After Hagel Exit, Innovation Drives Expected to Continue at Pentagon

WASHINGTON — In the last major address he delivered as defense secretary — just nine days before President Barack Obama announced his resignation — Chuck Hagel focused on two initiatives that may come, if successful, to define his brief tenure.

While neither initiative was his idea, analysts give Hagel credit for empowering his deputies to move ahead with their plans to reform a postwar DoD looking for new ways to operate.

The Defense Innovation Initiative — also known as the “third offset” — which was the main subject of the Nov. 15 speech, was actually the brainchild of Deputy Defense Secretary Bob Work. But Hagel nevertheless “deserves credit for being secure enough to create top cover for Bob to go and execute his ideas,” said Ben FitzGerald, director of the Technology and National Security Program at Center for a New American Security (CNAS).

CNAS is Work’s former home where he began to formulate the ideas that would become the third offset strategy.

Read the full article at Defense News.