SVG
Commentary
Wall Street Journal

“Unit X” Review: Taking Tech into Battle

To spur innovation, the Pentagon established a special unit to partner with Silicon Valley’s cutting-edge companies. Not everyone welcomed the effort.

A Saildrone Explorer unmanned surface vessel sails in the Gulf of Aqaba during International Maritime Exercise/Cutlass Express 2022. (DVIDS)
Caption
A Saildrone Explorer unmanned surface vessel sails in the Gulf of Aqaba on February 9, 2022. (DVIDS)

When Raj Shah was an F-16 pilot in 2006 flying missions along the Iraq-Iran border, he discovered that the multimillion-dollar fighter’s navigation system was so out of date that it couldn’t tell him which side of the border he was flying over. He decided to load his hand-held, $300 Compaq iPAQ with civilian GPS software and digital maps. It worked perfectly.

Ten years later, when Mr. Shah visited the U.S. Air Force command center in Qatar as a civilian, the same tech gap was evident: To his dismay, he saw computers armed with software programs that were older than the military officers using them.

Read the full article in the Wall Street Journal.

Enjoyed this article? Subscribe to Hudson’s newsletters to stay up to date with our latest content.