Sponsored by Bertin Exensor
www.exensor.com
———————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————
16 Jan 25. Trump’s Pentagon should expand innovation hub, tech panel says. The Defense Innovation Board, chaired by billionaire Michael Bloomberg, recommends the Pentagon invest more in its Defense Innovation Unit. (Photo by JLN Photography/Shutterstock)
The Pentagon should expand the role of the Defense Innovation Unit — and increase its budget — to help more non-traditional companies navigate the Defense Department’s bureaucracy, according to a new report from DOD’s technology advisory board.
The Defense Innovation Board’s report, released Jan. 13, offers suggestions for how the Pentagon can broaden the pool of companies it works with to include firms, small and large, that have not typically been part of the defense industrial base. The board, chaired by billionaire Michael Bloomberg, recommends the department give DIU — its innovation arm — a more central, sherpa-like role in helping new vendors work with the Pentagon.
DIU already serves as a hub to guide nontraditional firms trying to sell to the military services, and its influence in the defense innovation ecosystem has grown significantly over the past few years. In 2023, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin elevated the organization to report directly to his office. Then, in fiscal 2024, Congress boosted its budget to $983 million – a major increase for the small office.
DIU now plays a key role in major DOD initiatives, such as the Replicator drone program, and is charged with coordinating the many innovation entities dispersed throughout the services.
However, the report argues, DIU’s staffing and infrastructure don’t match the scope of its task. Members of the panel, which includes business executives and former Pentagon leaders, say the organization needs a bigger budget.
“DIU is well-positioned to continue catalyzing the DOD’s future engagement with non-traditional vendors,” the report states. “However, DIU still requires additional staffing and infrastructure to provide an end-to-end ‘concierge service’ for non-traditional vendors at scale.”
As part of the cross-service, sherpa-like role that the Defense Innovation Board envisions for DIU, the organization would focus on helping companies develop rapid prototypes and transition them to production, helping firms determine where to invest as they look to deliver capabilities at a larger scale.
Elsewhere in the report, the board offers broader recommendations for President-elect Donald Trump’s incoming national security team. The board recommended Trump’s administration train program offices to change the way they work with nontraditional vendors and to reduce “burdensome, confusing” contracting processes.
The board further suggests that the Pentagon craft a plan to buy and field between five and 10 “game-changing” capabilities by the end of 2027. They recommend the Defense Department secure funding from Congress to support its plan and leverage organizations like DIU and the Office of Strategic Capital to coordinate and help finance the effort.
“The DoD must … dramatically accelerate its efforts to field a focused set of emerging capabilities essential to preventing Chinese overmatch during this decisive decade,” the board said in its report. “This requires a fundamental shift from past initiatives and approaches to prototyping and procuring game-changing technologies – including adopting new partnership models, scaling successful initiatives, and disrupting the service research labs.” (Source: Defense News)
16 Jan 25. Defense Department Bids Farewell to Outgoing Commander in Chief. At Joint Base Myer-Henderson Hall, Virginia, today, the secretary of defense and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff bid farewell to President Joe Biden, who has served as commander in chief of the U.S. military for four years.
The leaders praised Biden’s contributions to the military and support for service members.
The president secured funds needed to support the department’s mission, equipment and troops, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Air Force Gen. CQ Brown, Jr., said. He also ensured the U.S. military remains prepared for whatever challenges are on the horizon.
“President Biden’s work with Congress on bipartisan legislation has set our military on a course to confront the threats of tomorrow, to ensure our warfighters are ready when the nation calls,” Brown said.
“He supported significant investments in shipbuilding to modernize and expand our naval fleet. We are on track to increase the number and lethality of our fighters and bombers and to expand our space domain capabilities.”
Brown said DOD is now able to increase long-range fire capability, implement next-generation combat vehicles and improve air and missile defense. The department is also modernizing its nuclear triad. He attributed all of this to Biden’s leadership.
But Biden’s impact can be felt on more than just improved equipment, the chairman said.
“President Biden has worked tirelessly to care for our men and women in uniform and their families, improving the quality of military housing, providing historic pay raises and implementing new programs to expand the benefits available to all service members,” he said.
Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III said the president dramatically strengthened America’s global network of allies and partners.
“He rallied the free world to help Ukraine fight for its freedom after Putin’s indefensible invasion positioned America to succeed in strategic competition with the People’s Republic of China,” the secretary said.
Under Biden, Austin said, NATO expanded with the inclusion of Sweden and Finland. And when Hamas attacked Israel, the president demonstrated America’s commitment to Israel’s security.
“He helped defend Israel from outrageous direct attacks by Iran, and he’s prevented the Middle East from erupting into an all-out regional war,” Austin said. “And he has just secured a ceasefire that will stop the fighting in Gaza, surge more humanitarian aid to suffering Palestinian civilians and reunite the hostages with their families.”
Austin said he learned a lot from working with the president over the past four years.
“Mr. President, it has been an honor to serve with you,” the secretary told Biden. “I hope that future presidents and secretaries of defense will enjoy similar relationships of trust, candor and friendship. Our entire department stands together today. We salute your service to the republic that we defend, we are deeply, deeply grateful for your love of our troops.”
Biden told the troops gathered at Joint Base Myer-Henderson Hall that serving as their commander in chief has been the greatest honor of his life.
“While I’m deeply grateful for your thanks and affection,” the president said, “I’m here to thank you for your service to our nation for allowing me to bear witness to your courage, your commitment, your character.”
Biden thanked service members for, among other things, concluding the 20-year conflict in Afghanistan, the department’s efforts to defend Ukraine against Russia and Israel against Hamas, for operations in the Red Sea to defend commerce there against Houthi attacks, and for their work in growing the strength and size of the NATO alliance.
“Everything I and others have asked of you, you’ve done … with honor, commitment, grit and guts,” he said. “Let me close with a final request. I say it not as your president or commander in chief. I say it as a man who spent 50 years of his life serving his country in a different way: remember your oath.”
The president said the U.S. military is the strongest, best-trained, best-equipped fighting force in the world, but that is not what makes it the best military in the world.
“It’s our values — American values — our commitment to honor, to integrity, to unity, to protecting and defending not a person or a party or a place, but an idea,” he said.
That idea, Biden said, part of the Declaration of Independence, is that all Americans are created equal and are endowed with certain inalienable rights, including life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
“That’s the idea that generations of service members have fought for, an idea you’ve sworn an oath to defend,” the president said. “As a nation, we’ve never fully lived up to that idea, but we’ve never, ever, ever walked away from it. And our country is counting on you to ensure that that will always be true.” (Source: U.S. DoD)
14 Jan 25. Defense Innovation Board Recommendations Continue to Advance National Security Efforts. Over the past three years, the Defense Innovation Board has been a powerful advisory resource to advance innovation within the Defense Department, and to provide the secretary and deputy secretaries of defense with independent, practical, and actionable advice and recommendations about how to make use of that innovation.
“The Defense Innovation Board has played a pivotal role in driving innovation.” said Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III. “Over the past four years, the DIB’s diverse expertise and practical recommendations have provided the department with valuable insights and actionable strategies to accelerate innovation at speed and scale, ensuring that the DOD remains at the forefront of technological advancements and prepared to meet the challenges of the future.”
The board originally stood up in February 2016. After a brief hiatus and subsequent reappointed in 2021, the insights and recommendations provided by the DIB have continued to strengthen department efforts to scale and adopt innovative technologies and systems.
“Innovation is a never-ending imperative for DOD, and I’m deeply proud of the progress we’ve made over the last four years — substantially lowering barriers to innovation across the DOD-enterprise, from the boardroom to the battlespace,” said Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks. “There’s no doubt about it: innovation adoption is fundamentally a change-management problem. That’s why we’ve employed an effective theory of change — building trust and confidence across the defense enterprise, demonstrating what’s possible, rewarding game-changers, and promoting the best ideas and success through teamwork.”
Board Chairman Michael M. Bloomberg was nominated to lead the board in February 2022 by Austin. Since that time, he has guided board efforts related to artificial intelligence, software, data, digital transformation, culture change and workforce development.
“Serving on the Defense Innovation Board has been an honor and a responsibility we committed to in support of our men and women in uniform,” Bloomberg said.
Since its reappointment, the DIB has delivered eight significant studies with more than 150 strategic and tactical recommendations meant to breach innovation barriers and furnish state-of-the-art capabilities to the warfighter more quickly and at scale.
In July 2023, for instance, the DIB delivered a study titled “National Defense Science and Technology Strategy: An Innovation Strategy for the Decisive Decade,” which focused on aligning the department to its first congressionally authorized NDSTS. A second study, titled “Strategic Investment Capital Task Force Study: Terraforming the Valley of Death,” discussed the time it takes for a contractor within the industrial base to transition a prototype or commercially available product to a DOD contract.
In January 2024, the study “Lowering Barriers to Innovation” examined key domains related to innovation, including leadership, security, enterprise license agreements and dual-use technologies, for instance. That report also outlined specific barriers to innovation, business outcomes that might result from the removal of those barriers and pragmatic steps for implementation.
The “Building a DOD Data Economy” study, also made available in January 2024, focused on establishing reliable and scalable data access, and treating data as a product to support the warfighter. That study provided best practices adopted from industry and adapted to the DOD context in areas such as leadership, people, process, technology, incentives and implementation.
From those four reports alone, nearly half of their 73 recommendations have since been implemented within the department.
Last summer, the DIB published “Optimizing Innovation Cooperation with Allies and Partners,” which responded to challenges such as supply chain issues, comparative technical weaknesses, and threats to sustainable and interoperable partnerships. By addressing these challenges, the DIB pointed to the imperative of innovation with key allies through NATO, the Ukraine Defense Contact Group, the Australia-U.K.-U.S. partnership, and the Partnership for Indo-Pacific Industrial Resilience. The report’s recommendations ensure those partnerships remain enduring and scalable.
The “Aligning Incentives to Drive Faster Tech Adoption” study, also published last summer, focuses on aligning incentives to drive faster technology adoption within the department. That report identified gaps between current DOD and industry incentive structures and developed a communication and rollout plan to disseminate and scale these aligned incentives centering on leadership providing top cover, embracing calculated risk and iterating to learn from failure.
Since the publication of these two studies, a third of their 65 recommendations have been adopted for implementation.
This month, the DIB published two new significant studies. The first of those, “Scaling Nontraditional Defense Innovation,” focuses on using contracting to procure and field commercial and dual-use capabilities. A second report, “A Pathway to Scaling Unmanned Weapon Systems,” examines the essential elements needed to achieve superiority in manufacturing, acquiring and fielding of unmanned systems.
The DIB’s work in areas across military innovation and emerging technology adoption has been instrumental in advancing the department’s innovation agenda, Austin said.
Additional information can be found on DIB reports and recommendations. (Source: U.S. DoD)
13 Jan 25. Austin recommends $50bn boost above US 2026 defense spending projections, Bloomberg News reports. Outgoing U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has recommended a boost in defense spending by about $50 bn more than the current 2026 projections, a move that could push the defense budget beyond $1trn in the coming years, Bloomberg News reported on Monday. In a Nov. 27 letter to the Office of Management and Budget that was seen by Bloomberg, Austin recommended leaving President-elect Trump’s incoming administration a proposed five-year defense plan that starts with $926.5 bn in fiscal 2026, compared with a projected $876.8bn. The Pentagon and the Office of Management and Budget did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
“I have not wavered in my assessment that meeting the demands of our strategy requires real growth” above inflation “and sustained new investments in fiscal years 2026-2030,” Austin wrote in the letter, according to Bloomberg.
President Joe Biden’s 2025 defense and national security budget request released in March last year, was just 1% higher than the previous year, owing to a two-year budget deal struck in mid-2023 that limited the budget to a 1% increase. (Source: glstrade.com/Reuters)
13 Jan 25. Defense Innovation Board Releases Two Studies on Scaling Innovation in Nontraditional Industry and Drone Manufacturing. Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III and Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks hosted the Defense Innovation Board (DIB) for its winter Board meeting in the Pentagon on January 13th, 2025. Underscoring Secretary Austin’s commitment to defending the nation through innovation and modernization, the DIB, chaired by Michael R. Bloomberg, discussed its efforts to catalyze and empower defense innovation leaders within the DoD and the defense industrial base. During the public remarks portion, Deputy Secretary Hicks reflected on the emphasis she and Secretary Austin placed on solving the Department’s innovation challenges over the last four years.
“Innovation is a never-ending imperative for DoD, and I’m deeply proud of the progress we’ve made over the last four years — substantially lowering barriers to innovation across the DoD-enterprise, from the boardroom to the battlespace,” said Deputy Secretary Hicks. “There’s no doubt about it: innovation adoption is fundamentally a change-management problem. That’s why we’ve employed an effective theory of change — building trust and confidence across the defense enterprise, demonstrating what’s possible, rewarding game-changers, and promoting the best ideas and success through teamwork.”
The Board presented its two latest studies on Scaling Nontraditional Defense Innovation and A Pathway to Scaling Unmanned Weapons Systems. The two studies were tasked by the Hon. Heidi Shyu, Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering, in September 2024.
This full Board meeting marked the DIB’s eighth since October 2022 and the release of eight studies under Mr. Bloomberg.
At today’s public meeting, called into session by DIB Designated Federal Officer Dr. Marina Theodotou, the DIB members shared perspectives on the current state of DoD efforts to partner with nontraditional defense companies, particularly developers and manufacturers of unmanned and autonomous weapons systems, along with insights for rapidly scaling manufacturing of critical and disruptive capabilities. Mr. Bloomberg called on DoD, Congress, and other leaders focused on technology and innovation to work faster to address the nation’s defense procurement challenges. The Board urged the Department to eliminate unnecessary bureaucracy and implement more efficient processes and procedures for ensuring that our servicemembers have access to cutting-edge capabilities. Members emphasized the urgency of this task for ensuring U.S. technological leadership and deterring and winning conflicts. Mr. Bloomberg and the Board expressed their appreciation for the insights and support of innovators within the Department and across industry, academia, and allies and partners. The Defense Innovation Board, established in 2016, provides the Secretary of Defense, Deputy Secretary, and other Department leaders independent advice on how to catalyze innovation in DoD. More information about the DIB and the public meeting is available here: https://innovation.defense.gov/(Source: U.S. DoD)
13 Jan 25. Kendall floats F-35 successor, casts 2050 vision for Air Force. The Air Force under a Trump administration could choose to pursue a more advanced successor to the F-35 instead of the costly Next Generation Air Dominance platform to maintain air superiority, outgoing Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall said Monday. Kendall suggested alternative paths for the Air Force’s future combat fleet at a Center for Strategic and International Studies event at the think tank’s Washington headquarters, in which he outlined a report on where the department needs to be in the next 25 years.
Authored by Kendall, the report, titled “The Department of the Air Force in 2050,” amounts to a sort of valedictory in the waning days of his leadership of the department — and a warning of the threats it could face in decades to come.
“The [Air Force and Space Force] missions don’t fundamentally change [by then], but both services need to go through a transformation” by 2050, Kendall said.
The Air Force will need to procure and maintain the Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile and B-21 Raider stealth bomber as the core of its portion of the nation’s nuclear triad, Kendall said. It must also accelerate its shift to standoff capabilities that can be launched outside an enemy’s territory, as well as mature survivable stand-in capabilities such as Next Generation Air Dominance, or NGAD, drone wingmen known as collaborative combat aircraft, or CCA, and a next-generation refueling tanker.
Kendall’s report largely calls for continuing the Space Force’s current mission — just at a larger scale and with new architectures and tactics. It predicts growth in the number of satellites in orbit and in the size of the force that will operate them. While today, there are 10,000 guardians in the Space Force, he suggested that by 2050, there will be “multiples of this number.”
China will likely remain the “pacing challenge” for the U.S. and its allies, Kendall said. He predicted China will continue to develop militarily and be able to challenge the U.S. and its allies not only in the Indo-Pacific region but worldwide. Russia will also remain hostile and a “serious threat,” he said, but its economic weaknesses could hinder its military ambitions.
But many “wildcards” exist that make it hard to predict 25 years in the future, Kendall said, such as unforeseen technological advances, a potential nuclear exchange between nations or a Chinese attack on Taiwan. And the department needs to make several decisions to prepare for the possibility of a very different future.
Options on NGAD
One of the most pressing concerns for the Air Force — which will ultimately be up to the incoming Trump administration to decide — is how to modernize its fighter force to keep control of the skies in a future war.
For years, the service has planned to create NGAD as a family of systems with an advanced sixth-generation platform flying alongside CCAs to replace the F-22 Raptor, which was designed three decades ago to specialize in air superiority. The service originally planned to award an NGAD contract in 2024.
However, Kendall said Monday the service would have needed more than $20 bn added to its budget for research and development for NGAD. The potential cost of the platform turned out to be prohibitively expensive, about three times that of the F-35, which would have only allowed the Air Force to buy a small fleet of NGAD fighters.
Kendall put NGAD on hold while the service reconsidered its options and consulted with multiple airpower experts, but felt it was best to let the next administration make the final decision on how to proceed.
The Air Force felt there was “value” in going ahead with NGAD, Kendall said — but without a budget increase, the service needed to pay for other priorities first.
There are alternatives to an F-22 replacement like NGAD, Kendall said, such as another aircraft that would be an F-35 successor. That successor could, like the F-35, be a multirole aircraft that would be designed for controlling CCAs, he said — and could be “much less expensive” than NGAD.
Another alternative could be to further boost the Air Force’s long-range strike capability, Kendall said. Those capabilities could include long-range cruise missiles.
“That’s something we could do in any event,” Kendall said. “It’s relatively inexpensive, and probably makes some sense to do more that way.”
Kendall expressed hesitancy toward suggestions from some — including Trump adviser Elon Musk — that the Air Force should abandon efforts to build another post-F-35 crewed fighter and instead focus on drones.
“I don’t think we’re quite there yet,” Kendall said. “I think that could be considered.”
But a shift away from an Air Force with pilots would require a major cultural shift, Kendall said — one for which he’s not sure the service is ready.
“The culture and history and the legacy of the Air Force, which I have been steeped in … for my whole life, really, is about the role of the pilot,” Kendall said. “Letting go, to some degree, of that, is an incredibly difficult emotional thing for people to do.”
Space Force grows up
Although Kendall’s report doesn’t predict major changes to the Space Force’s mission, it does call for growth and a sense of urgency in response to aggression in the domain from China and Russia.
The document points to a “revolution” in space technology over the last decade that has changed the cost equation for accessing and operating in the space environment, and Kendall said he expects that to continue to shape global reliance on the domain over the next 25 years.
“We’re going to need a much bigger, much more capable, much more powerful Space Force,” he said at CSIS. “That’s a transformation that’s already started, and we’ve made some pretty good progress on that since just five years again when the Space Force was created and particularly in the last few years as we’ve moved to acquire and field distributed, resilient architectures.”
As part of that growth, Kendall said, the service will need to “expand substantially” its inventory of offensive, or counterspace, capabilities to defend against and respond to aggression from China and other adversaries. That could include a range of capabilities, he wrote in the report, from on-orbit kinetic weapons to others based on the ground. The service should also build improved battle damage assessment capabilities to mitigate any debris created by destroying satellites.
Another growth area for the service is surveillance and targeting — a mission that has traditionally been performed by aircraft. Under Kendall’s tenure, the Air Force has taken steps to shift that work to space-based sensors and communication networks.
The service will also need to invest in more automation of its space domain awareness systems, which observe, track and catalogue objects in space, Kendall said Monday.
“Trying to monitor all that and track it without a high degree of automation is impossible,” he said. “We’ve got to go much more in that direction.”
The report predicts that by 2050, common space-based sensors will share data with the Defense Department and intelligence community. Commercial data will also feed into those systems, making it harder for an enemy to decide which parts of the architecture to target.
Kendall’s report also suggests that long- and short-range missiles will continue to be the “preferred weapon,” making the Space Force’s missile warning and tracking capabilities increasingly important for the joint force. Those capabilities include space-based sensors that can detect and track ballistic missiles as well as hypersonic weapons, which can travel and maneuver at speeds above Mach 5.
“The resilient architectures being fielded now will evolve and be updated multiple times between now and 2050,” the report states. “Because of their importance to nuclear stability, these systems will be a high priority for reliability and resilience, but they also must be adequately survivable in a conventional conflict.” (Source: Defense News)
10 Jan 25. Securing Critical Minerals Vital to National Security, Official Says. Secure sourcing of critical minerals is critical to the defense industrial base, which uses them to produce virtually every Defense Department system, from unmanned aerial systems and fighter jets to submarines, said Adam Burstein. Burstein, technical director for strategic and critical materials in the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Industrial Base Policy, spoke today at the Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island.
“Recent disruptions adversarial actions have underscored what we have long recognized, that it is more urgent than ever to build capability and resilience in supply chains for critical minerals,” he said.
To do so, DOD must address challenges. Besides adversarial disruptions of critical minerals, there are other problems related to critical minerals like insufficient labor and training in the U.S. to meet defense production demand, and inadequate U.S. and allied sourcing for key materials and production, Burstein said.
An example of disruption vulnerabilities, he said, has been China’s attempts to impose export bans on key materials such as gallium, germanium and antimony.
” demonstrated China’s willingness to cause such a disruption to critical U.S. supply chains and highlights the urgency of securing our supply chains against such tactics,” he said.
Industrial-based policies focus on increased domestic mining and processing and align with broader DOD objectives to secure critical supply chains, he said.
For example, since 2020 DOD has awarded more than $439m to establish domestic rare earth element supply chains, he said.
There are 17 elements on the periodic table referred to as rare earth. DOD needs nearly all of them in some capacity, he noted. To address this critical need, the department has embarked on a five-year rare earth investment strategy to build domestic capacity. There is only one rare earth mine currently active in the United States, he noted. Partnering with allies is also key to success, he said. Earlier this year, Congress added the United Kingdom and Australia as domestic sources, in addition to Canada, for purposes of the Defense Production Act.
“This means we can now make direct investments in our closest partners and reflects the enduring commitment of the U.S. government to partner with key allies over the long term,” Burstein said.
For instance, last year, the U.S. issued multiple DPA awards to projects based in Canada, which also received joint funding from the Canadian government. These projects are targeted to increase the secure supply of key materials, including cobalt, graphite and tungsten, he said.
“By partnering with our close allies, we can capitalize on opportunities to leverage each other’s strengths to mutually reinforce our domestic and allied defense industrial bases,” he said.
This includes 19 security supply cooperation arrangements that the U.S. has with partner nations, which allow DOD to request priority delivery for DOD contracts, subcontracts, and allow the signatory nations to request the same of the United States, he said.
“These agreements further demonstrate DOD is committed to strengthening and expanding existing alliances and forging new partnerships that increase capabilities and strengthen defense industrial bases,” he said.
Stockpiling of critical minerals is another DOD strategy that reduces risk from unanticipated demand spikes or supply chain disruptions, essentially acting as shock absorbers, Burstein said. (Source: U.S. DoD)
10 Jan 25. Joint Press Statement on the Fourth Nuclear Consultative Group Meeting. The United States and the Republic of Korea (ROK) convened the fourth Nuclear Consultative Group (NCG) in Washington, D.C. on January 10, 2025. The NCG is an enduring bilateral consultative body to strengthen extended deterrence that contributes to peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula and in the region.
The meeting was co-chaired by Ms. Cara Abercrombie, who is performing the duties of Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, and Dr. Cho Chang Lae, ROK Deputy Minister for National Defense Policy. Other participants included U.S. and ROK officials from the U.S. National Security Council, the ROK National Security Office, and relevant defense, foreign affairs, intelligence, and military authorities.
During the meeting, both sides welcomed NCG work that has bolstered nuclear deterrence and the response capabilities of the Alliance over the last year through in-depth discussions on all areas of extended deterrence, including information sharing, consultative mechanisms, and joint planning and execution.
The United States reaffirmed its commitment to the ROK is enduring and ironclad. And any nuclear attack by the DPRK will be met with a swift, overwhelming, and decisive response. The United States reiterated that any nuclear attack by the DPRK against the United States or its allies is unacceptable and will result in the end of that regime. The U.S. commitment to extended deterrence to the ROK is backed by the full range of U.S. capabilities, including nuclear. Moreover, both sides noted the continuously strengthened extended deterrence cooperation between the United States and the ROK through the ongoing work of existing consultation bodies, including the NCG, the Extended Deterrence Strategy and Consultation Group, and the Security Consultative Meeting.
The NCG co-chairs reviewed the progress on NCG workstreams, including on security and information sharing protocols; nuclear and strategic planning; conventional-nuclear integration (CNI); exercises, simulations, and trainings; nuclear consultation and strategic communication processes during crises and contingencies; the establishment of dedicated secure communication systems; and strategic messaging. NCG Principals also discussed various efforts to maintain and strengthen nuclear deterrence policy and posture, in accordance with the United States and Republic of Korea Guidelines for Nuclear Deterrence and Nuclear Operations on the Korean Peninsula (Guidelines), which is a key document for enhancing U.S.-ROK extended deterrence cooperation in an integrated manner.
The NCG co-chairs applauded the progress towards nuclear and strategic planning, especially on the CNI workstream developed by defense components, including ROK Strategic Command, U.S.-ROK Combined Forces Command, U.S. Forces Korea, U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, and U.S. Strategic Command. This includes working in lockstep to closely connect the capabilities and planning activities of the new ROK Strategic Command to the Alliance’s combined defense posture.
The NCG Principals assessed that NCG activities, like the Nuclear Deterrence Immersion Course, the NCG Simulation, and a military-to-military table-top exercise (TTX), contribute to deepening cooperative and coordinated decision-making on nuclear deterrence and, developing a joint approach to planning for nuclear contingencies.
The United States also reaffirmed the commitment to enhance the regular visibility of U.S. strategic assets to the Korean Peninsula. Furthermore, the co-chairs decided to continue advancing ways to conduct U.S.-ROK conventional and nuclear integration exercises and trainings.
Both sides agreed that the NCG is an enduring bilateral consultative body, tailored to the U.S.-ROK Alliance, that has deepened U.S.-ROK extended deterrence cooperation. Furthermore, the co-chairs underscored that the NCG will continue to function as a solid foundation for strengthening U.S.-ROK extended deterrence in an integrated manner. The NCG Principals agreed to continue making swift, substantive progress on NCG workstreams, including, based on the outcomes of the 56th Meeting of the Security Consultative Meeting.
The NCG co-chairs approved an NCG workplan and key activities for the first half of 2025, which include convening the fifth principal-level NCG meeting in the ROK.
An NCG fact sheet, outlining key workstreams, participants, and accomplishments can be found here: chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://media.defense.gov/2025/Jan/10/2003626634/-1/-1/1/THE-UNITED-STATES-OF-AMERICA-REPUBLIC-OF-KOREA-NUCLEAR-CONSULTATIVE-GROUP-FACT-SHEET.PDF (Source: U.S. DoD)
10 Jan 25. Hicks Outlines Plan Tied to Strategic Competition With China. Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks spoke about “four lessons” she views as critical for prevailing in the U.S. strategic competition with China during a keynote address today at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Washington. Titled “Outpacing the PRC: Lessons Learned for Strategic Competition,” Hicks said that staying focused on top priorities, appreciating that execution or delivery is paramount, recognizing that the U.S. has strong competitive advantages it must leverage and attending to one’s own actions and words are all necessary to prevail in such a competition. Pointing out that “competition” is not synonymous with “conflict,” Hicks said nobody should seek the devastation that armed conflict with China would bring.
“Instead,” Hicks said, “we want the leadership to wake up each day, consider the risks of aggression and think to themselves, ‘Today is not the day’; and for them to think that — today and every day — between now and 2027, in 2035, 2049 and beyond.”
In terms of staying focused on priorities, Hicks pointed out that the challenge posed by China isn’t by any means new, and that the Pentagon and multiple administrations roughly over the past quarter century have been tracking China’s determination to build a modern military.
“So, came into office determined to build on the progress of our predecessors — from both parties — and to unlock necessary changes,” Hicks said.
“Senior decision makers must rigorously align ends, ways and means to ensure the strategy itself remains right and DOD can deliver on it,” she continued, adding that it’s the responsibility of those same decision makers to drive change from the top if the strategy isn’t working.
On the topic of execution and delivery, Hicks listed numerous examples of capabilities the U.S. military has produced during the ongoing competition with China.
“From day one, we’ve focused relentlessly on driving changes needed to outpace the PRC and ensure our enduring military advantage,” Hicks said. “The result has been a more modernized, lethal, agile force across our capabilities, operational concepts, posture and much more.”
Hicks also cautioned, however, that China’s advanced methods of intellectual property theft and its large-scale industrial capacity make China “talented fast followers.”
“So, we must be careful about what we say and what we show, because a long-term investment can only be revealed once,” Hicks said. “And we must be constantly pushing to grow our lead.”
Turning next to leveraging competitive advantages, Hicks explained how the U.S.’ strong alliances across the globe prove to be a force multiplier that makes the country stronger.
“Around the world, America’s friends and allies have been substantially contributing to the common defense … And when Beijing sees — as they did last year — navy ships from Canada, Germany and peacefully sailing through the Taiwan Strait, they’re reminded that America is hardly the only democracy that wants to see stability and prosperity prevail over chaos and conflict,” Hicks said.
She also explained that, domestically, DOD working across government, industry, academia and non-profits — as well as partnering with Congress and other government agencies — is also a good example of leveraging advantages.
In addressing her fourth insight, Hicks cautioned the audience to attend to their actions and words, so far as how it relates to how China might view them.
“After all, we want our operations, activities, investments and messages to maintain deterrence — not needlessly provoke Beijing into starting a war,” Hicks said.
“We don’t believe conflict is inevitable, but it’s our job to prevent war by always being ready for war if it comes. So, where Beijing might see DOD anticipating a potential conflict, that’s because we’re concerned Beijing will instigate one,” Hicks explained, adding that both the U.S. and China must work hard to avoid such understandings in that dynamic.
With her tour as deputy defense secretary winding down over the next 10 days, Hicks wrapped up her remarks praising the progress that the men and women who make up DOD have made over the past four years, while also providing words of encouragement for those who will contribute to national security in the future.
“As I leave this, my third tour in government … I will be watching for my successors to build on our progress with their own. I will be rooting for those who continue to stand the watch for our nation: our warfighters, civilians, military families and all who support them,” Hicks said.
“And they will remain in my prayers, as they help defend us all.” (Source: U.S. DoD)
—————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————–
Founded in 1987, Exensor Technology is a world leading supplier of Networked Unattended Ground Sensor (UGS) Systems providing tailored sensor solutions to customers all over the world. From our Headquarters in Lund Sweden, our centre of expertise in Network Communications at Communications Research Lab in Kalmar Sweden and our Production site outside of Basingstoke UK, we design, develop and produce latest state of the art rugged UGS solutions at the highest quality to meet the most stringent demands of our customers. Our systems are in operation and used in a wide number of Military as well as Homeland Security applications worldwide. The modular nature of the system ensures any external sensor can be integrated, providing the user with a fully meshed “silent” network capable of self-healing. Exensor Technology will continue to lead the field in UGS technology, provide our customers with excellent customer service and a bespoke package able to meet every need.
A CNIM Group Company
————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————