Defense
Defense
An Agile US Department of Defense: A Message from Heidi Shyu, Under Secretary of Defense for Research & Engineering
On Wednesday, April 27, AUVSI's XPONENTIAL featured keynote speaker was Heidi Shyu, the Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering, U.S. Department of Defense. In her role at the Pentagon, she works towards technological superiority of the U.S. military and is responsible for the research, development, and prototyping activities across the DoD enterprise.
She mentioned that DoD is now using the AeroVironment RQ-20 Puma, which is a small, battery powered, hand-launched unmanned aircraft system used for surveillance and intelligence gathering using an electro-optical and infrared camera.
FY 2023 Budget for Uncrewed Vehicles: AUVSI's Preliminary Review
The President’s Budget was released on March 28th which proposes $127.3 billion in discretionary and $1.7 trillion in mandatory budget authority for Fiscal Year 2023. Of that $1.7 trillion, $773 billion is dedicated to the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) which represents a 4% increase relative to the FY 2022 funding enacted less than two weeks earlier. In FY 2022, research conducted by AUVSI showed that just under $9 billion was appropriated to support the procurement and research, development, test, and evaluation (RDT&E) of uncrewed vehicles and associated technologies in the DOD.
Distributed Warfare and Uncrewed Systems in the New Era of Strategic Competition
As the Pentagon moves resources to address the new era of strategic competition, uncrewed systems – in the air, in the sea, and on land – will be the tip of the sword for our sailors, marines, soldiers and airmen. This era is evolving to one that is multi-domain, features rising peer and near-peer adversaries, and is driven by industry innovation.
For the U.S. to maintain its security advantage in a multi-domain battlespace where force overmatch is no longer an absolute, a strategic shift needs to take place from a reliance on large and expensive traditional military assets to a distributed warfare and force structure.
