Defense Resource Management (Formerly Human Capital) Sept. 18, 2025

Defense Resource Management

The originally designated Defense Resource Management Industry Study assumed responsibility for examining the varied and complex network of actors, processes, legal and regulatory mechanisms, and perspectives that converge at the intersection of resource management (availability, distribution, application), economic performance, and security. At the outset, it became clear that, broadly labeled, Defense Resource Management was not a definable industry with a coherent identity, even though it could be said to share certain important characteristics in common with industry: revenues, markets, customers/clientele, products (goods and services), processes, enterprises (installations and facilities), and workforces, among others. In a deeper sense, it was seen as what some would call a cross-cutting domain consisting of actors/stakeholders, relationships, policies, processes, and practices – basically an enabler or facilitator for all organizations and institutions, military and non-military, public and private. Within this larger set of parameters, the Defense Resource Management Industry Study therefore chose to focus its attention, energies, and activities more specifically on Strategic Human Capital, a richer and more comprehensive concept that both complements and stands independent of financial capital and physical capital. The overarching aim of this more-specifically-focused Industry Study enterprise has become to assess the importance and impact of human capital in contributing to and determining U.S. and international industrial and economic competitiveness (across industries, firms, and countries; for both defense and non-defense purposes; under routine and emergency circumstances). What has resulted is a reaffirmation that strategic human capital’s strength is its centrality in ensuring national security, contributing to economic vitality and competitiveness, and enabling the effective exercise of national power; conversely, its absence can almost inevitably and invariably produce vulnerability across virtually every societal domain.