December 29, 2024 | International, Land
Canadian military fears maintenance issues will plague equipment sent to Latvia
DND acknowledged a lack of storage and maintenance facilities at Camp Adazi in Latvia, but said fixes are underway.
October 6, 2020 | International, Aerospace, C4ISR, Security
Making the case for commercially successful tech
Peter Villano
Despite the Pentagon's efforts to develop advanced technology to strengthen national security and stay competitive, barriers remain, keeping much of the most promising emerging technology out of the government.
Pockets of success do exist; Air Force acquisition in particular evaluates dual-use technologies through AFWERX and investment arm AFVentures. To truly enhance our national security, however, more needs to be done to fund companies that have proven, viable emerging technologies.
Most nontraditional companies with proven technologies that don't have national security experience already work with Fortune 500 companies and in highly regulated, complex industries. The problem is that most of these companies are still overlooked for collaboration with the government and the Pentagon.
In an effort to leverage our nation's commercial innovators, the Small Business Innovation Research program requires federal agencies with large research and development budgets, like the Department of Defense, to set aside funds for small businesses. But the government's definitions for eligible small businesses can disadvantage tech companies that have already succeeded in the private sector.
The SBIR program has been successful in many ways, but most awards go to companies already focused on the government. Robert Rozansky and Robert D. Atkinson wrote that nearly a fifth of all SBIR awards go to companies that have already won 50 or more times, evidencing failure to reach the most promising technology companies.
A 2019 report from the Alliance for Digital Innovation claimed that the federal government's failure to adopt commercial technology has wasted $345 billion over the past 25 years. And a report from Govini noted that approximately 59 percent of DoD research and development funding is concentrated in the top 10 vendors, limiting innovation. As calls for public sector innovation remind us, the DoD needs the most advanced technology from the private sector.
There are critical steps the DoD should take to fix this problem.
First, the government should reform the SBIR program and dedicate new, flexible resources to find and utilize viable, commercially successful tech companies.
The National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal 2020 provides additional SBIR flexibility for small businesses more than 50 percent owned by venture capital. But the DoD has yet to fully promulgate this new flexible authority and is missing an opportunity to work with proven, VC-backed companies.
The Small Business Administration should adjust the eligibility standards for the SBIR program to incentivize growth and, more importantly, take advantage of companies with more venture funding and a proven record of past performance. The number of repeat winners indicates that the SBIR program is not casting a wide enough net.
Second, the DoD should further streamline acquisitions, reward acquisition executives who move fast, and expand flexible programs such as AFWERX, SOFWERX and the Defense Innovation Unit. Mike Madsen, deputy director and director of strategic engagement of DIU, said: “What [DIU has] represented is a lowering of those barriers to entry, making it easier for those leading-edge technology companies to get their technology to the men and women in uniform.”
In the National Defense Authorization Act that passed the House, there is a charter for the National Security Innovation Network, which will expand and coordinate these efforts within the DoD. I strongly encourage the Senate to adopt the NSIN charter as well, and ensure its effort remains fully funded.
The DoD alone awarded over 179 contracts in 2018 to nontraditional companies leveraging the other transaction authority, a flexible prototype authority outside of federal acquisition regulations. These contracts represent another way to engage high-growth tech companies. The DoD should continue to leverage OTAs.
Third, the DoD should seek out federally focused accelerators and VCs in the private sector to inform, source and evaluate high-growth tech companies to drive federal missions forward. Federally focused tech accelerators like Dcode, and its investment network Dcode Capital, source promising tech for the government and ensure commercial tech is fully vetted and equipped to succeed in the federal marketplace.
The DoD is also establishing in-house, VC-like programs, with AFVentures as an example. “This has been a year in the making now, trying to make our investment arm, the Air Force Ventures, act like an investor, even if it's a government entity,” the assistant secretary of the Air Force for acquisition, technology and logistics, Dr. Will Roper, explained.
Buy-in from Congress will also be crucial to the success of these initiatives, starting with the NSIN section of the NDAA. Working with the right private sector partners is vital, and organizations like Dcode reduce risk for the government.
Defense organizations don't need to reinvent the wheel to work with commercially successful tech. Use what's available today to reduce barriers and risk, reform existing methods, and increase engagement with trustworthy resources to work with more viable commercial tech companies that can move our country forward.
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May 4, 2021 | International, Aerospace
L’Armée de l’Air et de l’Espace (AAE), le Centre national d'études spatiales (CNES) et le Groupe ADP coopèrent dans la lutte anti-drones
Selon les données de l'Agence européenne de la sécurité aérienne (AESA), le nombre d'incidents liés à des drones est en augmentation constante, étant passé de 600 événements entre 2011 et 2015 à près de 2 000 pour la seule année 2019. Dans ce contexte, l'AAE, le CNES et le Groupe ADP ont conclu une convention d'une durée de cinq ans visant à partager leur analyse de la menace, leur expérience et les solutions techniques pour la contrer, indiquent-ils dans un communiqué. Il s'agit pour le Groupe ADP de sécuriser la basse altitude, pour le CNES de renforcer la protection du Centre spatial guyanais et le centre spatial de Toulouse, et pour l'AAE de protéger le ciel français. La Tribune, 3 mai
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November 9, 2018 | International, Naval
Navy Creating Attack Sub Aggressor Unit to Train to Fight Against Russia, China
By: Megan Eckstein ARLINGTON, Va. — The U.S. Navy submarine force is creating an aggressor squadron as one initiative to ensure all subs are combat-ready as the service trains to take on China and Russia, the commander of Naval Submarine Forces said on Wednesday. Vice Adm. Charles Richard, who took command in August, drew attention during the change of command ceremony by telling the force to “prepare for battle.” He has backed up those words with actions in the months since, moving ahead with a plan – updated in March to reflect the National Defense Strategy – that includes refocusing training and certification on combat and developing new tools and concepts to support high-end warfighting. The plan – called the Commander's Intent for the United States Submarine Force and Supporting Organizations – led to an overhaul of training for the attack submarine force, Richard said today while addressing the Naval Submarine League at its annual conference. “We have restructured and retuned the fast attack training period to ensure that we're ready for that high-end fight, including restructuring what we used to call the Tactical Readiness Evaluation, and it is now a Combat Readiness Evaluation to ensure we're focused on warfighting,” he said. “We've updated the deployment certification process to eliminate duplication, put the right focus in the right place. I'll tell you that I am driving to put competition in everything we do inside the submarine force. I want to produce winners and losers just like we do in battle; it does you no good to be at standards if your opponent is more at standards than you are. You still lose, and in this competition, you may not come home.” The new aggressor squadron fits in with the desire to create more high-end sub-on-sub competitions and ensure the Navy is ready to win. Richard said the plan mimics what the naval aviation community has at “Top Gun.” Navy spokeswoman Cmdr. Sarah Self-Kyler told USNI News at the event that, unlike Top Gun, the squadron won't have its own submarines dedicated to training the squadron and fighting other submarines in training events. Instead, the squadron will include a yet-to-be-determined number of personnel – which Richard said would include active and reserve sailors and civilians – and that personnel would get to work with submarines and sub crews as allowed by operational and training schedules. Richard, calling the new group “a cadre that does nothing but emulate red in all of our training and certification exercises, said “we're taking a page from naval aviation and we're establishing an aggressor squadron with a team that will become experts in employing our adversaries' potential capabilities and then set them up to be able to go head-to-head with our units so that we're always training against what we think is the highest fidelity simulation I can give them in terms of what they might be able to expect when they go into combat.” The Commander's Intent plan also outlines an Undersea Rapid Capability Initiatives (URCI) program that Richard said not only delivers “stuff” but also concepts of operations, tactics, maintenance strategies and more. “I can't go into a lot of detail given the nature of the work – it is classified – but I am able to tell you that we are working on 26 major future projects, including the Navy's number-one priority of strategic deterrence; 13 URCIs; 11 operational initiatives; and a series of advanced workshops and military exercises designed to expand our capabilities in the undersea domain. We are pursuing next-generation weapons, multi-domain sensors, comms systems, navigation aids, and unmanned and autonomous technologies. In some cases, these capabilities are revolutionary and will inform future programs of record.” Full article: https://news.usni.org/2018/11/08/submarine-forces-china-russia