployments are getting longer and that's an impact of having fewer ships ready for the tasking. there are other options, however. one, of course, is that the navy could go with a more forward-basing model. you know, the navy --

>> reduced transit times, for example? >> right, exactly. reducing the amount of time the ship needs to take to get on station. another option is a rotational crew model forward. the defense secretary has asked the navy to review this. >> gas its popularly known. >> that's exactly right. there is a transfer of a crew in a foreign port and then you get a much longer time on station for a unit that's similar to what the ballistic missile submarines do currently. >> bloom and gold rotations of crews. >> exactly. and the navy is reviewing if they can do that in other parts of the surface fleet. let me ask you about -- go ahead. >> i just want to add that obviously the combat commanders can reduce the overall requirement. right now the navy is committed to the 1.7 carrier requirement in central command through september. >> how is this effecting

retention, recruitment as well as navy families? >> well, it's too soon to say on retention. there's a very limited sampling so far of these longer deployments, and, you know, obviously this puts a strain on sailors and their families, especially in repeat scenarios. however, studies have shown that sailors often enjoy and stay in because of some of these deployment extensions. they're getting to do humanitarian missions, they're getting to do war-fighting combat support missions. those are exactly the kind of things that sailors join to do. now, that said, there are -- these are -- the ones we're talking about are 11, eight- month deployments that are scheduled. in the past when the navy has done those, they've seen negative retention impacts, people have been getting out because they weren't getting home and they weren't getting the rest time they needed. the navy went to the six-month

deployment standard in 1986 and they did that largely because of negative retention impacts. >> sam, thanks very much for joining us. we really appreciate it. coming up in my notebook, why it's going to take more than

america has used its precision strike, night vision and connectivity monopoly as a key war-fighting advantage for two decades. but what happens after potential enemies gain similar capabilities? it's already happened. in 2006 hezbollah used commercially-available night vision and communications systems and rockets and missiles against israel. israel has sought better defenses like iron dome which last month intercepted 60 of 75 rockets fired from gaza, an 80% success rate. but in 2006, hezbollah fired thousands of rockets, downing

80% of 75 is different than 80% of 4,000. defensive systems are effective, but can cost millions apiece. so if an attacker launches vast numbers of relatively precise but affordable weapons, the math and the odds favor the attacker. asem et rickal strategies work on imposing cost on an adversary. in the cold war, spending on undersea and stelt missile systems bankrupt the soviet union. more recently iraqi and afghanistan insurgents imposed high costs on u.s. fofers forces with roadside bomb bombs. this threat demands a layered threat with lasers, rail guns, jamming systems and innovative strategies. otherwise nations that now enjoy the benefits of the precision revolution could end up on the receiving end of an insurmountable cost equation. thanks for joining us for "this week in defense news." i'm vago muradian. you can watch this program on defensenewstv.com or e-mail me at vago@defensenewstv.com. i'll be back next week at the same time. until then, have