What’s the secret sauce in AFRL’s Space Vehicle Directorate?

… our secret sauce is that we have some organic capability to do things. What I mean by that is we have actual scientists and engineers that can build satellites here, that can test satellites, that can fly satellites. That gives us a huge advantage over the many other science and technology and innovation organizations in the Department of Defense. What it enables us to do is a couple of things.

 

First of all, if we are told to and need to start working on building a certain satellite tonight, we can do that. More importantly than that, I think you are working with people that intimately understand the technology that they are developing and maturing. That leads to a lot of innovative ideas, as our researchers work closely with their counterparts, industry and academia, you get a great virtuous spiral of innovation activity that only can happen when our government people are very technically savvy.

 

… It’s so fun to see that because it’s also really motivational to our young engineers. Most of them would rather actually build a satellite than work on a PowerPoint presentation to explain how the contractor is going to build the satellite and then sit through a design review of what the contractor has done. It’s also a really motivational aspect to our workforce that they can actually do some hands-on engineering and do it themselves. I think that’s a really important secret sauce capability of AFRL. Something that we absolutely must preserve and grow and use to our advantage.

That was Col. Eric Felt, Director of ARFL Space Vehicles Directorate, on the Constellations podcast. A lot more of interest in the episode, and the podcast itself has tremendous content so check it out!

More people need to wake up and listen to what Col. Felt said. An organic capability in government is incredibly important to successful functioning. Army and Navy technical services used to perform between 20 and 40 percent of R&D work in-house. That was destroyed by the McNamara management philosophy and the PPBS. Here is Chief of Army R&D from 1954 General Uncles:

We don’t know exactly what that point is, but 25 percent or 35 percent of our program we feel should be done within our own laboratories to enable us to have people who understand what the rest of the world is doing.

The idea that government only needs the talent to evaluate contractor performance but never has to turn a wrench (or type a piece of code) itself has been incredibly destructive. Just consider the human experience as Col. Felt mentioned. DoD has turned its engineers into desk-engineers who aren’t able to contribute their skills and grow. Since the 1990s, the number of Air Force engineers to program managers fell from 10-to-1 to 4-to-1.

Now, I’m as big of a markets guy as you can find, but you don’t see any successful company outsource everything including its core competencies. They would quickly lose to competitors because they no longer add any value. DoD doesn’t have competitors in business, and so it is shielded from its own bad decisions. But the chickens come home to roost in a military conflict.