The Enduring Competition: Mosaic Warfare and Beyond

The U.S. faces challenges of peer competition across all scales of intensity, and the U.S. military is increasingly finding itself lacking options. At the high end, peers are modernizing their militaries at a pace that makes conventional military deterrence too costly (literally and figuratively), and in the enduring competition, the Nation has few options in between a Freedom of Navigation Operation and all-out war. DARPA is developing new initiatives to provide leadership scalable options across this spectrum of competition. Our more mature portfolio, Mosaic Warfare, is providing new approaches for a constantly evolving and scalable combat-credible conventional deterrent. It is developing the tools and infrastructure to enable dynamic composition of an adaptable, disaggregated Joint all-domain force. But because Mosaic involves as much institutional change as technology, it faces headwinds for implementation. This talk will provide a detailed review of what Mosaic Warfare is, how we are implementing it, and initial concepts for fielding and adoption. The talk will also provide a framing of the full spectrum of competition and some discussion of some initial ideas DARPA has to provide scalable option.

Dr. Timothy Grayson is the Director of the Strategic Technology Office (STO) at DARPA. In this role, he leads the office in development of breakthrough technologies to enable warfighters to field, operate, and adapt distributed, joint, multi-domain combat capabilities at continuous speed. These technologies include sensing, communications, and electronic warfare technology and the supporting tools and decision aids needed to compose, integrate, and operate complex combat architectures. Dr. Grayson has extensive government experience. He spent several years as a senior intelligence officer with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in the Directorate of Science and Technology and culminating in a tour at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.