For decades, U.S. national security was ensured, in part, by a simple advantage: a near-monopoly on access to the most advanced technologies. Increasingly, however, off-the-shelf equipment developed for the communication, transportation, construction, agriculture, and other commercial sectors features highly sophisticated components and systems, which resourceful adversaries might modify or combine to create novel and unanticipated threats to military operations.
The Improv program asks experts across multiple disciplines to look at today’s bustling tech marketplace with an inventor’s eye and imagine how easily purchased, relatively benign technologies might be converted or combined into threats to military operations, equipment, or personnel. Candidate ideas will be assessed and varying levels of support will be offered to develop and test selected proposals. The emphasis will be on speed and economy, with the goal of propelling winning submissions from concept to simple working prototypes within approximately 100 days.
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