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07 Sep 23. Matching China Means Letting U.S. Industry Iterate, Develop Technologies. The best way for the U.S. to meet the pacing challenge posed by China is to let U.S. industry do what it does best: develop new technologies. The government’s role there, said the deputy under secretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment, is to create the best conditions possible to allow those technologies to scale.
“To counter China’s whole-of-nation approach, what we need to do is what only the American system can do, which is let industry iterate and develop while we in the government create the conditions to rapidly scale those key technologies — that’s the secret sauce,” said Radha Iyengar Plumb during a discussion Wednesday with Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C.
Plumb laid out three things the Defense Department is doing to advance its ability to deliver capabilities more quickly to warfighters and at scale. First, Plumb said, the department must do more to make use of the acquisition tools and authorities it already has.
“The Adaptive Acquisition Framework, which folks might be familiar with, was a good step,” she said. “And building on that at the individual program level, we’re employing everything from and other transaction authorities to the software acquisition pathway to create a range of hybrid strategies that enable scale.”
One approach the department is taking is with the Competitive Advantage Pathfinders initiative, or CAP, within acquisition and sustainment.
The Competitive Advantage Pathfinders initiative demonstrates common challenges and solutions to barriers in capability fielding. By bringing together cross-department teams, each CAP identifies any disconnects among the three legs of delivering warfighter advantage: requirements, resourcing and program management.
“We identify high-tech-ready capabilities that meet a warfighter need, and then, we see where the sticking points are when we try to just rapidly push it to scale,” Plumb said. “We develop a solution for that problem and keep going and solve the next issue and the next issue and the next issue.”
With CAP, Plumb said, the department can not only accelerate a specific technology, but it can also identify where improvements are needed to speed scale, more generally.
Second, she said the department is working to figure out where it can reduce barriers to integration.
“Inside of , we set up this acquisition integration interoperability team, and their job is to align service-specific systems acquisition to meet joint requirements,” Plumb said.
The office runs an “integrated acquisition portfolio review,” she said, which takes a capability and a mission thread and looks at underlying service-specific programs, identifies gaps, seams and areas where investment for integration is needed, and focuses on identifying resources for that integration with a focus on year-of-execution funding.
“The idea here is to establish faster, better processes to connect prototype contracts to production contracts to scale integration to ensure that our joint requirements are met,” she said.
Finally, Plumb said, there must be an increased focus on the acquisition workforce.
“None of this happens without the right people in the right places,” she said. “We’re looking at expanding recruitment through programs like our Defense Civilian Training Course, on building more modular innovation-focused training — that’s work going on at DAU — and how we can create the right kind of incentives to do that innovative work, encouraging the right kind of risk-taking.” (Source: U.S. DoD)
07 Sep 23. US Army to reward big contractors that ingest smaller innovator’s tech. The U.S. Army will soon provide incentives for larger defense companies to incorporate technology developed through small businesses as part of competitive development programs, the service’s undersecretary said Sept. 6 at the Defense News Conference.
“I was pretty worried when I first came into the role [of undersecretary] because I saw some statistics that indicated that since about 2010, small business participation, at least on the innovation side of the Army, had dipped by about 30-35%,” Gabe Camarillo said, “so I asked the team to do an in-depth study of what were the causes, were there any trends that we should be concerned about.”
“We need to incentivize small business innovation, but we can’t always do it with direct awards,” he added.
The service will begin inserting language in some requests for proposals in fiscal 2024 meant to encourage prime contractors to use technology already funded and developed through Small Business Innovation Research dollars, but not yet carried into a program of record, according to Camarillo.
Starting small, the effort called Project Vista will take lower-tier acquisition programs and give source-selection credit to prime contractors that incorporate those Pentagon-funded technologies as part of their proposals, he explained.
“We’re experimenting,” he said, “and if it works, we’ll begin scaling it out.”
While large contractors already work with small businesses on a regular basis, the Army has struggled to turn technology developed through SBIR-funded grants or prototyping into actual fielded capability, Camarillo noted.
“We want to leverage that investment. Maybe it didn’t have a home, maybe that technology couldn’t bridge the valley of death, so we are now looking to find ways to incentivize integrators to pick up where that left off,” he said, referring to the gap between a product’s development and the Pentagon’s sluggish bureaucracy. (Source: Defense News)
07 Sep 23. Hicks Discusses Replicator Initiative. The United States military must capitalize on the country’s greatest asset – the unparalleled innovation of its people, Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks said yesterday.
Hicks spoke at the Defense News Conference in Arlington, Virginia, and outlined the steps the department must take to innovate and field new capabilities that will continue U.S. dominance in military affairs.
She spoke about the department’s new “replicator” initiative and what it could mean to fielding new technologies, new capabilities and new concepts to the military.
She also addressed the need for speed in innovation. This has been a constant in the Defense Department since Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III arrived in January 2021. “We’ve never wavered from our ultimate objective, which is delivering safe and reliable, combat-credible capabilities at speed and scale to America’s warfighters, so that they can deter aggression and win if they are called to fight,” she said.
DOD is also “incentivizing more joint experimentation and concept development,” Hicks said.
This alone helps bridge the “valley of death” between developing an idea and deploying a capability. The department is also accelerating software acquisition and procurement of innovative technologies.
The urgency behind this comes from the competition with China. “The PRC has spent the last 20 years building a modern military carefully crafted to blunt the operational advantages we’ve enjoyed for decades,” she said. “But the one advantage that they can never blunt, steal, or copy — because it’s embedded in our people — is American ingenuity: our ability to innovate, change the game and, in the military sphere, to imagine, create and master the future character of warfare.”
The replicator initiative will help overcome the production valley of death. “Replicator is not a new program of record,” Hicks said. “We’re not creating a new bureaucracy, and we will not be asking for new money in . Not all problems need new money; we are problem-solvers, and we intend to self-solve.”
The initiative will use “existing funding, existing programming lines, and existing authorities to accelerate production and delivery at scale — by exerting leadership focus and attention on a singular operational challenge and maturing solutions because that’s what ultimately delivers,” she said. “This is about driving culture change just as much as technology change — and about replicating best practice just as much as products, so we can gain military advantage faster.”
Replicator will begin with all-domain, “attritable” autonomy to help overcome China’s advantage in mass: more ships, more missiles, more forces. These capabilities “can help a determined defender stop a larger aggressor from achieving its objectives, put fewer people in the line of fire, and be made, fielded, and upgraded at the speed warfighters need without long maintenance tails,” Hicks said.
Examples of these capabilities are self-piloting ships and uncrewed aircraft. “Now is the time to scale with systems that are harder to plan for, harder to hit, and harder to beat than those of potential competitors,” she said.
“We’ve set a big goal for replicator: to field attritable, autonomous systems at a scale of multiple thousands in multiple domains within the next 18-to-24 months,” Hicks said. “The ‘replication’ isn’t just about production. We also aim to replicate and inculcate how we will achieve that goal, so we can scale whatever is most efficient, effective and relevant in the future, again and again.”
Hicks discussed the possibilities of all-domain, attritable autonomy. “Imagine distributed pods of self-propelled ADA2 systems afloat, powered by the sun and other virtually -limitless resources, packed with sensors aplenty, enough to give us new, reliable sources of information in near-real-time,” she said. “Imagine fleets of ground-based ADA2 systems delivering novel logistics support, scouting ahead to keep troops safe or securing DOD infrastructure.”
In space this will mean ADA2 systems in orbit “flung into space scores at a time, numbering so many that it becomes impossible to eliminate or degrade them all,” Hicks said. “Imagine flocks of ADA2 systems flying at all sorts of altitudes, doing a range of missions, building on what we’ve seen in Ukraine. They could be deployed by larger aircraft, launched by troops on land or sea, or take off themselves.”
These systems will create new capabilities and call for new concepts and new ways to fight, she said. “That’s what ‘small, smart, cheap, and many’ can do,” Hicks said. “Make no mistake: Replicator signals from the top that we are embarking on audacious change fast using the means we have. We face an urgent challenge, and we intend to meet it with the courage to bet big.” (Source: U.S. DoD)
05 Sep 23. Senate Confirmation Still in Limbo for 301 Military Leaders.
The Senate has returned to work, and there is still no resolution in sight of confirmation of general and flag officers by the body.
Alabama Sen. Thomas H. Tuberville has put holds on the nominations of 301 senior military leaders in an effort to force changes in the Defense Department’s position on equal access to reproductive health care services.
Pentagon officials continue to stress that DOD’s policy on reproductive health coverage has remained consistent, and no changes to the policy have been made. To ensure equitable access to care, DOD implemented a policy enabling service members to travel outside their duty stations’ state if that state imposes restrictions on reproductive health access.
The Tuberville holds have already resulted in the Army, Navy and Marine Corps being led by “acting” military leaders. Some in the Pentagon have said if the holds continue, Joint Chiefs of Staff will have to be renamed “Joint Chief of Staff.”
Air Force Gen. CQ Brown, Jr. — nominated to replace Army Gen. Mark A. Milley as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff — is the most senior officer affected, but there are many more. Brown has been approved out of the Senate Armed Services Committee, but the full Senate cannot vote on the nomination.
While the positions are being filled by acting leaders, there are limitations to what those individuals can do. While they are serving in an acting status in the position that they have been promoted to, they also must continue to fill their current jobs. For example, Marine Corps Gen. Eric M. Smith now serves as both the assistant commandant of the Marine Corps and as acting commandant.
President Joe Biden nominated Smith for the top job in May, and his nomination was reported out favorably by the Senate Armed Services Committee in June. It is yet to be acted on by the full Senate. And that is just one example.
If the holds don’t lift by the end of the year, nearly 650 of the more than 850 general and flag officer nominations will be affected, DOD officials said.
Defense leaders renewed their calls for the Senate to lift these holds and speedily confirm those officers who are in legislative limbo. In a Washington Post commentary today, Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro, Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall and Army Secretary Christine Wormuth said the Tuberville holds are “eroding” the military.
“I’ve been asked before to try to put this into context in terms of why does this matter,” said Pentagon Press Secretary Air Force Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder today. “With football season starting, … imagine going into the football season with a bunch of acting coaches for each of our teams with a regulation that limits any of those acting coaches from presuming that he or she was actually going to officially lead the team.”
That would have a ripple effect throughout the team, as “acting coaches who come up through the organization are now responsible for not only being the offensive and defensive coordinators, but also acting as the head coach,” he said. “In the short term, they’re likely going to make things happen because that’s what good leaders do.
“But what happens when performance on the field becomes impacted over time,” he asked. “How are you going to deal with the uncertainty of the coaching staff and in the locker room in terms of who is in charge?”
This sort of situation would impact performance of any team, Ryder said. It would also impact the person fans hold accountable, he said.
If that is the course for a team playing football, the same is true of teams that have a far more serious mission – like the military.
“This is an issue for Congress to address,” Ryder said. “It would be inappropriate for me to comment on how they should go about it. But I can tell you that our military leaders simply want to do the job that our nation expects them to do — lead our military to protect and defend our nation and, if necessary, overwhelmingly defeat our enemies in battle.” (Source: US DoD)
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