Creative Disruptors in the Desert Remarks
The Creative Disrupters in the Desert conference was hosted on February 23–24, 2024 in the city of La Quinta, which is located in the Coachella Valley portion of the 41st Congressional District. Hosted by the Creative Defense Foundation, the event brought together traditional and non-traditional defense industry with government officials from Congress and the Department of Defense. A series of panels brought together industry, venture capital, and government officials for frank conversations regarding the challenges facing innovation. Chairman Calvert and Ranking Member McCollum were featured as honorary co-chairs. Other notable speakers included Palmer Luckey of Anduril, Congressman Mike Garcia, the Honorable Heidi Shyu, Doug Beck, retired Admiral John Richardson, and number of other senior leaders.
Here are Rep. Calvert's remarks from the conference:
Good morning. It’s great to see so many colleagues, partners, and friends here in my district for this Disrupters in the Desert conference. Thank you to the Creative Defense Foundation for honoring me as a co-chair.
It’s great to be in the California desert, discussing the future of military technology and the glass we are going to have to break to bring the Department of Defense along. This is no doubt going to be the premier event for this area — I only hope it will help raise awareness for other local events, like this music festival you may have heard of called Coachella.
There’s a growing movement to rebrand this region from the Inland to the Innovation Empire. Riverside and San Bernardino counties will grow twice as fast as the rest of Southern California in the next 25 years. Leading the charge is the Tech Bridge at Naval Surface Warfare Center Corona, run by Troy Clarke who is here today.
Troy and the Tech Bridge stakeholders here today, please stand so everyone can recognize you.
The innovation conversations we are going to have today are the kind of frank, transparent, and productive discussions that our country needs.
The past two years have awoken the world to an uncomfortable reality — war is always an option. The end of the Cold War did not mark the end of great power competition.
Today marks two years since Russia initiated its invasion of Ukraine. Israel is in the fourth month of its war against Hamas terrorists. Iran is supplying drones to Russia, while coordinating attacks by its proxies which have killed three American servicemembers. North Korea continues a rapid and alarming pace of missile tests. And of course, China is preparing for war over Taiwan as soon as 2027.
We are not positioned to meet these 21st century challenges. The machine we relied on to prevail against the Soviet Union is still in place, entrenched and largely unchanged in the Pentagon. The marginal organizational and process adjustments the military bureaucracy made during the war on terrorism did not seek, nor accidentally achieve, the changes modern times require.
Instead, we have been leveraging and degrading our inherited arsenal and economic strength to outlast and overmatch our lesser-empowered adversaries. This is the approach of a superpower in decline, not one poised to fight for its inheritance.
As the Chairman of the House Appropriations Defense Subcommittee, I am committed to reverse this decline.
The machine keeps spinning in the five-sided building, barely able to keep pace with the task of resourcing and replacing old capabilities with new models.
The consolidation of defense industry has resulted in a lack of productive competition. An over-reliance on tried-and-true methods has incurred exactly the risk it sought to avoid. With processes designed to focus on big dollar, long lead-time investments, innovation is slow and often abandoned.
While we’ve slowed down, our enemies have caught up, often picking up where we left off years ago. Russia’s plans to put a nuclear weapon in orbit has roots in the discarded American experiment Starfish Prime from 1962.
China’s fractional orbital bombardment hypersonic test two years ago stems from America’s discovery, and subsequent abandonment, of hypersonic technology more than two decades ago.
Iran’s low-cost, high production rate drone program was inspired by America’s use of such systems in Iraq and Afghanistan.
In a promising sign, Washington is discussing this challenge more regularly. The House Armed Services Committee hosted a hearing just last week on Expediting the Fielding of Innovation. There was general agreement innovation is not being taken seriously enough in the Pentagon.
However, there was a sentiment expressed that the appropriators are risk averse. I’m not sure which appropriators they’re talking about, because the bill Betty and I passed in the House included:
- $1 billion for the Defense Innovation Unit, with $220 million for combatant commanders;
- $300 million for APFIT;
- and just under $100 million for the Office of Strategic Capital.
That’s 547% higher than the fiscal year 2023 enacted level for innovation. So, on this important topic, authorizers and appropriators are aligned and we make a great team.
We’re starting to see some progress at the Pentagon. The Marine Corps are testing a surface ship inspired by cartels. The Army is preparing for the Pacific by testing new ways to strike enemy ships from land. The Space Force is leveraging commercial satellite collection to augment the need for military-only capabilities. The Navy and Air Force, once resistant to unmanned platforms, are now discussing incorporating a variety of these platforms.
American defense innovation is reawakening. From software to autonomy to space launch, non-defense enterprises have already fundamentally changed the way the Department does business.
We need to seize this momentum and start fielding and scaling capabilities that keep our adversaries up at night. We must unleash the American entrepreneurial spirit to defend our status as the leading military power. Complacency would mean our ruin.
I’ll close with this thought — in 1993 Les Aspin hosted the last supper and we went from fifteen defense primes to five. This is the resurrection.
Thank you all for being here today. With that, I’ll hand it over to my co-chair, the Ranking Member of the House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, the distinguished member from Minnesota, my friend Betty McCollum.