A PLAN TO MAKE—AND BREAK


these initiatives make possible is neces- sary for us to continue to lead.


But these are things any organization that wants to conduct R&D must do. Devel- oping leap-ahead technologies


for the GUIDED BY SCIENCE


GEN Dennis L. Via, commanding general of the U.S. Army Materiel Command, listens as T.J. LaPointe, a project lead with the PIF of the U.S. Army Aviation and Missile Research, Development and Engineering Center (AMRDEC), briefs mission equipment projects, including the Apache infra- red (IR) strobe and Federal Aviation Administration strobe and position light at Redstone Arsenal, AL, in November 2013. Used with existing night vision goggles, the PIF IR strobe provides pilots a way to distinguish Army aircraft at night without being identified by the enemy. (Photo by Jeanette Watson, AMRDEC)


Army takes more. It takes an understand- ing of war and Soldiers, and a willingness to scour the world to find the best technol- ogy available. RDECOM brings together these elements in our work with the U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command, our science and technology advisers and our RDECOM forward element com- mands. Tis helps us to understand not only the state of the art but also what is possible in moving the state of the art for- ward. In turn, we can help make the Army better at asking for the technology that will meet its requirements, and a smarter buyer of those technologies once they are developed. Tis becomes more critical as affordable modernization becomes less a goal and more an imperative.


accept risk and to reward bold failure. At RDECOM, we have long pursued these ends with human capital and infrastruc- ture development, as well as programs that allow us to fund promising research that may have a big payoff but also has a high risk of failure.


For example, we are exploring several new ways to open the aperture on new ideas. One is our Virtual Lab initiative, which will mitigate the restrictions of time and distance to allow our research- ers and engineers


to put together the best possible team, whether that means 170 Army AL&T Magazine April–June 2014


involving a colleague next door or one across the country. Another initia- tive is an Army Research Laboratory open-campus project that will allow our partners in academia, industry and other government agencies to set up research facilities


alongside our own. One of


these initiatives seeks to erase boundar- ies within the organization, while the other is intended to erase the boundaries between us and external partners. Te United States does not enjoy the same lead in technological capability over potential adversaries that it once did, and we believe that the kind of synergy


CONCLUSION Yet RDECOM will still break the plan— break it often and before anyone else does. Providing technologies to enable the overmatch our Soldiers deserve mandates that we do exactly that. We need to balance the day-to-day devel- opment of technologies that modernize our Army with leap-ahead technolo- gies, such as quantum computing and synthetic biology. (See related article,


“Evolving Innovation,” on Page 86.) We need to keep the technology pipeline full to create capabilities to defeat the next IED-like disruptive technology, while working on breakthroughs in power and energy that will make dangerous con- voys a thing of the past.


We do this with a balanced portfolio that spans the R&D process, from sci- entists working on breakthroughs that may take decades to field to engineers


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