It will be essential to focus the marketplace on commercial technology areas that have clear applications across a broad range of national security capabilities, and then distill them against military supply gaps. For instance, instead of merely looking at “hypersonics” across Silicon Valley and American-allied partners, the Pentagon should consider gimbal technology that many autonomous systems rely on for stabilization. Otherwise, military leaders are often left with little else to offer other than a sincere but vague commitment that they might fund a project after an investor brings a technology to maturity. Understandably, this is a commitment few investors have accepted.
That was from the excellent Stephen Rodriguez at War on the Rocks, “The US Military’s investment ecosystem is missing in action.” Read the whole thing.
I would argue that the DoD’s acquisition process doesn’t allow government to effectively pursue the gimbal stabilization technologies of the world. Those are intermediate/enabling technologies, whereas the program budget/office structure focuses attention on the end item — for example, a hypersonic missile. The vast majority of funding available for pushing gimbal technologies is limited to the funds that flow through hypersonic missile programs. Components are thus “purpose-built” in a waterfall process rather than modularly designed with standard interfaces.
This is also why government is less likely to be aware of enabling technologies in the first place. Officials primarily interact with lead systems integrators. If the government disaggregates programs into various component and integration sub-projects, then more of the burden of coordination will rest with government officials. What used to be detailed in a prime contractor proposal is left unspecified. The overall program would emerge overtime through the way government starts, ramps up, or cancels its portfolio of austere sub-projects.
In the 1940s/50s before the PPBS, the services pursued components independently. As AT Atwood said in 1959: “Where the need was once for a large number of general-purpose components and subsystems, the demand is increasingly for complete systems and even supersystems.” But movement back to modular design of components and subsystems relies on budget flexibility. Funds within a ceiling should be available for redirection in the year of execution to projects/companies that were not planned in from two or three years before:
[The] new entrants that the Pentagon recruits are too small to instigate the level of innovation that military leaders desire and do not address the issue of how the Pentagon does acquisition. Mission-funded budget accounts and pitch days that result in authentic programs of record are the tools and metrics by which the Pentagon can visualize effective changes. Under an expanded mandate, the Pentagon should leverage the Trusted Capital Marketplace as an umbrella for commercial businesses consortia, providing companies with access to military users and requirements.
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