Peter W. Singer is the director of the 21st Century Defense Initiative and a senior fellow in Foreign Policy at Brookings. Singer’s research focuses on three core issues: the future of war, current U.S. defense needs and future priorities, and the future of the U.S. defense system. Singer lectures frequently to U.S. military audiences and is the author of several books and articles, including Wired for War: The Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the 21st Century.

He’s here to answer your questions about defense in a high-tech world, including: current U.S. defense needs; defense energy security; and future priorities such as robotic warfare on the ground, in the air and from space.

Welcome Peter and thank you. Let’s get started.

The reason is not environment in my mind, but national security. As we explore in the report, if we had an energy strategy, not only would we save the DoD budget money, but also soldiers’ lives. A disproportionate amount of the convoys in Iraq and Afghanistan are actually fuel convoys. So just 1% improvement in energy efficiency would mean well over a 1000 less convoy missions for soldiers, one of the most dangerous jobs in the field right now.

I think the biggest maybe the emergence and now seeming dominance of the “COIN mafia.” This term is part jest but essentially counter-insurgency was once something that got very little thought or training relative to other areas. Now it is at the center of the mix in everything from doctrine to the debate over Afghanistan. A question, though, is whether 1) we have the right balance in our planning now (are we overcompensating?) and 2) does our concept of insurgencies and what to do about them equate with the current reality of the 21^st century. That is, is everything Malaysia or Vietnam redux, when facing a mix of warlords and drug dealers terrorists and child soldiers, or is Iraq the same Afghanistan and does what worked there carry over. These are questions that need fact based answers, unfortunately not something we often see in the debates.

A huge part! The US military went into Iraq with just a handful of robotic systems in the air and zero unmanned systems on the ground, none of them armed. Today, there are over 7,000 drones in the US inventory and another roughly 12,000 on the ground. These are just the first generation, the Model T Fords and Wright Flyers compared to what is already in the prototype stage.