Organizations favor core responsibilities over peripheral ones. The military labors mightily to master missions considered critical and invests substantial resources incrementally improving core capabilities. While guarding their essence, armed services may overlook innovation opportunities along their periphery.

The Department of Defense, however, initiated three endurance unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) programs in the 1990s to modernize theater airborne reconnaissance, a mission peripheral to the Air Force. The eventual fielding of two of these systems provided a unique opportunity to investigate changes made to weapon systems, organizations, and operational routines serving peripheral missions during development, implementation, and institutionalization stages. This study examines how maturing technologies, events in the security environment, organizational rivalry, the capacity to change, and individuals influenced the mission's modernization and its eventual innovation.

The integration of Predator and Global Hawk into military operations fundamentally altered the troops, technologies, and techniques for conducting theater airborne reconnaissance after the Defense Department overcame significant institutional barriers. Defense executives defined UAV requirements, avoided traditional service developers, and included warfighters in a new demonstration process. Interservice competition and military support convinced the Air Force to adopt systems developed by others. Senior leaders guided the service through implementation obstacles and drew this mission closer to its core. Mission priorities, altered by the Global War on Terrorism, and combat performance are influencing the process institutionalization of this peripheral-mission innovation.

To exploit similar opportunities, the Defense Department must restore its power to spur modernization from the outside, in. It should rely upon non-traditional developers for systems serving peripheral missions and bolster the influence warfighters have over adoption decisions. To capitalize on these efforts, Congress and the Department must remove disincentives that hamper the fielding of systems developed by outsiders. The Department could realize considerable operational benefits by enacting policies designed to improve oft-neglected peripheral missions.