Summer Myatt
The CHIPS and Science Act of 2022 represents a major milestone in the United States’ efforts to revitalize domestic semiconductor chip manufacturing and re-establish our nation as a microelectronics powerhouse on the world stage.
The Department of Defense’s Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering, Dr. David Honey, called the CHIPS Act a “hugely important investment” for the DOD and the country.
During the ExecutiveBiz CTO Forum, Dr. Honey explained that part of the CHIPS Act includes a $2 billion set aside — $400 million per year over five years — to OUSD R&E that will support prototyping activity as part of the DOD’s “lab-to-fab” concept.
Dr. Honey described lab-to-fab as a concept which centers around regional innovation hubs where industry and academia will be able to use leading-edge design tools and partnerships with semiconductor fabrication plants, or “fabs,” to bring their semiconductor chip ideas from concept to reality.
Currently within the defense industrial base, the big semiconductor corporations are spending more money on development than research, Dr. Honey shared with the audience in Falls Church, VA. The lab-to-fab concept, and the funding that will support it, will help to rebalance the R&D scales and put more of a focus on research.
This prototyping activity aligns with a larger trend within OUSD R&E toward experimentation. Dr. Honey said the GovCon community will see more of a focus on experimentation in the DOD as the department learns more about “what works and what doesn’t work,” especially with the emergence and implementation of Joint All-Domain Command and Control, or JADC2.
“There’s a lot that we just can’t learn from the laboratory, there’s a lot that we can’t learn from the computational capabilities that we have — we actually have to do that in the field and determine what works and what doesn’t work,” said Dr. Honey.
Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks, a Wash100 Award winner, started an activity called RDER, or Rapid Defense Experimentation Reserve, that Dr. Honey said will provide the DOD with a “relevant environment in which we take new concepts out in the field and experiment” — ultimately allowing the department to more rapidly acquire new capabilities that it needs.
Learn more about defense priorities from a budgetary perspective during the Potomac Officers Club’s Defense Technology Summit: FY2023 Budget and Priorities Forum on Oct. 25. DOD’s Under Secretary for Acquisition and Sustainment, Dr. William LaPlante, is slated to keynote. Register here.
