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Don’t just hear—listen

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B. Dean Angell

COMMAND/ORGANIZATION: U.S. Army Mission and Installation Contracting Command
POSITION AND OFFICIAL TITLE: Cost/price analyst
YEARS OF SERVICE IN WORKFORCE: 8
YEARS OF MILITARY SERVICE: 13 (eight in the Army and five in the U.S. Marine Corps)
DAWIA CERTIFICATIONS: Level III in contracting; Level I in program management; Federal Acquisition Certification – Contracting, Level II
EDUCATION: Ph.D. in business administration, Capella University; MBA, Bellevue University; B.S. in business administration, San Diego State University
AWARDS: U.S. Army Contracting Command Cost/Price Analyst of the Year; Army Commendation Medal (2); Army Achievement Medal (2); National Defense Service Ribbon; Army Overseas Service Ribbon; Commandant’s Award; Navy Achievement Medal; Navy Good Conduct Medal; Navy and Marine Corps Overseas Medal


By Susan L. Follett

When Dean Angell says that any person in the 1102 job series, contracting, should be proficient in all areas of the series, he’s speaking from experience. Over the course of a career that spans four decades, he has served as a contract specialist, contracting officer, procurement analyst, cost and price analyst and supervisory contract specialist. He has been a Marine and a Soldier, worked for NASA and the Air Force, started and sold one private sector company and worked for another, and, in his spare time, he’s a college professor.
“It’s a good thing that I love challenging work, because there is plenty of it here,” he said. “Here” is Procurement Operations within the headquarters of the U.S. Army Mission and Installation Contracting Command (MICC) at Joint Base San Antonio – Fort Sam Houston, Texas, where Angell is one of two senior cost and price analysts. “We review the actions that have the highest dollar value, are the most complicated and have the highest command interest. To make sure these actions are executed properly, we review enormous amounts of documents and research and correctly interpret laws, regulations, rules and policy. Fortunately, there are some very smart people in MICC, and in Procurement Operations in particular. Assistance is just a cubicle away.”

Angell recently led the cost and pricing team on a $4.7 billion contract to provide rotary-wing aviation maintenance services at Fort Rucker, Alabama, in support of the U.S. Army Aviation Center of Excellence. DOD’s review of the contract, which Angell noted will save the Army more than $164 million over the previous contract, found many of the team’s procurement approaches to be best practices and recommended they be adopted for future procurements.

The $4.7 billion award was complicated and had “very high command interest,” said Angell. “The customer wasn’t pleased with the service or performance of the previous contract. We met with them many times, over the phone and in person, and toured their facilities. We let the customer describe the requirement—what they needed, what they wanted, what their superiors expected, what their customers expected and why. They explained what was good and bad with the current contract, and would work best to motivate the contractor to produce the desired results that would provide the best value to the Army.” When the team began discussions with offerors, the customer described to the MICC team how each offer could or could not help or how it could be improved. “By not just hearing, but listening, we were able to finally execute a contract with terms and conditions that both the customer and contractor like, with a lower price and higher performance standards than the previous contract.”

For Angell, the effort reinforced his belief in the importance of communication. “One of the most important lessons a person can learn—and possibly one of the most difficult to master—is in communication: Don’t just hear, listen,” he said. “When others are communicating, don’t just think about what you are going to say or how you are going to respond. You can learn so much when you finally listen to what people say—and what they don’t say.”

Angell, third from left, stands with his team from Procurement Operations within MICC Headquarters at Joint Base San Antonio – Fort Sam Houston. From left are Raul Guerra; Division Chief Lorraine Massie; Karl Fischer; Karen Edwards; and Dev Gokool. Not pictured are Cynthia Borlinghaus and Johnny Castro. (U.S. Army photo by Ryan Mattox, MICC Public Affairs)

Angell, third from left, stands with his team from Procurement Operations within MICC Headquarters at Joint Base San Antonio – Fort Sam Houston. From left are Raul Guerra; Division Chief Lorraine Massie; Karl Fischer; Karen Edwards; and Dev Gokool. Not pictured are Cynthia Borlinghaus and Johnny Castro. (U.S. Army photo by Ryan Mattox, MICC Public Affairs)

It wasn’t the first time he had learned the lesson. “Many years ago when I was a new contract specialist, I was assigned my first multimillion-dollar acquisition. After I received the purchase request and requirements documents, I contacted the customer to introduce myself. He fired back an email to me and the director of contracting that started out with ‘Whenever I have to work with contracting, I just cringe,’ and it got worse from there.” But by meeting with the customer and listening to what he needed, Angell outlined an approach that met all of the customer’s demands.

Angell’s federal service started in 1981 when he enlisted in the Marine Corps. After five years as an infantryman, he enrolled in college and joined the Army ROTC program. He was commissioned in the Signal Corps and served for eight years. Angell had a hand in contracting while in the private sector, serving as the final decision authority for local contracts for a cable company and submitting proposals through a print distribution company he and his wife founded.

After selling the company, Angell accepted a developmental position with MICC at Fort Lee, Virginia. He left briefly for opportunities at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama, and Laughlin Air Force Base, Texas, and rejoined MICC in 2016. He’s quick to note that his successes there are largely because of the mentorship and leadership he has received. “It’s not practical to mention everyone,” he said, “but two people have proven to be superior leaders and mentors for me: Lorraine Massie, Procurement Operations division chief, and Dean Carsello, the contracting officer for the $4.7 billion aviation maintenance acquisition.”

When he’s not at work, you can find Angell in a classroom—real or virtual—where he teaches MBA students at Bellevue University, based in Bellevue, Nebraska, and Norwich University, in Northfield, Vermont. While Angell was earning his MBA at Bellevue, he struck up a professional relationship with Dr. David Levy, one of his professors who was also the MBA program director. Four years later, when Angell earned his doctorate, Levy offered him an adjunct professor position.

“Every time I teach a class, regardless of the subject, I learn something new,” Angell said. He’s applying what he learned to MICC, developing online courses in contracting and cost and pricing for analysts and contracting officers. “It’s a force multiplier. We can reach more people across the command and provide training cost-effectively,” he said. He sees the possibility for scaling the classes beyond MICC, a subordinate command of the U.S. Army Contracting Command (ACC). Angell uses Blackboard, a commonly available platform that’s also used by Defense Acquisition University, to develop and conduct his classes. “It’s simple to build and navigate, it’s portable and it would be easy for other organizations within ACC to take what we’ve developed and customize it.”


This article will be published in the October – December 2018 issue of Army AL&T magazine.

“Faces of the Force” is an online series highlighting members of the Army Acquisition Workforce through the power of individual stories. Profiles are produced by the U.S. Army Acquisition Support Center Communication and Support Branch, working closely with public affairs officers to feature Soldiers and civilians serving in various AL&T disciplines. For more information, or to nominate someone, please contact 703-664-5635.

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Cutting through the noise

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How a Platypus, a small team of independent Australian scientists and a THUNDERINGPANDA answered the Army’s challenge for faster signal detection.

by Nancy Jones-Bonbrest

The Army Rapid Capabilities Office (RCO) does things differently. It has to. It’s mandated in its charter and embedded in its culture.

So when it came time for the small acquisition shop to find a way to speed up signal detection, it knew it wouldn’t seek answers using traditional methods.

Instead, the RCO studied commercial models for getting answers quickly and created a “challenge” that gave industry, academia, scientists and other agencies the opportunity to go head-to-head in a competition, with prize money awarded to the top three performers.

The challenge focused on using artificial intelligence and machine learning to speed up the rate at which electronic warfare officers (EWOs) could sift through the congestion and noise that comes with signal detection. With an ever-increasing number of signals flooding in from satellites, radars, phones and other devices, the signal detection process is no longer efficient in understanding the vast amount of data presented to EWOs on the battlefield.

Within four months of setting up the Army Signal Classification Challenge, the RCO knew mathematically who had the best-performing algorithm.

The challenge also had an unexpected result. By offering an unorthodox method for garnering participation in what would have been a traditional request for information (RFI), the RCO challenge resulted in the top three prize winners spanning the unconventional by including a federally funded research and development center, an independent group of Australian scientists and a team from a big business.

“By structuring this as a challenge instead of an RFI, we were able to model what industry does and create something much more hands-on,” said Rob Monto, director of the RCO’s Emerging Technologies Office. “We invited anyone with a possible capability to participate and posted it on Challenge.gov and FBO.gov. This is very similar to the commercial model of posting on Kaggle.com, where data sets are sent out to communities of data scientists who want to compete against one another to determine who has the best solution.”

The RCO’s online challenge offered synthetically generated data based on what could be seen in the electromagnetic spectrum, and challenged participants to prove they had the best artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithm for performing “blind” signal classification quickly and accurately. The challenge was strictly performance-based and open to anyone. Because it was all online and completed in four months, it came with very little cost or burden placed on those participating.

“The response was overwhelming,” Monto said. “We had more than 150 participants from across traditional and nontraditional industry partners, universities, labs and government. As an incentive, we offered $150,000 in prize money.”

The RCO announced winners on Aug. 27, 2018. First place and $100,000 went to Team Platypus from The Aerospace Corp., a national nonprofit corporation that operates a federally funded research and development center. Second place, with an award of $30,000, went to TeamAU, made up of a small team of independent Australian data scientists. And third place, with a prize of $20,000, went to THUNDERINGPANDA of Motorola Solutions.

“Having a specific problem that can be worked on by industry, academia and private citizens is a great way to establish and build a community of innovators for this technology area,” said Dr. Andres Vila, an engineering specialist at The Aerospace Corp. and a member of Team Platypus. “This challenge, which extended for approximately three months, was the right balance of having time to formulate a unique and robust solution but also not so long that the team lost urgency to find that award-winning approach.”

The challenge proved a better way to assess industry’s capabilities, instead of using a more traditional RFI and white paper approach, Vila said, calling it “spot on.”

“The challenge arrived at a great time as we were just kicking off this research and the Army had a well-formed problem set and, most importantly, data,” Vila said. “This competition gave us the chance to take our latest innovations and prototypes and apply them to this new customer-curated, hard problem. These types of customer-sponsored competitions provide very focused challenges that give us the confidence that we are using the best technology available to meet their mission needs.”

Team Platypus from The Aerospace Corp. won first prize in the Army Signal Classification Challenge over the summer of 2018. The team includes (front row, from left) Eugene Grayver, Alexander Utter and Andres Vila; and (back row, from left) Donna Branchevsky, Esteban Valles, Darren Semmen, Sebastian Olsen and Kyle Logue. (Photo by Elisa Haber, The Aerospace Corp.)

Team Platypus from The Aerospace Corp. won first prize in the Army Signal Classification Challenge over the summer of 2018. The team includes (front row, from left) Eugene Grayver, Alexander Utter and Andres Vila; and (back row, from left) Donna Branchevsky, Esteban Valles, Darren Semmen, Sebastian Olsen and Kyle Logue. (Photo by Elisa Haber, The Aerospace Corp.)

THE PROBLEM SET

The idea for the challenge stemmed from the RCO’s partnership with the Project Manager for Electronic Warfare and Cyber, within the Program Executive Office for Enterprise Information Systems, which recently delivered new electronic warfare prototype systems in response to an operational needs statement from U.S. Army Europe. Soldiers are using the equipment to implement electronic protection for their own formations, to detect and understand enemy activity in the electromagnetic spectrum and to disrupt adversaries through electronic attack effects.

However, in enhancing the signal footprint for EWOs, the prototype systems also brought more data to an already complex electromagnetic spectrum. Through the challenge, the RCO wanted to determine if artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) could assist them in digesting that data and sorting through what is and isn’t important.

“We knew industry was already making leaps and bounds in applying AI/ML for image recognition and video recognition, but found that there was very little work being done in this specific area of signal detection,” Monto said. “What we discovered in a very short period of time is that AI/ML could in fact be applied to a data set that could translate to being integrated into an electronic warfare system on the battlefield.”

The idea is to create this application as a layering effect, where artificial intelligence and machine learning does one subset of signal classification for the EWOs, then layers other applications that are more encompassing onto that to give the EWOs a wider range of what they can identify, said Monto.

While the EWOs would remain as the lead for identifying signals of interest and analyzing their impact, the use of artificial intelligence and machine learning could help them quickly and accurately detect patterns, identify signals of significance, filter out unwanted signal noise and paint a picture of the electromagnetic spectrum.

Soldiers with the Combat Electronic Warfare Intelligence Platoon, Delta Company, 54th Brigade Engineer Battalion provide signal intelligence to help the 173rd Airborne Brigade during Saber Junction 18, held in September 2018 in Germany. As more and more signals are captured by satellites, radars and other devices, the signal detection process is no longer efficient in understanding the vast amount of data presented to EWOs on the battlefield. (U.S. Army photo by Spc. Josselyn Fuentes, 173rd Airborne Brigade)

Soldiers with the Combat Electronic Warfare Intelligence Platoon, Delta Company, 54th Brigade Engineer Battalion provide signal intelligence to help the 173rd Airborne Brigade during Saber Junction 18, held in September 2018 in Germany. As more and more signals are captured by satellites, radars and other devices, the signal detection process is no longer efficient in understanding the vast amount of data presented to EWOs on the battlefield. (U.S. Army photo by Spc. Josselyn Fuentes, 173rd Airborne Brigade)

THE CHALLENGE

The RCO’s Army Signal Classification Challenge began April 30 and closed Aug. 13. After opening registration online, competitors were given access to the training data set, consisting of over 4.3 million instances across 24 different modulations, which included a noise class. (The noise class represents “white” noise to replicate the real-life environment that signals would be detected in, rather than a pristine lab environment.) The effort sought solutions that could perform “blind” signal classification quickly and accurately. Blind signal classification requires little to no prior knowledge about the signal being detected in that specific instance. Instead, the solution would automatically classify the modulation, or change of a radio frequency waveform, as a first step toward signal classification.

The challenge gave participants 90 days to develop their models and to work with the training data sets. That was followed by two test data sets of varying complexity that were the basis for judging submissions. The first data set was released 67 days after the challenge launch, with a solution submission window of 15 days. A second, more complex test data set was released 84 days after the challenge launch, with a shorter submission window of only seven days.

Participants’ scores were based on a combined weighted score for both test data sets. Competitors could see how well they were performing against their peers through a participant leader board that showed scores in real time.

For first-place winners Team Platypus—which participated in the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s Software Defined Radio Hackfest 2017 and whose name references platypuses’ ability to detect electrical fields with their bills—the challenge lined up perfectly with its core research in artificial intelligence (AI) and advanced signal processing.

“We really enjoyed the challenge process, which included the hard problem curation, providing training data and a specific scoring algorithm,” Vila said. “To do this with the highest level of confidence, we had to use a multipronged approach. We built statistics and metrics inspired by communication principles, and we also developed deep learning classifiers that work directly on the raw data. We ended up using several state-of-the-art AI techniques to achieve the winning submission.”

Their technology includes an algorithm trained to identify what kind of signal is present in the midst of a congested radio frequency environment, much like Soldiers would find in an urban core or battlefield where both friendly and enemy radio communications are being detected.

Stryker crewmen with the 1st Squadron, 2nd Cavalry Regiment fire an M1128 Mobile Gun System during a joint combined arms live fire exercise Aug. 26-30 at Bemowo Piskie Training Area, Poland. The CALFEX is designed to maintain readiness and build interoperability among BPTA Soldiers. The Soldiers are on a six-month rotational assignment in support of the multinational battle group comprised of U.S., U.K., Croatian and Romanian Soldiers who serve with the Polish 15th Mechanized Brigade as a defense and deterrence force in northeast Poland in support of NATO’s Enhanced Forward Presence at BPTA. (U.S. Army photo by Sgt. John Onuoha)

Stryker crewmen with the 1st Squadron, 2nd Cavalry Regiment fire an M1128 Mobile Gun System during a joint combined arms live fire exercise Aug. 26-30 at Bemowo Piskie Training Area, Poland. The CALFEX is designed to maintain readiness and build interoperability among BPTA Soldiers. The Soldiers are on a six-month rotational assignment in support of the multinational battle group comprised of U.S., U.K., Croatian and Romanian Soldiers who serve with the Polish 15th Mechanized Brigade as a defense and deterrence force in northeast Poland in support of NATO’s Enhanced Forward Presence at BPTA. (U.S. Army photo by Sgt. John Onuoha)

WHAT’S NEXT?

By structuring this effort as a challenge and not going through the traditional RFI process, the RCO proved it could take an industry model and move fast. For its efforts, it is substantially closer to identifying a potential solution that could be applied to battlefield electronic warfare capabilities in the very near future. It also showed the RCO could harness the promise of artificial intelligence and machine learning by applying it to a specific problem. The amount of interest and quality of performance, including from nontraditional organizations, was remarkable.

Now the RCO is quickly moving forward to the next step, with two possible options. First, the RCO could initiate a second, more intense challenge and open it up to only the top performers in the first challenge. Or, the RCO could begin to immediately move the algorithms into the hands of Soldiers through software enhancements to their existing electronic warfare equipment. This would enable the Soldiers to give immediate feedback and enable the Army to incrementally build capability.

Over the next several months, the RCO will begin to advance what was learned from the challenge, potentially prototyping the leading artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms into Army electronic warfare systems.

For more information on the Army RCO, go to http://rapidcapabilitiesoffice.army.mil/.

NANCY JONES-BONBREST is a public communications specialist for the Army RCO and has written extensively about Army modernization and acquisition for several years, including multiple training and testing events. She holds a B.S. in journalism from the University of Maryland, College Park.

Related Links

https://challenge.gov/a/buzz/challenge

https://www.fbo.gov/

http://rapidcapabilitiesoffice.army.mil/


This article will be published in the January – March 2019 issue of Army AL&T magazine.

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Cutting the cost of nuts and bolts

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PEO CS&CSS’s Robot Logistics Support Center uses IDIQs and a unique sustainment approach to keep robot systems up and running.

by Thomas A. Lettis and Adam Bennett

Conventional Army contracting mechanisms can be manpower-intensive, cumbersome and costly. The Robot Logistics Support Center (RLSC) uses indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity (IDIQ) contracts to keep costs down, minimize demands on contracting personnel and quickly return repaired systems to the warfighter.

Part of the Project Manager for Force Projection within the Program Executive Office for Combat Support and Combat Service Support, the RLSC is the Army’s only source of repair and maintenance for its fleet of more than 4,000 non-standard robots, consisting of five different models and 28 unique configurations. The RLSC sustainment team conducts repair and return services at 11 locations in the United States and a site in Kuwait; a new site is slated to open soon in Germany. The organization also provides robot sustainment and training support to the U.S. Air Force, the U.S. Coast Guard, the U.S. Marine Corps and the National Guard Bureau, as well as foreign military sales (FMS) partners.

RLSC establishes a five-year IDIQ contract with each robotic original equipment manufacturer to supply parts at the wholesale and retail levels for robot repairs as well as for recapitalization and reset activities. It currently has IDIQs with two manufacturers, both in Massachusetts: QinetiQ North America in Waltham and Endeavor Robotics in Chelmsford. The use of IDIQs reduces procurement action lead time and the effort that goes into requirements package preparation. It also yields benefits in the form of shorter staffing, faster execution, more direct lines of communication with manufacturers and no vendor fees. IDIQs also boost small business participation, resulting in a more stabilized and solid robotics industrial base.

Late in 2018, the RLSC Contracting and Budget Team received the Secretary of the Army Award for Excellence in Contracting for Outstanding Unit/Team in the category of Systems, R&D, Logistics Support (Sustainment) Contracting as a result of its use of IDIQs and its approach to sustainment.


BENEFITS OF IDIQ CONTRACTS

An IDIQ contract provides for an indefinite quantity of a product or service, with stated limits, during a fixed period. This type of contract requires the government to order (and the contractor to furnish) at least a stated minimum quantity of supplies or services. The contracting officer decides a reasonable maximum quantity for the total contract. IDIQs can streamline the contract process and speed delivery times.

The main content of the IDIQ contract is the master parts list, which contains each part found at all levels of the bill of materials for all supported robotic platforms—in other words, the smallest replaceable component or smallest part that makes up a larger assembly. The master parts list is especially important to the RLSC to perform immediate field-level repair and return and for depot-level reset and recapitalization sustainment activities. The RLSC holds weekly meetings with each manufacturer to forecast revision of parts, discuss engineering changes and address obsolescence issues.

Using IDIQ contracts, RLSC can quickly award delivery orders for any required part or list of parts within one to two weeks. Previously used contracting mechanisms—namely, assisted acquisitions contracts—required a minimum of three months for the preparation of a substantial requirements package, staffing and execution.

From a cost perspective, every part on the master parts list is priced for five years, which is extremely beneficial in the areas of budget and planning for projects and programs that span multiple fiscal years. As an example of cost savings, the RLSC transitioned the contracting mechanism on a robot recapitalization program within its portfolio to an IDIQ contract from an assisted acquisitions contract. After contract negotiations, the average cost of a production kit to upgrade a single robotic system was reduced by an estimated $20,000, or 13 percent of the total hardware cost, according to internal estimates. The reduced cost for the recapitalization program provides for acquisition and allows for delivery of additional assets, allowing RLSC to reach full operational capability sooner and for funding to be diverted to other crucial areas such as acquiring spare parts, training and fielding.

Additional gains through the use of IDIQs have been made in manpower. Other contracting mechanisms require 1.5 man-years of an RLSC procurement analyst and four man-years of personnel from the U.S. Army Contracting Command (ACC) – Warren, Michigan, to staff an extensive contracting package through to contract award. Under an IDIQ contract, the manpower is reduced to one procurement analyst, one contract specialist and a half of a procurement contracting officer’s time, cutting ACC-Warren contracting manpower figures to 2.5 man-years. Much of that reduction comes because a price analyst is not required to award requirements on an RLSC IDIQ contract, since the master parts list is fully priced from the IDIQ award for five years.

RLSC technician Todd Oakey rebuilds the arm of a Talon robot. The RLSC recovers components from legacy systems and uses them as stock for newer projects, improving capabilities and providing a bridge between older systems and newer ones. (Photo by Jay Lambertson, RLSC)

RLSC technician Todd Oakey rebuilds the arm of a Talon robot. The RLSC recovers components from legacy systems and uses them as stock for newer projects, improving capabilities and providing a bridge between older systems and newer ones. (Photo by Jay Lambertson, RLSC)

THE SUSTAINMENT MODEL

While the IDIQ contracting mechanism yields many important benefits, equally beneficial to robot readiness throughout the extensive customer base is the RLSC’s sustainment model. Our maintenance philosophy is to repair robots to the lowest repairable component. Since we are able to purchase components at the lowest level of the bill of materials for robotics systems, RLSC technicians need not remove a depot-level repair part, or major assembly, from a fully configured robot—essentially removing an entire assembly, shipping it to another facility for repair or refurbishment, and then applying a replacement assembly in its place. Instead, the technician can troubleshoot and then isolate the smallest component causing the failure and complete a work order action to remove and replace it. These lower-level components can include nuts, bolts, screws or other pieces of hardware, wiring harnesses or controller boards.

The depot-level repair part replacement process was put in place in 2006 when these robotic systems were first procured for the contingency operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. When the RLSC assumed responsibility for the sustainment of all non-standard equipment robotics systems in 2014, the sustainment strategy shifted to the more agile model that remains in place.

For example, a technician might determine that a manipulator arm assembly has a fault: One of the arm’s joints is not moving through its intended range of motion. If the former depot-level repair part model were applied, the technician would have to remove an entire arm assembly and replace it with a costly new or refurbished one. However, under the RLSC’s model, the technician would isolate the fault to the smallest repairable or replaceable component, such as a pinion gear within one of the arm’s motors.

There are four major benefits to be realized when applying this model. The first is financial. The cost of a whole arm assembly can exceed $20,000, while the cost of an arm motor pinion is $50. Over a five-year period, we completed approximately 650 work orders to repair robot arms. If every arm was done using the depot-level repair part process, the cost of the arm assemblies would have been roughly $13 million. But filling those work orders using the arm motor pinion gear reduces the cost to approximately $35,000. Even if each work order were isolated to an arm motor, it would only be $3 million versus $13 million, a savings of $10 million over that five-year period.

The second benefit is supply availability, impacting the turnaround time for the work order action to be completed. By keeping smaller consumable parts on hand at the retail or shop level, parts can be immediately applied and the work order can be completed within hours instead of days or weeks.

The third benefit is the time saved by eliminating the need to change the robot’s configuration. Arm assemblies are high-dollar, serialized components. If the arm assembly is to be removed, additional logistics automation transactions are necessary to adjust the robot’s configuration within the logistics automation database.

Finally, the fourth benefit is eliminating the need to send the work to a facility with the capabilities to replace major hardware assemblies on the robotic system. The RLSC has skilled technicians at both the main depot and 13 locations inside and outside of the United States, all of whom are capable of performing field-level and depot-level repairs.

THE BENEFITS OF SEED STOCK

The RLSC also recovers legacy systems when new robotic systems are fielded to military units, and these older variants later serve as “seed stock” for future projects. This seed stock method has been applied to two recent recapitalization and modification efforts.

The first is a recapitalization of explosive ordnance disposal robots that will serve as a bridging solution until the program of record reaches the materiel release phase and begins fielding the replacement system. The second effort is a modification of an existing platform that detects chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear and high-yield explosives. The modification will provide additional capabilities of area mapping and sensor feedback from the robot to the operator’s position. For the second effort, the base chassis of the robot was upgraded to accommodate the installation of additional payloads to provide the increased capability and enhanced performance. A new procurement of this asset would typically cost approximately $315,000 per robot. However, by reusing the base chassis of a seed stock asset, the cost was reduced to $287,000.


CONTRACTOR LOGISTICS SUPPORT

Key to the RLSC sustainment model is government-led contractor logistics support. When acquisition professionals think of contractor logistics support, there is a perception that this means program-owned robots or those on military unit property books are evacuated from the program manager shop or from the field to a separate contractor organization for maintenance and sustainment activities. As part of this evacuation process, there is a complicated logistics tail of having to perform multiple government-furnished property transfers to establish a chain of custody as robots are shipped to and received from the contractor. Instead, the RLSC embeds contractors into the government maintenance induction process and employs a logistics automation database that makes additional transfer of government-furnished property unnecessary. RLSC contractors are as organic to the mixed-manpower staff as the government civilian employees, ensuring a cooperative relationship between contractors and government representatives that has lasted more than a decade with an exceptionally high degree of success.

CONCLUSION

The RLSC will continue to employ its contracting and sustainment approach across its operations, including several upcoming important efforts:

  • An FY19 recapitalization production kit purchase for explosive ordnance disposal robots.
  • Semiannual sustainment parts purchases for several robotic platforms.
  • Numerous foreign military sales cases for robots, parts and training.

The flexibility and experience that has grown within the organization, accompanied by the agility and efficiency found in the execution of IDIQ contracts and our maintenance approach, allow the RLSC to provide the highest level of sustainment support for its worldwide customer base and user communities, ensuring the safety and lethality of today’s warfighters.

For more information, contact Tom Lettis, RLSC director, at thomas.a.lettis.civ@mail.mil, or go to http://www.peocscss.army.mil/ or http://www.peocscss.army.mil/pmfp.html

THOMAS A. LETTIS is director of RLSC, a position he has held since October 2016. Lettis entered civil service in 2005 after serving 21 years in the Army and retiring as a command sergeant major. He holds an M.A. in program management and a B.S. in business administration from Excelsior College. He is a member of the Army Acquisition Corps and is Level III certified in program management and life cycle logistics.

ADAM BENNETT is a product support integrator in the RLSC. An 11-year Army veteran, he has worked in defense robotics for a decade. He holds a B.S. in criminal justice from Ferris State University.


This article will be published in the January – March 2019 issue of Army AL&T magazine.

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A frank and open forum with industry yields new insights

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An unusually frank and open forum among government and industry competitors yielded new insights into developing a Gator Landmine Replacement command-and-control system.

by Waliul Mizan and Sean Stevens

Traditional land mines have been used for decades by the U.S. Army to “shape the terrain” in order to deny, slow or steer an enemy advance. However, once the mines were deployed, the warfighter lost the ability to control the field.

Adding a command-and-control architecture would provide the gateway for the warfighter to remotely arm, fire and assess the status of the minefield.

This capability would add a whole new dimension to terrain-shaping, with the ability to selectively turn it off. To simplify, a user could create a dynamic munition field that could feed sensor information back to Army mission command to ascertain vehicle movement in the minefield and to allow a remotely initiated lethal response or safe passage. An aging land mine inventory that needed to be replaced created an opportunity at Picatinny Arsenal to push for this capability.

The effort is significant, as current policy restricts the use of antipersonnel landmines to systems that have a human in the loop. The requirement for the landmine replacement includes a command-and-control capability in the Gator Landmine Replacement system. (See related article, “A New Way of Thinking,” Army AL&T January – March 2017, page 40.) Each munition field consists of three critical components: a bottom attack capability, a top attack capability and a command-and-control architecture to securely network the field back to Army mission command. Part of the difficulty in creating the command-and-control portion of the system is that each building block of a minefield, which can be made up of many building blocks, is 150 by 250 meters. Within a minefield, the munitions must not only communicate with other munitions, but also with the operator-control station. The number of operators required in the loop has yet to be determined.

The Product Manager for the Gator Landmine Replacement (PM GLMR) is on an accelerated schedule—milestone A is scheduled for the third quarter of FY 2019, with milestone B just 18 months later—to develop and deliver the next-generation field of munitions for the Close Terrain Shaping Obstacle (CTSO) program.

Because of the criticality and risk of integrating a command-and-control capability in terrain-shaping materiel solutions, the Project Manager for Close Combat Systems (PM CCS) engaged industry to assess industry approaches and solutions. PM GLMR is part of PM CCS, within the Joint Program Executive Office for Armaments and Ammunition (JPEO A&A, formerly PEO Ammunition) at Picatinny Arsenal, the Joint Center of Excellence for Guns and Ammunition, in northern New Jersey.

Through these industry engagements, PM GLMR has been conducting competitive prototyping activities for the next generation of terrain-shaping obstacles since 2016. That effort culminated in a technology roundup demonstration January – March 2017. Recently the office undertook an exercise to narrow the focus of prototyping efforts to refine requirements for the command-and-control architecture and make informed decisions on where to continue investing in the technology maturation and risk reduction phase of the program.

A LANDMARK FORUM

CCS held the CTSO command-and-control forum on May 15 at Picatinny, with more than 100 government and industry stakeholders attending. This unusually frank and open forum provided the platform for industry to ask questions of not only government representatives, but also of other members of industry, both potential collaborators and competitors.

The deputy project manager for CCS kicked off the session stating that the intent was to discuss system-concept options, to allow industry and the government to exchange information on previous accomplishments related to terrain shaping and the current work each contractor was doing, and to provide an opportunity for discussion and collaboration. The intention was to have free and open discussion of program and technology risks. A lot of work was done under government contracts since 2016, and it had to be shared with the entire audience of government and industry stakeholders so that leadership could get accurate feedback to better inform government on how to proceed with a command-and-control architecture.

In attendance at the forum was a government panel consisting of leadership as well as experts in communication electronics, encryption and sensors from JPEO A&A; the project manager for Positioning, Navigation and Timing within the Program Executive Office for Intelligence, Electronic Warfare and Sensors; the U.S. Army Armament Research, Development and Engineering Center (ARDEC); the U.S. Army Communications-Electronics Research, Development and Engineering Center; the U.S. Army Research Laboratory; the U.S. Army Maneuver Support Center of Excellence; the Air Force Life Cycle Management Center, and MITRE Corp., a federally funded research and development center.

The industry panel consisted of leadership and technical teams from Fantastic Data; Northrop Grumman Mission Systems; Northrop Grumman Innovation Systems (formerly Orbital Alliant Techsystems), which previously fielded legacy Family of Scatterable Mines; Textron Systems, which fielded the M7 Spider mine system and developed the follow-on XMX1100 Scorpion: Intelligent Munitions System; and NAL Research Corp.

In preparation for the meeting, the government support team created 12 questions to help meeting facilitators spur conversation. These critical questions encompassed the major focus areas of safety, such as safe passage for friendlies; security and encryption of data; long- and short-haul communication capabilities; acquisition, supportability and general topics. The questions were employed several times to force industry briefers to share more insight into their solutions.

The CTSO command-and-control forum put government and industry experts together to look for answers to questions about safety, such as safe passage for friendlies; security and encryption of data; long- and short-haul communication capabilities; acquisition and supportability.

TOUGH QUESTIONS
The CTSO command-and-control forum put government and industry experts together to look for answers to questions about safety, such as safe passage for friendlies; security and encryption of data; long- and short-haul communication capabilities; acquisition and supportability. (SOURCE: JPEO A&A)

 

DIFFERENT PLAYERS, DIFFERENT APPROACHES

With such a large list of players, it was not an easy task for PM GLMR leadership to coordinate and gain agreement from each organization or company to support and brief their respective command-and-control expertise. Nondisclosure agreements between potential competitors had to be created and signed. Additionally, the government prepared internally a list of topics that would be off-limits to protect industry’s intellectual property and maintain trust from the industry participants. These off-limits topics were distributed among the key meeting facilitators so that discussion topics were known by all meeting attendees before the start. Doing this created a sense of mutual understanding between the government and industry that intellectual property would be protected and freer flowing conversation would result.

Participants the day-long forum from government and industry presented more than eight hours of briefing material to the audience. This consisted of technical details of the various industry approaches that were investigated and were followed by discussion of the various tradeoffs of each approach.

Participants discussed command-and-control high-level capability requirements, such as handling of the message information, encryption, data resilience and security classification. For example, the Fantastic Data team described its approach of creating an inter-nodal network where data could flow between every munition on the field. The Northrop Grumman Innovation Systems team discussed its approach to achieving long-haul communications by integrating Iridium satellite connectivity into the munition field. Textron Systems went into detail on its short-haul and long-haul communication concepts. NAL Research described its road map to get to a system-on a-chip solution.

Schedule and performance risks for each industry and government approach were candidly identified by government and industry panels, which, in any other forum, would be sidelined for private meetings individually held between each industry member and government representatives. However, with the ground rules agreed upon and the right people in attendance, the opportunity could not be missed to have these discussions in order to get real-time, honest feedback.

This was also a forum to present government solutions, offering opportunities to gain insight into alternate approaches as risk mitigations. The government team presented key networking concepts and encryption approaches to lead the discussion on tradeoffs. Industry members benefited by hearing about government advances such as a new, miniaturized encryption chip developed by the Air Force that enables unattended munition systems to handle encrypted information, a capability that provides a broader look at all potential options for command-and-control approaches. Some of the government solutions were offered up to industry for further analysis and applicability to their concepts.

PM GLMR is developing the next-generation field of munitions for the CTSO program. Each munition field consists of three critical components: a bottom attack capability, a top attack capability and a command-and-control architecture to securely network the field back to Army mission command.

SHAPING THE FIELD
PM GLMR is developing the next-generation field of munitions for the CTSO program. Each munition field consists of three critical components: a bottom attack capability, a top attack capability and a command-and-control architecture to securely network the field back to Army mission command. (SOURCE: JPEO A&A)

 

CONCLUSION

Overall, the forum was a unique opportunity for information exchange among industry members and the government. Its uniqueness was that it was not just a government-to-industry exchange of information, but also industry-to-industry crosstalk. This exchange provided CCS with an opportunity to hear industry competitors ask questions and critique each other’s approaches, giving the government valuable insight for future decisions and investments.

Armed with the information presented, CCS is narrowing the focus of its efforts for terrain-shaping concepts and directing aspects of the system be implemented in future phases of the program while ensuring they are not duplicating work across the various contractors. In one instance, the deputy project manager for CCS provided candid feedback directly to one of the contractors on modifications to its approach after seeing what others had presented.

The forum also brought to light other technologies that were not previously known by either the program office or the system contractors, such as the Air Force’s encryption chip. The insight and knowledge gained at this forum will enable the program to drive partnerships among industry partners and narrow down potential solutions for the CTSO capability. This type of venue is something the program office will certainly look to pursue again.

For more information, contact the authors at waliul.mizan.civ@mail.mil or sean.r.stevens.civ@mail.mil.

WALIUL MIZAN is an electronics engineer for ARDEC at Picatinny Arsenal and supports the GLMR program. He holds an M.S. from the Stevens Institute of Technology and a B.S. from the Rutgers School of Engineering, both in electrical and computer engineering. He has more than 15 years of acquisition experience and is Level III certified in systems engineering. He lectures at the Armaments University in the field of applied electromagnetics.

SEAN STEVENS is a GLMR project officer in PM CCS at Picatinny Arsenal. He holds an MBA from the Florida Institute of Technology and a B.S. in chemical engineering from the University of Delaware. He has more than 10 years of acquisition experience and is Level III certified in program management. He is a member of the Army Acquisition Corps and a recipient of the Achievement Medal for Civilian Service.


This article will be published in the January – March 2019 issue of Army AL&T magazine.

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Eliminating preconceptions

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Byron A. Kight

COMMAND/ORGANIZATION: Installation Information Infrasatructure Modernization Program, Program Executive Office for Enterprise Information Systems
TITLE: Acquisition management specialist
YEARS OF SERVICE IN WORKFORCE: 8
DAWIA CERTIFICATIONS:Level II in program management and in life cycle logistics
EDUCATION: B.S. in business management, North Carolina A&T State University
AWARDS: Director’s Civilian of the Quarter; Achievement Medal for Civilian Service; Certificate of Achievement; Outstanding Service Award


  By Susan L. Follett

Many members of the acquisition workforce have found themselves on the receiving end of a blank stare after explaining what they do for a living. Not so for Byron Kight. “People tend to be very interested in how a capability gap is filled. It’s not always stated in those words, but that’s the gist of their primary interest. I often encounter people who find the acquisition process to be interesting, particularly the amount of moving parts and the sheer volume of different stakeholders involved with any given effort,” he said. “Those same people are often quite surprised to find out how hard most DA civilians work. We do have an unfair label, and I enjoy the challenge of ripping it off.”

Kight, an acquisition management specialist for the Installation Information Infrastructure Modernization Program (I3MP) within the Program Executive Office for Enterprise Information Systems (PEO EIS), is a translator of sorts. “In essence, it’s our mission to ensure that requirements, established by CIO/G-6 [Army Chief Information Officer/G-6] and TRADOC [U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command], are logically understood by our industry partners.”

He’s part of a team responsible for acquisition planning, acquisition strategy development, acquisition review, and approval and configuration control of all applicable acquisition program documents, including contract data requirement lists, market research, system requirement documents, statements of work, cost estimates and documents associated with contract modifications. “I do my best to ensure that contractual language and the applicable artifacts are well understood by both our industry partners as well as I3MP staff. We also do our best to ensure that we facilitate open lines of communication with Army Contracting Command – Rock Island,” he said.

“Our success is measured by corps, division and theater HQs possessing the ability to deploy and distribute warfighting functions and watch sections across mission command nodes according to a commander’s intent. My goal is to assist in ensuring that the number one priority—readiness—is continuously met, as we attempt to provide stability and continuity during both war and peace.”

When it comes to helping develop that documentation, he usually comes to the table empty-handed—by design. “It’s been my experience that most of the confusion surrounding the acquisition process usually stems from preconceived notions. If I can begin to break down some of those notions, I can do some rebuilding,” he explained. “I try to do more listening than talking and I ask very measured questions. Through those questions, I’m typically able to obtain a really good picture, figuring out what the desired end state should resemble. I can then convert the necessary steps required to achieve that desired end state into terminology that’s understood by both I3MP personnel and our industry partners, leading to increased efficiency during contract execution.”

Thus the end state, he said, “is a solution that we’ve all developed, not something that’s been put together in a vacuum. And it’s also an ongoing process: It’s not something that’s done in a week or a year. Once we’ve put a plan in place, we continue to monitor the situation and the market, ensuring that we’re still meeting the needs of our stakeholders.”

In 2015, Kight deployed to Afghanistan in support of the REF, where he learned valuable lessons about the acquisition process from both forward and rear assignments. (Photo courtesy of Byron A. Kight)

In 2015, Kight deployed to Afghanistan in support of the REF, where he learned valuable lessons about the acquisition process from both forward and rear assignments. (Photo courtesy of Byron A. Kight)

 

Before joining the acquisition workforce eight years ago, Kight was a technical writer and editor with the U.S. Army Communications-Electronics Command’s Integrated Logistics Support Center (CECOM-ILSC), where he supported sustainment activities. “During my time with CECOM-ILSC, I was able to collaborate with several program office representatives and was exposed to a lot of acquisition activities,” he said. His work with the PEO for Intelligence, Electronic Warfare and Sensors and the PEO for Command, Control and Communications – Tactical sparked his interest in becoming part of the Army Acquisition Workforce.

In 2015, he was selected to support the Army’s Rapid Equipping Force (REF). He spent a year with that organization and deployed to Kuwait and Afghanistan. “It was without a doubt a life-changing event,” he said. The assignment provided him the opportunity to “complete the puzzle,” he said. “While at REF-Rear, I worked on half of a puzzle: conducting mission analysis on incoming requirements for the sole purpose of providing solutions to operational challenges. On deployment with REF-Forward, I saw the other half: what happened when those supported solutions made it into theater, how Soldiers used it and what they thought about it.”

His REF assignment also gave him the opportunity to see what it was like to serve in a few key positions—some at the same time, as he was simultaneously a logistics lead, alternate contracting officer representative and project officer. “The first key to success in dual-hatting is to accept and look forward to the fact that you’re going to be a very busy, in-demand person,” he said. “Then, find out the current conditions with an eye toward determining if a change/no change decision should be made. Third, breathe. Seriously.” Lastly, he added, get organized and get to know your teammates. “It’s your teammates who you will depend on the most. Take care and be responsible for the team. Efforts absolutely fail or succeed due to the people involved.”

Serving as a project officer during the REF assignment was also educational, he noted. “Up until that point, my experience dealing with the concepts of cost, schedule and performance was really an outsider’s look in. My REF work demonstrated the sheer amount of variables and responsibility someone in that position has to wrestle with.”

After leaving REF, he joined PEO EIS in December 2016 to serve as an acquisition management specialist. “The most important thing I’ve learned so far is to meet people where they are. In most cases, to do that, you must learn something about that person and know a fair amount about yourself as well. But it’s worth it: It leads to better relationships, clearer communication, improved efficiency, better morale and readiness.”


This article will be published in the January – March 2019 issue of Army AL&T magazine.

“Faces of the Force” is an online series highlighting members of the Army Acquisition Workforce through the power of individual stories. Profiles are produced by the U.S. Army Acquisition Support Center Communication and Support Branch, working closely with public affairs officers to feature Soldiers and civilians serving in various AL&T disciplines. For more information, or to nominate someone, please contact 703-664-5635.

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Everywhere man

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Whether it’s his fiction and nonfiction, his work as a TRADOC ‘mad scientist,’ the interviews he’s done with defense media, the pages of Popular Science, or some other venue, P.W. Singer is the Army’s must-read thinker.

by Margaret C. Roth

In the ongoing, all-consuming exploration of the future battlefield, the recently published book “LikeWar: The Weaponization of Social Media” adds a new dimension. Only this battlefield is already well-established: the internet.

“[T]he internet has become a battlefield,” one that “changes how conflicts are fought,” co-authors P.W. Singer and Emerson T. Brooking write. “[T]his battle changes what ‘war’ means,” with victory going to those who command more attention, more effectively. The principles of warfare on the internet are already pretty clear, they write. In fact, Prussian general and iconic military thinker Carl von Clausewitz (1780-1831) “would have implicitly understood almost everything it is doing to conflict today.” But, as “LikeWar” explores, social media have created new rules for war and politics that would have flummoxed Clausewitz and are doing much the same to today’s leaders.

The evolution of warfare is more than comfortable territory to P.W. (Peter Warren) Singer. It is where he has built much of his life’s work. Singer is a strategist at New America, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank “dedicated to renewing America by continuing the quest to realize our nation’s highest ideals, honestly confronting the challenges caused by rapid technological and social change, and seizing the opportunities those changes create.” He is also an author and an editor at Popular Science magazine and an official “mad scientist” for the U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command.

To call Singer prolific is a glaring understatement. So is just naming the six books he has authored, both nonfiction and fiction. The Wall Street Journal has called him “the premier futurist in the national-security environment.” The Smithsonian Institution has named Singer one of the nation’s 100 leading innovators. Defense News includes him among the 100 most influential people on defense issues. Foreign Policy magazine has him on its Top 100 Global Thinkers List. And Onalytica Ltd., a social media data analysis consultancy, counts him among the 10 most influential voices in the world on cybersecurity and 25th most influential in the field of robotics.

These many titles of authority are no casual hyperbole. Singer comes by them honestly, and with surprising humility. His thinking and writing venture into virtually every corner of defense: the nature of warfare in all of its realms—land, sea, air, space and cyber—military history, doctrine, emerging and future technologies, war gaming, organizational change and more.

Given mundane but necessary time constraints, Army AL&T had a painful choice to make in talking with Singer: where to focus its discussion. We chose transformation to be Topic A, namely the transformational aspects of technology and whether there’s any realistic hope for DOD to transform its acquisition system into one that could be responsive to emerging technologies. The theme is all too familiar to Singer, based on his experiences with the military.

“The pressure point for the acquisition system is going to be, ‘How do I have my tentacles out there so that I am aware of this technology, when and where these breakthroughs are happening, and I’m incorporating it as rapidly as possible?’” he told Army AL&T in an interview, explaining how the game-changing technologies are increasingly proliferated around the world. “The thinking can’t be, ‘We’re going to be the only ones with this technology.’ Rather, it should be, ‘We’re going to be the ones that make use of it the best.’”

THE NEXT

Straightforward and plainspoken, Singer asks as many questions as he answers; but then, that’s the point. Reading some of the interviews Singer has done with the military specialty media, one of the key questions he has embraced centers on technology, which now happens to be the focus of the Army’s push to modernize so that it can establish a decisive advantage in the battlespace. Is the U.S. military in a position to seize advantages that are already there, such as the internet? It’s one thing to adapt technologically in response to a known threat, but quite another to waste no time in harnessing technology to claim the battlefield in the first place.

Singer is no ivory tower polemicist. He has worked in the thick of conflict in his work with DOD, both on the battlefield and in the Pentagon, participating in war games and talking with scientists, Soldiers, generals, even Iraqi insurgents.

In 2009, recognizing that the U.S. military had no guarantee of maintaining the technological edge it had enjoyed in global warfare for the past few decades, DOD contracted with Noetic Group, an international strategic consulting firm, to assess the implications of emerging technologies on future warfare. The method was Project NeXTech, led by the Rapid Reaction Technology Office within the Office of the Secretary of Defense and in which Singer played a central role.

Through research on the state of emerging technologies with leading scientists, engineers, academics, military leaders, policymakers, investors, journalists and futurists, NeXTech set out to define “what are the technologies that today’s naysayers derisively describe as ‘science experiments’ that will actually be key to shaping the battlefield of tomorrow?” according to a September 2013 report by the Center for a New American Security. “The goal that guided them was to identify what technology right now is akin to where the computer was in 1980 or the Predator [aerial drone] was during the 2001 Quadrennial Defense Review—real but not yet noticed as transforming the world.”

NeXTech comprised a series of war games in partnership with the U.S. Army War College, the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School and the U.S. Naval Academy, among other organizations, to examine the barriers to use of the technologies as well as their appropriate uses from tactical, strategic, doctrinal, legal and ethical standpoints. The project focused on five areas of technology with the potential to produce “game-changers”—biotechnologies (e.g., human enhancements), energy (e.g., lasers and superefficient batteries), materials (e.g., 3D printing), hardware (e.g., robots) and software (e.g., electromagnetic and cyber weapons).

While the outcome of NeXTech was primarily to shape senior defense leadership’s decision-making on resource-constrained planning and investment in science and technology, it was a starting point in the slow reorientation of defense priorities toward emerging technologies in a globally competitive environment.

Capts. Joe Spracklen (left) and Brad Pemberton of the 1st Cyber Protection Battalion, Army Cyber Protection Brigade, acting as battle captains for exercise Operation Tiger Stance, review and discuss a common operating picture in the blue team operations area at the Indiana National Guards Muscatatuck Urban Training Center in Butlerville, Ind., Aug. 23, 2018. OTS was a five-day live, scenario-based situational cyberspace training exercise designed to prepare Cyber Protection Teams for task force-oriented real-world operations. (Photo by Bill Roche, U.S. Army Cyber Command)

Capts. Joe Spracklen (left) and Brad Pemberton of the 1st Cyber Protection Battalion, Army Cyber Protection Brigade, acting as battle captains for exercise Operation Tiger Stance, review and discuss a common operating picture in the blue team operations area at the Indiana National Guard’s Muscatatuck Urban Training Center in Butlerville, Ind., Aug. 23, 2018. OTS was a five-day live, scenario-based situational cyberspace training exercise designed to prepare Cyber Protection Teams for task force-oriented real-world operations. (Photo by Bill Roche)

TECHNOLOGY OUTPACING GOVERNMENT

In an interview in November 2013 with the late journalist Matthew Power published on TED Talks’ website, Singer observed that in the four years since NeXTech concluded, the pace of technological change and the pace of government were getting further and further apart. The difference has only grown, he told Army AL&T.

“It’s getting worse, because in some areas we’re no longer playing catch-up. We’re literally moving in the opposite direction” in terms of defense policy and its people, he said. Singer cited as an example the Trump administration’s decision last spring to eliminate the White House position of cybersecurity coordinator, a position created under President Barack Obama. National Security Adviser John R. Bolton stated that the post was no longer necessary because lower-level officials had already made cybersecurity issues a “core function” of the president’s national security team.

“It took us a long time to wake up to the threats and challenges [in cybersecurity], and we started to build organizations,” Singer said. Eliminating the cybersecurity coordinator “left pretty much everyone in the field mouths-open, stunned by that idea that we would no longer try to have strategy and top-level coordination on a topic as important as cybersecurity.”

The White House cybersecurity coordinator was in charge of shaping national cybersecurity policy and the political responses to national cybersecurity incidents. Instead, Bolton assigned the task to two National Security Council senior directors, at a time when defense and intelligence officials anticipate more cyberattacks, not fewer, given cyber threats from major powers such as Russia’s NotPetya ransomware and North Korea’s WannaCry ransomware.

In addition, Singer said, “There’s the larger challenge of a geopolitical economic and technologic race with China, where China is behind but moving at a much faster pace ahead. And there have been a series of decisions that really attack some of the core advantages that allowed us to be ahead—specifically, spending on research and development and attracting the world’s top talent to America.”

“You look at the history of leading American technology companies, and the overwhelming majority of them were started by either an immigrant or son of an immigrant.” Yet current national immigration policy has moved to create the opposite, with dangerous potential consequences, he said, evoking the United States’ deportation in 1955 of Qian Xuesan, the first director of Cal Tech’s famed Jet Propulsion Lab who would go on to found the Chinese intercontinental ballistic missile and space rocketry program.

Those days of McCarthyism and the Red Scare were over a half-century ago, but the current national policy’s singling out of certain Muslim countries for restrictions on immigration to the U.S. are painfully familiar, Singer said. “You can pretty much [draw] a direct line between actions driven out of bias that harmed national security. … We know what works, we know what doesn’t, from history, and we’re ignoring these lessons today.

“It’s a deep worry. I do a fair amount of travel, and it’s something that our allies are deeply, deeply worried about, as well.”

TECH COMPETITION

On the plus side, Singer sees DOD’s outreach to Silicon Valley as a “saleable” step in the right direction as the Army modernizes. “I don’t think it’s the end-all, be-all solution, and the challenge is multifaceted,” he said.

“One is, at the end of the day, the Pentagon’s spend in Silicon Valley is not going to be enough to alter the behavior of the large tech companies. It is enough to open up opportunities for some of the smaller companies and startups and the like, but it’s not going to change what, as we’ve already seen, the Googles or the Apples are going to do.”

The second major challenge is that, whereas the Soviet Union competed technologically with the United States, now China is also competing economically for American investment, which colors U.S. companies’ willingness to do business with DOD. “The China market is crucial to so many companies’ future prospects. And so it leads them to look at that relationship with the Pentagon—that full-fledged jump into, you know, a more traditional defense industry role—with a different kind of eye.

“That’s just a reality, and we’re not going to be able to change it with the opening of a small office” of DOD’s Defense Innovation Unit nested amid major tech companies. “But I’m very, very gung-ho of the idea of having more and more of a presence by the Pentagon not just in Silicon Valley, but these tech clusters all over the nation. It’s incredibly important for them to be out there technology-scouting, finding opportunities.”

The reason lies in the very nature of the game-changing technology that exists today. Unlike the atomic energy or aircraft carrier or ballistic missile of earlier generations, the organizations that research, develop, buy and use the technology will be both government and the private sector, and it will comprise both civilian and military applications.

“So you think of something like artificial intelligence [AI] or robotics or big data: These are areas where the breakthroughs won’t be coming out of exclusively governmental labs funded primarily by the Defense Department. They’re going to be coming from lots of different directions. The users of them are not going to be exclusively governmental or even military in the first generation, the way we saw with some of these past key technologies, even arguably the start of the computer.”

Additionally, given the nature of the technology, it’s becoming easier and easier to use—AI, for example—because of machine intelligence. A drone that is flown by a brain-machine interface lowers the barrier to use by “all sorts of different actors; the ‘pilot’ didn’t have to learn how to become a pilot to fly this complex piece of machinery,” Singer noted.

Singer at US Air Force facility, discussing new tech with officer and DoD civilian (Photo courtesy of P.W. Singer)

Singer at US Air Force facility, discussing new tech with officer and DoD civilian (Photo courtesy of P.W. Singer)

CHALLENGING THE STATUS QUO

Truly challenging war gaming is essential to this dominance, Singer said. That means looking at new technologies across multiple different scenarios, as the NeXTech project did in 2009. “Too often in these war games—not just war games, but when we’re thinking about a certain weapon system or technology—we put it into the context that we’re most familiar with or we most want for the future.”

In NeXTech, by comparison, “we were thinking about scenarios that ranged from high-intensity conflict to counterinsurgency to an embassy evacuation to a response to an earthquake—all different kinds of settings that U.S. forces have been in—and saying, OK, in these different contexts, how might the technology be used? And then, secondly, not just how might the U.S. use it, but how might it be used against us? How might a drug cartel use it? How might a terrorist group use it? How might a high-end military use it? How might a midtier military use it?”

The U.S. military conducts very useful war games and training exercises, he said, but with common challenges across the board. “Even when it’s a challenging scenario, a high-end conflict with another state, it’s still framed in a very familiar way, instead of trying to come at it from multiple angles.”

A second challenge is the people chosen to be the “bad guys.” The general approach is, “I take some part of my organization and say, ‘You go think like the bad guys’—as opposed to actual people who think like bad guys. So there tends to be a limited framing.”

Additionally, the exercises often are designed to validate existing concepts or planned programs of record to demonstrate “that this was a good investment, as opposed to really, really kicking at the tires. There’s also a little bit of what I call the back-to-basics problem.” That problem, as Singer sees it, is that the exercise is not so much a war game as a large-scale training event with the guiding principle being, “We haven’t been doing X for 15 years. We need to get back to basics”—as opposed to asking, “OK, how maybe have the basics changed?”

Finally, he said, multinational exercises “too frequently are about making allies feel good about themselves.”

As an example of “a really good effort,” Singer pointed to Fort Polk, Louisiana, home to the Joint Readiness Training Center. On a historical note, Fort Polk was established in 1941 for the Louisiana maneuvers, in which, against the backdrop of World War II, the Army set out to “figure out what not just tanks, but mechanization and wireless communication at large, had done to war and how we needed to change to adjust for it.”

Singer noted that since then, Fort Polk, with its collection of villages and counterinsurgency sites, “has become the training and thinking ground for everything from, how do we stop Soviet tanks to after 9/11”—to, most recently, a cyberspace “battleground.” Singer has advised one of the companies involved in that program.

Called the Social Media Environment and Internet Replication, its purpose is “basically building a fake internet over the fake wars that take place at Fort Polk.” The “insurgents” chat online, recruiting, reporting, pushing their story just as the Islamic State group does. “I find it utterly fascinating from a historic standpoint, because a little over a generation ago, the military had literally created the internet with ARPANET and then walked away from it [and] handed it off to the civilian side.”

SCI-FI LEADS THE WAY

As a rare combination of novelist, nonfiction writer and scholar, Singer sees elements of science fiction today predicting what technologies the military will spin in from the civilian world tomorrow.

“Artificial intelligence, of course, and autonomous robotics are some of the most frequent technologies that pop up in sci-fi, and they are definitively part of military futures,” he said. “Brain-machine interface technology, you know, is already being played with in labs and in video gaming. I see that moving over to the military in the future.”

Three-D printing is “really the ‘Star Trek’ replicator in a certain way, already popping up on military bases in a mostly ad hoc manner.”

Singer also predicts that the U.S. military is also going to see more biological technology. “There are amazing breakthroughs happening in the biosciences and genomics affecting, of course, not just diseases, but shaping what humans can do that they couldn’t do previously. And if it’s being used in health, if it’s being used in sports, we shouldn’t be surprised to see it make its way over to the world of war, too.”

This crossover from fiction to fact is nothing new, he said. “Science fiction has always played with technologies that then become real and then are applied to war, whether it was the flying machine or the undersea boat or H.G. Wells’ concept of an ‘atomic bomb.’ It’s going to be the same thing in the 21st century. Of that, I’m confident.”

MARGARET C. ROTH is an editor of Army AL&T magazine. She has more than a decade of experience in writing about the Army and more than three decades’ experience in journalism and public relations. Roth is a MG Keith L. Ware Public Affairs Award winner and a co-author of the book “Operation Just Cause: The Storming of Panama.” She holds a B.A. in Russian language and linguistics from the University of Virginia.


This article will be published in the January – March 2019 issue of Army AL&T magazine.

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Innovation countdown

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Expeditionary Technology Search narrows Army-funded competition from over 350 proposals to 12 contenders for $200,000 award.

by Dr. Matt Willis and Jennifer Smith

When Dr. Bruce Jette, assistant secretary of the Army for acquisition, logistics and technology (ASA(ALT)), launched the Army Expeditionary Technology Search (xTechSearch) in June 2018, the focus was to start a conversation, lower barriers to engaging industry and build trust with small businesses and startups. Thus they could rapidly develop new, innovative technologies for the Army using a new paradigm of prize competitions, thus connecting with small nontraditional businesses in a way that cuts bureaucracy and streamlines cumbersome administrative processes, while increasing mentoring and partnership opportunities.

Dr. Thomas P. Russell, deputy assistant secretary of the Army for research and technology (DASA(R&T)), said that xTechSearch “gives us the potential for future capabilities, but the bigger impact is getting people aware of the things we’re interested in.”

Accordingly, the Army structured the xTechSearch program as a prize competition with a minimal requirement for entry—a 1,000-word whitepaper describing the technology. To maximize outreach to elements of the technology sector that traditionally would not do business with DOD, the Army advertised xTechSearch broadly, including on Challenge.gov, FedBizOps, venture capital platforms and media venues including national media (e.g., Engadget, Mashable), government periodicals, Twitter and Facebook. As the U.S. Army Research Laboratory (ARL) described xTechSearch on its website, the solicitation requested “innovative technologies and ideas” from the nontraditional defense community—from concepts to fielded products—“that can solve Army challenges” for the future battlefield by supporting its six modernization priorities.

More than 350 companies submitted papers for Phase I of the competition. The companies represented a wide spectrum of the country, including 42 states; 70 percent of those companies had no previous engagement with the Army, with 40 percent of those having no previous engagement with the government.

THE SELECTION PROCESS
After a rigorous technical review of the whitepapers, senior technologists from several Army laboratories and scientists, engineers and operators from ARL, the Army Capabilities Integration Center, U.S. Army Special Operations Command and the DASA(R&T) selected 125 companies, or 35 percent of those that had submitted technology concepts. Over 100 Army scientists, engineers and warfighters participated in the technical review.

Each of the 125 companies received $1,000 and an invitation to Phase II of xTechSearch, in which they would pitch their concepts to a panel of Army experts, including laboratory scientists and engineers, operators and technology transfer leads. During this phase, each company identified the ARL Open Campus location, of several across the country, where they wanted to make their venture capital-style pitches. The locations included Playa Vista, California; Chicago; Austin, Texas; Boston; and Adelphi, Maryland.

ARL’s Open Campus concept is a science and technology ecosystem that encourages groundbreaking advances in basic and applied research areas of relevance to the Army. Through the Open Campus framework, Army scientists and engineers work collaboratively, usually in the same location, with visiting scientists from academia and industry. The panel of experts evaluated each pitch based on its potential to impact or revolutionize the Army, its scientific and engineering viability, and the product team’s experience and abilities.

After review, the Army invited 25 companies to Phase III of xTechSearch. Phase III conferred a $5,000 prize and exhibit space in the Innovator’s Corner at the 2018 Association of the United States Army (AUSA) Annual Meeting and Exposition in October in Washington.

During the Phase II and Phase III events, companies also had the opportunity to network with Army representatives from the laboratories’ small business and technology transfer offices in a low-pressure environment that broke down perceived barriers between industry and the military. Karl Kappra, ARL’s chief of strategy management, stated that “xTechSearch provided an opportunity for small businesses to make government labs aware of their innovative ideas. Then, working with our military, we can collaborate with them to give them insight on how they could tailor their ideas to support Army modernization priorities.”

The networking was also valuable to the Army; Russell said the bigger impact of the xTechSearch competition was “increasing our network of people in our ecosystem and to try and think about how we solve Army problems.” Feedback from one company was that the networking talk opened up many new possibilities.

CONCLUSION
Phase III culminated in Russell announcing the 12 finalists at the AUSA event, with Jette attending to provide his congratulations. (See insert for the list of finalists.) Each of the 12 received $125,000 and an invitation to participate in the final phase of xTechSearch, a capstone demonstration in spring 2019 in which the companies will showcase a technology proof of concept to Army leadership. At the capstone demonstration, one company will receive the top $200,000 award.

For the long run, the major benefit that all the companies gained from the xTechSearch competition was understanding the spectrum of opportunities that exist to engage with the Army research community. In addition, through the questions and concerns presented by the small businesses, the companies began to understand the technical challenges the Army is trying to solve—without all the red tape.

The Army plans additional xTechSearch initiatives in 2019, showcasing it again at the Innovator’s Corner of the AUSA Global Force Symposium and Exposition, scheduled for March 26–28 in Huntsville, Alabama. The conversation for innovative solutions to Army challenges will continue.

For more information, contact usarmy.pentagon.hqda-asa-alt.mbx.xtechsearch@mail.mil.

DR. MATT WILLIS is the director for laboratory management in the Office of the Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Army for Research and Technology (ODASA(R&T)). As such, he shapes policies that impact the workforce, infrastructure, technology transfer, and science, technology, engineering and mathematics educational outreach at the Army science and technology research laboratories. He holds a Ph.D. and an M.S. in chemical engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a B.S. in chemical engineering from Cornell University. He is Level II certified in S&T management and is a member of the Army Acquisition Corps.

MS. JENNIFER SMITH was detailed during 2018 from the Engineer Research and Development Center‘s Geospatial Research Laboratory to (ODASA(R&T)) and served as the deputy director for laboratory management. She holds an M.S. in geospatial intelligence from George Mason University and a B.S. in physical science from the University of Maryland.

And the finalists are:

Adranos Inc.
Aeronics Inc.
Blacksand Technology LLC
Cuberg Inc.
Hivemapper
Hyperdyne Inc.
Nodar Inc.
Notch Inc.
Sempulse LLC
TangiTek LLC
WildSpark Technologies LLC
Wiser Systems Inc.


This article will be published in the January – March 2019 issue of Army AL&T magazine.

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Continuing to contribute

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Paul L. Price

COMMAND/ORGANIZATION: Night Vision and Electronic Sensors Directorate, U.S. Army Communications-Electronics Research, Development and Engineering Center (CERDEC)
TITLE: Chief, Aviation Branch
YEARS OF SERVICE IN WORKFORCE: 16
YEARS OF MILITARY SERVICE: 28
EDUCATION: Continuing studies, Liberty University
AWARDS: Legion of Merit; Distinguished Flying Cross; Purple Heart; Air Medal (2); U.S. Army Master Aviator Wings; High Altitude Low Opening Parachute Badge; Parachute Badge; Armed Forces Civilian Service Medal; CERDEC Mid-Level Manager of the Year and Degraded Visual Environment Team Awards; Army Aviation Association of America Hall of Fame inductee


by Susan L. Follett and Douglas Scott

After retiring from the Army in 2002 following a long and distinguished career as an Army aviator, Paul Price was looking for a way to continue to support Soldiers. He found it in the Night Vision and Electronic Sensors Directorate (NVESD), where he now serves as chief of the Aviation Branch.

NVESD, part of the U.S. Army Communications-Electronics Research, Development and Engineering Center, researches and develops sensor and sensor suite technologies for air and ground intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance (ISR) and target acquisition under adverse battlefield conditions. Price supervises a team that includes two noncommissioned officers, eight civilians and 15 contractors. “NVESD has the reputation of being the best sensor lab there is. It’s my honor to be able to manage this workforce and flight-test present and future sensor arrays in support of Army aviation,” he said.

“We flight-test so much more than people think, often in one day—flight goggles and multiple sensors on a Black Hawk, the ISR sensor suite on an MC-12 [reconnaissance aircraft] and the one-pound sensor on a small unmanned aircraft system.” He also deploys with Soldiers to install and operate mission systems and transition the systems to Army users.

Price was originally hired at NVESD to work on transitioning systems from the laboratory to the field. “My boss decided that what he really needed is a pilot to work with the scientists and engineers when we start developing things, so they can ask me how things work—or how they don’t work. So I was reassigned to the Engineering Branch and now I’m part of the entire life cycle, supporting the acquisition workforce and still within my own comfort zone.”

Now with NVESD for 16 years, Price and his team have achieved a great deal. Among his proudest accomplishments is Night Eagle, a system to locate improvised explosive devices (IEDs) that was deployed in Iraq in 2007. “I deployed with it and spent over a year getting that platform ready, working with Soldiers either in identifying IEDs or doing overwatch for dismounted troops. I am very proud of the work we did because we put that system together in about a year and got it deployed.”

He’s also proud of current work to develop systems that allow pilots to operate in a degraded visual environment (DVE). “Our engineers have come up with a great sensor to combat DVE,” said Price. “It can’t do everything, but it can do a lot. What I really like are the distributed aperture and the heads-up display.” A distributed aperture uses cameras installed around an aircraft, each looking in a separate direction. Images from the cameras are combined to create a continuously viewable video sphere. When the images are paired with the heads-up display in an aviator’s helmet, the aviator can look around and virtually “see” the environment around them relayed from the network of cameras, no matter the conditions. “It’s just like riding on a magic carpet,” said Price.

“NVESD put together three airborne platforms when [operations in Iraq and Afghanistan] started,” he said. “Two of them are programs of record—that is how important our work is. So I am very proud of that. And that’s not just me; it’s the engineers and the scientists who make this happen. I help them implement those programs and make things work a little smoother with my background and knowledge of the Army. But it is the whole organization that helps make this thing happen.”

Price joined the Army in 1974 and retired 28 years later at the rank of chief warrant officer 5. As a pilot, he logged more than 11,100 hours, including 800 combat hours, in 30 different airframes. He was involved in the rescue of hostages held in Iran; as a special operations aviator, he played a key role in developing air tactics and night vision goggle skills. Price was part of a team that rescued Americans held in Grenada in October 1983. He also deployed to Bosnia to capture war criminals in 1997. After 9/11, he executed advanced force operations around the world in support of special operations forces.

His achievements earned him a place in the Army Aviation Association of America’s Hall of Fame in April 2018. “It is humbling, it really is. There are so many other folks who are equally deserving of the award. … There are people out there who have done multiple rotations and so many other things, and for me to be singled out among my peers and among other folks is truly an honor.”

Do good pilots make good acquisition professionals? “Not necessarily,” he said. “In either area, the keys to success are a drive to complete the mission and complete it successfully, as well as a work ethic and a motivation that ensures that you’re doing the right thing for the right purpose.” To be successful in acquisition, he noted, “you need to keep your sights set on leadership’s priorities and requirements, current and future, and you need to be sure that you’re moving where the team is going—that you’re not out in left field developing something that the Soldier doesn’t need, or that you’re not so far behind that by the time you’ve fielded your product, it’s irrelevant.”

Price noted that many of the aviators with whom he served “had what I would call a ‘Type A’ personality. The sharp end of the spear is where everybody wanted to be—up front and leading.” While it might seem to be difficult to lead a group where everyone wants to be in charge, Price has found it to be an asset. “In that situation, everyone—whether it’s pilots or the acquisition community—is driven to support the mission, and they each contribute something different. From a leadership perspective, it’s just a matter of harnessing each of those contributions and bringing all the different skills together to successfully complete the project.”

Related Links 
Army Aviation Association of America Hall of Fame Induction
https://www.quad-a.org/18Summit/Photographs/18Summit/photos.aspx?hkey=7173117b-f249-4262-b381-2bbd467b9cc9
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zuHBaoC4UQ


“Faces of the Force” is an online series highlighting members of the Army Acquisition Workforce through the power of individual stories. Profiles are produced by the U.S. Army Acquisition Support Center Communication and Support Branch, working closely with public affairs officers to feature Soldiers and civilians serving in various AL&T disciplines. For more information, or to nominate someone, please contact 703-664-5635.

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RDECOM’s road map to modernizing the Army: Next Generation Combat Vehicle

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Second in a series of articles about RDECOM’s support for the Army’s six modernization priorities.

by Maj. Gen. Cedric T. Wins

Soldiers in the field need the right equipment to be successful. A tank that is too heavy to cross a bridge or maneuver through rough terrain and high altitudes can have a serious impact on mission success.

To meet the challenge of keeping Soldiers the best-equipped in the world and to prepare for the battlefield of the future, the Army has refocused its modernization efforts on six priorities: long-range precision fires, Next Generation Combat Vehicle (NGCV), Future Vertical Lift, the network, air and missile defense, and Soldier lethality.

To support the second priority, the U.S. Army Research, Development and Engineering Command (RDECOM) has aligned its science and technology ground portfolio to directly support the NGCV effort and created a team-of-teams approach, led by the RDECOM Ground Vehicle Systems Center in Detroit. Other teams include our six research, development and engineering centers and the U.S. Army Research Laboratory, the Army’s corporate lab, along with domestic and international academic and industry partners and the cross-functional teams developed as part of the U.S. Army Futures Command.

As RDECOM moves from the U.S. Army Materiel Command to the U.S. Army Futures Command, the command’s centers and laboratories are working closely with the eight cross-functional teams to develop a concept of operations and to provide technical analysis, portfolio alignment, proposal and program briefings and a coordinated modernization strategy.

On an April 2018 visit to the RDECOM Ground Vehicle Systems Center, Secretary of the Army Dr. Mark T. Esper drives the fuel cell-equipped Chevy Colorado ZH2 demonstrator. The center leverages General Motors’ fuel cell and off-road technologies in developing Army vehicles that are safer and more powerful. (U.S. Army photo by Carl Jones II)

On an April 2018 visit to the RDECOM Ground Vehicle Systems Center, Secretary of the Army Dr. Mark T. Esper drives the fuel cell-equipped Chevy Colorado ZH2 demonstrator. The center leverages General Motors’ fuel cell and off-road technologies in developing Army vehicles that are safer and more powerful. (U.S. Army photo by Carl Jones II)

MODULAR ACTIVE PROTECTION SYSTEMS

The Army is changing the way it protects its forces as the velocity of battle, the lethality of potential adversaries and the range of threats increase in multidomain operations. Historically, the Army countered the impact of the enemies’ more powerful and lethal vehicles by adding armor to combat vehicles. While this provided additional protection, it also increased the weight of the vehicle, reducing its speed and increasing the need for fuel.

The Modular Active Protection Systems (MAPS) is a multiyear RDECOM program led by the Ground Vehicle Systems Center in collaboration with the acquisition community and industry. The overarching goal of the MAPS program is to produce a modular and open approach for developing technologies that will be used to enable agile, layered protection against current and future threats in demanding environments.

The MAPS science and technology program has established a community of interest that ensures maximum participation by government and industry experts to help shape products and establish the right solution for the Army. This community is shaping and driving development of the MAPS products by leveraging industry partners to inform and fortify products to ensure their success. Community of interest members help frame the future of active protection systems (APS), and they leverage their knowledge of MAPS to update or develop technologies that are compliant with the MAPS Framework. The community is made up of 55 members of industry and academia from the computing technology, vehicle platform integration and vehicle protection systems communities.

Numerous industry partners have driven and fortified the development of MAPS products. MAPS has funded more than 27 key organizations throughout the life of the program and worked with more than 55 companies to develop products through the community of interest.

MAPS defeats incoming threats to combat vehicles without adding excessive armor weight. While these active protection systems—sensors, defeat mechanisms, processors and other components—are not a replacement for armor, they can significantly increase survivability of vehicles and Soldiers in multidomain operations by integrating hard- and soft-kill systems. Hard-kill systems use physical countermeasures such as blasts or projectiles to destroy or divert incoming fire, while soft-kill systems use sensors that detect signatures from weapons and send out electromagnetic signals to interfere with incoming weapons.

The benefits of MAPS include:

  • Higher survivability rates.
  • Increased innovation and rapid integration that will provide a quicker response to evolving threats.
  • More competition and diversity within the APS community, which will keep costs low.

Consistent, rapid implementation of safety and cybersecurity across active protection systems.

As MAPS technology evolves, additional protection technologies may be added, including active blast mitigation, adaptive armor and obscurant inhibitors. MAPS has been identified as a critical technology in the draft NGCV capabilities development document, and it supports the current NGCV requirements, so it will be integrated at the earliest possible date.

Making it to the frontline The RDECOM Ground Vehicle Systems Center conducted an autonomous leader-follower demonstration using an M915 truck on October 26, 2018. (Photo Credit: Doug Halleaux, Ground Vehicle Systems Center)

Making it to the frontline
The RDECOM Ground Vehicle Systems Center conducted an autonomous leader-follower demonstration using an M915 truck on October 26, 2018. (Photo Credit: Doug Halleaux, Ground Vehicle Systems Center)

ADVANCED ROBOTICS

The Ground Vehicle Systems Center’s work with the Robotic Operating System – Military (ROS-M) covers a spectrum of autonomy and robotics, including small explosive ordnance disposal-assist robots that have been fielded as part of the advanced leader-follower capabilities that Soldiers in two transportation battalions will see by summer 2019.

The ROS-M uses an open-source approach and a widely accepted software framework with common government and industry software to develop military robotics and autonomous systems. The open-source approach allows developers to create software modules for different applications and enables integrators to build modular systems using the best software modules available for military autonomous systems.

Robotics helps Soldiers in two ways: It eliminates the need for Soldiers to conduct mundane, dangerous or repetitive tasks that can be automated, and it increases the standoff distance between Soldiers and a threat, which can greatly enhance safety. Additionally, automation can increase logistics on convoy missions. For example, a pair of Soldiers can operate a convoy that normally requires two Soldiers in each vehicle, freeing the additional Soldiers to conduct other missions, such as providing security for the convoy.

AIDED TARGET RECOGNITION

Soldiers in combat or on patrol perform several tasks simultaneously: maintaining overall situational awareness, communicating with higher headquarters, planning and adjusting routes for manned and unmanned vehicles, monitoring sensor locations and gathering information from multiple sensors. Given all these tasks, they may not have enough time to focus on sensor imagery that may contain many objects that could be interpreted as targets. Spotting and deciding on the validity of potential targets is critical, so RDECOM has developed the Aided Target Recognition (AITR) system to reduce the Soldiers’ workload and enable them to perform their jobs more effectively.

The RDECOM Communications-Electronics Center is providing real-time image and signal processing AITR algorithms to support manned and unmanned vehicle targeting and decision-making. These algorithms, along with new advanced sensors, will be capable of locating concealed targets in a variety of backgrounds and under a range of conditions. As the algorithms and sensors mature, they will provide automated detection of both stationary and moving threats, augmenting traditional AITR and increasing the survivability and lethality of the NGCV platform.

Future efforts include integrating and demonstrating real-time AITR on NGCV platforms. The ability of ground vehicles to rapidly find difficult targets in complex environments will improve the ground vehicles’ lethality and ability to maintain overmatch in the future.

TECHNOLOGY DEMONSTRATORS AND PROTOTYPES

RDECOM scientists and engineers are exploring the art of the possible by integrating emerging technologies onto existing platforms to demonstrate how they will work. These demonstrations inform Army leadership and the acquisition community about what currently exists, as well as what might be possible in the future.

In particular, the Ground Vehicle Systems Center has been leveraging the Mission Enabling Technologies Demonstrator, a modified Bradley Fighting Vehicle, to demonstrate various emerging science and technology capabilities for manned-unmanned teaming. Until the requirements for a remote combat vehicle are determined, we have equipped a supply of M1113 armored personnel carriers with drive-by-wire and autonomy kits so that the Army can begin learning how to best use a remote capability. As we identify which technologies provide the biggest operational payoff, we will transition them to future NGCV increments.

Since prototypes are more targeted and specific, we view them as the best way to “fail early” and “fail cheaply.” RDECOM develops a physical prototype after a digital prototype has passed a rigorous process of testing and experimentation. Putting designs and concepts through such a process greatly reduces the risk of significant redesign costs after production.

The MAPS program received its first prototype controller (hardware and software) base kits in 2016. These have been updated through ongoing development and demonstration efforts throughout the program. The base kits will be demonstrated on a platform at the end of FY19 for an overall system technology readiness level 6, but we have already transitioned products to the Product Manager for Vehicle Protection Systems within the Program Executive Office for Ground Combat Systems.

Soldiers test leader-follower technology with semiautonomous trucks during operational training at Fort Bliss, Texas, in 2016. Semiautonomous systems like this one could be fielded as early as summer 2019. (U.S. Army photo)

Soldiers test leader-follower technology with semiautonomous trucks during operational training at Fort Bliss, Texas, in 2016. Semiautonomous systems like this one could be fielded as early as summer 2019. (U.S. Army photo)

TEAM OF TEAMS

By collaborating across the command and working with academic and industry partners, we maintain a steady stream of world-class technology. We also work with hundreds of nontraditional defense companies on NGCV ideas and technologies, particularly those from the automotive industry, whose long-term goals with improved powertrains and robotics strongly align with those of the Army. This synergy already has produced valuable advances in vehicle capability. Significant improvements in engine and transmission technology have resulted from these partnerships, including vehicles that are lighter and more powerful. These relationships, along with the expertise of the RDECOM workforce, will enable the NGCV Cross-Functional Team to make informed decisions about future technology.

We regularly engage our academic collaborative partners on a wide variety of technology to support the NGCV modernization priority. Some of our academic partners include the University of Michigan, the University of Michigan  Dearborn, Auburn University, Carnegie Mellon University and Michigan Technological University. We currently have more than 500 cooperative research and development agreements with domestic and international academic institutions, industry, partner militaries and government agencies. Such agreements enable both parties to trade access to labs, equipment, data and other resources for technical knowledge.

CONCLUSION

RDECOM is committed to bringing the latest, most flexible, adaptable, modular and smart capabilities possible to Soldiers to give our leaders the tools they need to accomplish their mission effectively and safely. By partnering with industry and academia, as well as the automotive and defense industries’ ground vehicle developers, we accomplish our mission and provide the Army with our expertise in ground vehicle technology development and integration.

For more information, go to http://www.rdecom.army.mil/ or contact RDECOM Public Affairs at 443-395-3922. Industry partners who wish to participate in the MAPS community of interest can contact the National Advanced Mobility Consortium at Questions@NAMConsortium.org to learn how to participate.

MAJ. GEN. CEDRIC T. WINS is the commanding general of RDECOM. Wins graduated from the Virginia Military Institute and was commissioned in the field artillery in July 1985. His military education includes Field Artillery Officer Basic and Advanced Courses, U.S. Army Command and General Staff College and the National War College, where he earned an M.S. in national security and strategic studies. Wins also holds an M.S. in management from the Florida Institute of Technology.


This article will be published in the January – March 2019 issue of Army AL&T magazine.

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Expanding the perimeter

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Cyber defense and partner nation interoperability are vital to meeting national security objectives at home and abroad.

by Andy Strand

In “Sneakers,” a 1992 comedic caper about the ethical and political implications of cyberwarfare, Sir Ben Kingsley’s villainous character, Cosmo, sententiously instructs Marty, the film’s protagonist, played by Robert Redford, that war and power are no longer dominated primarily by weapons, energy or even money, but by the control of information.

More than 25 years later, the prescience of those lines is evident in a U.S. national security posture that highlights the criticality of information dominance and protection. In the 2018 National Defense Strategy, “Sharpening the American Military’s Competitive Edge,” Secretary of Defense James N. Mattis warns:

“America is a target, whether from terrorists seeking to attack our citizens; malicious cyber activity against personal, commercial or government infrastructure; or political and information subversion. New threats to commercial and military uses of space are emerging, while increasing digital connectivity of all aspects of life, business, government and military creates significant vulnerabilities.”

DOD is, therefore, focused on increasing information technology capacity, both within the department and on behalf of U.S. allies, to meet national security objectives at home and abroad.

Using the foreign military sales process, the U.S. Army’s Program Executive Office for Enterprise Information Systems (PEO EIS) international programs office, Allied Information Technology (AIT), headquartered at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, is doing its part to assist our allies. That assistance comes in the form of the command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (C4ISR) and defensive cyber capabilities necessary to defend against threats and contribute to allied coalitions, thereby expanding the perimeter of collective security.

AIT has taken acquisition notes from U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM) to do this as efficiently and effectively as possible. By focusing on speed, absorptive capacity (a country’s ability to absorb and support a particular capability), decentralization of command and interagency relationships, AIT is better equipped to deliver the right information technology (IT)  solutions to our allies.

AIT Country Program Manager for Ukraine, Mr. Dan Hawkins (far right), briefing U.S. Deputy Ambassador to Ukraine, Mr. George Kent (left), and Ukrainian Deputy Chief of Defense, Lieutenant General Serhii Bessarab (center) on the new Ukranian Special Operations Forces training facilities (location in Ukraine undisclosed) being outfitted by AIT with various C4ISR and Defensive Cyber capabilities, January 2018. Photo credit: Mr. Jeremy Way, AIT support contractor

AIT Country Program Manager for Ukraine, Mr. Dan Hawkins (far right), briefing U.S. Deputy Ambassador to Ukraine, Mr. George Kent (left), and Ukrainian Deputy Chief of Defense, Lieutenant General Serhii Bessarab (center) on the new Ukranian Special Operations Forces training facilities (location in Ukraine undisclosed) being outfitted by AIT with various C4ISR and Defensive Cyber capabilities, January 2018.
Photo credit: Mr. Jeremy Way, AIT support contractor

INTEROPERABILITY IN THE 21ST CENTURY

The global proliferation of IT over the past quarter-century has unlocked seemingly limitless potential for human well-being. The ability to create, manipulate, distribute or store information instantly has fundamentally changed the way we live and operate in the world. Just think of the ease with which a person can now communicate with family, friends, colleagues or customers from anywhere in the world through any number of digital media. Consider the significance of IT to fields like science and medicine, space exploration, commerce and education, to name just a few.

The internet has connected the world in ways our grandparents could never have comprehended, and while all of the interconnectedness is making life better in so many ways, our ever-increasing dependence on the IT that can improve our experience can also expose us to unique vulnerabilities and formidable threats. Indeed, our very way of living in the 21st century—the strength of our economy and our national security—now depends largely on a stable and secure cyberspace. DOD is prioritizing its focus on this issue not only for our own joint force, but also for our allies.

DOD’s mission is to make combat-ready the military forces needed to deter or prosecute war to protect and defend the security interests of America and its allies around the world against a continuum of state, nonstate and transnational bad actors. A key component of this mission is theater security cooperation, which begins with the conviction that building stronger defense partnerships and interoperability with our partners lightens our own security burden and enables them to play a larger role in the shared responsibility of maintaining what the 2018 National Defense Strategy calls the “free and open international order.”

Given the emphasis our joint force places on C4ISR and defensive cyber capabilities, it behooves DOD to continue investing in like capabilities for our allies. In doing so, we improve the durability of their IT infrastructures, help to improve the accuracy and reach of their warfighting systems, increase interoperability with our own systems and, perhaps most importantly, fortify their networks against antagonistic cyberthreats.

AIT has seen a sharp increase in appetite for these capabilities over the past several years, particularly in Eastern Europe, where Russia continues to provoke U.S. allies with cyberattacks and other overt acts of hostility. In Ukraine, for instance, AIT currently has underway several major IT modernization efforts for the Ukrainian armed forces, including a revamped network infrastructure, new training centers for Ukrainian special operations forces, a state-of-the-art joint operations center with effective command-and-control tools, NATO-interoperable logistics and medical defense business systems, and a first-of-its-kind cybersecurity operations center. All of these enhancements are a tremendous boon to the Ukrainian armed forces, enabling their leaders to make faster, more accurate decisions while defending against ubiquitous cyberthreats.

In fact, the Ukrainian armed forces are already seeing the operational impact of these capabilities in the ongoing conflict with Russian-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine. What’s more, the Ukrainian chief of general staff (equivalent to our chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff), recently wrote to the commander of U.S. European Command and NATO supreme allied commander, Europe, praising AIT for its efforts in Ukraine and requesting that AIT personnel continue to advise him and his senior staff on the investments needed to ensure that Ukraine can continue to optimize, maximize and sustain these capabilities over time.

They agreed that the Ukrainian armed forces’ senior staff should visit U.S. Army Europe in Wiesbaden, Germany, “in order to visualize the digital common operating picture and to receive an overview of battle staff procedures in support of the commander’s decision-making process.” Beyond the goodness of kudos, the real significance here is that AIT is having an impact far beyond the foreign military sales transaction itself, working to ensure that these capabilities do not become wasted investments.

But any success AIT has achieved, it has not achieved alone. We rely on best practices and lessons learned from organizations throughout the interagency enterprise, including SOCOM, to help us build partner capacity at the speed of relevance.

AIT, GDIT and UAF personnel gather for a photo during construction of new Ukrainian Special Operations Forces IT training center, December 2017. Photo credit: Mr. Jeremy Way, AIT support contractor

AIT, GDIT and UAF personnel gather for a photo during construction of new Ukrainian Special Operations Forces IT training center, December 2017.
Photo credit: Mr. Jeremy Way, AIT support contractor

BUILT FOR SPEED

One of the biggest complaints from allies and foreign partners about the foreign military sales process writ large is that it takes too long for requirements to be prioritized, defined properly, organized and then processed through the many layers of DOD’s security cooperation enterprise. The sheer abundance of complexity in the IT space—system design, data sharing and protection agreements, etc.—can make foreign military sales in this area seem more daunting, especially considering the pace at which technology in this field changes. This is why AIT has chosen, not unlike other interagency organizations, to take a page from SOCOM’s stated acquisition methodology to cut timelines and bring greater velocity to the foreign military sales process. For AIT, the tenets of SOCOM acquisition translate to:

Speed as an attitude. Teams that understand not only how to execute their mission, but why it matters to the bigger picture, are generally motivated to hustle. AIT conducts sync meetings throughout the week during which one teammate is called upon to discuss the tasks he or she has for the week and why accomplishing those matters to both AIT and the Army’s overarching security priorities. This simple exercise encourages better communication, creates shared consciousness among the team and ensures that each individual—leader or follower, government or contractor—understands how his or her actions support success for DOD’s broader security cooperation mission. All of that tends to generate an expeditious vibe in the office.

Absorptive capacity matters. Not every country is prepared technologically, organizationally or even culturally to implement the latest and greatest capability that the U.S. defense industry has to offer. It may sound counterintuitive, but when we try to deliver too much capability too quickly, we end up overburdening the customer, making things perhaps worse than when we started. In our business, the best way to achieve effective results quickly is to deliver capability in a crawl-walk-run approach. Starting with smaller amounts of capability and using time-phased optimization to scale those capabilities later can build confidence in system users, earn buy-in from senior leaders and help the U.S. government know when, where or whether further investment is desirable.

Decentralize to win. Building tailored IT system solutions in a foreign country requires tremendous amounts of touch labor and calculated risk tolerance, which cannot be managed effectively from a desk in Northern Virginia. That is why AIT has chosen a decentralized organizational model, pushing most of the technical, operational and program management decision-making capability forward, where its personnel, led by an area-of-responsibility portfolio director (a government civilian), can work directly with the geographic combatant command and theater special operations command functional proponents (e.g., J-5, strategic plans and policy, and J-6, command, control, communications and computers and cyber), as well as the offices of defense cooperation and host nation ministry of defense itself. The proximity of AIT personnel to these commands provides front-row access to the requirements coming down the pike, which we then can take an active role in developing with the customer. This ensures that requirements are actionable by the time AIT officially receives guidance and funding to execute the projects.

Expand the Rolodex. Every AIT employee is encouraged to cultivate relationships with interagency members and other partners in the public and private sectors, and bring back ideas that can help us solve problems. By leveraging lessons learned from coaches and teachers, first responders, special operations forces, executives in finance and anyone else who can improve the way we operate, AIT will continue to increase its capacity to deliver efficient, effective IT capability across the globe.

CONCLUSION

The United States and its allies are clearly aware that the exchange and protection of information is paramount. Security is no longer solely about who has the biggest bombs or the most bullets; it is about access to and control of information. The 2018 National Defense Strategy acknowledges this reality, and the combatant commands are developing security cooperation strategies that will strengthen bilateral defense partnerships, enhance coalition building and interoperability, and increase the readiness of our allies and partners in uncertain, complex and potentially hostile security environments.

AIT understands its role in this mission and is working to cultivate a culture of acquisition operators who are laser-focused on doing foreign military sales better and faster.

For more information, go to http://www.eis.army.mil/programs/ait

ANDY STRAND is the director of AIT, based at Fort Belvoir, Virginia. He holds an M.A. in international affairs from the University of Oklahoma and a B.A. in history from The Citadel. He is an Army Acquisition Corps member and is Level III certified in program management and in information technology.


This article will be published in the January – March 2019 issue of Army AL&T magazine.

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Engineering a successful path

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Jonathan B. Hill

COMMAND/ORGANIZATION: Integrated Air and Missile Defense (IAMD) Project Office, Program Executive Office (PEO) for Missiles and Space
TITLE: Chief, Performance Management Division
YEARS OF SERVICE IN WORKFORCE: 17
DAWIA CERTIFICATIONS: Level III in production, quality and manufacturing and in engineering; Level I in program management
EDUCATION: Ph.D. in industrial and systems engineering (expected in fall 2019) and M.S. in engineering management, University of Alabama in Huntsville; B.S. in mechanical engineering, University of Alabama
AWARDS: Distinguished Departmental Fellow, University of Alabama Department of Mechanical Engineering; numerous awards for contributions to the IAMD Battle Command System, the PEO for Aviation’s Unmanned Aircraft Systems Program Management Office (UAS PMO), the Technical Management Division of the UAS PMO, the U.S. Army Aviation and Missile Research, Development and Engineering Center’s Engineering Directorate and the Shadow Tactical Unmanned Aircraft System


by Susan L. Follett

Jonathan Hill has received numerous awards over the course of his acquisition career, including recognition for his support of reliability growth for the Integrated Air and Missile Defense (IAMD) Battle Command System; critical contributions to the Unmanned Aircraft Systems Program Management Office (UAS PMO) within the Program Executive Office (PEO) for Aviation; and contributions to improving alignment between UAS PMO and the U.S. Army Aviation and Missile Research, Development and Engineering Center (AMRDEC).

But it’s his first award that holds the most meaning for him: recognition for contributions he made in 2007 to improve the safety of the Shadow Tactical Unmanned Aircraft System. Hill and his team partnered with Defense Contract Management Agency personnel at Fort Huachuca, Arizona, to reduce aircraft incident rates for the Shadow by 50 percent for two consecutive years.

“That award was meaningful for two reasons: It was the first time in my career that I was recognized for my work, and I learned that good work gets rewarded,” he said. “Second, but most importantly, it demonstrated that my work had a direct impact on Soldiers in the field. People often think that since the Shadow is unmanned, when it crashes, it’s not a big deal—no one gets hurt, and it’s only equipment that’s lost. But it is a big deal: Soldiers in urban operations rely on the surveillance information that the Shadow provides, and without it, they can find themselves walking into harm’s way.”

Hill is chief of the Performance Management Division within the IAMD Project Office within the PEO for Missiles and Space, responsible for the safety, reliability, configuration and data management, production, quality and manufacturing of the IAMD system of systems. “Being a part of the Army Acquisition Workforce provides opportunities to solve unique technical challenges every day,” he said. “Most people assume that engineers work nearly in isolation with little interaction, when in fact almost everything we do is done through teamwork. Working in a team environment allows us to develop better solutions to problems and requires the ability to work well with others.”

He oversees a team of approximately 18 government and contractor personnel. “For me, the hardest part of my job is the difficult conversations that supervisors often have to have with the people they lead,” he said. “No one wants to hear that there’s something they’re not good at or there’s a skill they need to get better at; even constructive feedback can be hard to hear. But those conversations are necessary. They’re an important part of growth and improvement, both personally and for our team as a whole.”

Hill became part of the Army Acquisition Workforce as a co-op student after his freshman year of college; he alternated semesters between working and attending classes throughout his undergraduate years. “The diversity of work assignments appealed to me as an engineer in training. I saw that I could work on a wide variety of products and technologies throughout my career with ample opportunity to transition to different projects.”

One of the most important points in his career came about 10 years ago, when he was competitively selected for a developmental assignment as executive officer to a Senior Executive Service (SES) member. Originally assigned to work for Patricia Martin in AMRDEC’s Engineering Directorate, Hill ended up working for Randy Harkins, who had become the acting director after Martin was named acting director for AMRDEC’s Systems Engineering and Support Division. “That assignment helped me get a much better perspective of how the Army works at a much younger point in my career than is typical,” said Hill. “It also broadened my view of possible career paths and helped me to form relationships with senior leaders that have mentored me throughout my career.”

Hill now tries to pay that forward by mentoring others. “The most important advice that I have been given and that I try to pass on to junior personnel is to have a plan for how you want to achieve your career goals. You will not achieve your career goals by accident or without deliberate action. Also, be proactive in managing your career. Do not assume your supervisor will do it for you.”

In that vein, he volunteered to help with an effort undertaken by the Army Career Program 16 Proponency Office to update the career map for occupational series 0801, general engineering. Hill was one of 13 people selected as a subject matter expert for that effort, based on his experience and his supervisory and technical expertise. “It’s a really comprehensive map of the functional competencies, training and certifications from GS-1 all the way up to the SES level. It’s helpful even for someone at my level, and it’s even more beneficial for someone just starting out, to know what degrees and training and experience will be needed to advance.”

Now in the 17th year of his career, he’s seen several big changes come his way. “The change from the abundant funding that we saw during the global war on terror to the budget challenges and sequestration was big. Budgets got a lot smaller, and we were asked to do as much or more with a lot less money. The biggest change I’ve seen recently is the push to get capabilities fielded faster.” If he were in charge, he said he would “look to streamline where I could—cut review times, speed up the contracting process. I’d also look to make changes in the budget process, specifically when it comes to the continuing resolutions. We could get a lot more done if we didn’t have to spend three or four months wondering about funding.”

 

Related Links

IAMD site: https://www.msl.army.mil/Pages/IAMD/default.html


This article will be published in the January – March 2019 issue of Army AL&T magazine.

“Faces of the Force” is an online series highlighting members of the Army Acquisition Workforce through the power of individual stories. Profiles are produced by the U.S. Army Acquisition Support Center Communication and Support Branch, working closely with public affairs officers to feature Soldiers and civilians serving in various AL&T disciplines. For more information, or to nominate someone, please contact 703-664-5635.

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Medical Partnership

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USAMMDA works with military, federal civilian and contract professionals to develop and deliver quality medical products.

by Jeffrey M. Soares

Since its establishment more than 30 years ago, the U.S. Army Medical Materiel Development Activity (USAMMDA) has been partnering with industry to create effective medical product solutions to support our warfighters in the field and at home. Over the years, USAMMDA’s multiple project management offices have overseen the development of numerous medical products and devices, which include the antimalarial drug tafenoquine, an adenovirus vaccine, freeze-dried plasma, the Chemical Patient Protective Wrap, the Environmental Sentinel Biomonitor and the Laboratory Assay for Traumatic Brain Injury. In so doing, the organization has used a number of approaches to secure the right type of partnership for a given product, such as various types of contracting methods, cooperative research and development agreements (CRADAs) and “open campus” models.

As a subordinate command of the U.S. Army Medical Research and Materiel Command at Fort Detrick, Maryland, the USAMMDA team is a partnership of military, federal civilian and contract professionals working together in support of the organization’s mission to develop and deliver quality medical capabilities to protect, treat and sustain the health of our nation’s service members. However, given the nature of medical product development in the world of Army acquisition, USAMMDA does not have the manufacturing capability to carry a product all the way through the life cycle pipeline on its own. Therefore, the command uses its expertise in project management and reaches out to commercial partners to create the best product to satisfy a given military requirement.

In addition to creating products for troops on the battlefield, USAMMDA works to find solutions to treat wounded warfighters returning from battle. While the scars of traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress disorder may not be readily visible, the damage of catastrophic wounds can clearly be seen, and the command has multiple teams that look to discover treatment options for these types of physical and emotional injuries.

PARTNERING FOR SUCCESS

While USAMMDA does its part in the development of critical medical products moving through the acquisition pipeline, it relies heavily on commercial partners in industry to complete this important task. Kathleen Berst, USAMMDA’s deputy for acquisition, explained that the command seeks opportunities to partner with companies currently holding a technology that has a civilian market and is militarily relevant but not necessarily military-specific.

“Everything we do is driven by a requirement,” she said. “However, our requirement is probably not the only driver of our industry partner’s development effort. So the question we ask ourselves is, ‘How do we integrate our requirement with the industry partner’s strategy to deliver a commercially viable product that is sustainable and meets the military’s need?’ ”

Berst pointed out the similarities between DOD’s business model and that of typical companies throughout the industry. “We both look at the same factors: How much will this cost? What is the need for this? What is the market? How long will it take to develop? What’s the programmatic risk? The bottom line is that it’s an investment decision,” she said.

Berst explained that, working within a relatively small budget, the Army must remain diligent in its investment decisions, so it considers partners with the greatest chances for success. DOD cannot create a militarily unique product that leaves the government as the only customer, as this would create the difficult scenario of having to solely sustain the product indefinitely.

Dr. Lawrence Lightner, project manager of USAMMDA’s Pharmaceutical Systems Project Management Office (PSPMO), which oversees the development of items including tafenoquine, the adenovirus vaccine and freeze-dried plasma, underscored the critical role of contracting in the partnering process. He explained that a government contract provides a flexible mechanism for using DOD funds to assist industry partners in a variety of areas. The CRADA is a very important tool as well.

“The CRADA essentially affords the DOD a seat at the table in contributing to decisions made by the industry partner,” said Lightner. “Under a CRADA, the industry partner may provide funding to DOD for specific activities, while DOD can provide other material items to the industry partner for the product development process.”

The CRADA played an important part in the recent U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval of tafenoquine, which was realized after 40 years of research and development involving numerous partners. Malaria remains the top infectious disease threat to U.S. service members deployed overseas, and DOD has been committed to discovering an effective solution for the prevention and treatment of this life-threatening illness among its troops, as well as civilian populations worldwide.

Tafenoquine was first discovered in 1978 within the Experimental Therapeutics Branch at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research. In 1988, the drug was transitioned to USAMMDA’s PSPMO for management and oversight of the product development effort, and it has remained under the PSPMO’s guidance ever since. While many organizations have been involved in studying the drug, production of tafenoquine as a weekly prophylaxis was secured through the establishment of a CRADA between USAMMDA and its industry partner, 60° Pharmaceuticals LLC, which will manufacture the drug for DOD.

The result of this type of partnership is usually a win-win scenario: The industry partner ends up with a commercially profitable product that DOD can purchase, generally at a reduced cost, for use throughout its military forces. As DOD cannot solely sustain a militarily unique product for the sake of its warfighters, industry partnerships such as this are vital to maintain military readiness and to provide medical product support. Although some exceptions exist for products that are a DOD operational priority but have no civilian market, these cases are rare.

Andrew Atkinson, product manager for USAMMDA’s Pharmaceutical Systems Project Management Office, demonstrates the speed and ease involved in reconstituting freeze-dried human blood plasma during an Army senior leadership visit at Fort Detrick, Maryland. As a successful effort between USAMMDA and it industry partners, the freeze-dried plasma product may be approved and readily available for use by 2020. (Photo courtesy of Ashley Force, USAMMDA public affairs office)

Andrew Atkinson, product manager for USAMMDA’s Pharmaceutical Systems Project Management Office, demonstrates the speed and ease involved in reconstituting freeze-dried human blood plasma during an Army senior leadership visit at Fort Detrick, Maryland. As a successful effort between USAMMDA and it industry partners, the freeze-dried plasma product may be approved and readily available for use by 2020. (Photo courtesy of Ashley Force, USAMMDA public affairs office)

USING THE OPEN CAMPUS MODEL

While USAMMDA maintains traditional commercial partnerships to produce the majority of its medical products and devices, it is engaged in a unique open campus project as well. The open campus concept brings together government, industry and academia in an effort to maximize resources and output. Since 2016, representatives from USAMMDA have helped to guide the establishment of the Advanced Regenerative Manufacturing Institute (ARMI) in Manchester, New Hampshire.

In 2016, ARMI was awarded the BioFabUSA project, which is a DOD-sponsored initiative in the Manufacturing USA network and the first to address biomanufacturing. The BioFabUSA program looks to bridge the gap between early scientific research and later-stage product development by advancing critical technologies to enable large-scale biological manufacturing efforts—in this case, tissue regeneration.

“ARMI is a public-private partnership serving as one of Manufacturing USA’s 14 manufacturing innovation institutes,” explained Air Force Lt. Col. Melinda Eaton, USAMMDA’s director of strategic acquisition planning and program management. “My role in this effort is to serve as the government program manager, to help ensure that we are effectively utilizing the $80 million of federal funding provided by DOD to establish this partnership.”

DOD’s interest in tissue regeneration grew from the challenges of restoring service members to form, function and appearance following catastrophic combat injuries. As conventional approaches may sometimes fall short of full restoration, USAMMDA’s Combat Trauma and Acute Rehabilitation Project Management Office has overseen numerous research projects focused on developing novel solutions to address this need. Currently, the most successful projects in its portfolio are efforts in the field of vascularized composite allotransplantation, which involves hand and face transplants, and the ongoing development of a skin substitute to treat burn wounds.

BioFabUSA is focused on tissue engineering, at manufacturing readiness levels between 4 (validated in a laboratory environment) and 7 (demonstrated in prototype in an operational setting), said Eaton. The group hopes to research immature technologies to see if these can be scaled up, or scaled out, to ensure a consistent quality of tissue manufacturing.

“We have more than 100 members within the various industries and academia and private partners that have joined the institute, and these will add over $200 million in private commitments,” she said. “BioFabUSA is currently working with these partners to set up a tissue foundry so they can create test facilities where the partners can come in and learn how to scale up some of their own products.

“Our goal,” Eaton explained, “is to ensure that these public-private partnerships are sustainable, so that after the government funding ends, the institute can continue on its own as a sustainable entity. In the end, we want to make sure we have those manufacturing partnerships in place with these industry partners.”

Eaton values the open campus concept, as it allows USAMMDA to reach out to more partners than it could on its own. She believes it is helping the organization connect with researchers in academia as well as its usual partners in the commercial industry.

“We have a lot of partners in industry and academia that want to support the DOD, but they just don’t know how—and we’re able to provide them with our unmet needs and capabilities so they can provide support to the DOD,” she said.

“At the same time, we’re providing them with our expertise, and they are able to work with our science and technology partners and tap into some of our military populations for clinical trials, if they would like to study the effects on our unique population,” she said. “For example, we know we have unique wounds from the battlefield that they may not see in the civilian sector, and this could be very helpful to their own research.”

The Advanced Regenerative Manufacturing Institute/BioFabUSA held its 2018 Fall Summit at ARMI headquarters in Manchester, New Hampshire, September 19-20. With a focus on regulatory as well as education and workforce development initiatives, the summit was intended to promote collaboration among participants and opportunities for networking within the growing “ecosystem.” (Photo courtesy of ARMI/BioFabUSA)

The Advanced Regenerative Manufacturing Institute/BioFabUSA held its 2018 Fall Summit at ARMI headquarters in Manchester, New Hampshire, September 19-20. With a focus on regulatory as well as education and workforce development initiatives, the summit was intended to promote collaboration among participants and opportunities for networking within the growing “ecosystem.” (Photo courtesy of ARMI/BioFabUSA)

CONCLUSION

It would be hard to diminish the value of industry partnerships or the open campus concept, especially in light of the recent success of tafenoquine as the first FDA-approved malaria drug in nearly two decades. The idea of collaboration is infused throughout the important work of USAMMDA and the collective mission of all involved.

Army Col. Ryan Bailey, USAMMDA commander, has been immersed in military medical product development since assuming command of the organization in 2017. He recognizes the true value of industry partnerships for success in these unique endeavors.

“These types of partnerships are not about multiple teams racing toward a finish line, hoping to jump ahead of each other in the final stretch,” he said. “The concept is more like a relay race, where talented individuals work closely together to reach the goal, doing everything possible to ensure the team does not ‘drop the baton’ along the way.”

Although the BioFabUSA project may have a great deal to prove in the future, the prospects are exciting. In working with an extensive list of partners, it is likely that many good things will come from such synergistic relationships. For this important effort, restoring wounded service members and civilians to form, function and appearance remains paramount—and the possibilities through effective partnerships remain endless.

For more information on the work and mission of USAMMDA, go to http://www.usammda.army.mil/.

JEFFREY M. SOARES is a senior technical writer and communications specialist with General Dynamics Information Technology, providing contract support as chief writer for the Public Affairs Office and Office of the Commander at USAMMDA. He holds an M.A. in English language and literature from the University of Maryland, College Park and a B.S. in education with a concentration in English from the University of Scranton.


This article will be published in the January – March 2019 issue of Army AL&T magazine.

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Running The Options

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How MRMC leverages expertise and relationship-building with industry.

The U.S. Army Medical Research and Materiel Command (MRMC) aims to lead the advancement of military medicine and responsibly create, develop, deliver and sustain medical capabilities for the warfighter. MRMC knows the importance of industry and building relationships, but understands that sometimes industry can’t reach us or doesn’t know how to communicate with us. It’s an important issue to address: Simply put, MRMC can’t get products to the end of cycle without industry.

Six laboratories make up the command’s core science and technology capability; these specific areas of biomedical research are staffed by highly qualified military and civilian scientists and support personnel. There are five additional MRMC subordinate commands that focus on command requirements—such as medical materiel development, logistics and contracting—to complete the life cycle management of medical materiel.

MRMC partners with government agencies, academic institutions and commercial entities to identify solutions that address critical gaps in Military Health System medical research and development (R&D) programs.

MRMC has several tools to assist small businesses and help build relationships. The MRMC “Gateway to Partnerships” guide went live on the MRMC website in November 2017 as a reference to help businesses better understand what we do and how to partner with us.

The NDIA Army Science & Technology Symposium & Showcase focused on the future of warfighting and demonstrated how the future of warfighting is changing with technology modernizations. (Photo by Christina Watson, USAMRMC Public Affairs)

The NDIA Army Science & Technology Symposium & Showcase focused on the future of warfighting and demonstrated how the future of warfighting is changing with technology modernizations. (Photo by Christina Watson, USAMRMC Public Affairs)

DECISION GATE

MRMC understands that there are many challenges to overcome on both sides when working with small businesses. For example, there may be difficulty attracting and maintaining qualified personnel, staff can get frustrated with current government processes that could use improvement, and some government processes can take longer than expected to complete.

To ensure that the acquisition system runs efficiently, MRMC uses its decision-gate process with every medical R&D product that enters the pipeline. Decision gate provides a governance structure for the development of products throughout the acquisition process, and features event-driven milestones that allow successful products to move along the development pathway. The decision-gate process was implemented in 2005 as a way for MRMC to manage its medical materiel development efforts. It is an overarching process that integrates DOD acquisition processes with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration requirements and industry business practices. The goal is to focus materiel development efforts on meeting DOD requirements as quickly and efficiently as possible.

FORUMS AND EVENTS

Forums and events are great opportunities for MRMC commanders and their staff to learn about other R&D efforts and their importance within the command. During forums and events, leaders and industry can have face-to-face discussions, network and gain knowledge through professional development. Such events allow government, academic and private sector experts to explore emerging medical technologies and their potential roles in supporting military medicine. For example, the Telemedicine and Advanced Technology Research Center (TATRC) 4th Annual Open House and Technology Demonstration in September 2018 educated the military medicine community and external partners about TATRC’s focus on supporting military readiness through innovative technologies across the Military Health System.

VENDOR DAYS

Military Health System Vendor Days are cooperative ventures by the military services, located at Fort Detrick, Maryland. Typically held seven times a year, the event focuses on assisting the services’ medical agencies with strategic market analysis of products and technologies that may be applicable to austere medical environments.

The agencies involved are:

  • Defense Health Agency Medical Logistics Division.
  • U.S. Army Medical Research and Materiel Command.
  • U.S. Army Medical Materiel Agency.
  • Naval Medical Logistics Command.
  • U.S. Air Force Medical Operations Agency.
  • U.S. Marine Corps Systems Command.

RESEARCH SYMPOSIUMS

Like open houses, conferences and symposiums facilitate networking, collaboration with peers and small-group discussion sessions. One such event, the U.S. Army Military Health System Research Symposium, held in Kissimmee, Florida, Aug. 20-23, is considered by many as a premier DOD medical research meeting, bringing together military and civilians to collaborate and create partnerships.

MRMC also participated in the 2018 National Defense Industrial Association’s Army Science & Technology Symposium & Showcase, held Aug. 21-23 at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington. Events such as this allow representatives and leadership to engage with industry and discuss ongoing research projects and capabilities.

The 2018 Military Health System Research Symposium focuses on the Warfighter’s unique medical needs. The Symposium consisted of more than 75 break-out sessions, 90 exhibits and 1,400 poster presentations. (Photo by Leticia Hopkins, USAMRMC Public Affairs)

The 2018 Military Health System Research Symposium focuses on the Warfighter’s unique medical needs. The Symposium consisted of more than 75 break-out sessions, 90 exhibits and 1,400 poster presentations. (Photo by Leticia Hopkins, USAMRMC Public Affairs)

MECHANISMS FOR COLLABORATION

Two congressionally mandated programs—Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR)—were created to promote technological innovation and economic growth among small businesses through federal investment. SBIR and STTR allow small, high-tech U.S. businesses and academia the opportunity to provide innovative research and development solutions in response to critical DOD needs.

Five federal agencies participate in both SBIR and STTR:

  • DOD
  • NASA
  • Department of Health and Human Services.
  • National Science Foundation.
  • Department of Energy.

Six federal agencies participate in the SBIR program only:

  • Department of Agriculture.
  • Environmental Protection Agency.
  • Department of Education.
  • Department of Homeland Security.
  • Department of Transportation.
  • Department of Commerce.

CRADAs

The preferred vehicle for technology transfer is a cooperative research and development agreement (CRADA), which allows MRMC investigators to collaborate with scientists in industry and academia and work toward a common research goal. CRADAs allow federal laboratories to collaborate on R&D with nonfederal parties and are used for nondisclosure agreements, material transfer agreements and complex R&D collaborations. Visit the MRMC’s Office of Research and Technology Applications (ORTA) at http://technologytransfer.amedd.army.mil/index.cfm to learn more about the possibility of creating a CRADA with MRMC.

MRMC also has technologies available for licensing. For licensing opportunities, please contact ORTA at USArmy.Detrick.MEDCOM-MRMC.List.ORTA@mail.mil.

OTHER WAYS OF DOING BUSINESS

The Medical Technology Enterprise Consortium (MTEC) consists of industry, academia and other entities organized and operated through a nonprofit corporation. MTEC currently has more than 200 members and is seeking new members from the following areas:

  • Small and large businesses.
  • Academic medical research organizations.
  • Not-for-profit organizations.
  • Nontraditional government contractors.

MRMC works with MTEC through a prototype other transaction agreement, which provides a flexible method to combine public and private resources to focus research, prototype development and commercialization on specific shared military and civilian medical technology needs.

An other transaction agreement is a funding vehicle used by federal agencies for obtaining or advancing R&D or prototypes. It’s generally used with small businesses and nontraditional contractors, but traditional contractors can be funded through that way if certain criteria are met. Other transaction authority is not a contract or assistance agreement.

The other transaction agreement mechanism enables discussions with potential performers throughout the process to develop better requirements for projects to meet the needs of both military and commercial health care markets. This type of interaction is usually not allowed through typical contracting and grants processes.

Field medics perform a simulated escharotomy using the Remote Diagnostic Technologies i2i Solution (Tempus Pro) at TATRC, Fort Detrick, Sept. 7. (Photo by Elizabeth Lamie, USAMRMC Public Affairs)

Field medics perform a simulated escharotomy using the Remote Diagnostic Technologies i2i Solution (Tempus Pro) at TATRC, Fort Detrick, Sept. 7. (Photo by Elizabeth Lamie, USAMRMC Public Affairs)

MAXIMUM OPPORTUNITIES

MRMC is committed to ensuring that businesses are provided with maximum opportunities to compete for procurements. There are several systems and portals that enable academia and industry to submit ideas and research.

The command recognizes that unsolicited proposals with unique and innovative products or ideas that have been developed outside of the government can help it accomplish its mission. MRMC uses the New Products and Ideas (NPI) system as a mechanism to evaluate new products and ideas, currently configured or in development, that support the mission.

The NPI is a web-based system that provides a means for our subject matter experts to assess these products and ideas, evaluate their applicability and provide feedback to the submitter. It gives academia and industry an opportunity to showcase their products or ideas without needing to travel to Fort Detrick and without giving anyone an unfair competitive advantage. After the submitter enters data, an expert receives the information and provides feedback within 60 days.

Additionally, NPI gives the public direct access to the scientific expertise of DOD. It is open to the public so anyone can submit ideas or information. NPI has been a successful avenue for submission, giving submitters the opportunity to obtain feedback without an extensive process.

No funding is associated with NPI, but it allows for constructive feedback that can help with developing and refining the ideas that are submitted. Recent submissions to NPI resulted in further collaborative ventures for products in such areas as combat casualty care, military operational medicine, burn treatment, infectious diseases and surgery.

OFFICE OF SMALL BUSINESS PROGRAMS

The mission of MRMC’s Office of Small Business Programs is to maximize opportunities for various categories of small businesses to compete for procurements as either a prime or subcontractor and to forge strategic business alliances. The office is committed to supporting small businesses in their pursuit to provide products, services and solutions that sustain our nation’s warfighters. The organization’s goal is to ensure that small businesses remain an integral part of MRMC’s business solutions. For information about the MRMC Small Business Office, go to http://smallbusopps.amedd.army.mil/.

CONCLUSION

Military forces will continue to seek advanced medical products and devices to support their missions. The process needs streamlining—with requirement approval currently taking two to three years and technology moving so quickly, the technology may become obsolete before it is even implemented. The goal is to get products requested by the warfighters in their hands as quickly as possible.

Although the acquisition process may provide challenges, it also includes a necessary system of checks and balances to ensure the delivery of safe, effective, affordable and sustainable solutions to service members.

For more information and for details on working with MRMC, go to http://mrmc.amedd.army.mil.

ELIZABETH LAMIE is a writer and content development specialist for the Public Affairs Office at Fort Detrick, providing contract support to MRMC for eLittle Communications Group. She has more than 15 years of experience researching and writing for publications and companies, and holds a B.A. in English from George Mason University.


This article will be published in the January – March 2019 issue of Army AL&T magazine.

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Teaming Up On Substance Abuse

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Consortia partnerships developing treatments, especially for patients with TBI or PTSD.

 by Erin Bolling

It has been eight years since Congress first funded an Army-led research program to address substance abuse, yet it remains an issue that, for many individuals and family members, dwells in the shadows. For those who live with alcohol and substance abuse in their homes, the (ASADRP) to explore potential therapeutic solutions.

The ASADRP looks for integrated approaches to address alcohol and substance abuse disorders, especially those related to traumatic brain injury (TBI) and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Through multidisciplinary, team-based efforts, researchers translate basic knowledge into enhanced clinical pharmacological treatments.

A recent Institute of Medicine report, “Substance Use Disorders in the U.S. Armed Forces,” viewed alcohol as the key substance abuse problem in need of intervention and treatment among military personnel.

“The use of alcohol is common in all branches of the military,” said Dr. Ray Santullo, ASADRP program manager. “Furthermore, the National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism reported that 37 percent of those experiencing alcohol abuse also may have a mental health condition.”

PTSD “is a chronic, debilitating anxiety disorder that may develop after direct or indirect exposure to traumatic events,” said Santullo. Recent studies have shown that alcohol dependence and PTSD are highly comorbid—that is, medical conditions that have a high likelihood of existing simultaneously.

PTSD AMONG VETERANS

Among the general population, current rates of PTSD are estimated to be between 3.5 and 8 percent. In comparison, a large-scale investigation of 88,000 veterans serving in the Iraq war found that 12 percent had symptoms of PTSD soon after deployment and 17 percent had symptoms of PTSD at six months post-deployment, which is more than twice the civilian rate.

Along with the current effects of PTSD, approximately 25-30 percent of veterans who served in the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts may have suffered a mild traumatic brain injury. Evidence indicates that the prevalence of alcohol and other substance abuse disorders from these recent conflicts in veterans with TBI is approximately twice that of veterans who did not suffer TBI.

The “warrior ethos” of the military, which may make some service members reluctant to admit to either mental health or substance abuse problems, can make military personnel less likely to seek help when it’s needed, Santullo said. This challenge has to be taken into account in order to reach the military population that needs help.

The ASADRP is conducting its research at U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs medical centers, as well as military substance abuse treatment centers at Fort Gordon, Georgia, and Naval Medical Center San Diego. By conducting research at these military-specific locations, the program is able to access the appropriate populations and ensure relevant, impactful research.

A BIG-PICTURE APPROACH

“The current services offered to veterans do not adequately address co-occurring substance abuse disorders and PTSD, and there is an immediate need for the development of novel, evidence-based treatments,” Santullo said. “Our goal here is to explore new opportunities addressing alcohol and substance abuse disorders, especially related to TBI and PTSD.”

To achieve this goal, the ASADRP has invested in multidisciplinary teams of leading expert scientists and clinicians, in the form of consortia partnerships. One such partnership is the Pharmacotherapies for Alcohol and Substance Abuse (PASA) Consortium, a collaborative effort with 10 research institutions aimed at bringing new medications to market to treat alcohol and substance use disorders, with a special emphasis on TBI and PTSD in service members and veterans.

This team-based research approach aims to identify promising compounds for use as pharmacotherapies; conduct proof-of-principle research to determine which compounds are most appropriate for human trials; and conduct human proof-of-concept trials with the promising compounds, in order to ultimately provide functional medication to patients.

“The PASA consortium has released three rounds of funding opportunities and five studies are funded: two preclinical discovery studies and three proof-of-concept trials,” said Dr. Rick Williams, PASA principal investigator with RTI International.

Four medications are in preclinical tests for alcohol use disorder and PTSD: doxazosin, developed to treat high blood pressure; zonisamide, an anti-seizure medication; ASP 8062, developed to treat fibromyalgia; and CERC 501, developed to treat depression and substance abuse disorders. Three other compounds are undergoing clinical review: PT 150, developed to treat alcohol abuse; naltrexone, used to treat substance abuse disorders; and buprenorphine, developed to treat opioid addiction.

“We have actively cultivated pharmaceutical company partners who have excellent compounds for alcohol and substance use disorders or PTSD available but need the complement of experts, which the PASA consortium provides, in order to complete human studies to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) standards,” Williams  said.

“Our initial partnerships started with small companies, but our successes in just the last two years have progressed to larger-scale partnerships with companies that can afford to conduct FDA Phase III studies and prepare new drug applications, if our Phase II studies show efficacy,” he said.

The new drug application is the vehicle toward FDA approval and the final step before pharmaceutical sales. The information gathered from these animal and human clinical trials become a part of the application.

To complement these industry collaborations, the Department of Veterans Affairs and the National Institutes of Health are helping to build a strong infrastructure, Williams said, allowing the discovery of new treatments and helping to bridge what is known in translational research as the “valley of death.” These collaborations provide the funding and support needed to cross this valley, allowing medical research to become a new therapy or treatment and ultimately help the patient who needs it.

A CONSORTIUM CASE IN POINT

Another consortium partnership funded by ASADRP is the Institute for Translational Neuroscience, which collaborates with 22 research institutions with expertise in alcohol and drug addiction, PTSD and veterans health.

Dr. Jennifer Mitchell, the consortium’s principal investigator and associate professor at the University of California, San Francisco, said it focuses on rapidly and inexpensively developing therapeutics by identifying and testing compounds that are already approved by the FDA for other indications and could work for alcohol and substance abuse disorders.

“We are currently testing three promising compounds,” said Mitchell. “The first is oxytocin, which is a neuropeptide that is naturally produced in the brain and important for social bonding. Oxytocin can be administered as a nasal spray and has been used to treat a number of indications [mostly related to childbirth] for many years.

“More recent findings suggest that oxytocin can also block some aspects of alcohol intoxication, can decrease alcohol craving and can decrease signs of PTSD,” she continued. “We are trying to gather funds to conduct a Phase III study of oxytocin in people with alcohol use disorder and PTSD, and we hope to someday see this drug readily dispensed to individuals suffering from this comorbidity.”

The second compound the consortium is focusing on is N-acetylcysteine, or NAC, a dietary supplement that builds antioxidants and is typically found in grocery or health food stores. NAC is also FDA-approved to prescribe for other conditions, such as cystic fibrosis or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Mitchell explained that strong evidence from both animal and human models shows that NAC can lessen the severity of symptoms of PTSD and alcohol use disorder.

“NAC has been used for many years, and is safe and inexpensive,” said Mitchell. “Our consortium is now completing a series of studies that more thoroughly assess the conditions under which NAC improves mental health and behavior.”

Tolcapone is the third compound that the consortium is investigating. Typically used to help patients with Parkinson’s disease, tolcapone inhibits the degradation of the neurotransmitter dopamine, which allows dopamine to act longer in certain parts of the brain, helping to regulate movement and emotion.

“Recent research shows that administration of tolcapone can help people that struggle with impulsivity and alcohol abuse,” said Mitchell. “We hope that additional studies with tolcapone will help us determine the best dose to use to help people who are trying to control their alcohol consumption.”

PROGRESS IN PARTNERSHIPS

As well as the partnerships among experts in the research field, CDMRP involves patients, survivors, family members and caretakers in the scientific review process. These individuals are selected through a three-step process that includes nomination by an advocacy organization, submitting an application and completing an interview. This integration of consumers with firsthand experience of a disease, injury or condition provides a depth of knowledge and contributes a human dimension to the research.

Retired U.S. Coast Guard Lt. Thomas Faulkenberry served as a consumer reviewer on the ASADRP programmatic panel for vision setting. Consumer reviewers such as Faulkenberry sit along with scientists on both the programmatic and peer review panels, and have full voting member status. These meetings provide an opportunity to harness the consumer’s personal experience to focus the program’s goals.

He welcomed the opportunity to advocate for other service members as part of his transition out of the military. “The research is fascinating to me. I like to know the pros and cons of a medication, as well as alternatives to medication in treating the common disorders in afflicted service members,” he said. “I found the recent development that not enough healthy service members were available to launch a study eye-opening, but it was also an indicator that much more work needs to be done to observe progress. However, it also makes me want to fight harder to help a community that would give everything to know they are well and able to stand a taut watch,” Faulkenberry said, using an expression that’s common in the sea services.

CONCLUSION

Since its establishment in 2010, the ASADRP has been working to address the research gaps in treatment for substance abuse. The program has many exciting opportunities looking into effective medications for different substances of abuse with and without comorbidities such as PTSD. Additionally, the program is testing a variety of nonpharmacological approaches—including mindfulness, hypnosis and meditation—to treating pain and comorbidities in military and veteran populations.

The ASADRP’s approach to multidisciplinary, team-based research combines experts in the field to develop actual treatments with the patients who need them, here and now. Williams and Mitchell are examples of how consortia work together to develop solutions.

“It can be difficult to work to improve the public perception of drug and alcohol use and PTSD and to engender greater compassion for those suffering from these conditions,” said Mitchell. “If someone has a visible disability from combat, it can be relatively straightforward to feel that they deserve our help and patience. But those who carry trauma and emotional wounds that affect their mental health are more frequently discounted.

“We are so very grateful to the DOD for support of our consortium,” she said. “These aren’t typically the kinds of drugs that drug companies are interested in developing, so we need to be creative in funding our therapeutic pipeline and generating greater support for these debilitating and all too common conditions.”

For more information on the ASADRP activities and other CDMRP research programs, go to http://cdmrp.army.mil/.

ERIN BOLLING of Ripple Effect Communications Inc. is the public affairs specialist for CDMRP, located at Fort Detrick, Maryland. She holds a bachelor of fine arts in graphic design from Shepherd University and an associate of arts in visual art from Hagerstown Community College. She has provided public affairs support within the U.S. Army Medical Research and Materiel Command for more than nine years and is a member of the Public Relations Society of America.

 


This article will be published in the January – March 2019 issue of Army AL&T magazine.

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Innovation Through Agility

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PEO EIS uses Agile teaming to build the Army’s Integrated Personnel and Pay System.

by Col. Gregory S. Johnson

Today, the Army faces a complex dilemma: how to deliver warfighting capabilities in an environment increasingly defined by rapid technological advances and the changing character of war. According to a summary of the 2018 National Defense Strategy, “Sharpening the American Military’s Compet­itive Edge,” the United States is facing a host of challenges from adversaries spanning the globe. The strategy highlights that we as a nation are “facing increased global disorder, characterized by decline in the long-standing rules-based international order.” The growing complexity of the global security environment provides the imperative for us to modernize.

While modernization ensures that the American warfighter is equipped with the most capable weapon systems and equipment, it also applies to the processes and infrastructure that drive the management and pay of the Soldier: the Army’s most valuable resource. Currently, the Army uses approximately 200 human resources (HR) and pay systems to process routine transactions—none of which are standardized across the active, National Guard and Reserve components. This fragmentation and lack of standardization presents challenges to Soldiers and commanders alike, and detracts from the overall readiness of the total force.

For example, a recent Army Inspector General report showed that roughly 29 percent of all formal Soldier inquiries submitted in FY15 dealt directly with personnel and pay issues. A subsequent investigation found that commanders struggled to keep up with administrative requirements, in large part because the Army’s HR and pay systems were not integrated. Overall, the research reveals that “the current Army HR automated systems at brigade and below lack the capability to create, route and track awards, leaves and promotions from initiation through completion,” among other problems that burden Soldiers and commanders and threaten mission readiness.

Our current HR and pay environment limits the Army’s ability to effectively facilitate modern capabilities, including talent management. The complexity of more than 200 authoritative systems across the three Army components has led to inefficiencies, deviations and errors with Soldiers’ records. This limits our visibility and consequently our ability to unlock the potential of our people. Today’s environment is rooted in the industrial age, and we need to take it into the 21st century.

To that end, as part of the Total Force Policy, the Army mandated the employment of an integrated personnel and pay system that standardizes business practices, provides authoritative data for military personnel and facilitates a continuum of service across all three components. The Integrated Personnel and Pay System – Army (IPPS-A) is our solution to a decades-long problem of inefficiency and data inaccuracy that has plagued the total force.

A USER-FOCUSED TEAM EFFORT

The Army first set out to develop the new system at a time when DOD was struggling to integrate HR and pay capabilities for the Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps. Recognizing the urgent need to modernize, the Army launched its own initiative to build a system tailored to the specific needs of the Army community and to improve access, timeliness and accuracy of records for each Soldier. IPPS-A’s objective is to fully operationalize HR and pay while simultaneously adding a talent management capability—an ambitious effort, given the bureaucratic complexity and multicomponent structure of our nation’s premier combat force.

 Since we began this effort, the IPPS-A team has made significant progress toward building a system that will totally transform our Army’s HR and pay processes. In the last 25 months, our program executed more than 660 critical engagements with Soldiers and Army civilians. (See Figure 1). We have engaged with stakeholders across the Army, including leaders and commanders at all levels—from the Pentagon to the battalion—HR professionals, and most important, our rank-and-file Soldiers. These engagements are critical to ensure that we capture and apply the feedback of those who will use IPPS-A as part of their daily activities. In addition, we have kept key decision-makers and stakeholders at the Office of the Secretary of Defense and HQDA and in Congress informed at every turn to solicit their support and ensure that they are aware of our progress.

To date, our progress is based on our ability to operate as cross-functional Agile teams. Teams of total force Soldiers and Army civilians work together to customize and tailor commercial off-the-shelf products to meet the unique needs of the Army. We use the Agile methodology to break tasks into short phases of work with frequent reassessment and evaluation. We also rely on the expertise of HR and finance professionals, PeopleSoft developers, Army commanders, data integration developers, testers and many others filling diverse roles. And by using commercial software, we ultimately will allow the Army to rapidly modernize and update like private sector organizations.

IPPS-A’s teams function differently from the typical Army chain of command. Senior leaders work hand in hand with other team members to uncover new and innovative ways to solve the challenges we encounter as we design, build and test the system. The emphasis is on self-government, a structure that enables our IPPS-A team to use a design process centered on the user and to facilitate events that consistently integrate the user early and often. We listen to feedback from the field and build the system in phases, each delivering value and improving the next delivery.

For instance, our user juries provide Soldiers and Army civilians the opportunity to actually use the system and provide feedback on various features and functionality. IPPS-A uses operational mission scenarios to showcase how the system will improve the lives of Soldiers, commanders and HR professionals. These events also serve to train, develop and transition the total force in advance of IPPS-A’s deployment. Practical, hands-on, side-by-side assistance is recognized by the Army for not only supporting proficiency and readiness at the unit level, but also strengthening the relationships between HR and finance professionals pre-IPPS-A, collaboration that is essential to successfully executing the system. (See Figure 2)

THE IMPERATIVE FOR  CONTINUED AGILITY

Today’s fragmented personnel and pay systems are no longer adequate to meet the demands of our Army or address the complexity of an ever-changing security environment. Modernization is imperative, and the IPPS-A program remains committed to delivering a single, integrated personnel and pay system to all components. Only through harvesting industry innovation can IPPS-A expect to solve the Army’s larger, more nuanced problems of personnel and pay.

“It is essential that the technical competencies of the Army, its battle labs, and laboratory and development systems be focused in two ways,” Dr. Bruce D. Jette, assistant secretary of the Army for acquisition, logistics and technology, said during a House Armed Services Committee hearing in March 2018. “First, to know what is being developed commercially which may benefit the Army and, second, what must be developed by the Army because of its unique military value.”

CONCLUSION

IPPS-A must be developed. As we deploy its capabilities to all three components, beginning with the National Guard in early 2019, the program will continue leveraging agile teams to innovate and formulate solutions to the challenges of building an integrated personnel and pay system. We will also continue listening to feedback from stakeholders at all levels as we rely heavily on this input to improve the utility and usability of the system. IPPS-A needs the continued support of Soldiers and Army civilians across the total force to bring this transformation to fruition.

The IPPS-A Program is currently on track to roll-out initial capabilities to the National Guard in 2018-2019. As we work toward full operating capability, we remain committed to developing a system that embodies the mantra of “One Soldier, One Record, One Army” and we are going to get this done for the Total Force.

For more information, go to the IPPS-A website at www.ipps-a.army.mil.

Col. Gregory S. Johnson is the functional management division chief for IPPS-A, under the G-1 Technology and Business Architecture Integration (TBAI) directorate. He manages the partnership between TBAI and the Program Executive Office for Enterprise Information Systems (PEO EIS) to develop, deliver and set the conditions for successful sustainment of IPPS-A. He is a career Army Adjutant General Corps officer. He holds a master’s degree from the U.S. Army War College, a Master of Policy Management from Georgetown University’s Public Policy Institute and a Master of Education from the University of Oklahoma. He is a distinguished military graduate of the University of San Francisco, earning a B.A. in U.S. history.


This article will be published in the January – March 2019 issue of Army AL&T magazine.

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Mapping Acquisition

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Career Navigator

DAU’s handy-dandy subway map helps make it easier to understand contracting and find the right tool.

By Jacqueline M. Hames

It’s easy to get lost in the byzantine process known as DOD acquisition. It often seems that there are countless ways to acquire goods and services, countless contract types and an inconceivable number of rules and regulations to keep in mind. Defense Acquisition University’s (DAU) Michelle M. Currier has created DAU’s Contracting Subway Map to help make sense of it all.

“Everybody in acquisition needs to know where they are,” said Currier, a professor of contract management at DAU, because one person’s decisions will affect the whole of the process. “We need to get people thinking about not just themselves [and where they are in the process], but the big picture,” she said. The map helps students, acquisition professionals, leadership—anyone—get a picture of how the whole acquisition process fits together and be better educated on why the process is the way it is.

In fact, that’s why Currier initially developed the map: to help her DAU students understand the why behind the many steps of the acquisition process, she said. The map started in 2016 as a magic-marker drawing on unwieldy butcher block paper—one that Currier drew in her living room and carried around for almost two years, redrawing it whenever it became too tattered, before it was finally digitized in 2018 as users see it now.

Divided into two parallel modes of transportation, the map visualizes the steps for the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR)-based process (trains) and the non-FAR-based process (planes), Currier said. Each stop along each line represents a step in the process and is labeled with information icons and numbered icons. The numbered icons link to FAR citations for quick reference. The map is further color-coded to represent the different acquisition efforts: The orange line is for contract administration, the red is for acquisition planning and the blue is for contract execution. The green line indicates places for industry engagement, which is extremely important to acquisition, Currier said. “We want to include industry at every single phase of the process.”

The map brings users focused information on a topic when they need it through an information link—a blue icon labeled with an “I”. These links take users to lists of regulations, best practices, templates, mythbusting, examples and a wealth of other information related to the acquisition process, Currier explained. The references icons are linked directly with websites that contain the topic information, and are therefore updated when a parent organization updates the website. Currier can also update the map in real time with suggestions from users—which she encourages them to send in—or with new and trending information related to acquisition.

The primary method of acquisition is the FAR-based process, Currier said. But with technologies changing so fast, the Army doesn’t have time for that anymore. It’s now looking to a non-FAR-based process, like other transaction authority. Currier believes it is her job to get everyone to think critically about the different tools the Army has in acquisition.

“You have to look at the tool for what you’re trying to buy,” she said, and “select the appropriate tool that takes into consideration the risk, the time we have to solve the problem, to make sure we have the best risk management profile to get the products and services to the warfighter.” The map will help users learn to select the appropriate acquisition tool.

While the map is not a larger part of the decluttering of the acquisition process, it is a picture of how the process works today and will change to reflect how the process changes over time, Currier said. “It’s not meant to be the end-all to everything; it is meant to be a jumping-off place” where users can get the information they need at a moment’s notice.

For more information, go to https://www.dau.mil/tools/t/Subway-Map. If you have suggestions on how to improve the map, submit them to SubwayMap@DAU.mil.


This article is published in the January – March 2019 issue of Army AL&T magazine.

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Understanding industry is focus of new Army AL&T magazine

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By Michael Bold

FORT BELVOIR, Va. (Jan. 3, 2018)—Understanding how industry works—its motivations and its challenges—is key to Army acquisition professionals developing the skills and competencies needed to do their jobs and to get capabilities into Soldiers’ hands faster. It’s also the theme of the January – March 2019 issue of Army AL&T magazine. In it, read about:

As a scientist, patent holder and former small business owner, Dr. Bruce Jette—the Army acquisition executive and the assistant secretary of the Army for acquisition, logistics and technology (ASA(ALT))—knows that intellectual property (IP) is the lifeblood of any company. It must be protected and fairly compensated, especially if the Army is to attract the cutting-edge innovations of nontraditional companies. With that in mind, he explains the new policy on IP management signed in December by Secretary of the Army Dr. Mark T. Esper, in “INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY LINES.”

Maj. Gen. Cedric T. Wins, commanding general of the U.S. Army Research, Development and Engineering Command, writes the second in a series of articles about his command’s support for the Army’s six modernization priorities. Read “RDECOM’S ROAD MAP TO MODERNIZING THE ARMY: NEXT GENERATION COMBAT VEHICLE.”

The Expeditionary Technology Search launched by ASA(ALT) narrowed the Army-funded competition from more than 350 proposals to 12 contenders for a $200,000 award. Read how in “INNOVATION COUNTDOWN.”

Additive manufacturing holds great potential for the Army, but much work remains to be done for the Army to get to additive nirvana. Find out why in “COMPLEX GEOMETRY.”

Whether it’s his fiction and nonfiction, his work as a U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command “mad scientist,” the interviews he’s done with defense media, the pages of Popular Science, or some other venue, P.W. Singer is the Army’s must-read thinker. Read all about him in “EVERYWHERE MAN.”

Program Executive Office Combat Support and Combat Service Support’s Robot Logistics Support Center uses indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity contracts and a unique sustainment approach to keep robot systems up and running. Find out how in “CUTTING THE COST OF NUTS AND BOLTS.”

Even if you’re a die-hard hard copy reader, there are many reasons to take a sneak peek online. Go to http://usaasc.armyalt.com/#folio=1 to read the e-magazine, or visit the archives at http://asc.army.mil/web/magazine/alt-magazine-archive/ to download the PDF version.

For more information on how to publish an article in Army AL&T magazine, visit https://asc.army.mil/web/publications/army-alt-magazine/ to check out our writers guidelines, upcoming deadlines and themes.

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Understanding Industry

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As complex as its operations and motivations are, knowing how the commercial sector works is fundamental to being a skilled acquisition professional.

By Craig A. Spisak, Director of Acquisition Career Management

The acquisition profession is a complex business. It’s made up of highly competent professionals in 13 career fields ranging from contracting to engi­­neering to test and evaluation to cost estimating. But it’s always important to understand that we don’t get from the point of “I think I need a piece of equipment or system that does A, B, C or D,” to Soldiers having that in the field without a whole lot of people playing in the process.

Although we have a tremendous amount of competence and capacity inside the Army’s acquisition system, the majority of kit and product is actually built by industry, our critical partner. One of the main ways we can ensure that we get from “I need something” to “I have something” is to understand all of the pieces of the mechanism that make that capability a reality. Industry is one of the main players.

Army acquisition professionals need to develop the skills and competency to understand how industry works—what its motivations are, what an appropriate profit margin is, how much overhead should cost, what challenges they are facing related to end-item or second-tier and third-tier suppliers, and how they source materials. The better we are in understanding that, the better we can not only provide quality products to Soldiers in the field but do so efficiently, effectively and affordably.

The key here in many cases is affordability. Industry is a commercial practice. Businesses are in it for profit. They deserve to be able to make a reasonable profit, but it’s also incumbent upon us as acquisition professionals to find ways to partner with them to incorporate newer technologies, obtain greater capabilities and get better deals. We need to make sure that we understand we’re not paying more than we should for those benefits.

IT’S ALL ABOUT THE HOW

Understanding industry is an absolutely critical element of being a solid acquisition professional, and there are many aspects to it:

How do companies develop their business strategies and operating plans?

How do they determine costs and prices for their products?

How do they find suppliers and subcontractors?

How are their senior executives provided incentives, motivations and rewards?

How do companies plan and prioritize investments and pursue government contracts?

How are key financial ratios used to measure a company’s financial health?

How do they employ different negotiating strategies?

To rapidly get a better, more affordable product to Soldiers who desperately need it today, we require a better understanding of what industry does and doesn’t provide, and what oversight is necessary.

A key component of understanding industry is making sure that we truly do partner with them. It’s clear that the decades-old philosophies that kept industry at arm’s length did not result in better outcomes for the Army. And yes, there are certain things that we must be careful to do to avoid the perception of impropriety, or impropriety itself. But we have to be good partners with industry. We have to invite members of industry to understand our business so that they can adequately address provisions that we put in our requirements documents. We want industry to understand what we in the Army do, and understanding them will help us do that as well.

That’s why we have a number of partnerships with industry in a variety of areas. This includes big contractors, our federally funded research and development centers, our work with universities, laboratories and industry associations and a number of efforts with small businesses.

TWI and Education with Industry (EWI) fellows attend an Amazon Web Services business conference in Tysons Corner, Virginia, on Sept. 27. From left are Maj. Chris Ehlers, Army operations research analyst and TWI fellow; Staff Sgt. Robert Staal, Air Force EWI fellow; Dalila Wortman, Amazon Web Services; and Maj. Desiree Dirige, Army acquisition TWI fellow. (Photo courtesy of Maj. Desiree Dirige)

TWI and Education with Industry (EWI) fellows attend an Amazon Web Services business conference in Tysons Corner, Virginia, on Sept. 27. From left are Maj. Chris Ehlers, Army operations research analyst and TWI fellow; Staff Sgt. Robert Staal, Air Force EWI fellow; Dalila Wortman, Amazon Web Services; and Maj. Desiree Dirige, Army acquisition TWI fellow. (Photo courtesy of Maj. Desiree Dirige)

COMMUNICATION AND CREATIVITY

As we work with industry, especially with nontraditional contractors, we need to be as creative as possible. Not everything has to be a long, drawn-out buy of a major acquisition system through traditional processes. We need to use underutilized acquisition approaches such as the rapid prototyping and rapid fielding made possible under Section 804 of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2016 and other transaction authority, which provides more efficient acquisition of prototype systems involving nontraditional defense contractors.

We also need to be sensitive to intellectual property rights. We have to understand how industry views intellectual property in order to be able to buy what’s appropriate. We need to communicate about equipment and engineering capabilities that come from a company’s independent research and development that we hadn’t even envisioned. The vast majority of creative engineering development takes place in private industry, and quite a bit of that takes place in innovative small businesses.

We need to do a better job of conveying our system and process to them, breaking down the barriers for small businesses to work with DOD. How can we creatively find the technological solution to the problem-after-the-next if we haven’t made a solid effort to have that clear line of communication and break down the barriers to competition from all facets of industry, big defense contractors as well as small business?

All of that is an important part of the clear dialogue and communication that has to take place. In order to do that for a number of our professionals, we have programs like Training with Industry (TWI), which helps build that competency inside our force. After working with industry, Army acquisition professionals can return to the organizations they work for and explain to those around them who may not have had the opportunity to go spend a year with industry what they learned, sharing that experience with them.

This year DOD has a pilot program, the Industry Exchange Program, which will not only place high-performing, midcareer civilians in industry, but also will bring industry participants to work inside of our organizations. The program will allow DOD civilians and private sector participants to gain a better understanding of each other’s business operations and challenges, while sharing innovative and cost-saving practices. Naturally, we will be careful to make sure that any areas that might cause a conflict of interest are addressed ahead of time so that we don’t give any unfair advantages or provide any type of inappropriate access. Deloitte, Unisys, Northrop Grumman, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, General Motors, Jacobs, Guidehouse (formerly PricewaterhouseCoopers Public Sector), Booz Allen Hamilton and Raytheon have agreed to host DOD exchange participants in this pilot.

I think the more open we are with businesses about our processes and challenges, the more open they will be. I’ve typically found industry to be very willing to explain what they do and why they do it. There are many opportunities for the Army and industry to find better ways of doing business together to provide the best products to Soldiers in the field. I suggest every reader do what they can to foster this important government-industry partnership.

Related Links:

DOD Industry Exchange Program: https://asc.army.mil/web/career-development/programs/dod-iep

“One Peculiar Fellowship,” Army AL&T, July – September 2016: http://usaasc.armyalt.com/?iid=143668#folio=162


This article is published in the January – March 2019 issue of Army AL&T magazine.

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The cost of speed

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Beler H. Watts III

COMMAND/ORGANIZATION: Close Combat Weapon Systems Project Office, Program Executive Office for Missiles and Space
TITLE: Deputy product lead, Lethal Miniature Aerial Missile System
YEARS OF SERVICE IN WORKFORCE: 10
YEARS OF MILITARY SERVICE: 20
DAWIA CERTIFICATIONS: Level III in program management and in logistics
EDUCATION: M.A. and B.A. in business management, Columbia College
AWARDS: Commander’s Award for Civilian Service (2)


 

by Susan L. Follett

Like most members of the Army Acquisition Workforce, Beler Watts has a lot on his plate. He’s deputy product lead for the Lethal Miniature Aerial Missile System (LMAMS) within the Program Executive Office for Missiles and Space (PEO MS), and he and his team are working to get the new system fielded expeditiously. But speed often comes at the expense of quality and usefulness, and he’s hoping to avoid that. “We want to get the system to the Soldier as quickly as we can, but we want to make sure we’re getting them something that does what it should. What’s that saying? ‘Quick and cheap isn’t always good, and good isn’t always quick or cheap.’ ”

It’s Watts’ job to make certain that all aspects of the LMAMS program are accomplished. “I ensure that the contracting actions are complete, and I monitor the finance actions and training for the system,” he said. “I try to ensure that Soldiers are getting the best product in their hands in the shortest amount of time. The greatest satisfaction that I have is knowing that what I do is part of the bigger picture and that my small part ensures quality products are fielded to the warfighter.”

It’s not surprising that the biggest challenge he faces is time management—“finding time to do all the different things that need to get done, and doing them well.” Adding to that challenge is the size of Watts’ team: At around 10 people, it’s relatively small. “We all get to wear a lot of hats, but that’s what makes this job so interesting. I do a multitude of things on a daily basis, including contracting, finance, logistics and engineering. And that’s the best thing about my job—that on any given day, I’ll be in contact with all of those different areas. Every day I’m doing something different.”

After a 20-year career in the Army, Watts retired in 2005 as a sergeant first class. While on active duty, he worked with the Dragon and TOW (tube-launched, optically tracked, wire-guided) missiles for Bradley Fighting Vehicles and with missile guidance systems. After retirement, he spent three years as a contractor, doing staff work related to aviation maintenance, pre-positioned stocks and equipment transfer.

He joined PEO MS in 2008, initially assigned to logistics programs related to the Bradley: testing, equipment specifications, working with depots and producing technical manuals and other publications. In 2012, he took a developmental assignment as deputy product lead. “I had been a logistician for about four years with the Close Combat Weapon Systems [CCWS] Project Office, and was ready for a change. I then competed for the deputy product lead position, was fortunate enough to be selected, and I’ve been here ever since,” he said.

“My advice is to pursue some of the opportunities out there for developmental assignments and experience what the acquisition world has to offer,” he said. “There are multiple programs available for acquisition personnel, and the more someone takes advantage of these programs, the more rounded that person will be. And it will set them up better for advancement in their careers.”

Watts still uses the leadership experience he gained from his 20 years in the Army. “The supervisory and organization skills I learned as a noncommissioned officer come into play on this job when it comes to working with people,” he said. (U.S. Army photo by Chuck Braziel, PEO MS)

Watts still uses the leadership experience he gained from his 20 years in the Army. “The supervisory and organization skills I learned as a noncommissioned officer come into play on this job when it comes to working with people,” he said. (U.S. Army photo by Chuck Braziel, PEO MS)

 

Although he’s no longer in uniform, Watts still uses the leadership experience he gained from his active-duty tenure. “The supervisory and organization skills I learned as a noncommissioned officer come into play on this job when it comes to working with people, and the experience I gained in logistics, maintenance and supply operations are invaluable in keeping things moving.”

Originally designed to target snipers or those emplacing improvised explosive devices, LMAMS is a Soldier-carried and Soldier-launched loitering missile system that allows precision engagement of enemy combatants without exposing warfighters to direct fire. The system allows Soldiers on the ground to engage with targets they cannot see. It can fly to a specific position or be diverted with its wave-off capabilities to minimize collateral damage.

LMAMS started out as a rapid acquisition system and is fielded under multiple joint urgent operational needs statements. “It’s not a program of record yet, but we’re working toward that. We work with HQDA and obtain funding through overseas contingency operations funds to buy and develop what we need,” Watts explained. “We’re working with the Maneuver Center of Excellence and the Capability Development Integration Directorate, and the courses I took through Defense Acquisition University have been really helpful as we go through that process.”

Whether LMAMS will become a program of record is unresolved. “We’re on the verge, but it’s tough to say where it will go. It’s important that we demonstrate what it can do and how it can fit into the Army’s needs.” Despite the uncertainty, Watts is grateful for the experience he has had. “Being able to stay in this job and see a new system through the process of becoming a program of record is very interesting. Having the mentorship of some of the CCWS leadership and learning from their experiences also has helped me tremendously,” he said.

He added, “The most important lesson that I’ve learned is to treat people with respect and kindness. I apply that in my work by trying to understand where others are coming from, in their opinions and respective positions. Always trying to see any situation from both sides has greatly enhanced my work, and I hope it has enabled me to become a better co-worker and leader.”

Related Links 

https://www.amrdec.army.mil/amrdec/pdf/LMAMS_Fact_Sheet.pdf

 


This article is published in the January – March 2019 issue of Army AL&T magazine.

“Faces of the Force” is an online series highlighting members of the Army Acquisition Workforce through the power of individual stories. Profiles are produced by the U.S. Army Acquisition Support Center Communication and Support Branch, working closely with public affairs officers to feature Soldiers and civilians serving in various AL&T disciplines. For more information, or to nominate someone, please contact 703-664-5635.

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We Heard, We Conferred, We Concurred

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Thanks to everyone who took the time to complete Army AL&T’s reader survey. Here’s what we learned.

By Army AL&T staff

Ever wonder about the origin of the Army phrase “hooah?” Some claim it dates back to the Civil War, and others think it started on Omaha Beach in 1944. Another group argues that it comes from the acronym HUA, which stands for heard, understood and acknowledged. We know as well as anyone just how crazy the Army is for initials (we do our best to edit them out), and  that’s how we’re going to think about the results of the 2018 Army AL&T readership survey: HUA. Heard, understood, acknowledged. But it doesn’t end there.

More than 800 people responded to the anonymous survey, significantly more than previous surveys, and the responses reflect a thoughtful, engaged and serious-minded workforce—people who are committed to Army acquisition, have a deep sense of service and really want to see their missions succeed. They also show that Army AL&T is making good on its commitment to provide readers with the information they need: Roughly half indicated that something they’ve read in the magazine has helped them do their job better. That’s a statistic that makes us deeply proud. We helped with updated or improved business practices, helped our colleagues understand a specific aspect of acquisition, enabled folks to make changes based on lessons someone else learned, and offered updates on best practices, new technologies or key priorities of the assistant secretary of the Army for acquisition, logistics and technology.

The survey also showed us that when it comes to which format our readers like—hard copy, e-magazine, app or blog—there’s a range of preferences. We know that readers like to share articles and would share them more often if there were fewer hoops to jump through. We’re working on providing everyone with the best online experience possible and will update readers as changes are made. (In the meantime, if you need to change or add a subscription, go to https://asc.army.mil/web/subscribe/.) Unfortunately, we cannot do anything to change the security settings of the networks that many have to deal with to access the magazine.

With respect to content, we received all kinds of great ideas on what readers would like to see in upcoming issues, which are graphically represented in the word cloud. The full list is too long to include here, so we’ve posted it on milSuite with two goals: learning more—and more frequently—about what you’d like to see in these pages, and identifying experts who’d be interested in providing their perspectives in a future issue.

This can’t be stated often or strongly enough: Anyone in the Army Acquisition Workforce can write for Army AL&T. We urge everyone to do so. You don’t have to be a writer.

If you see a topic in the list that you’re interested in and knowledgeable about, write something up or run it by us. If you have an idea for a series, call us and tell us about it. Readers told us they’d love to see more how-to articles, checklists, short tutorials and case histories. And, if you do decide to write something up, don’t pull punches or just give us the rose-colored-glasses version: Readers want to know more about projects that went off the rails and how they got back on track. Contributing to Army AL&T lets you broadcast the work of your organization to a pretty diverse network of print and digital subscribers, and might put you in contact with someone whose perspective or experience could further enhance your work. Oh, yeah, and it can earn you continuous learning points. We do our best to make the submission and editorial process as easy as possible, and you can find our writer’s guidelines by going to https://asc.army.mil/web/publications/army-alt-submissions/.

Since the last survey, in 2016, we’ve made a lot of changes. We’ve been working on making articles more compelling and easier to read by all stakeholders, and getting rid of as many initialisms and acronyms that those in DOD adore but sensible people abhor. With the results from 2018, we’ll be making more changes: shorter, quick-hit pieces; roundups of developments at program executive offices (PEOs); and more on the roles of contractors and Army civilians. We’re also looking at ways to make it easier for PEOs and other organizations to tell us what they’re up to so we can share that information with our readers. We see the survey as the beginning of a conversation that we’d like to keep going, and to that end, we’ll be expanding our presence on milSuite to provide a forum for communicating with our readers and our contributors.

We’re grateful to those of you who took the time to respond to our survey and made solid suggestions for areas of improvement. We’re energized by your enthusiasm and your ideas, and we look forward to working with you to figure out the best way to implement them.

 


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