technologies that are critical to the future of national defense. EDI provides research and analysis to inform the development integration of emerging technologies into the defense industrial base. So prior to this current position, many of you know Dr. Lewis was the director of defense research and engineering in the Department of Defense where he oversaw technology modernization for all the services and DOD agencies. He was also the acting deputy undersecretary of defense for research and engineering. So when he was in that role, he was the Pentagon's senior most scientist. He managed a $17 billion budget that included agencies like DARPA, the missile defense agency, the defense innovation unit, space development agency, the FFRDC, the federally funded research and development centers, and the department's basic and applied research portfolio. So he really was highly ranked here, which is one of the reasons we've invited him to be the pedals speaker here today. He's got a large number of rewards and things, but I want to make sure I give him a chance to talk. So it's okay with Mark. I'll skip some of his details here other than to say he was also one of us. He spent 25 years at Maryland as a faculty member. So he's got government experience. He's worked for think tanks and support organizations. He's also served as in the DOD. He attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he got his bachelor's degree in aeronautics and astronautics and earth and atmosphere, earth and planetary science. Sorry I almost gave you our department's names. Got his master's science at MIT and his doctor's science at MIT and the MS and doctor and aeronautics and astronautics. So with that, Mark, let me go ahead and turn it over to you.  So thank you, Mark. It's really quite a privilege to be here. I'll start off by saying, I don't know of a university that so understands the intersection of technology and engineering and national defense as quite like Purdue University. And, you know, I tremendous admire of Purdue over the many years, many friends and colleagues of the faculty. I've had many of our undergraduates from Maryland come to Purdue for graduate studies and we brought many undergraduates from Purdue to Maryland for our graduate program. So again, really quite an honor to be able to address this audience and also I see some friends and colleagues from the much broader Indiana and Terry community. When I was in the Pentagon, we did some incredible work with Indiana, including industry, but as well the military installations such as the NSWC crane facility. So thanks again. So what I want to talk about today is emerging technologies for national defense. And I want to give a kind of a broad overview of where I think we are, what the imperatives are, and then one of some of the challenges that we're facing and introducing modernizing technology for national defense. So let me see if I can advance. All right, so let me start off. If I can, being a little bit philosophical about the American way of war, how we fight wars and really comes down to a colleague in the Pentagon once said that there are two ways that you there are two coins if you will involved in warfare. One is blood and the other is money. Blood is we fight wars and unfortunately sometimes spend the lives of our young men and women. In other words, we can spend money to develop technologies. In most cases, the aim of that is to reduce the loss of life among our people and also with our adversaries. So that is really very much the focus, why we want the most advanced technology in our department of defense, because we want to minimize the loss of life to our people and also to our opponents. I will submit to you. I'm not a historian, but I spent a lot of time hanging out with historians. I recommend it. They always have the last word. So you're always going to have friends who are historians. But one of my historian friends likes to point out that really our defense technology has always been a fundamental part of the way Americans fought wars. And this goes back to the origins of our nation, even before the origins of our nation. So during the Revolutionary War, there was a famous cry at the battle of Bunker Hill, which really took place on Breeds Hill, but battle of Bunker Hill don't shoot until you see the whites of their eyes. It was more than just a feel-good statement. It was an understanding of the importance of precision sprite. You make every bullet count. You make your effects as precise as possible. I think it set us up for a history within the United States military of emphasizing precision and, frankly, technology. There are lots of examples of that through history. The beginnings of the American Navy, when the United States fined them Saturday, needed the Navy to fight the barbaric pirates. We began building a series of ships, including the early American frigates, that were a generation beyond anything else that was on the water. So today, if you go to Boston Harbor, you can view the U.S. Constitution. It's the oldest floating commissioned warship in the world. When the Constitution was built, it was a generation beyond the incorporated technologies that were far in advance of any other ship of its type on sailing the oceans. It looked to the Civil War. One of my favorite examples there was the introduction of iron clad ships. You notice, by the way, I'm an aerospace engineer, but I'm choosing some nautical examples from the pre-Aviation days. When the Confederate Navy decided to cover one of its ships in iron, the USS Merrimack became the Virginia. That was an amazing revolution. It was dispensing with sails and rope and mass, and focusing on propulsion, focusing on steam engine, and then focusing on thick iron for defense. And, of course, the Union immediately responded with the ship that you see pictured in the upper right-hand corner of your screen, the USS Monitor. An amazing story there. That ship was built in the record 90 days. There were 65 separate patents on that ship. It changed the nature of warfare entirely. After the monitor was built, the United States stopped building mass and sailing ships. It had completely changed the nature of war. More recently, in the 1990s, we saw the introduction of stealth technology. For those of us who remember the Gulf Wars, the United States Air Force prosecuted its first days over Baghdad. They unleashed this new technology, stealth technology, that made our aircraft essentially invisible and radar. The whole world took a step back with gasping at the capabilities of this technology. Really quite a revolution. And then, since then, the introduction of precision munitions, weapons that are guided precisely to their target, again, has been a major revolution. And I don't think I even have to mention space. I'm sure you all recognize the importance of a space as part of the American way of war. It's become a tremendous advantage. We use space for just about everything, communications, for sensing, where it's part of our defense network. The GPS system that we all rely upon on our iPhone, that was developed as part of the US military space infrastructure. That's kind of the good news. We in the United States understand the importance of technology, we understand how to use technology, and it's incorporated in our national defense posture. But there are also some other lessons that we need to take from history that kind of informed the current discussion. We have missed a number of technological advances over the years. And in the center of the screen, I show a picture of World War I airplane. That's a Newport 28. It was flown by America's foremost air ace of World War I. A gentleman named Eddie Rickenbacker. Rickenbacker was flying at Newport 28, which is, interestingly, not an American airplane. It's a French airplane. And that's because when the United States entered World War I, we had very few airplanes on our road. We essentially didn't have an aviation industry. We had to rely on other people's airplanes. It's a technology that we invented. We invented it by, you know, the Wright brothers flew the first airplane in 1903. And by the time World War I broke out, we had essentially taken our foot off the gas. Now, lots of reasons why that happened. They're all technological. Some was political. Some is actually attributed directly to the Wright brothers, by the way. After they built their first airplanes, they basically sued anyone else who tried to build something similar. So they set the US industry back. But regardless, it's an example of a technology that we invented, we developed, we perfected, and then other people carried into the military. A lot of other examples of that happening. Radar, for example, it's one of the drop. Gas turbine engine. So the lower right-hand corner, I have a report that was written by the National Academy of Sciences in 1940 that concluded that the gas turbine engine could not be considered a feasible application for aircraft propulsion. They decided that the power-to-weight requirements meant that a gas turbine engine would never be feasible for airplane propulsion. At the same time they wrote this report, Britain and Germany were first developing their jet-powered aircraft. So we have dropped the ball. And I also kind of like to smile about that. One of the series of influential National Academy of Science reports. Not all of them do it. And then finally, of course, rockets. Robert Goddard for the first look at fuel rockets up in Massachusetts. But it was the Germans who once again introduced the rockets as a meaningful weapon of war. Now, we can debate how effective it was. The B-2 rocket was an amazing technological achievement with some limited strategic effects. But still it shows that once again we have had this propensity for dropping the ball fuel while taking our foot off the gas. The bottom line is, you know, defense technology, it's always moving quickly. It's always advanced. So just because you have an advantage today doesn't mean you'll have an advantage tomorrow. And that means we're constantly in a race. We're constantly, we're constantly looking over our shoulders as we develop technology. And if we strip a beat, if we don't continue to press and pursue, we can very quickly find ourselves lagging behind. All right, so let me now call your attention to a defining document that those of us in the Pentagon cited quite often. This is the National Defense Strategy that was released in 2018. Every four years, the Department of Defense releases this major document known as the National Defense Strategy. It improves the work of many, many folks working across the National Defense infrastructure. It's authored in the Pentagon, but it draws from across the government, its input from industry, its think tanks. 2018 was a landmark year for National Defense Strategy. Let me first point out that as I said, the National Defense Strategy is a four-year exercise. So the 2018 National Defense Strategy was begun in 20, well actually as early as 2014 and really started coming in, you know, it was really most of the work assembling it was in the 2016-2017 time frame. It transcended administrations. It wasn't a product of a single administration and the Defense Secretary who advocated for this who basically owned the strategy who signed the cover page when it was released was Secretary Mattis who was very much seen as a bipartisan bipartisan leader and this strategy had a couple of key elements. First and foremost, many of us would argue was the first National Defense Strategy in quite some time that was truly a strategy, right? Most previous National Defense Strategies very candidly had been more tactical. They'd been more reactive. This was the first strategy in quite some time that planted some real strategic flags and I want to quote a couple of lines from this strategy because it's quite significant. First, early on in the strategy it states that we're emerging, we in the United States are emerging from a period of strategic atrophic aware that our competitive military are eroding. In other words, other people have been investing and they're catching up to us. The incredible advantage that we had is starting to slip away. I'll cite back to that release of stealth technology during the Gulf War. Well that was 30 years ago now and more. The whole world has had an opportunity to study what we did, how we did it, the technologies that we employed, ways that you might counter that technology. That advantage is already slipping away. Second, the National Defense Strategy also named names. It called people out. It listed China as a strategic competitor. That's investing heavily using what the report calls predatory economics. Investing, you know, building up its military across the South China Sea and beyond. It also called out Russia for bad behavior violating borders of its nearby nations but also continue to invest building on, you know, its Cold War legacy of technology but all using all the levers of power. Now, this technology cited other countries. North Korea gets a shout out. Iran gets a shout out. But the key feature is that this document made was that while other nations obviously posed a threat to the United States it was China and Russia that were true from strategic competitors and that was the existential threat that the United States needed to address. Very candidly in the Pentagon by the time I arrived back in 2019 we used to say all China was a threat to the United States all the time. That's the country we were focused on as investing heavily and trying to catch up to us. At the same time, the National Defense Strategy wasn't naive about other threats, pointed out that the homeland United States is no longer a sanctuary. We, through most of our history, could rely on the fact that we were separated from the rest of the world by two large oceans. We had friendly neighbors in the North, friendly neighbor on the South. So really in a blessed situation to compare that to the enemies that are in close proximity to each other, really quite an advantageous geographic location. And now of course, in the modern era that geographic advantage is no longer so pronounced. It also points out that in order to meet these threats well we need to modernize key capabilities. Our report explicitly says we cannot expect success if we fight tomorrow's conflicts with yesterday's weapons. It's a very important message again echoing that theme that technology is constantly investing in. And then near and dear to the hearts of those of us who spent our careers looking at the intersection of technology and defense, the report explicitly says we anticipate the implications of new technologies on the battlefield, rigorously define the military problems anticipated in future conflict, and foster a culture of experimentation and calculated risk taking. And that echoes in the number of us have been saying over many years that we need to be willing to take risks. We need to be willing to accept risks. We need to be willing to fail as we develop the technologies that will be part of our future Department of Defense. So if you go through that National Defense Strategy document in more detail and with its emphasis on the importance of technology, a number of technology areas immediately jump out. Their reference. And I've got those technology areas listed here in this slide. And I put them in several specific categories. And by way of explanation, I will tell you that again when I showed up in the Pentagon in November of 2019 as Bill mentioned, as the Director of Defense Research and Engineering, I was basically handed this list. My boss at the time, the Under Secretary of Defense handed me this list and said this is what you need to focus on. These are the modernization priorities from National Defense Strategy. Now I will tell you it's not a list that I came up with but if I were to come up with my own list, this is pretty much the list I would have come up with. I dare say that if I asked almost anyone in this audience to come up with a list of technologies that they think are vital to National Defense well, I think you've come up with a pretty comparable list. These are the things that we know today are important not only for the nation as a whole but specifically for the defense sector. I tend to put them in three specific categories. There's underlying capabilities. Those are the capabilities that are kind of at the core of what we do in defense. It could be components it could be functionalities versus microelectronics absolutely key. Microelectronics is at the heart of pretty much everything we do in the department at the heart of almost everything we do in modern life. I drove that short of buying a hammer at Home Depot, almost anything you buy today has some microelectronic component to it. I'll tell you right now we're in a very serious situation of microelectronics. We face some significant challenges there and I'll elaborate on those in a moment. Autonomy artificial intelligence, cyber three different areas but obviously overlapping, right? Autonomy I think of as the use of machine systems in place of human beings or any unmanned airplane any uncrewed watercraft, any robotic system. We've all seen the tremendous advances in unmanned aircraft for example, UAVs drones as they're called popularly in the way they become integral to the battlefield. It's often been said that the military has been dragged kicking and screaming to the adoption of autonomous system unmanned systems. I'm here to tell you that's actually not true. That's absolutely the opposite is the case. The military has really stepped up to the plate in adopting autonomous systems unmanned systems. It's becoming increasingly a part of the American way of work. Artificial intelligence really important area, obviously artificial intelligence is using almost everything we do in technology. I can think of very few more important applications in the defense sector. And then cyber and especially cyber defense referencing those comments from the national defense strategy that pointed out that the homelab is no longer secure and one of the reasons is cyber. People can now use cyber to reach us as easily as they can they're next door neighbors. And then point that all together fully FNCQ that stands for fully network command control communication. We've come to understand that the battlefield of the future is a fully network battlefield. It's a battlefield where sensors are interacting with each other. Where sensors are connecting to different different weapon systems. Where operators have a sight picture that greatly enhances their effectiveness. Now, as we'll probably not surprise anyone in this audience. We haven't done a particularly good job in this area. So up to now. We tend to have siloed systems. We have services that don't always talk about it. We have systems that often communicate well with each other. Whole aircraft systems don't communicate well with other whole aircraft systems. Sometimes by design. So breaking those stove pipes using those sensors for combined advantage is going to be key to success in the future battle. That's kind of go to one. Second counter guy kind of put in the broad area of delivered effects. That's hardware. Things that I can hold my hand or things that I can see deliver, you know, specific weapons. And there are a couple that we focus on. Space obviously one. Space is already, as I mentioned earlier, integral to the way we communicate, the way we sense, the way we interact with our systems, the way we navigate. Absolutely critical to the American way of war. In 2008, as I was winding down my time as the Chief Scientist of the Air Force, I kicked off a study that became known about space study. We asked the question, what would happen in the US military if we were suddenly deprived of all of our space capabilities? Now, that's a bit of a perfect scenario. No one's going to be able to deprive us all at once. However, we do realize that our space capabilities are ever more at risk.  The day without space came to a very straightforward conclusion. We would have a very hard time fighting a war if we didn't have our space assets. It was fascinating because we talked to people in the military and said, what would you do without space? They said, oh, we don't need space. We have all these backup systems. And then you start diving in and you say, okay, how do we use those backup systems? Will those backup systems ultimately, at some point, depend on space? So quite a vulnerable building. Previous Secretary of the Air Force, Heather Wilson made the observation that we built a lot of our space systems like a glass house and we never took into account the fact that the neighbors could throw stones at us. That's the situation that we're in today. Direct energy, that includes lasers, microwaves, high powered systems. This is an area that the joke is that direct energy is the future and it always will be. Except we're at the point now we're seeing breakthroughs in direct energy. We're seeing lasers reaching power levels and suddenly they become viable weapons, viable systems. We've also begun to understand that direct energy wouldn't just replace kinetic systems. You don't simply replace a gun with a laser. Instead you use a laser or a microwave system in ways that you couldn't use the gun. One obvious example is a laser gives you an almost infinite magazine. With a gun I can run out of bullets. With a laser as long as I've got electric power I can keep on going. So if I'm defending say against an attack of swarming weapons lasers can be very attractive. Lasers also can factor into a cost card. Right now if I'm being attacked with a relatively low cost UAV one of my weapons of choice might be a much more expensive missile. You don't want to shoot down a thousand dollar drone with a million dollar missile. If I can shoot down that thousand dollar drone with a laser that cost me five cents worth of electricity that's a really good cost exchange. So that's another reason direct energy is very important for a future battle. Then my own personal favorite hypersonics. That's high speed systems. Systems that operate in excess of about five times the speed of sound. Hypersonics is more than just speed though. It's a combination of speed and maneuverability. Operating in trajectories in realms where basically it makes them extraordinarily survivable. And really can have a profound impact on the battlefield of the future. I will tell you when we did war fighting exercises in the Pentagon in some of our scenarios if we didn't have hypersonic systems available we the United States didn't win because we knew our adversaries were investing very heavily in this area. And then third category the category of future promise these are areas where we know there will be significant significant future engagement right. That's the area of quantum science biotechnology and and you know we're not in many cases sure exactly what those mean for the future battlefield. But we know they're important and we know that they have significant promise for the way we operate. Quantum for example holds potential of giving us substantially substantially improved sensors replacements for some space assets for precision navigation timing. Biotechnology can change the way we manufacture things whole new avenues for producing jet fuels or structural materials or producing new materials. So again really promising technology all right let me move to our next which is among those which are the ones that we're most concerned about and let me suggest to you that there are a number of technologies right. Of those 11 topic areas if you count in there were 11 you know there were immediately emerge hypersonics as I mentioned really important one because we don't have it in the future we won't win. Lots of technology she says with hypersonics what's the right propulsion system? How do we use these systems? How do we deliver them at scale? It's fine to do a prototype I can build a hypersonic you know weapon fly at once high five and congratulate myself myself for an engineering accomplishment. What we really want to do is be able to deliver hypersonic systems at scales that can have significant impact on the future battlefield. Frankly there have been some recent studies looking at hypersonic weapons in the role of the battlefield that have been quite bad. They've missed some important points and some more important elements on what hypersonics can need for the future of combat and so we're at kind of a turning point where we're investing we've got solid road maps we need to be continuing to advance the case for this technology. Microelectronics that are really important. When I was in the Pentagon I said it was my number one priority and that's because we have gotten ourselves into what are described as a bit of a pickle we are reliant on foreign sources today for our state-of-the-art microelectronics if you wish to buy a state-of-the-art component microelectronic component you're almost certainly buying it from a foreign manufacturer Taiwan semiconductor manufacturing corporation is one of the largest manufacturers for example of our semiconductor components so big push for how do we onshore microelectronics how do we bring that industry back from the United States or importantly the Department of Defense right now is incapable of buying state-of-the-art microelectronics we're not on what is called the commercial curve that's because of decisions that were made policy decisions that were made investment decisions that were made today precludes us from buying state-of-the-art so if you pick up a Department of Defense system today if you pick up any component that uses microelectronics in the DOD you will find that it is using microelectronics it could be a generation behind or two generations behind that's bad from several standpoints one it leads to obsolescence very quickly people stop manufacturing parts and you got a problem you don't know where to get those future parts so if you find out that someone is going to stop manufacturing you need to do a big investment on a legacy buy which means you're buying lots of parts you're putting a lot of money into a purchase for something that's about to become obsolete but of course there are some DOD unique needs in microelectronics in the DOD we need things that are radiation hard things that can survive in a very harsh radiation environment and we're the only ones who really need that there are some space applications for radiation part as well that's an area the DOD needs to really focus on directed energy I mentioned the importance of directed energy and what that could mean for the future battlefield that's still very much an area that requires significant risk taking it's an area that the services have really been a bit slow to incorporate they're not placing bets what happens if all those demonstrations and laboratory experiments actually work so there are some programmatic challenges there are also some technical challenges it's not enough to have a really good laser you have to have a way to steer it and point it in control of meat quality then of course we need an industrial base that can produce the systems that ultimately will be fielded and that's an industrial base that includes not only prime manufacturers but also the supply chain including the use of some rare earth elements that are integral to the design and manufacture of lasers and then finally another key area biotechnology I mentioned the importance of biotechnology got an important role in the industrial base it can play a key role in manufacturing new ways of manufacturing so I discovered when I came back to the Pentagon in 2019 when I would talk to people about biotechnology I would often be faced with a response from the services along the lines of yeah that's really important but it's not what we do we're not a biotechnology service the US Army would say we don't do biotechnology the Air Force would say we don't do biotechnology the Navy would say we don't do biotechnology then the pandemic hit and everyone realized the importance of investments in biotechnology I think one of the good news stories that's going to emerge from from this pandemic was that a lot of the work that went into developing those COVID-19 vaccines can be traced back to investments that were made by the Department of Defense DARPA played a very big role in the initial investments in the development of messenger RNA vaccines in many cases because DARPA was willing to take risks that other organizations weren't so I think that was an eye-opening experience really changed the nature of the conversations surrounding biotechnology alright next so a little bit of shameless self-promotion here as Bill mentioned at the beginning of my talk I'm now at the Emerging Technologies Institute we're a brand new technology institute that's really focused on these emerging technologies so we set this up we're all of about a month into establishing this institute but as a non-partisan institute focused on that list of technologies as critical modernization technologies will be a part of national defense analysis will be part of what we're doing engaging with national leaders informing not only government but also industry partners relying on the vast resources of national defense industrial association not only the governance structure but members and companies all that help us provide the information, the reports the analysis, have the conversations that we think are going to be important is the whole issue of national defense and technology alright so let me finish up by talking about the importance of emerging technologies I talked to you about the area why each of those individual areas is important focus now what are the challenges that we face there are many first acquisition it's not enough just to research, develop and engineer the system in order to be useful for national defense you have to get it into the hands of the combatants sometimes the kind of guy we refer to it as the pointy end of the spear means you need to acquire it means you need to have someone who purchases that technology who maintains it who sustains it who trains personnel with that technology you know those timelines can be really long our frontline where is the F-22 and the F-35 have taken more than two decades to go from concept to deployment the F-35 is still in the process of being deployed other systems we've seen take very long time unfortunately we no longer have that luxury but countries like China they're breathing down their neck investing very quickly we've seen them able to acquire new technologies acquire new systems frankly at a pace that puts our shame so trying to trim down those acquisition timelines that's a big challenge a lot of effort going under way right now within the department creating organizations such as DIU and appworks space development agency all of which are really designed to shrink those acquisition timelines take lessons learn from industry and introduce those into the defense ecosystem another part of that is what's called the acquisition valley of death it's a term you hear very commonly in defense S&T circles what does that refer to? but that valley of death is that wide gap that we often encounter between the development of the technology and its incorporation lots of people talk about why there is a valley of death I argue it isn't really a valley of death it's a mountain of death and that there's a tremendous amount of money that's available within the department that go from the laboratory to prototype the trick is to convince people to accept that prototype and incorporate it into their system and why is that such a challenge well the next bold point set out within the department we've got a lot of legacy systems often systems we have invested into which we've invested a lot of money right aircraft carriers are incredibly expensive you don't build an aircraft carrier this week and decide next week you're no longer going to be using it once you've made that investment you stick with it right a new airplane is a very expensive investment these systems are expensive investments it's not only the initial investment but it's the training, it's the backup it supplies it goes into sustainability so whenever you incorporate a new technology you have to convince someone to frankly give up something something older give up a legacy capability and lots of people get a vote in that so I've got a picture in the middle of the screen of an airplane called the A-10 given the name the Warthog because some people consider it an ugly airplane others would argue that part of its ugliness is in its beauty the Warthog was designed as a close air combat support airplane this is a tank killer this is an airplane operated by the US Air Force to fly low and slow and protect our crews it's an old airplane the company that built this airplane is no longer in business the Air Force has been trying to decommission this airplane it has argued it has newer systems that can do the same mission but yet Congress has not allowed the Air Force to do that because they've argued that the newer systems are not as capable and not as readily available as this unique airplane and so even when you want to decommission a system you aren't always allowed to do that other challenge industrial-based vulnerabilities I've mentioned this throughout my talk what is the industrial-based? the line-up of companies that are involved it's applying the national defense infrastructure with various technologies various capabilities the COVID pandemic brought this message home that we have points in our industrial base that truly are vulnerable individual suppliers individual companies which if they're no longer able to function will put at risk other pieces of national defense we saw that for example in the aerospace industry as the commercial sector stopped buying airplanes that had rippling implications to aircraft propulsion and the Department of Defense buys engines from the same people that build engines for the commercial sector we saw it in such things mundane things as uniforms so the Department of Defense is required to buy its uniforms from American suppliers that includes American sources sources of American material we found that as a pandemic pandemic kicked in the people who make the uniforms to the Department of Defense weren't well equipped to operate through the pandemic when you think about how you sew together uniforms you've got people sitting on top of each other hovered over sewing machines and those companies started cutting down and the parvo was afraid that it wouldn't be able to continue buying uniforms and have enough uniforms for its soldiers sailors, Marines airmen so now think about other parts of the industrial base and what that might mean especially in the higher technology areas so again, vulnerabilities to the industrial base really key issue another challenge we've got test and evaluation this is always a controversy how much money do you put into test and evaluation versus how much money do you put and actually build the thing you're feeling as a guy who grew up on wind tunnels I'll be the first to tell you that wind tunnels are a critical tool in aerospace engineering if you want to buy down the risk of anything that you're ultimately going to fly now there's some school of thought that says hey as we develop modeling simulation has it become more and more a tool of the trade there's less and less need for wind tunnels I have not to buy that I think modeling simulation goes hand in hand with the role of the wind tunnel I think it changes the way we use the wind tunnel but doesn't eliminate the need for the wind tunnel but that's certainly attention you know, attention that you see we put more money in building up those test capabilities or we invest that those dollars in the actual system and I can tell you I've been on a number of recent committees I was on some review boards for things that failed often held in spectacularly expensive ways at the end of the day it came down to you they failed because there wasn't enough test there wasn't enough evaluation done before these systems were fielded. Workforce another big challenge how do we make sure that the best and the brightest are working on the problems that are of critical importance in national defense that's at the undergraduate level at the masters level, at the PHD level how do we make sure that the smartest minds are working in the Air Force Research Lab in the Army Research Lab in the Naval Research Lab at university labs that are supporting the work the national defense, the working in the industry but it goes even beyond that we need a skilled technical workers the pipe fitters the plumbers even in such sectors as test and evaluation it takes a certain skill set to put a gauge on a wind tunnel model a certain degree of training to be able to build a model to be able to instrument it properly. The network forces at risk in saying that we were putting a lot of paying a lot of attention to in the Department of Defense I will tell you that we saw our peer competitors focusing on that issue as well making sure that their universities were incorporated with the work of their industry and work of their government and we were ramping that up quite a bit in response finally there's the issue of bad ideas and I highlight that because there's a certain scruble thought that says let's just keep dumping money at any problem if we've got a technology issue we'll just spend more money we'll invest more technology X space is vulnerable just put a lot more money into space hypersonics just dump a lot more money into hypersonics turns out that's not the best approach you have a lot of money doing that you have to filter out the bad ideas from the good ideas you have to figure out how do I make those investment decisions that I'm getting the best bang for my taxpayer dollars that's why I know how to do that is with a skilled workforce so see the bullet point above that we need to have the best and the brightest people making these decisions in order that we can stay at the forefront and I will tell you as someone who's worked on working in academia sometimes the most valuable skill set that we bring is the ability to see past a bad idea to recognize a truly good idea from something that just flat out won't work right and then the last point which is how do we pursue these emerging technologies how do we respond to these threats and especially how do we respond to these threats without doing more harm to ourselves than good what do I mean by that well I'll set up an example perhaps my least favorite example an example out of the aerospace industry so some decades back there were some significant concerns being raised about other countries infiltrating exfiltrating information from our industrial base and a series of rules and laws were put into place that are collectively known as ITAR and arms regulations and ITAR put significant restrictions on our ability to share technology with foreign partners now ITAR is not classified a technology on the ITAR list isn't necessarily on the classified list that doesn't have to be secret, top secret but it can be in a category of technology such that we will not discuss it share it or more importantly sell it to another nation when ITAR rules kicked in initially they had a positive effect they prevented some of our adversaries from getting a hold of technologies that we didn't want them to have in the long run many of us would argue it had a negative effect because those other nations are spawned by building their own indigenous capabilities horror industries were created overseas China especially responded by stepping up to the plate in key technology areas especially in space using that as a leverage to partner with nations that we would not partner we face that today we have some folks who looked at some of the threats that we face and they've said things like close the gates if we're worried about peer competitors stealing from us let's keep their researchers from coming to the United States let's keep their students from coming to the United States and I would argue adamantly that that's the wrong thing to do because we do that we wind up hurting ourselves more than anyone else if we close our gates to the best and brightest from around the world and ultimately we don't get that infusion of talent we don't get that incredible skill set coming to the United States participating in our community contributing to our ideas and ultimately helping our own industrial base and some of us have even advocated that every PhD diploma that is to a non-US citizen should come with a green card staple to it encourage those individuals to stay in the United States and really to contribute to our amazing S&T Enterprise I'll leave with that note and I'll close out with that note of optimism which is that what we're doing how do I view our our relative success in emerging technologies first I think we're doing quite well the Department of Defense has stepped up to the plate the creation of the undersecretary defense for research and journey was in fact a major was a milestone in addressing those emerging technologies the whole office in the Pentagon focused on emerging technologies secondly we were very successful in creating the agencies working together all on these emerging technologies one of the last things that I did in the Pentagon was kind of a report card how the Department of Defense was doing and it was a very promising report card indeed we had a lot left to do we were making progress but we weren't there yet but across the board we saw the department taking these technologies very very seriously I think we also saw a recognition of the great strengths that we have in our system we have many inefficiencies a country like China can move more quickly than we can dictatorships can be very very efficient they don't have to abide by acquisition rules they don't have long timelines they aren't burdened if you will with this focus on fairness and equal opportunity they can make unilateral decisions and it allows them to move very quickly but what they don't have of a scientific enterprise a diversity of ideas a diversity of sources a diversity of opportunities they don't have allies and partners countries who bring new perspectives different research focus areas who will team with us who will teach us new ideas they don't have that at their best and we do and I think that's the essential strength of our system and why ultimately I think we are although we have to be mindful of our threats we have to be cognizant of the fact that we're in a race I think in the end of the day we're actually very well positioned to meet these challenges that we are facing so that let me thank everyone for your attention if there are any questions that you have I'd be delighted to answer whatever is on your mind a great thank you Mark really appreciate the discussion special for the questions and answers what I'm going to do is I'm going to introduce Lieutenant Colonel Joshua Stafashia he's going to moderate the question and answer session with Dr. Lewis and as many have already been doing in the audience you can type in questions in the Q&A window if you're on the WebEx there should be a chat window and there should be a Q&A window we prefer you use the Q&A window you can type in a question and Josh will ask Dr. Lewis and so it will kind of look like a discussion between Josh and Mark but that will be a way for the audience to answer questions quick reminder to everybody all of the discussion today is approved for public release and so it needs to stay in that domain so it's entirely possible that Mark will have to say I can't answer that question because it heads up for everybody let me introduce Josh real quick Josh is one of several active military active duty military officers here at Purdue participating in something we call the Purdue Military Research Initiative so this is a program that provides no cost graduate education to these active duty officers right now in aeronautics and astronautics there's a little more than 20 I believe at Purdue in all kinds of different departments across campus and they range from near the end of their PhD studies like Josh is to several second lieutenants just getting started with us Lieutenant Colonel Strafascia is an active duty USF test pilot graduated from the test pilot school he's been assigned to Purdue as the PhD student is his assignment currently he has a BS in physics and math from the Air Force Academy he's got a master of science and aerospace engineering from the University of Alabama and an MS in flight test engineering from the Air University he's logged 2200 hours flying in 32 different military aircraft and 521 combat hours and so after you get stuck here he's going to be back and be an instructor pilot for the USF test school so with that let me turn things over to Josh so Josh why don't you take over from here alright thank you sir like Dr. Krause just mentioned my name is Lieutenant Colonel Strafascia and I just want to say thank you to Dr. Lewis for I would say a very relevant topic to come out and talk to us about and also thank you to the panel for including me to be part of the question and answer session real quick this is an unsecure venue so I won't go over that again just make sure we don't get in trouble keep it in the public domain or in the unclassed domain we won't have any issues first off we're still having some questions come in so while those are coming in I'm going to ask one kind of selfish question as a DT test pilot I'm curious you mentioned some of the issues just with the acquisition timelines being so drawn out in your opinion do you see any opportunities especially me going back and starting to work with test pilot school again any low hanging fruit to compress the acquisition timeline in any of the stages to do it both safely so that we're not missing things in the test and evaluation but getting these technologies to the point where we're caught up again and pushing forward and getting ahead in something like hypersonics so I love that question so I would argue that the limitations are more cultural than anything else every time someone asks me does the department need new authorities to speed it back we've got all the authorities we need just a matter of using them we've seen some clear examples of how to do that I mentioned the space development agency that was an organization that we stood up specifically to acquire space systems in an incredibly short period of time and they did it the space development agency had a series of space systems that are all focused on building survivable space platforms what we call proliferated Leo constellations lots of small satellites they went from an industry day in spring to contract award in late summer just by moving quickly because that's their mantra hypersonics you've got a good example there I mean that's one where that's a very frustrating story because that's a field that the United States invented we created and now we're playing a catch-up game in part I would argue that's because of our own mindsets we're kind of doing a leisurely pace where we're taking our own sweet time we would test once and it worked and we test the next again maybe a year later and then we do another play test we need to be testing early and often we've seen examples how to do this I often cite the X-15 rocket plane program that was going out of Edwards Air Force Base in 1960s it did 199 test flights they were flying on average once every 18 days so we've seen how to do this it's a matter of having the right mindset and it's more cultural than anything else so the more that when when you're back when you're back full time the more you can pound your fist in the table on the desk and say do it faster do it more quickly the better you'll be advancing us all right perfect that's what I'd like to hear real quick one of the questions that came through kind of an easy one what's a typical day like for you what are your responsibilities tasks that may be in your current job which I know you've only been there a short period of time but then also your previous job I would argue that in each of my previous jobs in my car cup I've never had a typical day there are things in typical days so my current job we're setting up a whole new institute I'm working with colleagues here at the Penn's Industrial Association an incredible team here partners in industry, partners in government partners in academia the Pentagon I mean the Pentagon okay so I will tell you there are some people in the military who design their careers to avoid spending time in the Pentagon I thought that was insane I loved every second that I was in the Pentagon it's imperial room it's where all decisions are being made when you're in the Pentagon frankly when you're on the e-ring you never know what any day is going to be like you know on a Monday you could be sitting across the table from the Secretary of Defense providing him advice on hypersonic weapons on Tuesday you could be sitting with the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy discussing the role of technology in international engagement you know on Wednesday you could be getting an intelligence brief that's going to scare the crap out of you informing you what our adversaries are doing in a given area it's really exciting very cool I might be one of those people that's been avoiding trying to get out there don't do that real quick kind of a follow-up to the previous question one of the considerations that always gets talked to us in the developmental test world is making sure that when we're getting all these new technologies making sure that while we're focused on the emerging technology itself that we're also developing the infrastructure required in order to test them and you were mentioning that at least in some recent examples that you've seen where we've either missed things or not tested enough and so I'm curious if you've seen over the past couple years that we've been making the appropriate investments in test evaluation infrastructure whether it's ranges targets, upgraded telemetry type things those kind of investments so that when we do get that new technology we don't go in order to test this thing we need A, B and C and then we're waiting and delaying that timeline for potentially months to get the infrastructure in place to test it so the simple answer is no we don't have an adequate test infrastructure and you're right we've made some investments so in the department there's a test resource management center that actually used to report to me in my previous job and they have oversight over all the DoD test and evaluation facilities but the simple answer is no we don't have adequate facilities but in many cases they're too few and far between I'll give you one perfect example so you mentioned hypersonics we don't have enough hypersonic ground test facilities in the nation hill there are key areas of the key aspects of the hypersonic flight envelope that we get difficulty simulating on the ground if facilities that can't simulate them can't meet the needs of the various programs that we want to field hypersonic propulsion, perfect example if you want to test an air breathing hypersonic engine what we call a supersonic combustion ram jet today you basically got two choices that's a Langley 8 foot tunnel you go to the Arnold engineering development center aptitude facility at one point last year the aptitude facility was down down for maintenance we got to turn a valve on a cooling system and the Langley facility was almost at risk because it had a nozzle that was beyond its lifespan so we almost lost all of our capability to do so other things so right now we're talking about reusable hypersonic technology reusable hypersonic systems we don't have a really good way to test a propulsion plan for such a hypersonic vehicle and so having that infrastructure is absolutely critical and then there are other elements to it so we saw in the test range I'll keep using hypersonic examples because it's the one that's near and dear to my heart our plan right now the Department of Defense plan was to have up to 40 flight tests of hypersonic systems for years scheduling that on our existing ranges is really quite a challenge I would imagine one of the questions that I don't know if you'll have insight into the Secretary of Defense had mentioned that the 2022 National Defense Strategy there will be some significant changes in that compared to the 2018 I didn't know if you have any insight into maybe what some of those changes might be and whether or not they would affect what you talked about in today's speech so the 2022 National Defense Strategy was already wrapping up we were already working on writing elements of it while I was still in the building but of course every new team focused their own new view onto that document so the simple answer is I don't know what's actually going to shape out I would be surprised if you saw significant deviation you might see a shift in focus but certainly the things that I think we were working on that I was working on I don't expect to see a significant change because the list that we were working on is kind of the common sense list okay one of the questions that I'm curious from your end of the acquisition timeline in your perspective what have you seen as far as requirements development because that gets talked about a lot in our career field is that a lot of the issues we run into when we're trying to design build acquire new weapon systems or capabilities is we write down a bunch of requirements and then the contractors turn around they build something for us and it actually meets all of the requirements but it's a horrible product and then that ends up coming to us and we end up having to deal with it so I'm curious if you've got any advice or insight or where that tends to fall apart as far as who's designing those requirements and ways to maybe mitigate that well yeah that also that's an outstanding question a lot of the problems are caused because of our long acquisition timeline so one of the reasons that the requirements go awry is that by the time we actually fill the system we first envision the needs have changed our best weapon systems have been the ones that were very adaptable look at the B-52 bomber the design in the cold war is a long range nuclear bomber now we're using it for close air support so it was a very flexible system and I think part of that is exactly as you alluded to in the requirements process that we create flexibility there's another element to it which is there's always this balance between requirements pull and technology push the pendulum tends to swing between those two sides of the coin and it's important to remember that some of our most important technologies never came out of a requirements document there was never a requirements document for the computer or nuclear device never requirements document for the light bulb for that matter so there has to be a marriage of technology push and requirements pull to inform the products to go to the warfighter and then another element of that is prototyping I'm a huge fan of prototyping that is you build it you test it, you fly it you kick the tires, you try it out before you get to the acquisition stage probably the largest piece of our budget in when I was acting deputy undersecretary was in prototyping for just that reason trying to play with things before we actually committed to buying them sounds fun a couple questions popped up I want to make sure I get to some of these there's a student who's curious what for any individuals are interested in contributing to the national defense post their graduation specifically this student's a mechanical engineer do you have any specific industries companies or recommendations on how he goes about making an impact sure so the answer is we truly have a very diverse S&T enterprise in support of the national defense there are a lot of ways to do it you can go down the list of all the defense industries so many ways to contribute from there you've got the primes you've got the second tier you've got the small companies some of our most innovative ideas coming from the small companies sometimes the mom and pop shops people working out of their garages their basements coming up with really clever ideas we're doing our best to get those ideas into the department through various programs I'm a strong believer in contributing to academia the United States Department of Defense across academia the Air Force Office of Scientific Research Office of Naval Research Navy Army Research Office all fund extensive research programs when we were stepping up in hypersonics one of the first things we did was step up our investments in academia in hypersonics because we recognize that's an important part so for me a faculty member in the Department of Mechanical Engineering faculty member in the Department of Aerospace Engineering in electrical engineering who's working on issues of that's a very very important contribution I will tell you that I don't know if a university does it better than Purdue in terms of supporting national events from the wood tunnel complexes Steve Schneider's hypersonic wood tunnels a national asset you've got a vice president for research Theresa Meyer is one of our thought leaders in microelectronics she's one of our nation's leaders in that and the list goes on and on and then finally of course there are opportunities within the government I mean the Air Force Research Lab the Naval Research Lab the Army Research Lab employ incredibly talented individuals all working on issues of national events and then the greater the greater DODS the enterprise I've got a lot of friends who've worked with you know got to the flight test center it's one of our foremost engineering centers in the Department of Defense so there really is such a wide range there's no one avenue that I would point out they're all really good Josh and Mark this is Bill I'm going to interrupt just to let a time check we started a little bit late and we're getting close to 230 so maybe we'll try to wrap up on 230 maybe one or two more questions sounds good alright let's see here I know there was one question up here maybe putting you on the spot a little bit but are there opportunities for Purdue to work with the NDIA on any of these emergent technologies or are they currently so the answer is absolutely and your dean of engineering and I have already been talked about that so we as we're standing up the Emergent Technology Institute we've got a really strong focus on partnering with AT&T now NDIA has been trying to bring on board more and more active partners but look we are looking for like-minded universities here I'll be blunt there are some universities that are very nervous about working with the Department of Defense some universities that are uncomfortable about it there are other universities who understand the importance understand how significant that is to maintain the American way of life and we're looking for those universities and Purdue is really first and foremost on that list so yes the answer is yes alright some of these questions are I think fairly specific maybe more appropriate for a follow-up to the email I guess maybe for a final question is there any big picture recommendations that you have for folks that are just about to start their career whether it's commercial sector or DOD any words of advice that you can pass along from your years of experience sure so I'll tell you a couple of years ago I was back in my alma mater I was back in MIT they'd asked me to talk a little bit about my career and I had that very same question asked of me and my answer was when I look back at my career I was very lucky I just won a bunch of lottery tickets opportunities materialized I left into them first opportunity in the Pentagon was kind of a lottery ticket I was the right place at the right time I got to serve on a certain set of committees my career path really changed based on some opportunities but I really thought I wanted some lottery tickets I made the mistake of giving that talk to an audience that included my wife who was also a graduate of the MIT Air Department and she is usually very quiet but stood up and said no you got it wrong you missed one important ingredient she by the way is much smarter than I am she said that is you always said yes throughout your career you will get opportunities and the key is always say yes I was very active in my professional study American student of aeronautics and astronautics whenever they asked me to chair a committee review papers be on a panel I said yes whenever I was given an opportunity to participate in a study work with colleagues I said yes you will have opportunities to materialize things you want to do that may not materialize but you will find your career going in different paths the bottom line also is really good at what you do you know if you will build your reputation for being someone that others like to work with but also someone who brings value to the table and I think that is kind of the key to a successful career in technology I can definitely agree with that we are past 2.30 I think that concludes this Q&A session once again thank you I am sure Dr. Krausler is going to close thank you for letting me chat with you I have about 6 months left for graduation so I am looking forward to get back and start compressing those timelines very good thanks a lot Carol we need as many well educated folks in our air force so thank you for doing what you are doing Dr. Krausler my thanks to Josh and Mark I have to joke because we can't unmute everybody so I guess I get to do the applause Mark thank you and thank you Josh so much for everybody who has been listening I just posted in the chat window a link if you haven't registered for the panel Mark is going to sit on a panel with several of our colleagues Ann Rutgers, Steve Huster, Jen Neville and John Podge they are going to talk about defense related research how the universities can do that research and what are some of those important topics the universities can dig into it will be at 3 o'clock today and so again the link I posted in the chat box you can register there and it will be a format very similar to this a WebEx event so again thank you very much everyone Mark I will see you in a little less than half an hour alright thank you so much really appreciate it you are welcome thank you everyone bye


You got to practice in the mirror saying, no, no, no, no, I don't want them, no, I don't need them, no, no. It's such a short word, but it sticks in some of your thoughts so badly.  Every time you say yes, but you meant no, it complicates your life.


So, it's time to talk a little bit about autoencoders. What's the setting? We have an input here, x, then that input gets encoded in an encoder. It potentially goes to multiple layers. When we talk about linear ones, of course, there's little point of helping multiple layers, but we basically have here an encoding into a code Z, and then we have a decoding back into x, and usually the code is smaller than the input. So at best we can hope for a lossy compression here. So that's the basic architecture. Now of course we would want to train it so that it produces a good code. Now as we discussed before, there's lots of definition of good code, but a very easy one is the mean squared error. You might first want to consider variance here. So the loss is the mean squared error, which is the sum over all the dimensions of the images of xi prime, which is the output here, minus xi. So we have the difference in the same component input and output transpose xi prime minus xi. So this is simply the mean squared error that we have here, and we might want to minimize that. If we minimize it, then we have the code that basically best allows us to know what the output is with a small vector in between. Now what's a linear autoencoder? We can say we take that code Z that we have in between here, and we say that that code is an encoding weight times the input vector x plus a bias, of course. And then the reconstruction is again a linear function of Z. So we multiply WD, the decoding weights with Z, and add the decoding biases. So what happens if we have no non-linearity? Well let's look into that. We have the linear encoder and the linear decoder, and now it's your turn to train a linear autoencoder in PyTorch and have different members of your pod. Try different k, where k is the dimensionality of the code. And let's compare what that does to the results.