PANDEMIC RESPONSE
equipment, finding facilities to conduct all the work and building the industrial capacity to meet the demand for leading- edge technologies.
To begin transitioning that information to industry partners,
the team lever-
aged a mix of Navy and Army contracts, along with support agreements among the Army, Navy and Sandia. Te first transi- tion efforts dealt with the industry team reviewing Sandia’s “Block 0” glide body designs for production issues, providing options to obtain long-lead or expensive items, and a variety of other concerns. Tat work has paid off in several signifi- cant ways. One of those enabled the team to move from an expensive, custom-built, high-voltage capacitor to using a rede- signed capacitor, reducing cost by more than 70 percent for this one component. Weekly meetings were quickly established to discuss every aspect of these module builds, from documentation to procure- ment of parts and test requirements.
Sandia’s status as a federally funded research and development center made it easier to bring in contractors from outside their mission. Since Sandia’s focus was not on production, it understood the impor- tance of transitioning this work to another team. Had this handoff occurred between traditional industrial partners, time would have been a concern as hurdles such as contract modifications, which can take months to process, would have come into play.
Sandia increased capacity to support the builds by using, and simultaneously training, industry technicians and engi- neers. In just a few months, the experts at Sandia developed a comprehensive train- ing course, starting with the design theory and progressing to hands-on activities with flight hardware in the lab. Tis leader- follower approach allows the industry
A HYPERSONIC TEST
On March 19, DOD successfully tested a hypersonic glide body in a flight experiment executed by the U.S. Navy and U.S. Army from the Pacific Missile Range Facility, Kauai, Hawaii. Information gathered from this and future experiments will further inform DOD's hypersonic technology development, officials say. (U.S. Army photo)
team to learn and become proficient before they are contractually obligated to assem- ble, integrate and test production hardware in their own facilities, such as the Dynet- ics facility in Huntsville, Alabama. Sandia, with a heritage that includes nuclear weap- ons, had never before permitted anyone other than its own personnel to build or test hardware in its labs. Bringing indus- try partners on board to learn hypersonics required the creation of a “guest worker” policy and new course material. Tis inno- vative effort ultimately established a solid foundation for the training program and a more rapid transition from lab prototyp- ing to industry production.
While looking at putting a second cadre of industry personnel through training, the Sandia team came to realize that its new industry partners were more than up to
the task. In order to keep Sandia's experts focused on building and testing hard- ware, the team decided to use several of the newly trained industry team members to conduct the second round of training. Freeing up the Sandia experts from these training duties also gave the industry part- ners a dry run for its training teams to get experience before heading home to Huntsville, where they would eventu- ally replicate the glide body activities in their own facilities. Ultimately, this effort produced a “badgeless” government and industry team focused on meeting the mission and common goals. An outsider walking through the labs and talking to the technicians and engineers would not know if they were talking to members of the Sandia team or an employee of any one of the three industry partners performing work on-site.
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