How does Moore’s Law apply to weapons of the future?
Pike: If we think about precision munitions or unmanned aerial vehicles, the reason that UAVs have gone like gangbusters is Moore’s Law. The autopilots have gotten better, the image compression has gotten better. All of those things are simply commentaries on Moore’s Law. When a particular domain of activity gets swept up by Moore’s Law, you can have incredibly rapid change. I believe that the military has increasingly become divided between those things that have gotten swept up by Moore’s Law and those that haven’t. The big challenge facing the military is to see if we can’t get Moore’s Law into play. Q: How do we do that? Pike: Maybe you don’t. There are some things for which it is just not relevant. If we think about tanks, for example, they are remarkably unchanged from three or four decades ago. If I am going to improve land combat systems, I’ve got my work cut out for me. But we’ve seen Moore’s Law in play with airpower with a vengeance. If you think about the way that UAVs and
