Te Army is also seeking less tangible progress toward innova- tion through the quarterly summits sponsored by AMC as part of the larger Army Innovation Campaign, with a concerted emphasis on unifying multiple major players behind a common vision of what the Army needs to do to foster a culture of change.
Te first two summits involved Army organizations—including AMC, the U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command, U.S. Forces Command, the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Acquisition, Logistics and Technology, HQDA Gen- eral Staff and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. “Te fact that you have the agencies together at the same time, working together, I think that can kick us forward and propel us to be more effective and efficient,” said Patrick O’Neill, AMC chief technology officer.
Participation has grown from 115 attendees at the inaugural summit in November 2015 to 144 at the second summit in April. Te next summit, in August, will bring industry and aca- demia into the discussion as well, O’Neill said. “Te whole idea is, [innovation] is a process that needs to start and continue … you can just never stop. Tat’s why this is a campaign. It’s really pushing to do the right thing and live up to what the chief of staff has to do as far as readiness and the future Army.”
“Te quarterly innovation summit program is a core component of the Army’s Innovation Campaign and an important medium for Army senior leader discussions,” said Maj. Gen. John F. Wharton, commanding general of the U.S. Army Research, Development and Engineering Command, which hosted the second summit.
“Tis is an opportunity to build upon the knowledge and insight gained during the first summit and discover new opportunities to refine solutions that will enhance Army innovation.”
CONCLUSION Notwithstanding the funding, cultural, regulatory and pro- cedural barriers to innovation, there is reason to be optimistic that the current push for innovation will produce results for the warfighter. “Te appetite from senior leadership is enormous,” Welby told participants at the Innovation Summit. “We’re not innovating because it’s the cool thing. We’re innovating because it’s critical to our future.”
Te question is whether the results will make a substantive dif- ference in the United States’ technological status.
“Te government needs to think about—and the person trying to sell the government needs to think about—what application
these ideas will have, if it can really make an incremental change at an affordable price,” Gansler said. Tat will take collaboration among the requirements, budgeting and contracting communi- ties—as well as with industry—to think ahead. “We need to know what options we have, what are the things we could have or the things that other people are doing and how it would make any difference in defense,” he said.
Te government also needs to be careful not to spread its dimin- ished resources too thin, in Chew’s opinion. “I think that these initiatives, if they were aimed at, ‘We’re going to do this instead of that,’ then they would do something. Instead, I see a lot of,
‘We’re going to do this in addition to what [else] we’re doing.’ And that’s a problem.
“Despite all these obstacles, we haven’t been doing badly,” said Chew, who has great faith in American ingenuity. “I do believe in American exceptionalism,” he explained, and “one of our
‘exceptions’ as Americans is our ingenuity. We don’t overthink a problem. We see a problem, and we get it done. We don’t see obstacles. We see an opportunity.”
Chew sees an opportunity for DOD to take a clean-slate approach to its S&T endeavors by challenging vested interests— for example, he said, by unifying each of the services’ separate laboratory systems into one “purple,” or joint system. “Purple labs. Now that’s innovation. You know, you’d get a lot of action [with] purple labs. Not Air Force labs, or Army labs, but OSD [Office of the Secretary of Defense] labs.
“And then you need to encourage the industrial base and say, ‘Look, we really are trying to innovate.’ ”
For more information on DOD S&T resources, go to http://www.
acq.osd.mil/chieftechnologist/index.html; for more on DIUx, go to
http://www.diux.mil/; and on the Army Innovation Cam- paign,
https://www.army.mil/article/151556/.
MS. MARGARET C. ROTH is an editor of Army AL&T magazine. She has more than a decade of experience in writing about the Army and more than three decades’ experience in journalism and public relations. Roth is a Maj. Gen. Keith L. Ware Public Affairs Award winner, and is a co-author of the book “Operation Just Cause: Te Storming of Panama.” She holds a B.A. in Russian language and linguistics from the University of Virginia.
+
ASC.ARMY.MIL 71
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
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
