Small businesses securing US industry need more aid, not less

On the same subject

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  February 26, 2020 | International, Aerospace

  Air Force To Pump New Tech Startups With $10M Awards

  The Air Force's new investment strategy is designed to "catalyze the commercial market by bringing our military market to bear," says Roper. By THERESA HITCHENS PENTAGON: The Air Force will roll out the final stage in its commercial startup investment strategy during the March 13-20 South By Southwest music festival, granting one or more contracts worth at least $10 million to startups with game-changing technologies, service acquisition chief Will Roper says. The first-of-its kind event in Austin, called the Air Force Pitch Bowl, will match Air Force investment with private venture capital funds on a one to two ratio, according to a presentation by Capt. Chris Benson of AFWERX at the Strategic Institute's Dec. 4-5 “AcquisitionX” meeting. So, if the Air Force investment fund, called Air Force Ventures, puts in $20 million, the private capital match would be $40 million. AFWERX, the Air Force's innovation unit, has one of its hubs in Austin. “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,” Roper explained. “We don't invest like a private investor — we don't own equity — we're just putting companies on contract. But for early stage companies, that contract acts a lot like an investor.” The goal is to help steer private resources toward new technologies that will benefit both US consumers and national security to stay ahead of China's rapid tech growth, Roper told reporters here Friday. The Air Force wants to “catalyze the commercial market by bringing our military market to bear,” he said. “We're going to be part of the global tech ecosystem.” Figuring out how to harness the commercial marketplace is critical, Roper explained, because DoD dollars make up a dwindling percentage of the capital investment in US research and development. This is despite DoD's 2021 budget request for research, development, test and evaluation (RDT&E) of $106.6 billion being “the largest in its history,” according to Pentagon budget rollout materials. The Air Force's share is set at $37.3 billion, $10.3 billion of which is slated for Space Force programs. “We are 20 percent of the R&D is this country — that's where the military is today,” Roper said. “So if we don't start thinking of ourselves as part of a global ecosystem, looking to influence trends, investing in technologies that could be dual-use — well, 20 percent is not going to compete with China long-term, with a nationalized industrial base that can pick national winners.” The process for interested startups to compete for funds has three steps, Roper explained, beginning with the Air Force “placing a thousand, $50K bets per year that are open.” That is, any company can put forward its ideas to the service in general instead of there being a certain program office in mind. “We'll get you in the door,” Roper said, “we'll provide the accelerator functions that connect you with a customer. “Pitch days” are the second step, he said. Companies chosen to be groomed in the first round make a rapid-fire sales pitch to potential Air Force entities — such as Space and Missile Systems Center and Air Force Research Laboratory — that can provide funding, as well as to venture capitalists partnering with the Air Force. As Breaking D broke in October, part of the new acquisition strategy is luring in private capital firms and individual investors to match Air Force funding in commercial startups as a way to to bridge the ‘valley of death' and rapidly scale up capability. The service has been experimenting with ‘pitch days' across the country over the last year, such as the Space Pitch Days held in San Francisco in November when the service handed out $22.5 million to 30 companies over two days. Roper said he intends to make “maybe 300 of those awards per year,” with the research contracts ranging from $1 million to $3 million a piece and “where program dollars get matched by our investment dollars.” The final piece of the strategy, Roper explained, is picking out the start-ups that can successfully field game-changing technologies. “The thing that we're working on now is the big bets, the 30 to 40 big ideas, disruptive ideas that can change our mission and hopefully change the world,” Roper said. “We're looking for those types of companies.” The Air Force on Oct. 16 issued its first call for firms to compete for these larger SBIR contracts under a new type of solicitation, called a “commercial solutions opening.” The call went to companies already holding Phase II Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) awards. The winners will be announced in Austin. If the strategy is successful, Roper said, the chosen firms will thrive and become profitable dual-use firms focused primarily on the commercial market. “The, we're starting to build a different kind of industry base,” Roper enthused. “So, we've gotta get the big bets right. Then most importantly, if you succeed in one of the big bets, then we need to put you on contract on the other side, or else the whole thing is bunk.” https://breakingdefense.com/2020/02/air-force-to-pump-new-tech-startups-with-10m-awards

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  November 25, 2022 | International, Naval

  QinetiQ Signs Next-Phase Demonstrator Contract to Deliver Multi-Platform Innovative Synthetic Training Capability to the Royal Navy

  The QinetiQ-Inzpire-BAE Systems team will deliver Phase 2 of PETC to the Carrier Strike Group in the summer and autumn of 2023

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  February 8, 2021 | International, Aerospace, Naval, Land, C4ISR, Security

  Opinion: Why The Future Will Not Be Virtual

  Steven Grundman The COVID-19 pandemic has accustomed us to living in the virtual world and hearing speculation about the ways in which our actual lives may never resume as before. Microsoft founder Bill Gates recently said he believes “over 50% of business travel and over 30% of days in the office will go away.” Explaining why the pandemic-induced surge in virtual house calls is likely to endure, Harvard's Dr. Thomas Delbanco concedes: “There are times when doctors, nurses or therapists really need to see you—no question about it. But there are also times when they really don't.” It was against the backdrop of such head-turning New Year's predictions that I spent the holidays reading about the Cold War and forming a nostalgic rebuttal to those prophesies of Zoom. At the start of my professional life, I led a surveillance platoon of the U.S. 1st Armored Division (1st AD), which was deployed to defend the “Frontier of Freedom” in the towns surrounding Nuremberg, West Germany. So it was that after cracking open Fulda Gap: Battlefield of the Cold War Alliances, I quickly thumbed forward to Chapter 7, “A Personal Perspective from Platoon Leader to Army Group” by Gen. (ret.) Crosbie Saint, who had commanded the 1st AD during my service in it. Saint's reflections transported me back to 1984 and the pastoral beauty of the Bavarian Oberpfalz, where we were actively preparing to fight a third world war. Prominent among the preparations Saint recounts was the terrain walk, a compulsory practice of every officer leading a maneuver unit regularly to traverse the ground where his troops would deploy, battle book in hand, mastering the contours of the landscape and envisioning his squads' movements in the General Defense Plan. Saint writes ardently about how “repetitive terrain walks at multiple command levels to analyze and become expert in exploiting the terrain for tactical purposes” gave the U.S. a decisive advantage over the vast armies of the Warsaw Pact. The still-clear memory of then-Lt. Grundman's own terrain walks along the monikered kill zones in my battle book—The Kemnath Bowl, Erbendorf Fire Trap, et al.—prompted me to wonder if the marvels of a virtual reality simulation would leave as indelible a mark. I doubt it. While the adoption of videoconferencing for commodity conversation is no doubt here to stay, the premium work of enterprise leadership must remain incarnate. Just as the experience of looking out from a ridgeline engages all the senses, strategic vision flows from an intuitive integration of time and space that no telemediation can fully activate. Beyond the battlefield lay other terrain walks affirming my conviction. In April 1993, just three weeks on the job as chief executive of an IBM teetering on insolvency, Lou Gerstner launched Operation Bear Hug, which directed each of the company's 250 most senior executives to visit at least five key customers over the following three months to learn why IBM had lost their trust. Years later, Gerstner wrote that Bear Hug made manifest what came to be the motive force of IBM's acclaimed transformation: “[W]e were going to build a company from the outside in and . . . the customer was going to drive everything we did in the company.” Gerstner invested this practice of deep listening to customers with the same strategic importance Saint attributed to a lieutenant's intimacy with the sight lines of his firing positions. Operation Bear Hug was a terrain walk. One of the trade secrets of my career as a business consultant to the aerospace industry is never to pass up an invitation to take a plant tour. No matter how near it is to your next flight's departure, when asked “Wanna see the shop?” the right answer is always “Of course.” When, a decade ago, I toured SpaceX's Hawthorne, California, headquarters and observed Elon Musk sitting at his desk among the busy cubicles of 30-something engineers gutting out their work in T-shirts, I instantly understood how the company's garage-shop culture could revolutionize the staid business of space launch. Years earlier, the clinical attention to workers' safety I saw at the bustling CFM56 jet engine plant in Villaroche, France, told me more about the success of the GE-Safran joint venture than even its impressive financials. So, too, did I need actually to feel the cavernous quietude in an antique defense factory to appreciate the true meaning of the sunk-cost fallacy. The aerospace plant tour is often a terrain walk. To all you leaders who, like me, find the progressively virtual world unsettling (and with apologies to a certain light lager's ad campaign), I say, “Find your terrain walk.” Once we again are free to move about, go physically to the crucible of what creates value for your enterprise and open your senses. Only from that vantage will you see truly into its future. The views expressed are not necessarily those of Aviation Week. https://aviationweek.com/aerospace/manufacturing-supply-chain/opinion-why-future-will-not-be-virtual