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Statement of Terrorism, Unconventional Threats and Capabilities Subcommittee Chairman Adam Smith DoD S&T Policy

March 13, 2008

"Good morning. The Terrorism, Unconventional Threats and Capabilities Subcommittee this morning will receive testimony on the Defense Department's science and technology (DoD S&T) policy and their conformity to the irregular warfare environment of the 21st century.

"I want to thank our panelists for taking the time to join us this morning to talk about an essential component of our efforts to defeat terrorism around the world. This subcommittee remains committed to ensuring our military remains at the cutting edge of technology.

"Terrorist networks like al-Qaida represent a class of adversaries who pursue 'complex irregular warfare.' The scope of our concerns in the irregular warfare environment includes counterterrorism, counterinsurgency, stabilization and reconstruction, and cybersecurity. Unlike more traditional national adversaries who wear uniforms and the flag of their native country, these nontraditional adversaries blend in to their local populations.

"Identifying terrorists and insurgents, tracking them and disrupting their activities can be more difficult by an order of magnitude. To do so, we utilize troops, unmanned vehicles, automated systems, and wireless technologies to gather and synthesize massive amounts of information.

"To be effective, DoD S&T policies have to lead to systems that can quickly take in information, detect patterns, and communicate back to the user actionable analysis. These systems have to include sufficient and efficiently used bandwidth, network structures that can be scaled up as needed, and information storage and analysis components. I'm particularly interested in how we manage bandwidth constraints when we have to implement these expeditionary networks, as well as how DoD S&T policy borrows best practices from 'big science' while attracting the best and the brightest minds to our efforts.

"Again, I appreciate very much the time and expertise of our panelists, and I thank Ranking Member Thornberry for his continued contributions to the bipartisan work of this subcommittee."