--- description: When money's tight, even the Pentagon has to improvise. That's why Defense Secretary Ashton Carter has created the Strategic Capabilities Office. It's a small shop... title: The Military Gets Crafty image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production --- * [World](/section/world/) ## World Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close # The Military Gets Crafty by [Mark Thompson](/author/mark-thompson/) ## Mark Thompson Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close Jun 30, 2016 12:19 PM CUT by [Mark Thompson](/author/mark-thompson/) ## Mark Thompson Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close Jun 30, 2016 12:19 PM CUT When money’s tight, even the Pentagon has to improvise. That’s why Defense Secretary Ashton Carter has created the Strategic Capabilities Office. It’s a small shop inside the military’s huge bureaucracy designed to tweak, cheaply and speedily, today’s weapons for tomorrow’s wars. Peeks at its secret work reveal, among other efforts, a software rewrite that turns a missile that was designed to protect U.S. warships from attack into one capable of sinking enemy vessels. Another launches swarms of soda-can-size drones from U.S. warplanes, which could be used to flummox enemies’ surveillance–or surreptitiously spy on them. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/4389143/the-military-gets-crafty/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/4389143/the-military-gets-crafty/"},"headline":"The Military Gets Crafty","datePublished":"2016-06-30T12:19:18.000Z","dateModified":"2026-02-22T22:57:54.967Z","description":"When money's tight, even the Pentagon has to improvise. That's why Defense Secretary Ashton Carter has created the Strategic Capabilities Office. It's a small shop...","url":"https://time.com/4389143/the-military-gets-crafty/","keywords":[],"thumbnailUrl":"","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Mark Thompson","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/mark-thompson/"}],"articleSection":"World","image":[],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/world/","name":"World"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/4389143/the-military-gets-crafty/","name":"The Military Gets Crafty"}}]}] ```