Shah, Raj M. and Christopher Kirchhoff (2024) Unit X: How the Pentagon and Silicon Valley are Transforming the Future of War. New York: Scribner.
In Unit X: How the Pentagon and Silicon Valley are Transforming the Future of War, authors Raj M. Shah and Christopher Kirchhoff both provide a history of the Defense Innovation Unit Experimental (DIUx) in the Pentagon between 2016 and roughly the end of the Biden Administration. Shah was a former Director of DIUx and Kirchhoff an advisor. The mission of DIUx (for it still exists), taken from its webpage, is to focus on, “accelerating the adoption of commercial and dual-use technology to solve operational challenges at speed and scale.”
The clarion call in Unit X is perhaps this:
The Pentagon must now strike a careful balance, recapitalizing older systems with new technology while also building entirely new platforms around novel operational concepts. But at least now everyone grasps that the Pentagon will not win a future war without embracing emerging technology in equal or greater measure than its adversaries.
Shah & Kirchhoff, p. 241
The secret to the success of DIUx, according to Shah and Kirchhoff, was possible because of the following elements:
- “…work on critical warfighter problems.”
- “…use real tech.”
- “…strong top cover… .”
- “…healthy irreverence… .”
- “…the right fuel in your tank [flexible money]… .”
- “…to battle, while at the same time co-opting, entrenhced interests.”
- “Building a team with conviction and resolve to see it through… .” (Shah & Kirchhoff, pp. 242-243)
Taken as a whole, Unit X is part history and part advocacy. The question, as pointed out in Unit X, is asking if the Department of Defense is ready to do what it takes, as shown by DIUx, or not.
X grognards
For wargamers, the tech that DIUx is exploring can often be placed into a wargame. The danger, of course, it to make sure the wargame is a fair reflection of that new tech. I personally have seen too many defense wargames where the tech always works perfectly; as if Murphy never gets a vote on the battlefield. So while innovation efforts like DIUx continue within the Department of Defense, as a wargame practitioner one must be wary of how they are being used in the process. This is especially relevant as there are seemingly growing calls to use wargames as an analytic tool.
Hobby wargamers, on the other had, have much less to worry about. Hobby wargames are not for analysis but for entertainment with, maybe, a bit of some education thrown in. That does not, however, mean hobby wargamers are totally detached from the Pentagon’s innovation efforts. As the Defense Department is turning to commercial tech providers to help solve problems, so to are some within the Department turning to commercial hobby wargaming for answers…with many of the same issues and concerns the wargame practitioner community faces.
Feature image courtesy RMN
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