House ‘Future of Defense Task Force’ Report Warns Pentagon Clinging to Past Technologies

(NYTimes) A bipartisan House panel reported that artificial intelligence, quantum computing, space and biotechnology were “making traditional battlefields and boundaries increasingly irrelevant” — but that the Pentagon was clinging to aging weapons systems meant for a past era.
The panel’s report, called the “Future of Defense Task Force” indicates that despite the Pentagon’s talk of embracing quantum computing and artificial intelligence, the politics of killing off old weapons systems is so forbidding that the efforts often falter. The politics of killing off old weapons systems is so forbidding — often because it involves closing factories or bases, and endangers military jobs in congressional districts — that the efforts falter.
The task force said it was concentrating on the next 30 to 50 years, and concluded that the Defense Department and Congress should be “focused on the needs of the future and not on the political and military-industrial loyalties of the past.”