MAKING INNOVATION HAPPEN
in bringing into the Pentagon tech executives who have left one company or venture and not yet started with another.
Carter wants to “drill tunnels through the walls of the five-sided building,” Welby said, to establish a “permeability” whereby new ideas can move more freely between the defense commu- nity on the one side and industry and academia on the other.
After more than 30 years working in S&T, including the defense aerospace, automotive and energy industries, James S. Chew is not surprised at the reluctance of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs to work with DOD. Chew, who for the past eight years has chaired the Science & Engineering Technology Division of the National Defense Industrial Association, specializes in product develop- ment, operations and marketing and is currently director of strategic development for a top-50 defense contractor. He spoke with Army AL&T as someone with experience in the defense industry, specifically S&T, not as a representative of either the association or his company.
“I get my thrill out of developing new technologies and demon- strating what is the state of the art,” Chew said, “what is now possible because of clever people in technology [and] clever people who figure out how to design and integrate these new technologies to really do what I call ‘delight’ people, meaning we’re now doing stuff that people didn’t know they needed until they saw it, and now that they see it, they can’t live without it.”
Even established defense contractors have grown alienated from the Pentagon, he said, in part because of laws that have cre- ated institutional fences between government and industry. As a result, “Instead of us knowing what each other wants, we’ve got this mutual distrust of each other, and that’s why you’re seeing this lack of innovation,” he said. “You’ve got companies saying they’re not going to do anything unless they see a requirement, and you’ve got the department saying, ‘I need to understand what you’re doing in IR&D because I don’t think you’re doing what needs to be done.’
“[Tis] is why you’re seeing a lack of Silicon Valley companies actually wanting to jump in, because of all the rigors of working on defense contracts, which is frankly kind of silly.”
Chew added that “Congress needs to step up” as well. Legisla- tors waste considerable time, both on Capitol Hill and in DOD, on numerous reports mandated many years ago that are now of questionable value, he said. “Nobody has had the courage in Congress to say that any reporting requirement that’s over four years old, unless specifically required by Congress, will be rescinded.” More broadly, he said, instead of criticizing what they call wasteful spending by DOD and the defense industry,
“I just don’t see too many members of Congress—and frankly I wonder how many of them have business experience or industry experience—coming to the table … and saying, ‘We’ve got to work with these guys [DOD and the defense industry].’ ”
WIRED INTO TECHNOLOGY
On April 13, the U.S. Army Research Laboratory (ARL) and the University of Southern California Institute for Creative Technologies formally opened ARL-West, a new facility that brings S&T knowledge not readily available on the East Coast into the ARL fold. “Innovation does not only take place in Army labs,” said Dr. Thomas Russell, acting deputy assistant secretary of the Army for research and technology. (Photo by Tom Faulkner, U.S. Army Research, Development and Engineering Command)
Chew cited the F-22 Raptor fighter jet as an example of a defense acquisition program fraught with the kind of inde- cision and unpredictability that discourages innovators from entering the defense market. When the Air Force developed a requirement for the stealthy fifth-generation fighter jet in the early 1980s, it was for 381 aircraft. Te total requirement was for 749. But the last F-22 was produced in 2009, for a total 187 aircraft. Now a House Armed Services subcommit- tee wants the Air Force to explore restarting production “in light of growing threats to U.S. air superiority as a result of adversaries closing the technology gap and increasing demand from allies and partners for high-performance, multirole
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Army AL&T Magazine
July-September 2016
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