University officials are hoping Air Force’s initial 5-year, $90 million investment will help Howard become the first historically Black institution to ascend to the top ranks of the nation’s research universities.
The U.S. Air Force wants scientists at Howard University to figure out how its fighter pilots can team up with robotic co-pilots to defeat enemy combatants.
The Air Force’s expected long-term investment in Howard, one of the nation’s 104 historically Black colleges and universities , addresses a congressional mandate that DOD begin to distribute its massive research budget more equitably. The UARC—the 15th such center funded by DOD and the first for the Air Force—is a potent mechanism for doing so.
In announcing the Howard contract, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin noted that HBCUs train 30% of all Black scientists and engineers yet receive only 0.05% of DOD’s massive R&D budget, which is approaching $100 billion. In 2020, Congress directed the agency to do more to build the research capacity of HBCUs, and the next year it gave DOD permission to use the UARC funding mechanism to achieve those goals.
Those who follow defense research give the Air Force’s decision a thumbs-up. “This award makes perfect sense given the congressional directive,” says Andrew Metrick, a defense fellow at the Center for a New American Security. “Tactical autonomy is a critical need for the Air Force,” he notes, and the cachet of a UARC will make it easier for Howard to win contracts from other branches of the military for related work.
“When you’re a large university, your natural inclination is to think you can do it all yourself,” says Dinesh Verma, a systems engineer at the Stevens Institute of Technology who has led the Systems Engineering Research Center since its formation. “There were quite a few naysayers at the beginning because all the previous UARCs were located at large, well-established universities. But a smaller university is more open to the idea of a network, which has worked very well.
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