The White House has released a four-tiered science and technology strategy that places undersea capabilities, outer-space systems, and artificial intelligence and autonomy at the center of U.S. military technology priorities. The 24-page National Security Science & Technology Strategy also identifies airpower, long-range strike, and C5ISR as critical supporting areas, while placing quantum technology, biotechnology, and artificial general intelligence in a longer-term category. Breaking Defense reported the strategy’s release this week.

The document’s top tier covers “three priority areas for U.S. battlefield dominance and power projection”: undersea capabilities, outer space, and AI and autonomy. It assigns different levels of ambition to those priorities. The strategy calls for “clear technological superiority” in undersea systems and outer space, while seeking a “competitive advantage” in AI and autonomy.

That distinction separates the strategy’s goals for technologies already central to military operations from its approach to emerging fields. Undersea systems, space capabilities, and AI are presented as immediate priorities, while the document’s final tier addresses technologies whose strategic effects and development timelines remain uncertain. The strategy identifies the three leading areas as priorities associated with the previous National Security Strategy, but gives them a more explicit technology-focused ranking.

Three additional areas are described as critical: airpower, long-range strike, and C5ISR. The strategy links airpower to stealth, electronic warfare, and air defenses. It defines long-range strike as the ability to penetrate an adversary’s defense-in-depth with speed and precision. C5ISR covers command, control, communications, computers, cyber operations, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance, forming the force’s information and coordination structure.

The document places a broad set of technologies beneath those critical areas as key enablers. The list includes advanced manufacturing, hypersonics, nuclear energy, and semiconductors. The main body names a dozen enabling technologies, while an appendix updates a formal Office of Science and Technology Policy list of critical and emerging technologies and extends for three pages.

The strategy also sets out an acquisition approach that combines inexpensive, potentially expendable systems with smaller numbers of sophisticated platforms. It endorses high-speed, low-cost innovations, including expendable drones, while maintaining the importance of expensive “exquisite” programs even when the threats they address may cost less. The document says the United States will seek combinations of lower-cost, sometimes lower-tech or attritable platforms that can operate in larger numbers alongside more limited quantities of advanced systems.

That approach updates the long-standing concept of pairing high-end and lower-cost forces, rather than replacing major systems with mass-produced alternatives. The strategy therefore treats affordability and quantity as complements to advanced capability. Its technology priorities and acquisition guidance point to a force designed to combine sophisticated platforms with larger numbers of less expensive or expendable systems.

In the final tier, the strategy calls for long-term resilience against potentially transformative technologies that could alter the strategic balance. Biotechnology is included for applications such as enhancing human performance and countering hostile biological weapons. Quantum technology is listed through quantum computers, sensors, and communications. The document also names artificial general intelligence, describing the possibility of a future algorithm that could outsmart humans. The next steps identified by the strategy are continued attention to these uncertain technologies while advancing the higher-priority undersea, space, AI, airpower, strike, and C5ISR capabilities.