WASHIINGTON — A new science and technology strategy [PDF] released this week by the White House outlines a comprehensive, four-tiered priority scheme for military tech, from AI to quantum.
The National Security Science & Technology Strategy, as the 24-page document is titled, also takes a balanced approach to acquisition. While the NSSTS endorses the new wave of high-speed, low-cost innovations the Pentagon is pursuing, especially in expendable drones, it also emphasizes the continued importance of traditional high-cost, “exquisite” mega-programs — even when the threat they’re countering is relatively cheap.
“We will seek optimal combinations of lower-cost (and sometimes lower-tech or attritable) platforms that can be deployed in larger numbers and complement more limited numbers of sophisticated platforms,” the strategy says. This argument is essentially an update of the traditional “hi-lo mix” that dates to the 1970s, when the Air Force decided to buy both expensive F-15s and larger numbers of cheaper F-16s.
Of course, today’s technology is very different from 50 years ago, and the new strategy reflects that. Most obviously, it puts an emphasis on artificial intelligence, which Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has publicly embraced (with the exception of Anthropic). But new strategy goes beyond AI boosterism to lay out four levels of priorities, from immediate, first-order needs, to second-tier but still “critical” techs, a third-tier of “key enabling technologies,” and finally “potentially transformative emerging technologies” to keep an eye on for the long term.
