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The New Defense Era

Thank you to the Northern Virginia Technology Council for inviting me to join you here today. I'm delivering a speech today that no one could have given a year ago. And that's because in that time, the world has been altered dramatically. Forever. And so have we. As President Bush said during the State of the Union, "Those of us who have lived through these challenging times have been changed by them." It's true. And at CACI, we're familiar with change.

Forty years ago, in 1962, we were a very different company... we were two men, Herb Karr and future Nobel Laureate Harry Markowitz, a phone booth for an office, and a single product - SIMSCRIPT, the world's first simulation programming language - which generated $34,000 in revenues for CACI that first year.

Today, CACI has 5500 employees worldwide, last fiscal year hit $560M in revenue, and we are optimistic about our future growth. Our growth will come from internal operations, acquisitions and change. In short, CACI is entering a new chapter of its history, just like the nation.

The New Defense Era

The era began long before the World Trade Center attacks. However, those attacks, and the ensuing war in Afghanistan, have been marked by many of the characteristics of this New Defense Era. It centers around "asymmetric warfare." And this term gets used so often these days, you'd think that everyone understands what it means.

Not so.

Let's take a closer look. The Joint Staff defines asymmetric warfare as "unanticipated or non-traditional approaches to circumvent or undermine an adversary's strengths while exploiting his vulnerabilities through unexpected technologies or innovative means." There's another, simpler, way to define it. "Not fighting fair." Precisely, asymmetric warfare means facing a cunning and conniving adversary of inferior strength, who finds ways to exploit vulnerabilities to radical extreme, and frequently with frightening psychological effect.

Today, instead of warring against a single empire we're facing groups like the Islamic Resistance Movement, or Hamas; the Islamic Jihad; Hizbullah; the Liberation Tigers of Sri Lanka; Jaish-i-Mohammed; and of course the al Qaeda network. By the way, some of the al Qaeda leadership is now believed to be in Lebanon with the Hizbullah. But as the president has said, "These enemies view the entire world as the battlefield, and we must pursue them wherever they are." And remember, these are the people who we know used the Internet to conduct much of their terrorist planning for the World Trade Center.

We're also facing countries who make up what President Bush called the "axis of evil" - states like North Korea, Iraq and Iran... known supporters of terrorism and missiles for weapons of mass destruction. And this would mean that we need some level of missile defense capability as well. The President has also said that we will not permit the world's most dangerous regimes to threaten us with the world's most dangerous weapons... the horrors of biological, chemical and dirty nuclear devices.

September 11 may be the event that comes most rapidly to mind when we think of this new war, but there were many previous attacks. The small, bomb-laden raft that nosed up alongside the USS Cole and killed 17 sailors. The Khobar Towers bombing that killed 19. The first attempt to blow up the World Trade Center, when six died and more than 1000 were injured. And, of course, the bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut, where 241 U.S. Marines were killed.

There were enough of these incidents, in fact, that when the Hart-Rudman Commission on National Security came out with its report last summer, it was able to confidently predict that, "A direct attack against American citizens on American soil is likely over the next quarter century." In fact, that attack would take place within the next couple of months.

Welcome to The New Defense Era

But as the events of more recent months have shown, it is by no means the defenseless era. Our country has encountered a challenge. And we are meeting it. As the president declared in the State of the Union Address, "In four short months, our nation has comforted the victims; begun to rebuild New York and the Pentagon; rallied a great coalition; captured, arrested and rid the world of thousands of terrorists; destroyed Afghanistan's terrorist training camps; saved a people from starvation; and freed a country from brutal oppression."

And it's true. American troops in Afghanistan have defeated the Taliban and driven out the al Qaeda with their evil camps. But they have also deployed to other places around the world to combat terror. We now have a federal office of homeland security, and with it, a renewed commitment to our nation's protection. The government has made it clear that "Our first priority must always be the security of our nation." And while we may always be vulnerable to some new, unthinkable and horrible form of asymmetric warfare, we are moving rapidly ahead with new technologies, new weapons and new defenses.

There's a common element in many of these security preparations. And it's something we all know well. Information technology. If the biggest challenge of the New Defense Era is asymmetric warfare, the biggest opportunity is information technology. That may sound like a strange statement, given the pictures we've seen from Afghanistan soldiers on horseback, fighters in caves - but in many ways, this is the most modern war we have fought. The horsemen had cell phones, the cavemen satellite links - and throughout, information technology has played a critical role, here and abroad.

How critical? As early as last spring, President Bush was already stating, "Science and technology have never been more essential to the defense of the nation and the health of our economy." And just last month, Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge reiterated the point, when he said, "We're going to win this war against terrorism armed with information and armed with knowledge..."

Or General Tommy Franks, who has been able to direct the battle from half a world away in Tampa, Florida, thanks to technology. When asked how quickly he gets information from Afghanistan, Franks told CNN, "Actually, very quickly. Because the chain of responsibility and the chain of command we have is blessed by great technology..."

And Defense Secretary Rumsfeld emphasized this in a recent speech about transforming the military: "We need to make the leap into the information age, which is the critical foundation of our transformation efforts." These efforts, he explained, rested on six goals - and two of them are explicitly related to our work. Goal number four is to protect our information networks from attack. And goal number five, Rumsfeld said, is to, "use information technology to link up different kinds of U.S. forces." And this clearly includes control of space and satellite communications links.

We've already seen this strategy succeed in Afghanistan. Technological sophistication allowed us to win a war with precious few American casualties. That's a blessing, certainly. But it's also virtually a requirement in today's world, when public and political opinion plays such a significant role. You can also find evidence of the importance the military places on IT today throughout the QDR - the Quadrennial Defense Review.

Published just a few weeks after the attacks on New York and the Pentagon itself, the report makes absolutely clear how real the threats facing the nation are... and how important it is that IT be part of the response. Early on, the QDR states, "The challenges the nation faces do not loom in the future but are here now... (and, in part) they require leveraging information technology..."

The report then moves to address a concept that has been talked about before, but which Secretary Rumsfeld has chosen to champion like few before him. Again, transformation. The QDR not only argues for the urgency of this transformation, but offers a blueprint for it. Information technology runs all through that blueprint. In fact, the QDR even says at one point that the "DoD must keep its information, communication and other management technologies on a par with the best, proven technologies available."

All of this is exciting, even reassuring news for America, as it means our military is really looking ahead. But more to the point of today's breakfast meeting, this should be exciting news for everyone in this room. The fact that the government, and the Pentagon in particular, are so clearly committed to pacesetting technology signals a busy future for Northern Virginia's IT community in being of service to our country. We certainly believe it does for CACI. Now as anyone who's done business in the area for any amount of time knows, talk is one thing, while committed budget dollars are quite another.

Well, there's no question the president is committed. As he explained last month during the State of the Union Address, his budget, "includes the largest increase in defense spending in two decades - because while the price of freedom and security is high, it is never too high. Whatever it costs to defend our country, we will pay." And he means it. $379B defense budget in 2003, up $48B from last year. And $120B in additional increases in the defense budget plan over the next five years.

We at CACI were also gratified to hear the president say that his budget, quote, "nearly doubles funding for a sustained strategy of homeland security, focused on four key areas: bioterrorism; emergency response; airport and border security; and improved intelligence." That adds up to nearly $38B in 2003, and it adds up to a significant opportunity for the IT industry, as is the proposed creation of a Homeland Defense Command or the Northern CINC.

Let me give you a better idea of what I mean. In the area of Homeland Security Protection, CACI is developing a mission planner/analyzer for the USMC Warfighting Lab, in order to help the military plan and assess the effectiveness of friendly or hostile small unit behavior in realistic urban environments.

We're also working on a web-based security clearance application, because with new security measures have come a blizzard of new requests for security clearances. In order to help make this process less of a burden for the DoD, CACI's paperless application handles security request processing and security personnel record keeping. And CACI is integrating software enhanced sensors with an ultra-wideband, networked, autonomous active system to track, locate and determine the status of a wide variety of assets.

We have a number of exciting activities underway on the counterterrorism front as well. For example, we have plans to leverage our technological capabilities and intelligence operations experience to develop a voice print identification and analysis system to help locate, track and correlate suspected terrorists and their evil cronies.

Our information assurance specialists, meanwhile, use current CACI advanced technologies to help security organizations rapidly prepare their security personnel to counter the terrorist threat. CACI is also one of two prime contractors for JWARS - the DoD's premier theatre level warfare simulation tool. The tool can also be used in support of counterterrorism operations.

In the area of airport and border security, CACI is already doing work for the FAA and Customs. We also working to adapt SARSIM II, a Search and Rescue Simulation developed for the U.S. Coast Guard, for Homeland Defense use.

Now this may sound like an unrelated list of activities, but the fact is that all these projects have one thing in common: a belief that innovation through IT can help bring about a more secure world.

I'd like to close with two thoughts, the first from the National Defense Panel, which as early as 1996, was already predicting that, "Technology will play an ever-increasing and imperative role in America's security policy and programs in the future... Information technologies... will play a preeminent role, with offensive and defensive manifestations." And so they have. But the panel also had words of caution. "If we do not lead the technological revolution," they wrote, "we will be vulnerable to it." I do not believe that has come to pass yet, and I assure you that all of us at CACI are working to make sure it never does.

I know I've emphasized the important role information technology will play in the New Defense Era. But make no mistake: as we have been reminded, painfully, each time a soldier has lost his or her life in this new war on terrorism, the New Defense Era is not a bloodless era. As President Bush said on October 7, when he announced that America's war in Afghanistan had begun, "We ask a lot of those who wear our uniform. We ask them to leave their loved ones, to travel great distances, to risk injury, even to be prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice of their lives. They are dedicated, they are honorable; they represent the best of our country. And we are grateful." So am I.

The President finished that October address to the nation with a message to all those in the armed services. He said, "Your mission is defined; your objectives are clear; your goal is just. You have my full confidence, and you will have every tool you need to carry out your duty."

So I have enjoyed sharing these thoughts with you and what seems clear... and what seems to be the major thrust of the New Defense Era and the need for transformation is that the aggressive use of information technology will be leveraged to respond to the asymmetric threat to create operational dominance on the battlefield, in space and in homeland security. It gives me great pride to know that CACI provides some of those mission critical tools. And it is my hope, that those tools, deployed in war, will some day bring peace - or, in the President's words, "freedom's victory."

It has been a pleasure to be with you this morning. God Bless America. And remember, We Are All Americans First!

Thank you.