EXPANDING THE PERIMETER


FULL C4ISR KIT


Dan Hawkins, right, AIT country program manager for Ukraine, briefs then-U.S. Deputy Ambassador to Ukraine George Kent, left, and Ukraine’s deputy chief of defense, Lt. Gen. Serhii Bessarab, center left, in January 2018 on the new training facilities for Ukrainian special operations forces being outfitted by AIT with various C4ISR and defensive cyber capabilities.


Tey agreed that the Ukrainian armed forces’ senior staff should visit U.S. Army Europe in Wiesbaden, Germany, “in order to visualize the digital common operat- ing picture and to receive an overview of battle staff procedures in support of the commander’s decision-making process.” Beyond the goodness of kudos, the real significance here is that AIT is having an impact far beyond the foreign military sales transaction itself, working to ensure that these capabilities do not become wasted investments.


But any success AIT has achieved, it has not achieved alone. We rely on best practices and lessons learned from orga- nizations throughout the interagency enterprise, including SOCOM, to help us build partner capacity at the speed of relevance.


BUILT FOR SPEED One of the biggest complaints from allies and foreign partners about the foreign military sales process writ large is that it takes too long for requirements to


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be prioritized, defined properly, orga- nized and then processed through the many layers of DOD’s security cooper- ation enterprise. Te sheer abundance of complexity in the IT space—system design, data sharing and protection agree- ments, etc.—can make foreign military sales in this area seem more daunting, especially considering the pace at which technology in this field changes. Tis is why AIT has chosen, not unlike other interagency organizations, to take a page from SOCOM’s stated acquisition meth- odology to cut timelines and bring greater velocity to the foreign military sales process. For AIT, the tenets of SOCOM acquisition translate to:


Speed as an attitude. Teams that under- stand not only how to execute their mission, but why it matters to the bigger picture, are generally motivated to hustle. AIT conducts sync meetings throughout the week during which one teammate is called upon to discuss the tasks he or she has for the week and why accomplishing those matters to both AIT and the Army’s


Army AL&T Magazine January-March 2019


overarching security priorities. Tis simple exercise encourages better communi- cation, creates shared consciousness among the team and ensures that each individual—leader or follower, govern- ment or contractor—understands how his or her actions support success for DOD’s broader security cooperation mission. All of that tends to generate an expeditious vibe in the office.


Absorptive capacity matters. Not every country is prepared technologically, organizationally or even culturally to implement the latest and greatest capabil- ity that the U.S. defense industry has to offer. It may sound counterintuitive, but when we try to deliver too much capabil- ity too quickly, we end up overburdening the customer, making things perhaps worse than when we started. In our busi- ness, the best way to achieve effective results quickly is to deliver capability in a crawl-walk-run approach. Starting with smaller amounts of capability and using time-phased optimization to scale those capabilities later can build confidence


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