SMALL BUSINESS PERSPECTIVE


T


apping the innovation of small high-tech businesses has been a goal of DOD and the Army for some time now. How well


has the effort gone? Army AL&T talked to some small businesses that range from 250 to five employees. Tey have some definite ideas about what government can do—and stop doing—to work better with them.


“Having come from industry and under- standing the challenges associated with entering ‘the process,’” Dr. Bruce D. Jette, the assistant secretary of the Army for acquisition, logistics and technology and the Army acquisition executive, wrote in his column for the Fall 2018 issue of Army AL&T magazine, “I know first- hand that the Army must proactively and aggressively engage with innovators to see what new ideas, concepts, systems and subsystem components they can bring to the table. Te next generation of enabling technologies required to achieve our modernization priorities may not currently exist—or they may, and not be apparent to the Army.”


Tis is by no means a comprehensive list, but it does provide a snapshot of the types of problems small businesses run into when working with DOD and the Army.


IT HELPS TO HAVE HELP Tobin Fisher is co-founder and CEO of Vantage Robotics, a team of 20 Stanford- and Yale-educated engineers based in San Leandro, California, that builds ultra- lightweight and compact unmanned aerial surveillance drones.


After focusing on consumer and commer- cial opportunities, Vantage became involved with DOD through the Defense Innovation Unit’s (DIU) Short Range Reconnaissance (SRR) Unmanned Aerial Vehicle project. In August, DOD gave


10 Army AL&T Magazine Fall 2020 Tobin Fisher


five small drone manufacturers, includ- ing Vantage, permission to sell to the U.S. military and federal agencies, in the wake of last year’s ban—based on espionage fears—on these agencies buying Chinese- made drones.


Fisher, who had worked with DOD earlier in his career at other companies, found DIU invaluable in helping Vantage land the SRR project. “Tere’s great people involved that understand the challenge and are really working hard to do it,” he said. “[Te credit] certainly goes to the work of DIU—I can’t say enough good things about them.”


“DIU did a spectacular job of really streamlining the process for working with DOD to the extent possible,” he said. “So I’d say, in general, it’s been a really great experience for us working with DOD. Having worked at the DOD over a long period of time, I have definitely seen a real massive change in the streamlining of approaches that DOD has. I think the big challenge for us is we want to develop


great products and we want to make a lot of them for our customers who can use them. Anything that’s other than that, in our minds at least, it’s a hindrance.”


For Lumineye, a five-person company based in Boise, Idaho, the initial push for working with DOD came from a Hacking for Defense class at Boise State University. Corbin Hennen, a co-founder and CEO of Lumineye, and Megan Lacy, a co-founder and chief design officer, were members of the Hacking for Defense team tasked by U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM) with coming up with a way to identify humans through radio frequen- cies. Trough their work in solving the challenge, the students started Lumineye in 2017. (See “More than a Competition,” Army AL&T, Winter 2020, Page 94.)


Te lightweight, compact device they created, the Lux, can provide first respond- ers and warfighters “through-wall sensing” and can detect moving and still people from more than 10 meters away. It enabled Lumineye to win the xTechSearch 2.0


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58  |  Page 59  |  Page 60  |  Page 61  |  Page 62  |  Page 63  |  Page 64  |  Page 65  |  Page 66  |  Page 67  |  Page 68  |  Page 69  |  Page 70  |  Page 71  |  Page 72  |  Page 73  |  Page 74  |  Page 75  |  Page 76  |  Page 77  |  Page 78  |  Page 79  |  Page 80  |  Page 81  |  Page 82  |  Page 83  |  Page 84  |  Page 85  |  Page 86  |  Page 87  |  Page 88  |  Page 89  |  Page 90  |  Page 91  |  Page 92  |  Page 93  |  Page 94  |  Page 95  |  Page 96  |  Page 97  |  Page 98  |  Page 99  |  Page 100  |  Page 101  |  Page 102  |  Page 103  |  Page 104  |  Page 105  |  Page 106  |  Page 107  |  Page 108  |  Page 109  |  Page 110  |  Page 111  |  Page 112  |  Page 113  |  Page 114  |  Page 115  |  Page 116  |  Page 117  |  Page 118  |  Page 119  |  Page 120  |  Page 121  |  Page 122  |  Page 123  |  Page 124  |  Page 125  |  Page 126  |  Page 127  |  Page 128  |  Page 129  |  Page 130  |  Page 131  |  Page 132  |  Page 133  |  Page 134  |  Page 135  |  Page 136  |  Page 137  |  Page 138  |  Page 139  |  Page 140  |  Page 141  |  Page 142  |  Page 143  |  Page 144  |  Page 145  |  Page 146  |  Page 147  |  Page 148  |  Page 149  |  Page 150  |  Page 151  |  Page 152  |  Page 153  |  Page 154  |  Page 155  |  Page 156  |  Page 157  |  Page 158  |  Page 159  |  Page 160  |  Page 161  |  Page 162  |  Page 163  |  Page 164  |  Page 165  |  Page 166  |  Page 167  |  Page 168  |  Page 169  |  Page 170  |  Page 171  |  Page 172  |  Page 173  |  Page 174  |  Page 175  |  Page 176  |  Page 177  |  Page 178  |  Page 179  |  Page 180  |  Page 181  |  Page 182  |  Page 183  |  Page 184  |  Page 185  |  Page 186  |  Page 187  |  Page 188  |  Page 189  |  Page 190  |  Page 191  |  Page 192  |  Page 193  |  Page 194  |  Page 195  |  Page 196