Dr. Will Roper, Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics, officially stood up the Program Executive Office for Advanced Aircraft during an Oct. 2 ceremony at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.
The new office was created to transform the Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) program into the Air Force’s Digital Century Series initiative, using digital engineering, modular opens systems architecture, and agile software development to design advanced airplanes faster and enter production with a significantly lower learning curve. The Digital Century Series aims to improve the speed and flexibility with which aircraft can be fielded by using all-digital design and manufacturing technologies, but will not alter the warfighting technologies pursued in NGAD.
That was from an announcement by Wright-Patterson AFB via Anne Laurent’s weekly. The PEO will be led by the former systems program director for the B-21 Raider, Colonel Dale White.
The Air Force’s move to upgraded NGAD from a program to a PEO is interesting, considering Congress proposed slashing NGAD by half in the FY 2020 budget:
House lawmakers propose slashing fiscal 2020 funding for NGAD from $1 billion to $500 million due to “cost risk associated with development,” according to the House-passed version of the 2020 defense policy bill.
Maj. Gen. David Krumm, director of Air Force global power programs, wants to make clear what NGAD is not: a singular item, a platform, or a substitute for earlier systems.
I think that last point is important. Creating a PEO for advanced air provides some flexibility for it to start, modify, and stop funding to particular programs underneath it in a more agile way. However, it isn’t clear that the PEO can move up timelines all that much, it will still have to request funds 18-24 months ahead of time even if it used rapid acquisition pathways. Ultimately it is the programs and not the PEO that funds are being requested for.
A different way about it would be to justify the NGAD program element in a broad way with a single number per fiscal year, discussing various independent sub-projects that work on horizontal components (e.g., sensors, munitions) and vertical platforms (e.g., airframes, integration). Not sure that would pass muster at higher levels of budget review. But that would support flexibility in decision making and partitioning the program into sequential chunks much better than raising the office to a PEO, where each activity will have to be separately budgeted for.
One other thing: Congress slashed funding because of cost risk associated with NGAD development. The Air Force’s actions with the century series, which to me amounts to incremental decision making, is not speaking the language Congress expects to hear, which is: define your outcomes ahead of time, define your risks, and put a cost to it that we can measure you against. But that’s the old way of doing things that Roper is trying to get away from. The two sides might be talking past each other on this.
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