The White House has released a 24-page National Security Science & Technology Strategy that places undersea capabilities, outer-space systems, and artificial intelligence and autonomy at the top of a four-tier military technology framework. The strategy sets different expectations for each: It calls for “clear technological superiority” in undersea and space capabilities, while seeking a “competitive advantage” in AI and autonomy, Breaking Defense reported.
Those three areas are identified as priorities for U.S. battlefield dominance and power projection. The strategy presents them as existing elements of the American arsenal rather than distant possibilities, while recognizing that competitors, particularly China, challenge U.S. advantages in each area. It attributes the prioritization to the previous year’s National Security Strategy, but gives the technology-focused document a more explicit ranking of the fields.
The framework’s second tier identifies three additional areas as critical: airpower, long-range strike, and C5ISR. Airpower is linked to stealth, electronic warfare, and defenses against air attack. Long-range strike covers the ability to penetrate layered enemy defenses with speed and precision. C5ISR, shorthand for command, control, communications, computers, cyber, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance, describes the force’s systems for sensing, directing, connecting, and coordinating operations.
The strategy treats those capabilities as mutually reinforcing. Aircraft can deliver long-range strikes, while C5ISR systems help direct them. Electronic warfare and air defenses shape the conditions in which airpower operates. That structure places electronic warfare inside a broader airpower priority rather than listing it among the strategy’s three highest-ranked technology areas.
A third tier consists of key enabling technologies intended to support the higher priorities. The document names advanced manufacturing, including 3D printing, hypersonics, nuclear energy, and semiconductors. Its appendix expands the list across three pages by updating an Office of Science and Technology Policy inventory of critical and emerging technologies.
The fourth tier addresses technologies that could alter the strategic balance after future breakthroughs. The strategy describes these as potentially transformative emerging technologies whose national-security effects and development timelines remain uncertain. It says the United States will pursue long-term technological resilience by leading in this category, Breaking Defense reported.
Biotechnology appears in that long-term group, particularly for enhancing human performance and countering hostile biological weapons. Quantum technology is also included, with quantum computers, sensors, and communications listed as examples. Artificial general intelligence forms the third example, extending the document’s AI focus toward the possibility of systems that could eventually exceed human intellectual performance.
Together, the four tiers distinguish between technologies the strategy treats as immediate priorities, capabilities it identifies as critical support, technologies that enable those capabilities, and fields whose national-security consequences remain uncertain. Undersea systems, outer-space capabilities, and AI and autonomy occupy the top tier, while airpower, long-range strike, and C5ISR form the next level of emphasis. Advanced manufacturing, hypersonics, nuclear energy, and semiconductors appear among the supporting technologies, and biotechnology, quantum systems, and artificial general intelligence are reserved for the longer-term category.