COMMENTARY
It used to be that military
technological advances drove overall technology advancement—the internet and GPS, for example—but the commercial marketplace now dominates technology.
One benefit of designing systems with a modular open-system approach is that they can be readily adapted for our allies’ use to enhance international cooperation and improve our interoperability. Why not take this logic one step further and design for commercialization?
Obviously, not all weapon systems and their components have commercial appli- cation. However, if many commercial technologies have defense application, the reverse is also likely true, e.g., the inter- net and GPS. Yes, they must be properly managed for security considerations; however, how can we more aggressively and properly incentivize these transitions?
Dedicated, supplemental funding can be used to encourage our heavily-reliant-on- defense-revenue partners to devise ways during early cutting-edge technology design work to adapt defense technology for commercial application. Tis could potentially enable them to increase their profit, reduce our production costs, and create more economic competitiveness for the U.S. in the global market—a win-win. A company like Lockheed Martin, with 95 percent of its revenue being derived from defense work, would obviously remain defense heavy. However, wouldn’t it be a worthwhile goal to see Lockheed rebal- ance its revenue-generating percentage to
something closer to 75 percent through commercial adaptation of defense-gener- ated technology?
Actively recruit leading technology companies. Congress and DOD leader- ship should not just be extending ways to allow our top technology companies to work with the DOD, but they should be actively courting them. Te government should identify those commercial technol- ogies that have the greatest potential for war-winning and war-deterring systems, and provide financial and intellectual property incentives for their development.
We experienced a similar provision of incentives in our response to the national COVID-19 crisis. The government quickly activated Operation Warp Speed to develop a COVID-19 vaccine. Why not apply that same logic to technologies that hold the most promise to providing our warfighters with the critical technol- ogies that they need, but perhaps with less intensity owing to resource limita- tions? Te NDS hints at some of these needed technologies in identifying its key modernization priorities, e.g., advanced autonomous systems. Obviously,
this
would be a very selective process; however, it could help avoid what the NDS describes as “a joint force that has legacy systems irrelevant to the defense of our people.”
CONCLUSION So, how relevant is speed? It’s critical! Our Soldiers need our acquisition professionals to provide them with the latest technol- ogy and systems to win the wars that we have to fight and fully deter our strategic competition from taking actions that may lead to war. We must be proactive in the pursuit of war-winning capability, rather than reactive. Terefore, we need to not just innovate ways that allow leading tech- nology companies to contract with DOD, we must pursue, attract, encourage and incentivize them to do business with us.
We should also urge our defense indus- try partners to venture into world-leading technologies that have potential commer- cial application.
Tese are just three ideas to jumpstart the process to, as the national defense strat- egy has it, “change business practices to achieve mission success.” We must make it our priority to find more ways if we hope to strengthen America’s deterrence and meet the “most far-reaching objective” of the NDS to “set the military relation- ship between our two countries [China and America] on a path of transparency and non-aggression.” We need to produce war-winning capabilities at the speed of relevance!
DAVE RIEL serves as acquisition management professor of for Defense
Acquisition University’s Midwest Region developing curriculum, teaching classes and providing consultation on the latest defense acquisition policies, program management principles, and production, quality and manufacturing matters. A somewhat different version of this article won the 2020 Maj. Gen. Harold J. “Harry” Greene Award for Acquisition Writing in the innovation category.
https://asc.ar my.mil
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