New DSB task force to recommend technologies, approaches to counter adversarial aggression

The Pentagon's chief technology officer has stood up a new Defense Science Board task force to review the potential for leveraging emerging technologies and approaches to "rebalance intervention cost and benefit" and restore the U.S. military's "operational dominance," a recently posted memo states.

Called the strategic options task force, the panel was established under a June 24 directive that was posted publicly this week from Heidi Shyu, the under secretary of defense for research and engineering.

“The goal is to deter local conflict involving allies or treaty partners, and to prevail at the lowest ‘cost’ should deterrence fail,” Shyu wrote in the memo.

Among the areas the new task force should consider, the document states, are advanced undersea assets, new uses for space-based capabilities, countermeasures for electronic warfare technologies, methods for leveraging cyber weapons and more. The directive states such approaches can also include “improvements in training and doctrine, alliance building, or exploitation of inherent asymmetric vulnerabilities of adversaries.”

The memo doesn’t call out specific nations or actions that prompted its issuance, only stating that “several countries aspire to greater regional power, threatening to employ military force to prey on their neighbors.”

The task force’s work is slated to begin within 30 days of its members’ appointment to the body, the memo states. Following the panel's completion of its work, members will present their conclusions to the full DSB as well as to Shyu herself, per the document.