I recently blogged about the family of systems concept for the Air Force’s Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) program. NGAD is envisioned to be more than a single vertically integrated airframe; it will potentially include a number of unmanned aircraft that will team with it to achieve different effects. Bryan Clark recently dove further into this NGAD concept, arguing that a family of systems is not the right way to think about what NGAD should be.
We argue in the report that NGAD needs to be a team of systems as opposed to a family of systems. Why that distinction is important is that a team, like we’re familiar with in football or baseball, is composed of a number of individual elements that are all developed, trained, and operated separately from one another. They come up through some kind of system independently. And they are assembled on the playing field to create a certain set of operations, missions, effects. As opposed to a family that grow up together, are designed to interoperate with each other and are generally close knit and stay together throughout their lifecycle. A team comes together, goes apart, and comes together. So it’s recomposable. You can change it based on the needs of the situation. You might even change the entire composition of the team if you need to start a rebuilding if you will. So NGAD needs to be more like a team and less like a family.
I really like that analogy for a “team of systems” concept. But it’s interesting to think how this affects the acquisition management. In a previous conversation with Clark, special advisor to the SecAF Tim Grayson said that NGAD elements could be managed under a single program of record: “You may actually have an evolution of different platforms, maybe it’s an evolution of one platform or even multiple different types of platform acquired under one program heading.” So in that case, each team-member is independently developed/contracted for, but you can move resources between and make tradeoffs within a larger program element.
However, it seems that Bryan Clark and Dan Patt in their report on NGAD envisioned a new Program Executive Office for NGAD that would coordinate the integration of systems and subsystems from across DoD. This implies a separate program of record for each unmanned system, for each sensor or weapon or comms link. They would all have their own funding lines, program owners, and could not make tradeoffs between them. It feels a little bit like the Navy’s Project Overmatch philosophy.
Here’s some discussion from Clark and Patt’s paper:
PEO NGAD would oversee integration, but not lead it. Like Apple—which does not integrate, for example, Sony headsets with iPhones—PEO NGAD would rely on system vendors and their associated SPOs to ensure that systems work with each other using approved interfaces, which would be validated through integration gauntlets. By allowing each program to be funded and developed independently and at a tempo consistent with its technological advancement, priority, and operational need, this approach would achieve loose coupling between NGAD elements.
Overall, I think Clark and Patt are right that NGAD will have to integrate pieces from several different PEOs. It wouldn’t make sense to merge the whole thing under one heading like the F-35 was with the Joint Program Office. However, it is hard to see how PEO NGAD manages to herd all the cats, each with their own priorities, and each tied to separate cost-schedule-technical baselines. Perhaps PEO NGAD taxes some funds from contributing programs to perform specific integration tasks.
Here’s a figure about the proposed organizational structure from Bryan Clark and Dan Patt’s. Note that NGAD is currently operated out of PEO Fighters & Advanced Aircraft, which itself was the product of a recent reorganization.
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