6 octobre 2020 | International, Aérospatial, C4ISR, Sécurité
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.
11 février 2022 | International, Aérospatial, C4ISR, Sécurité
Reports indicate artificial intelligence played a key role in the Israel conflict with Hamas in Gaza in May 2021, and artificial intelligence is increasingly being incorporated into systems developed by Israeli defense companies, such as rifles, bombs and other systems.
20 septembre 2018 | International, Naval, C4ISR
By: Amber Corrin The Navy released a long-awaited final request for proposals Sept. 18 for the re-compete of its Next Generation Enterprise Network contract. But it's part one of two, covering only the hardware side of things as the service looks to overhaul its Navy-Marine Corps Intranet. According to analysts at Deltek, each piece of the NGEN-R request is valued at roughly $250 million over a three-year period, per estimates from Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command. That's significantly lower than NGEN's original $3.5 billion price tag. Specifically, the RFP seeks hardware devices for use on the Department of Defense's classified and unclassified networks, including desktops, laptops, two-in-one detachable devices, tablets, ultra-small desktop computers, as well as thin- or zero-client devices. A single device could serve multiple users and associated accounts, according to the RFP. But for the roughly 400,000 devices NGEN-R looks to replace, the service in particular is looking at an end-user hardware-as-a-service arrangement. “It's breaking out the services that are being provided in a way that allows us to gain most effective advantage of how industry does business today,” Capt. Don Harder, deputy program executive officer for Navy enterprise information systems, told Federal Times in a recent interview. “The end user of hardware and devices as its own separate contract, there are those suppliers out there that that's what they specialize in. By breaking that out into its own contractual component within the NGEN-R construct ... we believe will allow us to get more effective advantage to pricing on those components.” The language in the RFP solidifies Harder's thoughts as part of the statement of work. “In acquiring EUHWaaS, the Government is only acquiring the service of using an EUHW device. This is not a purchase, and titles for all EUHWaaS devices remain with the Contractor,” the RFP states. “EUHWaaS includes the provisioning, storage of spares, configuration, testing, integration, installation, operation, maintenance, [end-of-life] disposal of NIPRNet and SIPRNet EUHW, and internal storage device removal and destruction requirements.” Bids for the hardware piece of NGEN-R are due Nov. 19. The second part of the NGEN-R RFP, service management integration and transport or SMIT, is expected in the next 30 days, according to a Navy spokesman. SMIT will cover much of NMCI's backbone and functionality, including services ranging from help desk to productivity suites to network defense — and how they're technically provided. Splitting NGEN-R into two separate contracts was an intentional move designed, at least in part, to give the Navy greater flexibility in the capabilities available to users, and the options for buying them, as technology evolves. “We are modifying how the services are broken out in a way that it allows us to sever some of those services as new mechanisms [and] provide [them as they are] brought into play or brought to our attention,” Harder said, using cloud capabilities as an example. “We may allow a mechanism to pull some of those into either a hybrid cloud or a cloud solution in the future. If so, it may go on a separate contractual vehicle at which point in time we would sever those services away from the SMIT vehicle. So, we're looking at how we take those services and how we manage them contractually, which would allow us, again additional flexibility later on down the road.” Harder said that throughout the development of NGEN-R, he's been eyeing not just the Navy, but also the broader government to benefit from the new approach. “We're building in that flexibility that allows the government the ability in the future even to find components of services that can be done in a more effective or efficient way [and] either sever them or modify them separately as opposed to having to break apart the entire contract to do something,” he said. The hardware piece of NGEN-R was released less than two weeks after Navy officials announced a one-year, $787 million extension to the incumbent provider, Perspecta. Harder declined to put a dollar figure on the NGEN-R contract, as did other Navy officials. The RFP comes after several delays — officials previously had said the contract would be up for bidding this summer. According to Harder, prior to release the RFP had to be approved by leadership at the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Navy for research, development and acquisition, as well as the Office of the Secretary of Defense's Defense Procurement and Acquisition Policy office. Harder said the Navy has taken extra time to shore up “the education piece” — ensuring the contracting process meets leaders' expectations, particularly with the new strategy. And IT modernization also has come into play, with officials from the broader DoD looking to NGEN as a possible model or even contract vehicle for defense networks down the line, he said. “We need to ensure that what we have placed in the contract and how we're going about the contract meets leadership expectations. And because we are doing things in a different way, that's taking a little bit of time,” Harder said. The Navy's approach to running NMCI today is “one of the more cost-effective ways of managing networks. And there is a desire as part of one of the many IT reform efforts [for possible] integration of networks in the future to mimic or, potentially, even ride on our contracts.” https://www.federaltimes.com/acquisition/2018/09/19/ngen-r-what-is-the-navy-thinking
18 septembre 2024 | International, Aérospatial
SPY-6 is the U.S. Navy's family of radars that performs air and missile defense on several classes of ships