Third Offset planners will have to evaluate whether adversaries are poised to field effective countermeasures to, say, stealthy aircraft or submarines. Such judgments will inform whether, like Eisenhower, to redouble U.S. investments in those areas of presumed enduring advantage (at the expense of less competitive options) or to abandon a decaying advantage and look elsewhere. Given the rapid diffusion of military technology and operational concepts, the search by Third Offset planners for enduring advantages is likely to be a much greater challenge than it was for their Offset predecessors. Indeed, in the future it may be the case that the most powerful and enduring American advantages (and the ones providing the most leverage over adversaries) are not military-technical but instead are diplomatic, political, and cultural, or lie at the unconventional end of the military spectrum.

A corollary conclusion is that policymakers will have to be even more ruthless than usual in culling clearly uncompetitive assets and concepts in order to free up resources for research, experimentation, and those technologies and concepts that are the most promising. Whether policymakers in the Pentagon and Capitol Hill are up to that challenge remains to be seen.

Net assessment: now more than ever

The five precepts described above – influencing adversary behavior, focusing on specific military problems, understanding the adversary’s strategy, knowing your strengths and weaknesses, and finding enduring advantages – point to the necessity of performing an honest and objective net assessment at the start of the Third Offset project. Without the guidance provided by a rigorous net assessment, the Third Offset project risks wandering off and failing to deliver the strategic results needed.

Existing net assessments regarding China, Iran, Russia, and other potential adversaries were undoubtedly part of the spark leading to the establishment of the Third Offset initiative. Yet such assessments are perishable. The murky future for the Pentagon’s Office of Net Assessment raises concerns over whether Third Offset planners will receive the objective assessments they will continuously need to perform their tasks over the long haul.

The two previous offset strategies were successful because they received bipartisan backing and because they each persisted over consecutive administrations of both political parties. The Third Offset’s challenges are more structurally complex than those of its predecessors and successful offset courses of action this time will be more elusive and fleeting. Third Offset managers should first think through their goals and strategy in order to launch the project on a constructive path. And policymakers on all sides in Washington have a duty to provide sustained support to the project – which should include a bright future for the Office of Net Assessment.

Robert Haddick is an independent contractor at U.S. Special Operations Command. He writes here in a personal capacity. His book “Fire on the Water: China, America, and the Future of the Pacific,” is now out from Naval Institute Press.