A Tech Agenda For the Next U.S. President

Stealth put America ahead of its peers; speed will keep it there. The U.S. has spent billions on hypersonics but has little to show for it, instead letting China and Russia catch up. The time has come to move ahead. We don’t want another X-30 National Aero-Space Plane. An operational air-breathing hypersonic strike missile will do for a start, with a robust follow-on plan to develop technology for a reusable Mach 5+ intelligence surveillance, reconnaissance and strike aircraft.

This is more than unmanned aircraft and robotic systems. This is about increasing human capability in everything from airspace management to air dominance, making aviation safer and more affordable, and enabling new missions and markets. It is less about developing the algorithms, which can largely be left to the ingenuity of America’s entrepreneurs, and more about large-scale demos to help customers, regulators and warfighters build trust in autonomous systems.  

Any vision of manned and unmanned systems working seamlessly together, for commerce or warfare, requires networks that can safely, securely and efficiently share spectrum with myriad other users. But spectrum is a finite and valuable resource—and one U.S. rivals can contest and exploit. Technology is required that can open new spectrum, such as lasercomm or terahertz, and dynamically share the airwaves. The days of stovepiped frequencies are numbered.

Sustained investment in turbine engine technology has kept the U.S. ahead of its rivals. New, fuel-efficient commercial turbofans are entering service, and versatile adaptive-cycle combat engines are in development. But now is not the time to ease off. There is more efficiency to be wrung out of civil engines and more affordability and capability needed from military powerplants. Engines enable aircraft, but technology development takes decades. So keep on investing.

Call it fuel savings or emissions reductions, the demand for increased efficiency in air transport will not decline and will require more than just ever-better engines. The time has come to significantly advance the aerodynamics of commercial aircraft through large-scale demos to prove the maturity of everything from new design tools to novel configurations—subsonic or supersonic. NASA must be funded to work with industry on X-planes that will keep the U.S. ahead.

Advanced manufacturing is about more than just 3-D printing. New materials have sparked revolutions in aerospace in the past, from aluminum through titanium to carbon-fiber. The U.S. needs to be leading the next revolution, whether it is nano-enhanced composites, new alloys assembled at the atomic level, bioengineered materials or bioinspired structures. Enabling faster qualification of new materials by pushing advances in computing and modeling is essential.

Precision-guided weapons gave the U.S. the ability to offset Soviet numerical superiority in the Cold War and to surgically strike in the war on terror. But they are now a commodity. Now the potential foe is numerous and well-equipped. The precision and almost limitless magazine of directed-energy weapons are required, and it is time to move them out of laboratories and experiments and into the hands of users for operational assessments and early fielding.

America’s economy and security are highly dependent on its use of satellites for communications, navigation and timing, surveillance, broadcasting, weather forecasting and resource monitoring. But building and launching spacecraft remains a lengthy and expensive process, and satellites on orbit are potentially vulnerable assets. The U.S. must push ahead with the development of technology to make access to space routine, responsive and fully reusable.

We cannot predict the future, but we can prepare for it. Disruptive technologies and services are a threat not just to established industries such as aviation, but to entrenched customers and regulators such as the FAA and Pentagon. Building bridges between America’s entrepreneurs and Washington’s bureaucrats is essential if aviation and aerospace are to evolve and thrive.