AUGUST 2018 Q $9

THE BUSINESS AND TECHNOLOGY MAGAZINE OF

SPECIAL REPORT

R&D
BIG BETS
WHAT ARE THE TECHNOLOGIES THAT
WILL DEFINE THE FUTURE OF WARFARE?
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 AUGUST 2018 VOLUME CIII, NUMBER 777
NDIA’S BUSINESS AND TECHNOLOGY MAGAZINE
W W W . N AT I O N A L D E F E N S E M AG A Z I N E . O R G

Homeland Security 26
Q The North Warning System stretches
from Canada’s Newfoundland and
Labrador province to Alaska. Both the
United States and Ottawa are now jointly
seeking a replacement for the aging sys-
tem as they face new threats such as
hypersonic missiles.

Coast Guard 22
Q As newly installed Coast Guard
Commandant Adm. Karl L. Schultz
begins his tenure at the head of the nearly
288-year old service, he is focusing on
making it ready, relevant and responsive.
He takes the helm as the Coast Guard
balances several major recapitalization
projects alongside increased operations
in the Western Hemisphere and Arctic
regions.

Big Bets 28
Q National Defense reached out to research-and-development organiza-
tions across the United States to find out what their number one “big
bet” is. In other words, a high-risk, high-reward technology investment
that they believe will have the biggest payoff for those in the military or
national security realm. Technologies featured include autonomy, hyper-
sonics, synthetic biology, maritime robotics and more.
Cover art: iStock, Defense Dept. images

6 10 12 14 20 24

Up Front Algorithmic Warfare Budget Matters News Briefs Industry Perspective Missile Defense

AU G U ST 2 0 1 8 • N AT I O N A L D E F E N S E 1
OPINION 29 Sandia National Laboratories AUGUST 2018
32 Air Force Rapid Capabilities Office VO L U M E C I I I
VIEWPOINT 32 Argonne National Laboratory N U M B E R 777
34 Army Research, Development and
17 Performance-Based Logistics Engineering Command’s Edgewood
Contracting: Does it Work? Chemical Biological Center
EDITOR IN CHIEF
Performance-based logistics contracting has 35 Army Tank Automotive Research
Stew Magnuson
often delivered the intended result — to Development and Engineering Center
36 Coast Guard Research and (703) 247-2545
improve warfighter readiness through
better weapon system availability and Development Center SMagnuson@NDIA.org
reliability, at lower cost. 37 MITRE Corp.
BY JAMES MARCEAU 38 Intelligence Advanced CREATIVE DIRECTOR
Research Projects Activity Brian Taylor
38 Army Natick Soldier Research, (703) 247-2546
INDUSTRY PERSPECTIVE
Development and Engineering Center BTaylor@NDIA.org
20 Public-Private Partnerships 39 Office of Naval Research
Critical to Protect Space MANAGING EDITOR
There is an immediate need for partner- DEPARTMENTS Jon Harper
ships that would coalesce the efforts of the (703) 247-2542
U.S. government, its allies and commercial 4 NDIA Perspective JHarper@NDIA.org
industry to foster a more protected space The Imperative for Artificial Intelligence
environment and encourage responsible BY FRANK J. MICHAEL AND SENIOR EDITOR
behaviors. SHANE SHANEMAN Yasmin Tadjdeh
BY REBECCA COWEN-HIRSCH
(703) 247-2585
6 Up Front
Random facts and figures from industry YTadjdeh@NDIA.org
FEATURES and government
BY STEW MAGNUSON STAFF WRITER
COAST GUARD Vivienne Machi
22 New Coast Guard Leader 8 Editor’s Notes (703) 247-2543
Focusing on Readiness BY STEW MAGNUSON VMachi@NDIA.org
Adm. Karl L. Schultz, commandant of
the Coast Guard, sits down with National 10 Algorithmic Warfare EDITORIAL ASSISTANT
Defense for an exclusive interview about What’s coming in artificial intelligence, Connie Lee
his strategic priorities. big data and cybersecurity (703) 247-9469
BY YASMIN TADJDEH BY YASMIN TADJDEH
CLee@NDIA.org

MISSILE DEFENSE
11 NDIA Policy Points
Reforms Deliver Wins for Small Businesses
24 Clock Ticking for U.S. Military BY CHRISTOPHER SMITH
To Defend Against Hypersonics ADVERTISING
With both Russia and China beefing up 12 Budget Matters
their investments in hypersonics, govern- Who’s funding what in Washington
Christine M. Klein
ment officials worry that the United States BY JON HARPER
SVP, Meetings & Business Partnerships
does not have the means to defend against (703) 247-2593
them. 14 News Briefs
BY VIVIENNE MACHI AND SONJA JORDAN CKlein@NDIA.org
BY JON HARPER

40 Government Contracting Insights Kathleen Kenney, Sales Director

26 United States, Canada Studying Granston Memo Could Impact Qui Tam (703) 247-2576
Options to Replace Arctic Early Actions KKenney@NDIA.org
Warning Radars CONTRIBUTED BY COVINGTON &
The United States and Canada have begun BURLING LLP Alex Mitchell, Sales Coordinator
planning a replacement for the North (703) 247-2568
Warning System, with the goal of awarding 41 Ethics Corner AMitchell@NDIA.org
a new contract in the mid-2020s.
BY VIVIENNE MACHI 42 Letters to the Editor
43 NDIA News National Defense
R&D SPECIAL REPORT 2101 Wilson Blvd., Suite 700
28 The Nation’s Big Bets on 44 NDIA Calendar Arlington, VA 22201
National Security Technology Complete guide to NDIA events
National Defense asked federally funded NDIA MEMBERSHIP: The
research centers, service laboratories and 48 Next Month National Defense Industrial
other research-and-development organiza- Preview of our next issue Association (NDIA) is the premier association
representing all facets of the defense and technol-
tions one question: What is your organiza-
tion’s number one R&D “big bet?” 48 Index of Advertisers ogy industrial base and serving all military services.
For more information please call our membership
department at 703-522-1820 or visit us on the
web at NDIA.org/Membership

National Defense (ISSN 0092–1491) is published monthly by the National Defense Industrial Association (NDIA), 2101 Wilson Blvd., Suite 700, Arlington, VA 22201–3061.
TEL (703) 522–1820; FAX (703) 522–1885. Advertising Sales: Kathleen Kenney, 2101 Wilson Blvd., Suite 700, Arlington, VA 22201–3061. TEL (703) 247–2576; FAX (703)
522–4602. The views expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of NDIA. Membership rates in the association are $40 annually; $15.00 is allocated to
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2 N AT I O N A L D E F E N S E • A U G U S T 2 0 1 8
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 Perspective BY FRANK J. MICHAEL AND SHANE SHANEMAN
The Imperative for Artificial Intelligence
Q The United States enjoys a long track record of dominating
conventional military operations, driven in large part by our
technological superiority — the nation’s ability to develop new
capabilities and rapidly integrate them into military operations.
However, continued dominance is not assured. Whereas in the
past the military funded most major technology breakthroughs
and thus could prevent potential adversaries’ access, today com-
mercial entities lead the development of cutting-edge technol-
ogy, providing rivals with the opportunity to obtain and rapidly
operationalize advanced capabilities, weakening America’s tradi-
tional advantages.
To protect the U.S. military’s technological edge, government,
industry and academia must work together to develop and
operationalize artificial intelligence, the technology most likely
to drive outcomes on future battlefields.
The 2018 National Defense Strategy places a strong focus on
AI as an emerging technology that will change society and ulti-
mately the character of war. It is quickly becoming a technical
discriminator as both commercial and government entities seek
to leverage it for competitive advantage.
Nowhere is this more evident than in the Defense Depart-
ment, which sees AI as critical to future military capability.
Recently, Defense Deputy Secretary Patrick M. Shanahan signed
a memo establishing the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center to
accelerate delivery of AI-enabled capabilities, synchronize activi-
ties and assure their department-wide impact.
Several other defense and intelligence community initiatives
serve as pathfinders for the rapid development and deployment
of AI. Pairing leading commercial entrepreneurs and innova-
tors with warfighters from all services, these partnerships define
the department’s toughest challenges, and identify promising
capabilities to tackle them. These partnerships, if successful, will
offer a blueprint for collaboration.
Collaboration between government, academia and industry
will determine success or failure in effectively operationaliz-
ing AI capabilities. Warfighters understand the challenges and
academia and industry have the expertise to develop solutions.
For instance, new weapons systems are drowning warfighters in
information. They desperately need capabilities to synthesize
data and package it into timely, actionable information, insights
and recommendations. Data overload is easy to predict when
fifth-generation fighter aircraft produce 8 terabytes of data from
a single sortie, and defensive cyber platforms require petabytes
of network data to accurately identify, isolate and attribute
emerging cyber threats.
The services simply cannot recruit, train, pay and retain suf-
ficient numbers of personnel to thoroughly identify and analyze
this data. Artificial intelligence offers the potential to process the
data and provide correlations leading to insights that could dras-
tically improve mission capability and protect U.S. forces.
As the pace of AI innovation accelerates, the United States
risks falling behind adversaries, as they make billion-dollar
investments in commercial entities to secure a broad and deep
AI innovation base. They will use this foundation to create
4 N AT I O N A L D E F E N S E • A U G U S T 2 0 1 8
asymmetric advances that would allow them to dominate future
conflicts.
To prevent technological inferiority, we must accelerate
application of AI capabilities in key areas including intelligence,
digital engineering and cyberspace operations to enhance warf-
ighters’ situational awareness and effectiveness.
The National Defense Industrial Association plays an impor-
tant role in ensuring the nation maintains technological superior-
ity. In accordance with its mission to bring government, industry
and academia together to solve the nation’s toughest national
security challenges, it provides critical forums for the exchange
of information supporting AI development and application.
For example, our Robotics Division is exploring the role of
AI in autonomous vehicle operations and swarming, paying par-
ticular attention to safety in operations. Similarly, our Test and
Evaluation Division and the Industrial Committee on Test and
Evaluation are working with the director of operational test and
evaluation to understand the testing implications for systems
employing AI.
The Systems Engineering Division is exploring incorporating
AI from the systems perspective as well as its impact on digi-
tal engineering. The Cyber-Augmented Operations Division is
“To prevent technological inferiority,
we must accelerate application of
AI capabilities in key areas...”
synchronizing AI efforts to capitalize on synergies with other
emerging technologies.
Finally, NDIA Chapters in Fort Walton Beach, Orlando, San
Diego, Tampa, Michigan, Georgia and Dayton, Ohio, are work-
ing closely with local commands and organizations on AI-related
programs.
Recognizing the cross-cutting impact of artificial intelligence
across the spectrum of missions and the defense industry, NDIA
will introduce an AI community of influence to create synergies
across its 65 divisions, chapters, committees, working groups and
affiliates.
One aspect of this community will be to help define and
address ethical concerns tied to AI, particularly in regard to
automation of lethality. Clearly the United States must develop
policies, procedures and rules of engagement to ensure respon-
sible deployment of emerging capabilities. We must find a way
to responsibly harness these capabilities to protect warfighters
and the nation because we know others, who may not share our
ethical concerns, will continue their investment in and develop-
ment of AI capabilities. ND
Retired Navy Capt. Frank J. Michael is NDIA senior vice president of
programs and membership. Shane Shaneman is director of strategic
government research and engagements at Carnegie Mellon University.
Views expressed are his and not necessarily the views of the university.
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 Quotable
UP FRONT COMPILED BY STEW MAGNUSON “This is another
No More JEDI Mind Tricks case of ready,
Q Dana Deasy, the Defense Department’s chief information
officer, declared a reset on the controversial Joint Enterprise
Defense Infrastructure program in a recent speech. The de-
fire, aim.”
partment’s effort to create an enterprise cloud, which will be Ret. Air Force
the “foundation for so many future warfighting capabilities,” Lt. Gen. David
is now undergoing a “top-down, bottom up” review to make Deptula on the
sure the requirements are clear, he said. announcement
Deasy A draft RFP elicited thousands of responses. Criticism has of a space force.
centered around the notion of a single-award contract. “When
“And you can quote
the JEDI RFP is released, I am confident that our requirements will be clear and will
me on that,” he
maximize responses,” Deasy said.
added. So we did.
New Coast Guard Maritime Strategy in the Works
Q Adm. Karl L. Schultz is working alongside his leadership team to develop a new
maritime commerce strategic outlook.
The outlook is part of the service’s effort to be a more “strategy-driven organiza-
tion,” he told National Defense during an interview at Coast Guard headquarters. INNOVATION NATION
The document will examine the service’s role 10 years out as it helps facilitate the
maritime transportation of goods, he said. Q Lockheed Martin has used additive
“How do we facilitate lawful trade and travel? How do we modernize the nation’s manufacturing to create what it says
infrastructure that supports the economic prosperity on the waterways?” is its largest 3D-printed space compo-
The Coast Guard has a regulatory and navigation role when it comes to com- nent. Two 46-inch diameter titanium
merce on the water and “this maritime commerce strategic outlook is going to frame domes that are part of a high-pressure
that,” he said. fuel tank completed quality test-
More from the interview with Schultz on page 22. ing in July. Three-D printing cut the
delivery time down to three months.
Hondo’s Got Your Back Traditionally manufactured domes
Q Hondo Geurts, the Navy’s acquisition chief, is asking his normally take two years to produce.
personnel to take risks. If they don’t, it ends up as a bad mark Additive manufacturing is helping
on their performance review. Program managers must take the company reach its goal of reduc-
on a major initiative each year that has at least a 50 percent ing the time and cost of building a
chance of failing, he said on a YouTube program CXOTalk. spacecraft by 50 percent.
He doesn’t like the term “fail fast,” though. “I like the term Lockheed used an electron beam
Geurts
‘learn fast,’” he said. additive manufacturing process using
“We’re not here to fail, but we are here to learn,” he said. an EBAM 110 machine, a product
Personnel in a risk-adverse culture such as military acquisitions have to know that made by Sciaky Inc., a Chicago-based
their leaders will back them up when these projects do go down in flames, he said. specialist in metal 3D printing. The
His job is to support these managers and “give them the culture, give them the system can print objects from 8
trust, to let them go attack the problem, and to be the pulling guard on the football inches to 19 feet and put together
team.” objects at rates of seven to 25 pounds
per hour.
Contract Award Debriefs Called ‘A Waste of Time’
Q The Section 809 Panel recently released its second volume of recommendations to
streamline the U.S. defense acquisition system. Commissioners told industry leaders
to expect changes to the current process to protest a contract decision.
Panel commissioner and retired Army Lt. Gen. N. Ross Thompson III said at an
NDIA-sponsored event that he “never worried about protests” when he was the com-
mander of the service’s Tank-Automotive and Armaments Command, and rarely had
to deal with them. TACOM’s debriefs after a contract award back in his day were
“fairly thorough,” he said.
“I can tell you, from being five years on the commercial side … the debriefs for
the most part from the contracting organizations are worthless,” he said. “They don’t
tell you a damn thing that’s not already in the source selection criteria or section …
of the RFP. So that’s part of the change.”
— Reporting by Vivienne Machi, Stew Magnuson and Yasmin Tadjdeh

6 N AT I O N A L D E F E N S E • A U G U S T 2 0 1 8
 By the Numbers Hello, Goodbye at Naval Support Activity,
Federal R&D spending by agency, average Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania,
in billions of dollars for fiscal years 2015 to 2017 QMatt Dooley, principal making her the first woman
consultant for robotics and to lead the two organizations.
autonomous systems at John Brig. Gen. Robert A.
DEPARTMENT NATIONAL H. Northrop and Associates Rasch, Jr., the Army’s deputy
OF DEFENSE INSTITUTES Inc., has taken over as the program executive officer,
$66.4 48% OF HEALTH new chair of NDIA’s robotics missiles and space at Red-
division. stone Arsenal, Alabama, has
$30.2 22%
Sierra Nevada Corp. an- moved up to PEO.
nounced that S. Sita Sonty Two subcontractors in
has joined its Wash- the photonics and
ington, D.C., office laser business joined
as vice president of when Excelitas
DEPARTMENT international business. Technologies Corp.
OF ENERGY L3 Technologies of Waltham, Mas-
appointed Stephen F. sachusetts, acquired
$12.3 9% O’Bryan as senior vice Skubic Research Electro-
president and chief Optics. The terms
global business devel- of the deal were not
opment officer. disclosed. Boulder,
NATIONAL Rear Adm. Mi- Colorado-based REO
AERONAUTICS chelle C. Skubic specializes in optical
AND SPACE succeeded Rear Adm. thin-film coatings
ADMINISTRATION Jonathan A. Yuen as Rasch and helium-neon
OTHER
commander, Naval lasers. It is the fifth
$16.0 12% $12.2 9%
Supply Systems Command company acquired by Exceli-
and chief of Supply Corps tas since December.
Source: GAO
For more on federal R&D, see pages 28 to 39

Coming in August

Blasts from the Past Q National Defense will be covering NDIA’s Global Explosive
A look at stories from the pages of National Defense as Ordnance Disposal Symposium and Exhibition Aug. 14-15
NDIA and the magazine approach their 100th anniversary. in Bethesda, Maryland. Michael Cardash, former commander

A
s National Defense in this issue takes a snapshot
of research-and-development priorities in the
year 2018, it is always interesting to look back
at some of the ideas put forth in the past. The Septem-
ber 1985 issue, which was devoted
to land warfare, had an article on
microclimate conditioning.
“To protect tank crewmen against
a hazard more insidious than enemy
action — heat stroke — corporate
and government researchers are
working on liquid-cooled garments
that let each crewman wear his own
‘climate,’” wrote Steven M. Shaker
and Alan R. Wise.
The A/C in a backpack weighed
only 6.5 pounds and was “hardly
DEFENSE DEPT.,LOCKHEED MARTIN, ISTOCK
of Israel’s national bomb squad, will be speaking.
Remember the Army’s annual Science and Technology
Conference? It’s back and promises to be better than ever
Aug. 21-23 at the Walter E. Washington Convention
Center in D.C. Gen. James McConville, vice
chief of staff of the Army, is a keynote speaker.
Women In Defense on Aug. 8 will cel-
ebrate this year’s winners of its HORI-
ZONS scholarships in the Washington,
D.C., office of Holland & Knight LLP.
Another NDIA affiliate, the National
Training and Simulation Association
will host its annual iFest Aug. 27-29
in Alexandria, Virginia.
There is a lot going on in San
Diego this month as NDIA’s Interna-
tional Explosives Safety Symposium

noticeable” under normal protec- and Exhibition gets underway there

tive closing, they wrote.
Why not just air-condition the tank? A fair question.
The system had the advantage of cooling off the soldier
when also being worn outside the vehicle, they noted.
While this idea may seem like a dead end, modern day
bomb squad protective suits do have cooling systems.
Aug. 6-9 and the association’s local chap-
ter puts on the 30th Annual Department of
the Navy Gold Coast Small Business Procure-
ment Event on Aug. 7-8. Emily Harman, director
of the Navy’s office of small business programs is a
featured speaker. ND

AU G U ST 2 0 1 8 • N AT I O N A L D E F E N S E 7
Editor’s Notes BY STEW MAGNUSON
Technical Data Rights: Finding Common Ground
Q The Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies recently invited
reporters to a media roundtable to present two new studies.
One was about the chronic pilot shortage. The other was an
in-depth look at the ongoing controversy over who owns the
technical data rights, or intellectual property, when the military
acquires a technology from a contractor.
The latter subject was as exciting to some people as “watch-
ing the paint dry,” head of the institute, retired Air Force Lt.
Gen. David Deptula, admitted as he kicked off the talk.
But there were free sandwiches, so the reporters listened
politely to the presentation and even asked a few questions
about this arcane topic.
And then in the middle of the roundtable discussion Presi-
dent Donald Trump made a surprise announcement that there
would be a “space force” — separate but equal to the Air Force.
Many of the journalists wolfed down what remained of their
sandwiches and made a beeline for their offices where most —
including this one — shoved the matter of technical data rights
into the farthest recesses of their minds as they wrote about
the implications of a potential new armed service.
But the report, “Data Requirements and Rights: Time for a
Reassessment,” written by retired Air Force Col. Herbert C.
Kemp, retired Air Force Maj. Gen. Lawrence Stutzriem and
institute Senior Fellow Heather Penney, deserves a closer look.
Drying paint is trivial unless one paints houses for a living.
Then it’s very important. And so is the controversy facing the
Pentagon and the defense industry, which are at odds over how
much of a company’s technical data should be shared with
defense programs.
The Defense Department wants this data so it can afford-
ably sustain a weapon system for years to come without the
company that created it having a monopoly on repairs and
upgrades.
“The Air Force is acting rationally, as is Congress, in pushing
the Air Force to reduce sustainment costs from a lifecycle per-
spective,” said Stutzriem.
On the other hand, intellectual property is a company’s
“crown jewels,” and signing it away is abhorrent to them.
That is particularly true of the innovative technology com-
panies outside the defense realm that the Air Force and other
services are attempting to woo. They are simply not going to
give their IP away to the government, Stutzriem added.
One of the problems Penney pointed out is that the acqui-
sition system was created in the industrial age and military
technology is transitioning to the digital age. The system has
not adapted.
The government already receives operations, maintenance,
installation and training data out of the box, she said. Software
is not technical data and doesn’t fall in these categories. “But
what appropriately belongs in that category is becoming fairly
contentious,” she said.
For nontraditional contractors — which the Defense Depart-
ment has been bending over backwards to attract — any
demand for IP is likely to scare them away, Penney said.
8 N AT I O N A L D E F E N S E • A U G U S T 2 0 1 8
“Because commercial content is privately funded, it compli-
cates the data rights available to the government,” she said. As
the government looks for more liberal licensing rights, it might
goad the commercial companies to exit the marketplace. Or
it could make the commercial content more expensive, she
added.
Highly innovative firms, the ones the Air Force is seeking
“are simply not going to put their IP at risk,” Kemp said. Many
of them don’t need the government to be successful, he added.
Meanwhile, “there is no real process to define what techni-
cal data requirements are in major acquisition programs.” The
study looked at several Air Force programs and found many
inconsistencies. “It’s a matter of different styles between the
program offices,” Penney said.
Kemp added: “It is not clear to us that the Air Force acquisi-
tion establishment really understands the valuation of intel-
lectual property, [and] the role of profit in attracting capital to
continue to innovate.”
The report had several recommendations. One is to stand
up a cadre of acquisition officials who specialize in data rights.
Most officials in the field on the government side have no
experience working in
“Both sides must engage industry. Yet piling on
more training to an
in ‘continuous and col- already stressed acqui-
sition workforce may
laborative’ dialogue from be counterproductive,
the report said. That’s
the outset of a contract why it’s important to
to reduce the antagonism hand-select and train
specialists.
now found between the Stutzriem said they
must understand how
Air Force and industry.” to translate the need
for data rights into
contract language. And there needs to be a better understand-
ing of how to define these requirements, he said. There is no
lack of guidance in the federal regulations. “Is it being enforced
is the question,” he added.
Creating this new cadre of experts “won’t happen over-
night,” he concluded.
Another recommendation is to develop a series of data
rights templates that flexibly adapt to program needs.
Both sides must engage in “continuous and collaborative”
dialogue from the outset of a contract to reduce the antago-
nism now found between the Air Force and industry, Penney
said. “Through dialogue ... it can be more collaborative, tailored
and customized to each program,” she added.
While the report examined Air Force programs, the authors
said it is an issue across the services as they are all under more
pressure to reduce costs.
“We do believe it is possible to come to a win-win, under-
standing what are the mechanisms that incentivize and reward
industry for their innovations,” Penney said. ND
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Algorithmic Warfare BY YASMIN TADJDEH
Google Versus The Pentagon: The Fallout
Q Current and former Pentagon officials are worried that
Google’s withdrawal from Project Maven — one of the
Defense Department’s most high-profile artificial intelligence
efforts — could have disastrous effects.
The goal of Maven is to develop AI systems that can analyze
reams of full-motion video data collected by drones and tip off
human analysts when objects of interest pop up.
Over the past several months, the program — which includ-
ed partnerships with Silicon Valley companies — has been met
with vocal opposition from some in the commercial sector,
particularly from Google employees.
In April, more than 3,000 Google workers signed a letter
stating that the company “should not be in the business of
war” and should sever ties with Project Maven.
In May, Google Cloud CEO Diane Greene announced inter-
nally that the company would not seek another contract asso-
ciated with the effort, news reports said.
That move, however, creates an “enormous moral hazard” for
the company, said Robert O. Work, former deputy secretary of
defense, during a panel discussion at a recent conference.
“They say, ‘Look, this data could potentially down the line at
some point cause harm to human life,’” he said. “But it might
save 500 Americans, or 500 allies or 500 innocent civilians
from being attacked. So I really believe that Google employees
are creating a moral hazard for themselves.”
When Project Maven was stood up, it was meant to be a
pathfinder to demonstrate how the Defense Department
could better use artificial intelligence and machine
learning, he said.
“We picked what we considered to be the absolute
least objectionable thing, and that is using computer
vision and teaching AI to look for things on video,”
he said.
Using a sensor called Gorgon Stare, a drone can fly
over a city and collect massive amounts of video, he noted.
However, even with three seven-person teams working con-
stantly, the Pentagon was only able to analyze 15 percent of
the data. “The other 85 percent of the tape was on the floor,”
he said.
Artificial intelligence programs, however, could prompt ana-
lysts when objects of interest appear, he noted.
Work did not downplay the possibility that it could result in
a military strike. “I fully agree that it might end up with us tak-
ing a shot,” he said. “But it can easily save lives.”
Work also noted that Google has an AI center based in
China, which is cause for alarm.
“In China, they have a concept called military-civil fusion.
Anything that’s going on in that AI center ... is going to the
Chinese government and then will ultimately wind up in
the hands of the Chinese military,” he said. “I didn’t see any
Google employees saying, ‘Hmm, maybe we shouldn’t do
that.’”
Google did not respond to requests for comment.
Josh Marcuse, the executive director of the Defense Innova-
10 N AT I O N A L D E F E N S E • A U G U S T 2 0 1 8
tion Board, said the Pentagon needs to have partnerships and
dialogue with those that work in Silicon Valley as it develops
powerful new technologies such as artificial intelligence that
call up ethical concerns.
“Engineers who work at these companies who are taking
issue with our approach should be active participants in mak-
ing sure that ethics and safety is at the forefront of what we
do, as it has been with every other weapon system,” he said.
“We applied international humanitarian law on undersea war-
fare. We applied it to war in the air. And we will apply it to
cyberspace and to AI.”
The Pentagon needs to have knowledgeable partners who
the department can consult with on the technology, he added.
“We want to be safe practitioners of these tools,” he said. “That
requires working with us.”
Navy Capt. Sean Heritage, acting managing partner at the
Defense Innovation Unit – Experimental, said during the panel
discussion that instances of Silicon Valley companies balking at
working with the Defense Department have been few and far
between.
“The things that we are reading about in the press are really
small in number when you talk about the number of patriots
out there who are willing to help solve our problem,” he said.
DIUx is the brain child of former Secretary of Defense
Ash Carter and was established to cut through the Pentagon’s
bureaucratic red tape and make it easier for firms in Silicon
Valley and other tech hubs to do business with the
Defense Department.
Too much attention is being paid to these refusals
to cooperate, Heritage said. The Pentagon has come
a long way in establishing relationships with compa-
nies in the region, he added.
Air Force Gen. James “Mike” Holmes, com-
mander of Air Combat Command, said Project Maven
has already provided operators with new tools that have
streamlined processes and reduced workloads.
“We are seeing some payoff,” he noted during a breakfast
meeting with defense reporters in Washington, D.C.
But Holmes said he was worried that Silicon Valley compa-
nies could pull out of the burgeoning program.
“Am I concerned? Yes,” he said. “But look, this is part of
being an American. … Americans have expectations about
what their government does and whether the government uses
technology and tools to infringe upon their rights or not.”
For the military to compete and deter peer competitors, it
needs to tap into investments being made in the commercial
sector, he said. The Pentagon, along with Silicon Valley, will
have to work through their respective comfort levels when
it comes to developing new technologies and how they are
applied to the battlefield, he added.
“We’ll work to make sure that we use them for good in
accordance with our Constitution and what it requires us to
do,” he said. “What I would like to do is be able to convince
ISTOCK
people that we’re all in the business of avoiding major war.” ND
 Policy Points BY CHRISTOPHER SMITH
Reforms Deliver Wins for Small Businesses
Q By some metrics, 2017 was a banner year for small business
federal contractors. In May 2018, the Small Business Admin-
istration announced that, for the first time, the federal govern-
ment exceeded $100 billion in prime contract awards to small
businesses in fiscal year 2017.
Despite reaching this milestone, small business federal con-
tracting still has room for improvement. For example, the SBA’s
data also show that the percentage of total federal contracting
dollars earned by small businesses declined for the second year
in a row, falling to 23.8 percent from a historic high of 25.7 per-
cent for fiscal year 2015.
Given these mixed results, is there a case for near-term opti-
mism for the small business contracting community? Recent
changes to federal caps on the use of micro-purchasing and
simplified acquisition methods hold the promise of more agile
acquisition, benefitting small businesses.
Indicative of the big changes forthcoming is a June 2018
White House Office of Management and Budget memo stream-
lining small business contractors’ access to federal contracting
opportunities. Memo-18-18, “Implementing Statutory Changes
to the Micro-Purchase and the Simplified Acquisition Thresh-
olds for Financial Assistance,” takes steps to accelerate imple-
mentation of increases in the thresholds for micro-purchases
and of simplified acquisitions, which Congress mandated in the
2017 and 2018 National Defense Authorization Acts.
Conducted mostly using government purchase cards, micro-
purchases occupy the lowest-cost, but most commercially open
end of the spectrum of federal acquisitions.
Acquisitions that fall under the simplified acquisition thresh-
old yet exceed the micro-purchase threshold are eligible for
streamlined, but still competitive bidding-based contracting pro-
cedures. Although the memo did not apply to Defense Depart-
ment contracts, its raising of the micro-purchase threshold and
simplified acquisition threshold — to $10,000 and $250,000,
respectively — for nonprofit research federal grant recipients sig-
nals similar government-wide increases expected later this year.
The department also has taken steps to streamline small-
dollar procurements. It implemented its own smaller micro-
purchase threshold increase in 2017. It followed up in April
by raising the contract value trigger at which contractors are
required to provide cost and pricing data for certification, from
$750,000 to $2 million. This change will give contracting offi-
cers the discretion to grant awards without having to verify a
proposal’s pricing justification.
At the same time, the Defense Department raised the simpli-
fied acquisition threshold for defense contracts to $250,000.
Following the same pattern, a proposed Defense Acquisition
Regulation System rule would grant contracting officers emer-
gency procurement authority with enhanced thresholds to
acquire products or services to aid in response to a cyberattack.
These acquisition reforms will likely benefit small business
contractors. The most direct impact will come from the increase
of the simplified acquisition threshold.
Across all federal agencies, the government reserves procure-
ments that fall between the micro-purchase threshold and the
simplified acquisition threshold for small business contractors;
with the simplified threshold authorized to rise by 150 percent,
small businesses will have more and better opportunities to win
contracts of greater value.
The Federal Procurement Data System indicates, for fis-
cal year 2017, $434.3 million in contracts valued between
$100,000 and $250,000 were awarded to firms other than small
businesses. Under the higher simplified threshold, it’s likely
most of those dollars will go to small businesses. The increased
micro-purchase threshold will also likely boost small business
contracting opportunities.
Although small businesses do not have a preferred status for
micro-purchases, these transactions allow anyone with a govern-
ment purchase card significant sourcing discretion, and they do
not have to follow typical competitive bidding procedures. In
fact, OMB in 2011 instructed senior acquisition and financial
officers to increase their use of micro-purchase authority to
acquire goods and services from small businesses.
The combined impact of these procurement changes benefits
more than just the small business contracting community. For the
last few years, “agility” has been the key buzzword in acquisition
“The combined impact of these procure-
ment changes benefits more than just the
small business contracting community.”
reform circles, articulating reformers’ preeminent goal of achiev-
ing an acquisition system that combines speed with responsive-
ness to dynamic strategic and technological environments.
By reducing contracting red tape and expanding contracting
officers’ discretion over vendor selection, these reforms improve
the agility of the acquisition system, which should deliver better
capabilities and materiel to warfighters more rapidly. Greater agil-
ity comes not simply from facilitating easier procurement from
open market commercial platforms or making it easier for con-
tracting officers to give contracts to small innovative tech firms.
Rather, as the Coalition for Government Procurement argues,
increases in the two thresholds also allow for greater use of
traditional agile contract vehicles, such as multiple-award, indefi-
nite delivery, indefinite quantity contracts that pre-clear rosters
of products, services and providers for price competitiveness and
compliance with other statutory requirements. Thus, increases
in small-dollar procurement opportunities help link acquisition
agility to acquisition quality.
Through the threshold reforms, the federal government takes
a major step toward an acquisition system that both gives small
businesses access to big opportunities and harnesses small busi-
ness’ innovation. ND
Christopher Smith is a regulatory research associate at NDIA’s
policy division. He can be reached at csmith@ndia.org.
AU G U ST 2 0 1 8 • N AT I O N A L D E F E N S E 11
BUDGET
MATTERS
BY JON HARPER
Fate of JSTARS Recap Hangs in the Balance
Q The future of the Air Force effort to replace its legacy E-8C
joint surveillance target attack radar system aircraft with new
capabilities is cloudy as lawmakers differ on next steps.
The service had planned to buy 17 new planes for the
JSTARS recapitalization at an estimated cost of $6.9 billion.
Northrop Grumman, Boeing and Lockheed Martin were pur-
suing the contract award.
However, in its fiscal year 2019 budget request the Air
Force called for scrapping the recap and instead developing an
“advanced battle management system,” or ABMS, that officials
believe would be more effective and survivable in warfare
against advanced adversaries.
“JSTARS is going to have a hard time being able to get close
[to the fight] and stay close enough to be effective,” Gen.
James “Mike” Holmes, commander of Air Combat Command,
said during a recent meeting with reporters in Washington,
D.C.
“We think we can spend that [modernization] money more
wisely by getting to an ability to find ground targets all over
the world all the time, by linking the things that we have
together and by acquiring new things that we would link
together,” he added.
Some lawmakers have signaled support for the Air Force’s
new vision. The Senate version of the 2019 National Defense
Authorization Act gave the green light to end the JSTARS
recap, while the Senate appropriations committee added $375
million in its bill for drones and other technologies to hasten
the ABMS effort.
However, the House version of the NDAA would compel
the Air Force to move forward with the recap and award a
contract for engineering and manufacturing development.
“The legitimate concern [among some members of Con-
gress] is that the [JSTARS] mission is going to get abandoned
or shortchanged,” said Todd Harrison, director of the aerospace
security project at the Center for Strategic and International
Studies.
12 N AT I O N A L D E F E N S E • A U G U S T 2 0 1 8
E-8C JSTARS aircraft
Holmes said there is widespread support on Capitol Hill for
the ABMS concept.
“All the committees understand the need for moving to
an advanced battle management system,” he said. “If there’s
disagreement between the committees it’s about whether we
can move straight to that and hold onto our legacy JSTARS
as a way to bridge until we get there, or do we need to do one
more recap.”
The House and Senate must hammer out compromise ver-
sions of the NDAA and defense appropriations bills before
they can be signed into law.
Harrison said the JSTARS recapitalization program may
survive for now but probably not in the long run. However,
the Air Force must make a strong case that it can perform the
mission using different platforms and sensors, he noted. “When
you’ve got a credible alternative then I think you can convince
Congress to move away from the recap.”
Lt. Gen. Arnold Bunch, military deputy to the assistant sec-
retary of the Air Force for acquisition, technology and logistics,
said the service is continuing its dialogue with congressional
staffs, and answering questions and providing information as
it’s requested.
The Air Force likely won’t have enough money to move
forward with both the JSTARS recap and an advanced battle
management system architecture in the coming years, Harrison
said. Other top priorities such as the F-35 joint strike fighter,
B-21 bomber, KC-46 tanker, Air Force One replacement and
T-X trainer will come with high price tags, he noted. “Trying
to cram more into that acquisition pipeline I think is a losing
proposition.”
While the Air Force is opposed to the recap, Bunch said the
service will be ready if Congress decides to move forward with
it.
“We are continuing the source selection,” he told reporters
AIR FORCE
during a recent meeting at the Pentagon. “We’re on track to
award … as soon as possible” if told to do so, he added. ND
 Elections Could Derail
Plans for Low-Yield Nukes
Q The Trump administration’s push to equip Navy sub-
marines with low-yield nuclear weapons is on track, but it
could be imperiled if Democrats take control of Congress
after the November elections, analysts said.
The 2018 nuclear posture review called for acquiring
low-yield, submarine-launched ballistic missile warheads
in the “near term” to deter countries like Russia from using
their low-yield arsenals against the United States or its
allies. The weapons would be obtained by modifying exist-
ing warheads rather than building brand new ones.
Democratic lawmakers have made several failed at-
tempts to prevent the project from moving forward in a
Republican-controlled Congress.
“We don’t need to build any … low-yield weapons that
dangerously increase the likelihood that they’ll be used,”
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said in a statement after
the Senate appropriations committee passed an energy
and water bill that would allocate $65 million for the ef-
fort in fiscal year 2019.
The House and Senate versions of the fiscal year 2019
National Defense Authorization Act approved $65 million
for the project.
The two chambers will have to negotiate and then pass
compromise bills — and President Donald Trump will
have to sign them — before the funding is allocated.
Feinstein said the warhead modification would take two
years to complete if fully funded.
Kingston Reif, director of disarmament and threat
reduction policy at the Arms Control Association, said the
effort is “not that technically complicated” compared to a
major life-extension program or
delivery system recapitalization.
“It’s something that [the National
Nuclear Security Administra-
tion] can do relatively easily and
quickly.”
Reif estimated that creating the
new weapon would cost upwards of $100 million, a rela-
tively small amount in the context of the United States’
nuclear force investment plans, which have an estimated
price tag of about $1.2 trillion over the next 30 years.
“I don’t think the cost will be the big impediment,” said
Bryan Clark, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and
Budgetary Assessments. “The concern I think is mainly a
policy one of what’s the value of a low-yield warhead on
a ballistic missile. … That might be the thing that kills it
rather than the money.”
The fate of the project could hinge on the outcome of
the 2018 midterms, Reif and Clark said.
“If one or both chambers [of Congress] flip in Novem-
ber we can expect a battle royale whether to continue to
fund” the program, Reif said.
Clark said: “If the Democrats take the House or Senate
NAVY, MARINES
then these efforts will slow or stop because they’re not go-
ing to have as much impetus under a Democratic regime.”
ND
Spending on Unmanned
Systems Set to Grow
Q Spending on unmanned systems across all domains of war-
fare is expected to receive a major bump in the next fiscal year,
a new report found.
The 2018 national defense strategy highlighted autonomy
and robotics as top acquisition priorities for the Pentagon.
“Unmanned systems and robotics are key technology areas
that enable the U.S. to counter the range of evolving threats
posed on the modern battlefield,” research analyst David Klein
said in a recent report released by the Association for Un-
manned Vehicle Systems International.
The Defense Department funding request for unclassified
programs related to these technologies increased 28 percent
in 2019 to $9.6 billion, Klein said in the study, “Unmanned
Systems and Robotics in the FY 2019 Defense Budget.”
That amount includes $4.9 billion for research, develop-
ment, test and evaluation projects, and $4.7 billion for procure-
ment. The budget blueprint calls for spending almost $7 billion
in 2019 on unmanned aircraft, $1.3 billion on unmanned
maritime vehicles and $700 million on ground robots.
Nearly $2.5 billion would go toward sensors and payloads;
more than $2 billion for platform development; nearly $2 bil-
lion for navigation and control technologies; and more than $1
billion for autonomy capabilities.
“Each service shows growth from FY 2018 to FY 2019, with
the Navy experiencing the largest increase at over $1 billion,”
the report said.
The Navy would invest nearly $4 billion, the Air Force
nearly $2.5 billion and the Army more than $2 billion in un-
manned technology. Other Defense Department components
would spend more than $1 billion, according to the study.
Earlier this year the Navy released a new strategic roadmap
for unmanned and autonomous systems.
Integration of unmanned and autonomous capabilities offers
many advantages such as: reducing risk to personnel; greater
endurance and range; improved speed and accuracy of data
processing; and supporting faster decision-making, the docu-
ment noted.
“Unmanned and autonomous technologies will become
a powerful and ubiquitous force multiplier in an integrated
human-machine team,” it added.
The other services have also developed blueprints for utiliz-
ing manned-unmanned teaming.
The Senate version of the 2019 National Defense Authoriza-
tion Act would authorize about $225 million more than the
Pentagon requested for spending on unmanned capabilities.
However, the House version of the legislation calls for approxi-
mately a $263 million cut, according to data from the study.
As of press time, House and Senate lawmakers have gone
into conference to negotiate a compromise NDAA. Congress
has yet to reach agreement on a final defense appropriations
bill to fund the programs. ND
AU G U ST 2 0 1 8 • N AT I O N A L D E F E N S E 13
NEWS
BRIEFS
BY VIVIENNE MACHI
AND SONJA JORDAN
Australia Boosts Maritime System Procurement
Q Australia is investing heavily in new unmanned aerial vehicles
and submarine hunters as competition from China heats up,
said one analyst.
Beijing’s naval modernization and expansion is of growing
concern to Australia and its partners in the region, said Dan
Darling, an Asia-Pacific military markets expert at Forecast
International, a Newtown, Connecticut-based marketing and
consulting firm.
“Seeing the increase in China’s naval bandwidth [as well as]
the growing congestion of submarines in the region in general —
that is setting off alarm bells for defense planners,” he said.
In late June, Australia announced its decision to award a
contract worth over $25 billion to BAE Systems to deliver nine
future frigates to the Royal Australian Navy. The award is part
of the country’s Project SEA 5000 program to modernize the
country’s maritime platforms, Darling said.
The future Hunter-class ship — also called the global combat
ship-Australia — will replace the aging Anzac-class frigates. It
is based on BAE Systems’ Type 26 frigate, which is currently
being constructed for the British Royal Navy. It will be built by
the government-owned ASC Shipbuilding in South Australia,
and is expected to create and sustain 5,000 skilled jobs for the
country’s workforce, according to the company. Italy’s Fincant-
ieri and Spain’s Navantia SA ship manufacturers also submitted
bids for the contract.
The initial design of the ship is expected to be determined by
the end of 2018, while production is slated to start in 2020. Ini-
tial operating capability is expected for 2023 or 2024, according
to the Australian government.
The country has made an effort over the past decade to
bolster its own domestic defense industry, in particular for ship-
building, Darling noted.
14 N AT I O N A L D E F E N S E • A U G U S T 2 0 1 8
MQ-4C Triton
“It is one area where they have tried to … avoid these gaps
in work orders,” he said. “They want to avoid their shipbuilding
‘Valleys of Death.’”
Australia also recently announced its plans to procure
Northrop Grumman’s MQ-4C Triton unmanned aerial vehicle,
to be operated by the Royal Australian Air Force.
The system can fly at altitudes of 55,000 feet for 24 hours
straight, according to Northrop. That capability, along with
an array of high-resolution imagery and near real-time video
sensors, can assist Australia in detecting, classifying and tracking
seagoing vessels across a vast area, said Doug Shaffer, company
vice president of Triton programs.
“As a flexible platform, Triton can serve in missions as varied
as maritime domain awareness, target acquisition, fisheries
protection, oil field monitoring and humanitarian relief,” he said
in a press release.
Darling said that the country’s drone acquisition fits into a
larger effort to modernize its maritime surveillance capabilities.
The system will work in tandem with Australia’s forthcoming
fleet of P-8A Poseidon multi-mission aircraft as a joint family
of systems to replace the AP-3C Orion maritime patrol aircraft
that have been in service since the 1960s.
“Having enough capacity to cover a wide territorial region is
crucial for Australia,” he said.
The future frigate procurement and Triton acquisition will
also allow for increased interoperability with allies in the region,
Darling noted. The U.S. Navy recently purchased two opera-
tional MQ-4C systems and is under contract for an additional
NORTHROP GRUMMAN
six, according to Northrop Grumman.
Additionally, the new frigates will be outfitted with Lockheed
Martin’s Aegis combat management system, which is already
used aboard Japanese, U.S. and South Korean vessels. - VM
 BISim Awarded
Contract for New Flight
Simulation Equipment
Q The Navy recently selected Bohemia Interactive
Simulations to develop new air crew technology that
leverages virtual and augmented reality to provide
shorter and more cost-effective pilot training, said one
company official.
The Orlando, Florida-based global software firm,
also known as BISim, will be developing both aug-
mented reality head-mounted displays and virtual
reality part-task trainers, or VR-PTTs, said John Bur-
well, vice president of business development. Part-task
trainers allow students to focus on specific tasks or
skills.
The systems aim to train pilots to fly the service’s
fleet of McDonnell Douglas T-45 trainer aircraft. Mc-
Donnell Douglas merged with Boeing in the 1990s.
The contract is worth $500,000, Burwell said.
While using the systems, an operator will reach to
push a switch or press a computer-simulated button.
BISim is developing software to “trick” the user into
believing they have completed a physical action while
in augmented reality, Burwell said.
“When you reach out in the proper way and your
fingers get to the proper positions to where they
should be to touch these virtual surfaces, we make
them change color and we play an audible click,” he
said. “It kind of fools your head into thinking you’re
touching something when you’re not.”
With virtual
reality, users are im-
mersed entirely in
a simulated world
with no interac-
tion from outside
sources. Augment-
ed reality combines
both real-world
experience with
virtual models.
Aiding in the
BISim’s AC-130 simulation development of
virtual reality part-
task trainers is SASimulation’s FLEX-air, which will
provide data about aerodynamic properties and affect
how the simulator will move.
BISim anticipates for the VR-PTTs to be finished
in four to six months, and expects the head-mounted
displays to be completed in the first quarter of 2019.
The Navy and other U.S. military branches have
been building flight simulators for over 40 years, Bur-
well said. While they have become more realistic, they
have also become expensive.
If the BISim technology proves successful, “this
BISIM, ARMY
could lower the cost of these training devices by two
orders of magnitude,” Burwell said. - SJ
Industry, Academia Working
To ‘Humanize’ Exoskeletons
Q New research from scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology and Draper, a Cambridge, Massachusetts-based ad-
vanced technology company, seeks to understand how to develop
more functional exoskeletons.
Despite the wide-ranging potential for a wearable system that of-
fers the user increased strength, agility or endurance, the technology
may not be developing as quickly as many hoped because human in-
teraction is not being taken into account, said Kevin Duda, principal
engineer and group lead for human systems integration at Draper.
Together with Leia Stirling, an assistant professor and co-director
of the MIT Man Vehicle Laboratory, the company has been work-
ing to address human system integration challenges to building a
functional system, he said. While current prototypes are designed to
help the user climb stairs, increase strength and regain function, the
automation necessary for the system to work can create added issues
for the wearer.
“Imagine you’re wearing this exoskeleton and the control theory
is slightly off or it’s doing something that you don’t quite expect.
You may sit there for a while and think, ‘Why is it doing what it’s
doing?’” Duda said. That could increase the user’s workload, causing
distractions and reducing situational awareness, he added.
“If the system is not ‘invisible’ to you, it’s going to be taking some
resources, you’re going to be paying attention to it at some level,” he
noted.
Through its research, Draper is collaborating with the Army
science and technology community to make systems more “human-
ized” and field them as soon as possible, he said. Exoskeletons can
help reduce and prevent musculoskeletal injuries for warfighters and
other personnel, he noted.
“If there is anything that we can do using an exoskeleton to elimi-
nate or reduce the occurrence of these … injuries, it has both a near-
and long-term payoff — getting the soldiers … back to duty quicker,
but also making sure that they are healthy and that they remain
healthy after they leave the service,” he said.
Following this research, Draper could help the Army develop a
test bed that more closely mimics real-world applications, Duda said.
“We all know the difference between walking on a treadmill and
walking on rough terrain,” he noted. “It all comes down at the end of
the day [to] what is the operational impact.” - VM
AU G U ST 2 0 1 8 • N AT I O N A L D E F E N S E 15
News Briefs
Company to Develop
Prototype to Counter
Shoulder-Fired Missiles
Q Photo-Sonics Inc., a Chatsworth, California-based tech-
nology company, was recently awarded a rapid prototyping
contract which will help pilots defend against threats such
as shoulder-fired missiles, which can take down helicopters
and fixed-wing aircraft.
The $15.2 million contract is funded by the Army
through the Training and Readiness Accelerator, a public-
private partnership managed by the National Security
Technology Accelerator, or NSTXL, to expedite the dem-
onstration and delivery of prototypes to the military.
The development of the technology against shoulder-
fired missiles is a two-stage program. The first stage
involves data gathering, while the second stage will involve
a separate contract, said Tim Greeff, NSTXL’s founder and
CEO.
The necessity of the program stems from the rapid
advancement of missiles and rocket-propelled grenades,
which has made it more difficult to develop countermea-
sures that can be attached to helicopters and fixed-wing
aircraft, said Greeff. There is also a lack of data on how the
weapons move, he added.
“What this system is actually going to do is allow the
military to collect a very rich data set on exactly how these
missiles are flying,” Greeff said. Once the data is collected,
it will be used to develop countermeasure systems used on
the aircraft, he noted.
The Army is utilizing other transaction authorities — a
contracting vehicle — to speed up the acquisition process,
according to a press release.
“This particular project with Photo-Sonics is a great
example of how OTAs are being used and implemented
to ensure that end-use systems are going to be as effective
as possible based on the intelligence, the best data and the
best research we can offer,” Greeff said.
The path to contract award was competitive, but short,
said Philip Kiel, Photo-Sonics’ president.
The company will develop “small and portable” ground
units, weighing about 2,000 pounds. The optical tracking
systems measure and track the position of the projectiles,
he added.
Photo-Sonics will spend two years developing the
optical tracking systems, with six months consisting of de-
velopment, 12 months focusing on manufacturing, and the
final six months working on testing. By the end of the two-
year span, the company predicts an operational prototype
will be finished and ready for use by the government, Kiel
said. - SJ
16 N AT I O N A L D E F E N S E • A U G U S T 2 0 1 8
IARPA-Funded Initiatives
Could Thwart Biothreats
Q The Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity has
enlisted Ginkgo Bioworks — a Boston-based synthetic DNA
company — in several initiatives meant to get ahead of poten-
tial biological threats such as infectious disease outbreaks or
even bioterrorism.
The agency recently awarded Ginkgo a prime contract for
the finding engineered linked indicators, or FELIX program.
The company will partner with Northrop Grumman to devel-
op a tool that can help scientists better detect whether certain
DNA sequences have been engineered, said Zach Smith, direc-
tor of the government business unit at Ginkgo.
The tool would ideally be able to identify whether the
most recent flu vaccine was less effective “because developers
guessed a little wrong, or if it was engineered to mutate ever so
slightly … where it was not the correct one anymore,” Smith
said.
“Right now, there isn’t the capability to say, ‘Is this biologi-
cal sample wild or engineered?’ So that is a pretty significant
capability gap,” he added.
The 42-month program, which began in late June, will seek
to leverage Ginkgo Bioworks’ experience developing a large
database of engineered DNA sequences, and Northrop Grum-
man’s deep learning technologies to create a tool that can
analyze a sample on site using standard hardware already used
in hospitals and forward-deployed laboratories, Smith noted.
Ginkgo is also a participant in
IARPA’s functional genomic and com-
putational assessment of threats, or
Fun GCAT program. Together with a
team that includes Twist Bioscience, a
synthetic DNA supplier, One Codex, a
bioinformatics platform company, and
Battelle, the company is developing al-
gorithmic approaches to screen DNA
sequences that could help predict
the function of unknown sequences
and assign a threat level based on the
potential for harm, Smith said.
“Right now, when we go to order synthetic DNA, it gets
blasted against a static threat list,” he said. “But that doesn’t
necessarily encompass the entire threat space or the future
threat space.”
Developers could also order strands from different providers
and then assemble them and make something more threaten-
ing, he added.
“Our tool that we’re developing will be able to look for those
kinds of specific instances in a piece of DNA and say, ‘Hey, flag
this, this could potentially be a threat here even if it isn’t on
that static list,’” he said.
The Fun GCAT program launched in August 2017, and the
team recently passed its first milestone in the four-year effort,
Smith said.
Both IARPA initiatives are efforts to help mitigate the po-
tential threats posed by biotechnology, Smith said. “People are
going to be doing work [in this field], and you need to under-
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stand what’s going on in the environment around you.” - VM
 Viewpoint BY JAMES MARCEAU

Performance-Based Logistics
Contracting: Does it Work?
Q Since its introduction to government is turning opportunity into tangible, crete stove-piped performance, modi-
contracting some 20 years ago, perfor- improved financial results. fication and modernization efforts as
mance-based logistics (PBL) contracting Why don’t PBL programs always directed by customers, to a focus on
has often delivered the intended result deliver the anticipated margin improve- product and process improvements that
— to improve warfighter readiness ments? are self-generated and that will reduce
through better weapon system availabil- Making the transition from a “spares demand, increase time-on-platform,
ity and reliability, at lower cost. and repairs” business to a “reliability, decrease response time, and mitigate
The intent is to shift responsibility availability, maintainability and support- “diminishing manufacturing sources and
for outcomes to suppliers while also ability” enterprise requires a cultural material shortages” and obsolescence
lowering overall lifecycle costs. From overhaul. The focus changes from dis- risk. Yet the supplier’s operating model,
the Defense Department perspective
performance-based logistics contracts
can work, and there is a renewed push
to use them. The question then is how
is this working out for suppliers since
the shift of responsibility also gives them
much more of the risk-share?
Supplier incentives have been
reversed from “the more spares and
repairs I can sell, the more profit I can
make” to “the less I use, the more profit
I can make.” In concept, this is exactly
what the department has been trying to
achieve more broadly in its relationship
with industry — to drive innovation
and provide better solutions at lower
cost. To help sell the benefit, the graphic
from the Defense Acquisition University
demonstrates the potential increase for
supplier profit from using performance-
based contracts.
The idea is that instead of selling, for
example, a weapon system and then sell-
ing replacement parts, repairs and main-
tenance, a supplier signs up to deliver
the reliability and availability of a system
at certain agreed-to levels. This shifts
the supplier/customer relationship to a
focus on outcomes versus transactions.
The incentive for suppliers is that
it encourages long-term planning and
investment in improvement with a busi-
ness model that can provide higher mar-
gins to reward improvements such as:
better inventory management, including
the opportunity to reduce stock; better
resource planning through opportuni-
ties to reduce labor costs; and fewer but
higher-priced long-term contracts via
opportunities to reduce overhead costs.
The key word here obviously is oppor-
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tunity. The supplier’s challenge, and risk,

AU G U ST 2 0 1 8 • N AT I O N A L D E F E N S E 17
 TRADITIONAL VS. PERFORMANCE-BASED CONTRACT
INV
RE ESTM
C E
PE OVER NT
RIO Y
Investment
to improve
reliability
or service
COST
Traditional Industry Price
Traditional Industry Cost
SOURCE: DEFENSE ACQUISITION UNIVERSITY
infrastructure, culture and supply chain
all have evolved to support transac-
tional, activity-based, or cost-plus pric-
ing and execution. Given this historical
approach, we find most suppliers suffer
from several challenges.
One of them is business planning.
That includes a lack of a sound contract-
ing strategy, approach and decision-mak-
ing process: when does it make sense,
how to set it up/execute, who to partner
with and who owns what, and so on.
Another problem is customer agree-
ments. An example is not partnering
with the customer early to ensure a
well-constructed product support agree-
ment with clear outcomes, measures
and governance — including clear agree-
ment on customer responsibilities and
the implications of the customer not
meeting their obligations
Some lack a sound business analysis.
They fail to employ a robust predictive
system with rigorous forecasting and
long-term planning tools to understand
and mitigate risk, ensure it is priced and
managed appropriately, and adequately
assess the cost of service requirements
and the impact of changes.
Driving sustainable change is another
issue. There will be resistance and barri-
ers to investments in improving product
reliability, infrastructure, information-
technology systems and data manage-
ment, both internal and customer-facing.
18 N AT I O N A L D E F E N S E • A U G U S T 2 0 1 8
D government
PBL investment
starts to pay back
TERM
PBL Industry Price
PBL Industry Cost
Contract duration incentivizes investment in reliability and service
And then there may be a lack of
continuous improvement process and
culture.
That includes standard and repeatable
processes to innovate, drive cost out,
compress the supply chain, optimize the
repair planning and execution process,
and manage the outcomes.
Further complicating matters, despite
the success of — and the Pentagon’s
push for more — PBL contracted pro-
grams, most aerospace and defense
contracts are still transactional in nature,
so suppliers are primarily incentivized
to conduct business as usual. It’s dif-
ficult to drive and sustain the necessary
organizational changes to make them
successful when these programs remain
a small portion of the overall business.
So, can individual PBL contracted
programs be successful within larger
organizations that are set up to transact?
The answer is not only yes, but they
better be. The following objectives of
PBL contracts should be shared by any
defense supplier looking to increase its
competitiveness in the market: increased
material availability; decreased logistics
response times; decreased repair turn-
around-times; and major reduction of
awaiting-parts problems.
Further, there should be: a major
reduction in backorders; a reduced
logistics footprint; improved reliability;
reduced diminishing manufacturing
Total cost for
is lower
Provider’s
profits are
higher (area
between the
lines is bigger
with PBL)
Industry Profit
sources and reduced material shortages
and obsolescence issues; and decreased
operating and support costs.
Relentlessly adding value to custom-
ers through enhanced experiences and
outcomes is critical for any company,
regardless of contract type, supported by
a culture of continuous improvement.
The key is to understand how to focus
differently to match the demands and
incentives of different contract types.
Two key elements, regardless of con-
tract type but especially valuable on
performance-based logistics are: strategic
analysis and planning, a predictive capa-
bility to improve forecasting and long-
term planning across the portfolio, and
operational excellence, performance-
focused behaviors at all levels of the
enterprise.
As for strategic analysis and plan-
ning, decisions to pursue a PBL contract
with specified levels of availability and
reliability must be based on rigorous
data-driven analysis and not gut-feel
assumptions, or worse yet — a “we’ll fig-
ure out how to make it work” mentality.
Unfortunately, many companies per-
forming transactional often cost-reim-
bursed work in defense have exactly this
approach. Assessing whether an organi-
zation is able to deliver the contract, and
do so profitably, includes analyzing alter-
nate scenarios to evaluate the robustness
of potential benefits under a wide range
of potential conditions, to quantify and
highlight key customer obligations and “For the customer, it absolutely improves desired outcomes
the impacts of them not meeting these
or the impacts of customer changes,
while simultaneously lowering total lifecycle costs.”
and assessing and prioritizing the best
options to improve performance. based logistics is when their needs of strength that builds customer con-
It is important to be able to assess the change and they struggle to adapt con- fidence, enables them to deliver, and
full impacts over time. What are the key tracts to reflect these changing require- yet ensures strong profitability. Both
performance drivers, baseline conditions, ments. A supplier that is strong on sides get what they want, and deliver
gaps and risks and potential mitigation? strategic analysis and operational excel- the improved value for money that the
Ongoing analysis as a program evolves is lence is best placed to be able to rapidly Defense Department has struggled to
important, including rapid assessment of understand the impacts of change, be achieve in its relationship with industry.
the full impact of changes. Over time, able to clearly explain and quantify the ND
analysis is enhanced through developing impacts for customers, and identify the
a database of past programs and an abil- best way to mitigate the changes. James Marceau is an aerospace and defense
ity to analyze differences on upcoming This gives both sides what they expert at PA Aerospace and Defense, a sub-
potential programs. This information need — for customers the ability to sidiary of PA Consulting Group. Colleagues
is critical to monitor program perfor- adapt as their requirements evolve, and Tom Mullen and Mark Sandate contributed
mance, enhance decision-making, and for suppliers to do so from a position to this article.
support rapid and effective negotiations
with customers on changes.
The essence of operational excellence
is delivering value faster, more reli-
ably and at lower cost. If an organiza-
tion does not have this culture already
embedded, then it’s likely that all its
programs — not just PBL — are see-
ing erosion of margin and customer
relationships. If there are pockets of an
organization that embrace a culture of
continuous improvement, it is critical to
change incentives so that it drives this
across the entire organization as most We build projects that support our national defense in
programs will draw on shared func- marine, hydro, nuclear and aerospace.
tions such as engineering, supply chain,
sourcing, procurement and manufactur-
ing.
Results-driven, high-performing orga-
nizations have clarity and alignment
on mission and vision; defined business
and program objectives, metrics and
accountability; efficient and digitally
streamlined availability of accurate data;
and a commitment to process improve-
ment and a deeply-rooted culture of
continuous improvement. This is an
organization that will make PBL con-
tracted programs benefit both the cus-
tomer as well as its bottom line.
So, does performance-based logis-
tics work? For the customer, it abso-
lutely improves desired outcomes while
simultaneously lowering total lifecycle
costs. For the supplier, results are
mixed. While doing whatever it takes to
deliver contracted deliverables, at times
through brute force, program margins
are put at risk.
Bringing both customer and supplier
perspectives together, one of the biggest
customer challenges with performance-
VIGOR.NET MARINESALES@VIGOR.NET SALES@VIGOR.NET
AU G U ST 2 0 1 8 • N AT I O N A L D E F E N S E 19

Industry Perspective BY REBECCA COWEN-HIRSCH
Public-Private Partnerships
Critical to Protect Space
Q We live in an era in which space is an
increasingly challenged and even hostile
environment. Today’s adversaries are
able to jam satellites for reversible effects
and even permanently damage space
assets with kinetic attacks from ground-
launched missiles, building urgency for
optimal resilience in space.
In April during the Space Symposium
in Colorado Springs, Colorado, I joined
Defense Department, intelligence com-
munity, State Department and Canadian
Armed Forces leaders to examine the
potential for adversaries to transform
space into a battleground.
The panel discussion, titled “War-
fare that Extends into Space: National
Security, International, Civil and Com-
mercial Partnerships,” focused more on
tangible, achievable solutions rather than
doomsday scenarios, with participants
expanding upon the immediate need
for partnerships that would coalesce the
efforts of the U.S. government, its allies
and commercial industry to foster a
more protected space environment and
encourage responsible behaviors in space.
The need for such resilience and strong
partnerships is not new: In 2007, the
world was shocked when China fired a
ground-based, medium-range ballistic
missile to destroy its own weather satel-
lite, some 537 miles above the Earth.
This satellite intercept test served as an
awakening, opening our eyes to a new
challenge of space as a contested and
potential hostile domain — one that
could possibly emerge as a dangerous
environment.
Now just over 10 years later, there is
an increased urgency to act as we are
more dependent on space today for so
many aspects of our modern lifestyle. We
must be mindful that the increasing chal-
lenges in space represent ever-increasing
potential dangers to all space assets, not
just military space vehicles.
To respond with a new, multinational
and industrial-based national security
strategy centered around space, we have
to “go fast and we have to innovate,”
according to the panel’s moderator, Ste-
20 N AT I O N A L D E F E N S E • A U G U S T 2 0 1 8
phen Kitay, deputy assistant secretary of
defense for space policy. “Partnerships are
key to our strategy.”
What is clear is that the commercial
satellite industry plays a primary, driving
role in today’s national security strategy
rather than a secondary or reactive one.
Across all domains and capabilities —
satellite communications for ground,
maritime and airborne operations, space
situational awareness, global naviga-
tion satellite systems, satellite launches
and hosted payloads — the commer-
cial industry continues to innovate and
advance comparably and even beyond
what governments can do. And satellite
companies pursue these accomplish-
ments not as competitors to agencies, but
as collaborators for assured, protected
access to space assets.
During the panel, I was encouraged to
find that my co-participants agreed with
this perspective.
“We need the aspirations provided by
the commercial sector,” said Jonathan
Margolis, acting deputy assistant secre-
tary for science, space and health at the
State Department’s bureau of oceans and
international environmental and scientific
affairs. “We need the inspiration that the
commercial sector has brought forward
to inspire … what we can ultimately
achieve in space. We need the efficiencies
of the commercial sector.”
Brig. Gen. K.G. Whale, director general
space, Canadian Armed Forces, described
commercial advancements as a “forcing
function” that greatly help satisfy stra-
tegic objectives: “New space innovation
is clearly outpacing government culture,
policy and procurement in orders of
magnitude. … We should welcome that
forcing function. We need to find ways
[to harness] the benefits of this commer-
cial innovation.”
My fellow panelists and I also took the
opportunity to elaborate upon critical
components of the partnerships — and
how they can combine to form a formi-
dable, defensive posture to discourage
hostile actions on the part of our adver-
saries.
We must take an enterprise
approach to partnerships, one that
incorporates mutual trust, upfront
planning and reciprocity. The
formal establishment of a com-
mercial presence within the Joint
Space Operations Center serves as
a good example of this. It follows
the creation of the commercial
integration cell pilot program within the
center in June 2015, in which Inmarsat
and six other satellite companies were
selected to collaborate with the U.S.
government via cooperative research
and development agreements. Literally
working on the center floor every day,
the partnership enables industry and
the government to share technology
and information on a collaborative basis,
expanding integration and space situ-
ational awareness while increasing the
command-and-control capacity of the
joint force space component commander
under Strategic Command. It has focused
on the improvement of processes and
commercial/government integration in
conducting conjunction assessments and
addressing electromagnetic interference
and resolution.
Gen. John W. “Jay” Raymond, com-
mander of Air Force Space Command
and the joint force space component
commander, has described the com-
mercial integration cell as “the next step
in our ongoing efforts to partner with
like-minded spacefaring entities to pro-
mote the peaceful and responsible use of
space” through the enhanced integration
of industry capabilities into day-to-day
space operations.
In these and likeminded efforts both
nationally and on a global scale, we
acknowledge that there are cultural dif-
ferences between commercial providers
and U.S. federal agencies, as well as their
international counterparts. And yet we
establish transparency to rise above these
differences, always with an eye toward
common goals and mutually desired
effects. We need to understand shared
risks and perceived advantages to make
beneficial, informed decisions.
Without transparency, we will encoun-
ter misunderstandings that will result in
delivery gaps that could ultimately prove
destructive to partnerships, only enabling
or even perhaps encouraging adversarial
activity. With transparency, we holistically
blend cultural backgrounds, technical
know-how and performance strengths, to
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create a unified state of enhanced resil-
iency. Together, we identify the threats
and, together, we assemble an integrated
response.
In the satellite community, we often
grow so enamored with the satellite itself
and lose sight of the rest of the end-to-
end system required for capability deliv-
ery. A truly cohesive space architecture
relies upon so much more. A complete
architecture encompasses the requisite
ground infrastructure supported by the
robust connectivity of fiber networks, and
of course the user terminals necessary to
consume the service. Without this fully
end-to-end system of systems, a satellite
in orbit amounts to merely “space junk.”
Indeed, when we think about an archi-
tecture, the aforementioned enterprise
concept should come into play. In addi-
tion to the satellites and the ground infra-
structure, the architecture is about the
users consuming it and the people who
make that happen — the solution pro-
viders and government leaders who seek
multiple means of function via diverse
sources. Yet, this is not diversity for diver-
sity’s sake. Our response demands more
than just “one flag.” We are an interna-
tional team, bringing the best of what
many nations and companies can offer.
We are in the game of space together.
“With space emerging as the next potential focus area,
the time is right for partnerships, and the time is now.”
Sharing resources as one enterprise
makes the architecture viable.
Security and interoperability remain
crucial. Without them, the partnerships
will not realize their potential.
Within certain agency circles, however,
there are misconceptions that a strong
commercial presence will invite compro-
mises in the form of reduced security and
interoperability. As to the latter, indus-
try is constantly engineering solutions
and services so that they are intercon-
nected to Defense Department and other
required information networks. Instead of
interoperability obstacles, agency partners
take advantage of a plethora of capa-
bilities that complement and strengthen
government performance.
In addressing security, satellite compa-
nies invest so that systems are not only
competitively defended but superior in
this regard. In addition to the govern-
ment, strong commercial companies
support a wide range of sectors and
each brings unique security demands
and requirements to satisfy. As a trusted
operator, the protection of internal and
customer data is essential. Frankly, this is
done for their own economic viability. If
their satellites and networks are vulner-
able, they are out of business.
With space emerging as the next
potential focus area, the time is right for
partnerships, and the time is now. The
U.S. government, its allies and the trusted
commercial satellite industry are highly
invested in the freedom of action in orbit
because the mission of our servicemen
and women depends upon it.
Therefore, we will commit to do what-
ever it takes to deter adversarial activity
that threatens our ability to operate. If
the partnerships effectively combine our
knowledge and resources to build an
entirely capable, interoperable and secure
enterprise space architecture, the effort
will be well worth it. ND
Rebecca M. Cowen-Hirsch is senior vice
president for government strategy and policy
at Inmarsat Government, based in Reston,
Virginia.
New Coast Guard Leader Focusing on Readiness
BY YASMIN TADJDEH
Sitting in his office overlooking
the bend where the Potomac
and Anacostia Rivers meet in Wash-
ington, D.C., the Coast Guard’s newly
installed commandant, said as he takes
the helm of the nearly 228-year-old ser-
vice, its brand is at a peak.
“The Coast Guard has been at a good
trajectory,” Adm. Karl L. Schultz told
National Defense during an exclusive
interview. “We’re kind of steady head-
ing. That’s what I’m looking at going
forward.”
Following in the footsteps of his pre-
decessor, retired Adm. Paul Zukunft,
Schultz said he wanted to continue to
take the service on an upward trajectory
as it works to protect national interests
amid growing activity in the Arctic, the
Western Hemisphere and around the
globe.
“My intention would be to not devi-
ate too much,” he said. “Obviously, every
change brings some different thinking,
different ideas, but at our core it’s …
steady as you go with trying to pick up
speed a little bit.”
As part of his guiding principles over
the next four years, Schultz — who took
over in June — said he is focusing on
making the Coast Guard a ready, rel-
evant and responsive service.
Readiness is of critical importance, he
noted. The service has for years been
focusing on increasing its acqusition
funding levels as it embarks on major
recapitalization projects such as the
polar icebreaker replacement, offshore
patrol cutter, national security cutter
and waterways commerce cutter.
“But as we sort of raised the bar on
our acquisitions … side of our budget,
we’ve been challenged a little bit on the
readiness side,” he added. “The operating
side is probably the pressure point.”
The Coast Guard is targeting a 5
percent steady, annual growth for its
operations and support funding, Schultz
said. While the service is replacing many
of its aging assets, it still has 50-year-old
cutters in operation, he noted. Those
vessels are expensive to maintain and
the newer ships coming down the pipe-
line will be costly as well, he added.
“My budgetary concern would be
really pressing into those operating and
22 N AT I O N A L D E F E N S E • A U G U S T 2 0 1 8
support parts of the Coast Guard bud-
get,” he said. “We’ve gotta get that bar
raised. We’ve gotta create a narrative
around that.”
Making a case to Congress for addi-
tional operating funds can be difficult
because — unlike with the construction
of a new vessel — operating costs don’t
tie into the creation of new jobs for law-
makers’ districts, he said.
“It’s not the stuff that Congress by
default looks to spend dollars against. …
But we’ve got to put a narrative around
that,” he said. If “you want a ready, rel-
evant, responsive Coast Guard, there’s
some costs that go with that, and that’s
my job to articulate that.”
However, Schultz noted that the
Coast Guard has received widespread
support from the Trump administration
— and Congress in particular — as it
pursues the modernization of its mari-
time fleet.
One of the service’s most high-profile
programs is the polar icebreaker replace-
ment. The Coast Guard has a statutory
responsibility to maintain polar ice-
breakers for the nation. It currently has
three in its inventory — the Polar Star, a
heavy-duty vessel; the Healy, a medium-
Coast Guard icebreaker Healy
duty vessel used primarily for research;
and the Polar Sea, a mothballed heavy-
duty icebreaker.
“We’re finally at a point when we’re
marching with the support of the
administration [and] the Congress
towards replacing our 40-plus-year-old,
single, heavy icebreaker,” he said.
The service plans to build up a fleet
of six vessels, which will be a mix of
heavy- and medium-duty vessels.
Five companies are expected to com-
pete for a contract to build the lead
vessel, including: Bollinger Shipyards,
Fincantieri Marine Group, General
Dynamics and National Steel and Ship-
building Co., Huntington Ingalls Indus-
tries and VT Halter Marine.
The Coast Guard — working with
the Navy — intends to down-select to a
single vendor by early 2019, he said. The
vessel is to be built by the end of 2023,
he added. While 2023 is an aggressive
timeline, Schultz said he would not walk
back on that deadline.
“The first ship is in sight,” he said. “We
can’t get there fast enough, to be frank.”
Schultz credited the Navy with bring-
ing in useful shipbuilding expertise and
experience that has helped the service
drive down technical and cost risks.
While the construction of the ship
could face obstacles because a heavy-
duty vessel hasn’t been built in the
United States since the 1970s, Schultz
said he was confident that industry
would be able to meet the challenge.
“We’ve had a very open dialogue
through our acquisition structure and
with the Navy, with those [industry]
teams,” he said. “Those are ways that
we’ve mitigated the risk.”
Fielding new icebreakers will be criti-
cal as the service seeks to increase its
presence in the Arctic. Melting sea ice
has opened up the region — which is
rich in natural resources such as miner-
als and fisheries — to increased activity.
“We’ve got an interest up there and I
think our ability to project our national
interest, our sovereign rights, is abso-
lutely essential,” Schultz said.
In addition, nations such as Russia and
China are beefing up their presence, he
said.
Moscow is aggressively projecting its
sovereignty in the Arctic, he said.
“A large chunk of their economy
derives from activities in the Arctic,”
he said. “The Russians … [have] some-
where between 40 and 50 icebreakers.
They’re building a nuclear icebreaker
right now, with plans to build more
nuclear icebreakers.”
The Kremlin is also arming its ice-
capable vessels, he noted. “We have to
 be aware of that. Our thinking has to be
informed by that,” he said.
China, meanwhile, is building its sec-
ond icebreaker, the Xue Long, and has
been operating in the Arctic, he added.
China considers itself a “near-Arctic”
nation though it is not one of the eight
Arctic nations.
“All that points to demand for the
Coast Guard to be up there and be up
there extensively more than we are
today,” he said.
While Schultz hopes the region
will remain peaceful, “you don’t rule
anything out when you talk about the
future.”
It is still too early to say what type of
armaments, if any, will be on the new
icebreakers, Schultz said. “The conversa-
tions we’re about right now is deliver-
ing that first icebreaker to give us some
capacity to be up in the Arctic. We’re
not ruling out any conversation. But
right now, we’re earlier in that process.”
Other important acquisitions include
the offshore patrol cutter. The service
plans to build at least 25 OFPs and
intends to award a contract for the pro-
duction of the first vessel this fall along
with long-lead time material for the
second cutter, Schultz said. “We’re off to
the races on that,” he said.
The OFP represents “the backbone”
of the service’s recapitalization effort, he
added.
The Coast Guard is also underway
with the recapitalization of its fleet
of national security cutters. The 2018
omnibus budget included funding for a
10th and 11th cutter, which is beyond
the program of record for eight hulls, he
said.
The waterways commerce cutter is
another important future acquisition,
Schultz noted. The service currently
operates a fleet of river tender and com-
merce tender vessels that enable trade
on the nation’s inland waterways. Some
of the platforms are 50 years old.
“The heartbeat of America’s economy
is really the maritime transportation sys-
tem that enables about $4.6 trillion of
commerce annually,” he said. Its legacy
vessels “allow commodities to move
down from the Great Lakes and from
the ports.”
Congress is excited about the pro-
gram, Schultz said, noting that in the
COAST GUARD
2018 omnibus budget lawmakers appro-
priated about $25 million for the effort.
“They are very keenly interested in
Adm. Karl L. Schultz
accelerating that,” he said. The service
is currently in the analysis phase and in
2020 will begin the acquisition process.
The program is “going to be a modest
replacement for a fleet of 35 vessels, but
[it’s] absolutely essential to the prosper-
ity of the nation,” he added.
As the service works to recapitalize
its fleet, it is also investing in new tech-
nologies to give Coastguardsmen access
to more information. One example
includes an effort to field a medium-
sized unmanned aerial vehicle aboard
every national security cutter, Schultz
said.
The service has conducted three
proof-of-concept trips on NSCs, he said.
They have provided “game-changing”
capability to service members and were
employed during 16 interdictions.
“UAS gives you some persistent abil-
ity to stay on station,” he said. There are
“huge distances involved in the Eastern
Pacific Ocean. It’s like patrolling North
America with a handful of police cars
for speeders.”
Crewmembers who have experiment-
ed with the unmanned aerial vehicles
don’t want to sail without them, he
added.
The Coast Guard plans to award a
contract for the drones sometime this
year, he noted. Schultz believed the
service would be able to field those at
a pace of two platforms per year under
a contractor-owned/contractor-operated
agreement.
“The Navy’s been using a similar
model with unmanned aerial surveil-
lance on Navy platforms,” he said.
“We’re confident this is … a proven
capability.”
As the Coast Guard juggles sev-
eral major procurement programs and
increasing tensions in the Arctic, it is
also beefing up its presence in the West-
ern Hemisphere and countering drug
cartels, Schultz said.
There is more cocaine being culti-
vated in Colombia than ever before, he
said. The service is coming off a record
year of drug interdictions and confis-
cated 223 metric tons of drugs headed
for the United States. Last year it also
arrested more than 600 people associat-
ed with drug cartels and trafficking and
turned them over to the Department of
Justice for prosecution.
“We’re down there with a greater
presence than we’ve ever had,” said
Schultz, who most recently served as
the service’s Atlantic area commander.
“I sourced about two-thirds of all the
Coast Guard operational assets in that
theater, … so we’re all in.”
Schultz noted that U.S. Attorney Gen-
eral Jeff Sessions wants to see even more
Coast Guard presence in the region.
“He sees the Coast Guard as a pivotal
player in that,” he said. “You will see no
diminution in our commitment to that
mission.” ND
AU G U ST 2 0 1 8 • N AT I O N A L D E F E N S E 23
Clock Ticking for U.S. Military
To Defend Against Hypersonics
BY JON HARPER
Faced with adversaries devel-
oping hypersonic missiles
that could potentially overwhelm U.S.
defenses, the Pentagon is in a race
against time to acquire technologies to
counter the emerging theat.
In recent months, Russian President
Vladimir Putin has been touting his
nation’s hypersonics arsenal, claiming
that no foreign power has the means to
defeat it. Meanwhile, China has been
aggressively testing its own offensive
weapons, according to U.S. officials.
Beijing is “close to fielding hyper-
sonic delivery systems for conventional
prompt strike that can reach out thou-
sands of kilometers from the Chinese
shore and hold our carrier battle groups
or our forward-deployed forces on land
… at risk,” Undersecretary of Defense
for Research and Engineering Michael
Griffin told the Senate Armed Services
subcommittee on emerging threats and
capabilities at a recent hearing.
“We, today, do not … have defenses
against those systems,” he noted. “It is
among my very highest priorities to
erase that disadvantage.”
Air Force Lt. Gen. Samuel Greaves,
director of the Missile Defense Agency,
has also been sounding the alarm.
“Based on what we have seen others
demonstrate, there’s no question that
it’s only a matter of time before it’s
operationalized,” he said during a recent
breakfast on Capitol Hill hosted by the
Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies.
“The question will be what have we
done to prepare ourselves to mitigate
or eliminate that threat five, six, seven
years from now when it shows up?”
he added. “We’ve got … to get started
now, work with industry and deploy the
capability” to counter enemy attacks.
Hypersonic weapons travel at speeds
of Mach 5 or higher, but it’s their
maneuverability that poses the greatest
challenge to defensive systems, noted
Tom Karako, director of the missile
defense project at the Center for Strate-
gic and International Studies.
“It’s where they travel and how they
travel” that makes it difficult to stop
them, he said.
24 N AT I O N A L D E F E N S E • A U G U S T 2 0 1 8
Hypersonics may begin their flight
on a ballistic trajectory but then change
course unexpectedly, he explained.
“Instead of operating by freefall they
may do a maneuver and then come back
down at a high angle and then … glide”
through the atmosphere, he said.
By staying inside the atmosphere rath-
er than going into outer space, the mis-
siles would be flying at a lower altitude
than where many U.S. interceptors are
designed to shoot them down. Addition-
ally, hypersonics can steer like a cruise
missile during flight rather than follow-
ing a predictable trajectory like typical
ballistic missiles, Karako noted. They are
also much faster than a standard cruise
missile.
“That means that you don’t know …
[if the missiles are] coming from this
direction or from that direction. And so
your defense problem is more compli-
cated,” he said.
U.S. military radars and long-range
interceptors are primarily aimed at
countering missile threats coming from
the north. But a hypersonic weapon
could fly across the Pacific, down into
the Southern Command area of respon-
sibility, and then change direction again
and attack the United States from the
south, he noted.
To deal with this threat, defensive
systems will need to be deployed on a
more distributed basis, Karako said. The
Pentagon also needs a more sophisti-
cated space-based sensor layer to persis-
tently track enemy warheads.
“Those sectored ground-based radars
can’t be everywhere, and you can go
around them and their reach is limited
fundamentally by the curvature of the
Earth,” he said.
The existing sensor architecture could
leave large gaps in coverage that would
make it difficult to track hypersonic
weapons, he added.
“If you’re relying upon ground-based
radars you’re cooked,” he said. “You pick
it up and then somewhere after you lose
it, it’s maneuvering and you don’t know
where it is now. And so the only way
to kind of get at this is from overhead
space-based sensors.”
Greaves said the Missile Defense
Russian air-launched
hypersonic missile
Kinzhal placed on
the carrier aircraft
Mikoyan MiG-31
Agency needs to have a “birth-to-death”
tracking capability to defeat hypersonics.
“Unlike the ballistic threat … we can’t
accept gaps, and space offers a vantage
point to maintain that custody from
birth to intercept,” he said. “That’s going
to be absolutely essential.”
Greaves laid out his vision for what
a future space-based sensor layer might
look like.
“It all begins with the Air Force space-
based infrared system … providing the
bell ringer that something is happen-
ing, there is a heat signature of a threat
that’s coming our way,” he said. “Then
depending on what type of threat it
is, the first system we’re looking at is
some sort of a missile defense tracking
system looking down at the Earth, the
warm features of the Earth to essentially
do that birth-to-death tracking … [and
flightpath] prediction for things like
the hypersonic threat or maneuvering
threat.”
Satellites would pass that sensor infor-
mation to a command-and-control bat-
tle management system, which would
cue interceptors to go after the target,
he explained.
The Pentagon is working with indus-
try through the Space Enterprise Con-
sortium on concepts for a new sensor
architecture. “We’ve got white papers
out to nine or 10 entities who are inter-
ested in pursuing that,” Greaves said.
The Missile Defense Agency is
also keeping an eye on the Defense
Advanced Research Projects Agency’s
Blackjack program, which is looking

Right: Standard missile-6
at how the U.S. military could
leverage commercial satellites in
low-Earth orbit.
Concepts that have been floated
by industry include deploying sensors in
geosynchronous orbit, mid-orbit, or low-
Earth orbit, Greaves said.
The Defense Department plans to
make a decision later this year on what
the new architecture should look like,
he said. “We’re in the process of picking
the best design, working with Dr. Grif-
fin and his office on which is the best
approach.”
The plan is to “neck down to a com-
petition of some sort, make the decision
and then move out on the demonstra-
tion mission,” he added.
The technology must be demonstrat-
ed to be effective before the Defense
Department launches a major program,
Greaves said, citing past space projects
that experienced difficulties.
“We all know what happened when
we overpromised and we underdeliv-
ered,” he said.
The Missile Defense Agency hopes to
have the new sensor layer in place by
2025 or sooner.
“Some may say, ‘Why don’t you go
faster?’ It’s because … to go fast some-
times you need to go slow early on,”
KREMLIN.RU, NAVY
Greaves said.
“This is the slow part — getting the
requirements done, getting the architec-
ture studies done, getting the modeling
and simulation done so by the time you
make your decision you can then turn
industry on and they are moving” quick-
ly to build new systems, he added.
The sensing technologies would have
to be tied into a robust command-and-
control battle management system.
Faster interceptors will also likely be
needed to deal with the hypersonic
threat, he said.
Karako said a more advanced inter-
ceptor capability might not have to be
designed from scratch.
“It may be that there is some incre-
mental or block modifications to our
current several families of interceptors
that can more effectively get after this,”
he said. “In other words, it doesn’t nec-
essarily involve a brand new thing, but it
may require some modifications to what
we’ve got out there” now.
New variants of systems such as the
terminal high altitude area defense,
Patriot advanced capability-3, or stan-
dard missile-6 could theoretically be
used to shoot down enemy hypersonics,
he noted.
The 2018 national defense strat-
egy emphasized that the U.S. military
has entered a new era of great power
competition. Much of the Pentagon’s
acquisition enterprise is now focused
on technologies that are applicable to
potential high-end fights against China
and Russia.
“Everybody knows that this demand
signal is out there,” Karako said. “Every-
body who has got a widget that has
potential applicability to the hypersonic
defense mission is probably thinking
through how to use that widget in the
most effective way possible.”
Kathy Warden, president and chief
operating officer for Northrop Grum-
man, sees new business opportunities
ahead.
Much attention has been paid to
the Pentagon’s push to develop its
own offensive hypersonic weapons,
she noted recently at the Bernstein
annual strategic decisions confer-
ence in New York.
“There also is an important
element of being able to defend
against hypersonic weapons … and
that’s an area where the Northrop
Grumman portfolio is particularly
strong in being able to detect those
threats, much the way we have played
in the missile defense business for
decades,” she said.
“This is a new type of threat that
needs to have good detection and
response capabilities, and so this is an
area of importance to us but just doesn’t
quite get talked about as much as the
weapons themselves,” she added.
Lockheed Martin and Raytheon, two
of the biggest industry players in the
missile defense marketplace, declined to
comment for this story.
Greaves noted that the development
and deployment timeline for new capa-
bilities will depend on funding.
In authorization and appropriations
bills for fiscal year 2019, lawmakers
have been boosting spending levels for
the Pentagon’s counter-hypersonics proj-
ects. However, Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Ala.,
chairman of the House Armed Services
strategic forces subcommittee, said he’s
not confident that steady investment
will continue in the coming years.
“The majority clearly feels like the
threat is significant … [but] we still
have sequestration” slated to go back
into effect in fiscal year 2020, he said
during another meeting on Capitol Hill
hosted by the Mitchell Institute. “We
have got to wrestle that gorilla again …
and it’s going to be tough.” ND
AU G U ST 2 0 1 8 • N AT I O N A L D E F E N S E 25
United States, Canada Studying Options
To Replace Arctic Early Warning Radars
BY VIVIENNE MACHI
The United States and Canada
are beginning to study poten-
tial replacements for a jointly operated
network of unmanned air defense radars
at the top of North America. However,
the re-emergence of great power com-
petition could prompt the close allies to
develop new missile warning capabili-
ties.
The North Warning System consists
of a series of 11 long-range AN/FPS-
117 radars and 36 short-range AN/
FPS-124 systems that together stretch
nearly 3,000 miles long and over 14
miles wide from Canada’s Newfound-
land and Labrador province to Alaska. It
was put in place and has been operated
and maintained by the North American
Aerospace Defense Command since the
late 1980s, replacing the Distant Early
Warning Line that had been built in the
1950s.
When the joint command
was first established in 1958, AN/FPS-117 long-range
its mission was to protect air surveillance radar
the continent against Soviet
long-range aviation capa-
bilities, said Royal Canadian
Air Force Lt. Gen. Pierre
St-Amand, deputy NORAD
commander.
In 1975, the command’s
mandate expanded to
include early warning against
ballistic missiles, and later,
the first generation of air-
launched cruise missiles,
“making us adjust our pos-
ture to take account of the
ranges of these new weap-
ons,” he said at a recent event
in Washington, D.C.
Now, the challenges
NORAD faces have changed
once again and the command
must remain innovative and
vigilant, he added.
“The weaponry that can
reach out and touch North
America now include cruise
missiles with increased rang-
es that can be air-launched,
but also launched from
maritime platforms, opening
26 N AT I O N A L D E F E N S E • A U G U S T 2 0 1 8
avenues of approach that we’re not used
to seeing,” St-Amand said. “Domains
that did not exist in the ‘50s, such as
space and cyber, are causing us to review
our posture and plan for the future.”
The United States and Canada have
begun planning a replacement for the
North Warning System, with the goal
of awarding a new contract in the mid-
2020s. The command is still in the
early stage of examining options that
could be incorporated into a future air-
defense radar system in the Arctic, said a
NORAD spokesperson.
Raytheon Canada, based in Ottawa,
won a contract to operate and maintain
the systems located in Canadian terri-
tory in 2014 for $261 million, accord-
ing to Public Services and Procurement
Canada, or PSPC, the country’s gov-
ernment arm responsible for internal
servicing and administration. The initial
five-year contract secures services until
March 31, 2019, but it could be extend-
ed until 2024, according to a PSPC
spokesperson.
Nasittuq, a joint-venture between
Canadian companies ATCO Structures
and Logistics and Pan Arctic Inuit Logis-
tics Corp., previously held the contract
since 2001. Raytheon Canada deferred
comments to the Canadian government.
Logistical and maintenance support
for the Alaska-based systems is conduct-
ed by Air Force Materiel Command.
The decision to modernize the joint
systems comes as the radars age, and the
United States and its allies face a new
era of great power competition with
peer adversaries such as Russia and Chi-
na, said a recent paper by the Simons
Foundation, a Vancouver, Canada-based
organization focused on education on
nuclear disarmament, international law
and human security.
The current system does not have the
capacity to monitor hostile
aircraft over extended dis-
tances, and serves more as a
“tripwire signaling an attack
from the north and head-
ing south,” said the report
titled, “Replacing the North
Warning System: Strategic
Competition or Arctic Con-
fidence Building?”
“The North Warning Sys-
tem … cannot contribute to
the detection [of] ballistic
missile launches or to track-
ing their flight,” the report
said. “American military
planners would like to see
its replacement become a
multi-purpose Arctic sensor
system capable of tracking
not only aircraft, but also
ships and ballistic missiles.”
But Canada may prefer
to pursue other capabili-
ties that enhance domain
awareness of the Arctic
territory itself for missions
such as search and rescue,
LOCKHEED MARTIN
border patrol and other
joint efforts it shares with
regional partners including
Russia, said Ernie Regehr, a
 senior fellow in Arctic security and
defense at the Simons Foundation
who prepared the report.
“There is a recognition [in
Canada] of the return to a certain
higher level of great power conflict,
and the evolution of technologies
— long-range cruise missiles and
ballistic missile proliferation —
continuing,” he said. “At the same time,
there is a sense that the really urgent
issues related to the Arctic are domain
awareness within the region and …
activities within the region.”
The Canadian Department of Nation-
al Defence is investing $133 million
over five years in the all domain situ-
ational awareness (ADSA) science and
technology program, which will allow
Canada to conduct research and analysis
to support the development of options
for enhanced domain awareness of air
and maritime surface and sub-surface
approaches to the country.
Canada is studying opportunities
for the renewal of the North Warning
System within the ADSA program, as
well as through a bilateral collaboration
with the United States, according to the
department. One potential plan is to
build a “system of systems” that would
integrate data gathered from ground
radars, maritime sensors, satellites,
unmanned systems and other technolo-
gies, according to the Simons Founda-
tion.
As a Cold War installation, the NWS
was built to detect long-range Rus-
sian military aircraft. But it is currently
unable to monitor and track airborne
entries into Canadian airspace around
the northern coastal border of the Arctic
Archipelago, the report said.
“If the NWS replacement is to have
a capacity to detect aircraft, including
cruise missiles, much farther out from
North American shores, and have some
capacity for ballistic missile detection,
experts insist the new … system will
require a mix of ground, air, space and
sea-based sensors, and will need loca-
tions further north than the present
NWS and further south down the Pacif-
ic and Atlantic coastlines,” it said.
NORAD must now include hyperson-
ic weapons in its aerospace warning mis-
sion, St-Amand noted. “We have a duty
to report and characterize those types
of vehicles [and] those missiles,” he said.
“We provide the warning, we provide an
ISTOCK
assessment, we characterize what it is.
$47 billion for the military over
the next 20 years. But no funds
were earmarked specifically for the
radars because the two countries
have not yet decided how much
is needed, Claude Rochette, the
Department of National Defence’s
top financial officer told The Cana-
“Any weaponry, any developments, dian Press in an interview.
that would cause us to think about re- “When we have guidance, then we
posturing … is going to be a concern,” will start looking at the options … then
he added. “That is something that is we will start looking at costing. But that
surfacing, that is something that we are [system] is not covered in the funding,”
tracking.” he said.
A replacement for the North Warn- “We’ll do a cost estimate, whatever
ing System is also imperative as activity the cost is,” he added. “I cannot predict
continues to grow in the Arctic region what will happen in the future, if a
due to opening sea routes and increased government decides to say, ‘No, I would
access stemming from climate change, prefer that you take this but remove
the Simons Foundation report said. that.’ It could happen.”
“With increased access to and activ- It is expected to take at least two
ity within the Canadian Arctic and the decades to replace the system, according
entire pan-Arctic region, the capabilities to the Simons report. Analysis of options
of both state and nonstate actors war- are to be completed by 2020, with a
rant increased attention,” it said. Tak- chosen system to be approved by 2021.
ing advantage of evolving surveillance Requests for proposals could go out to
technologies is an important part of that industry by 2023, with a final contract
process.” to be awarded in 2024. Delivery or
The two visions could be at odds as installation could then take at least a
NORAD works to develop the new sys- decade, with a final completion date in
tem over the next decade, Regehr noted. the mid-2030s. ND
“In the Canadian context, [there is] a
lot of support for enhancing capabilities
and domain awareness in the Arctic,” he
said. “But I think when it gets into build-
ing military facilities in the Canadian
Arctic that are focused particularly on
strategic issues — and missile defense
being a notable one — then … the
potential for Canadian political contro-
versy around it increases.”
Affordability could also be a con-
cern, Regehr said. Currently, Canada is
responsible for 40 percent of the cost
of the North Warning System, with
the remaining 60 percent under U.S.
responsibility, according to the Canadian
government. Canada owns the sites and
provides the site operations and mainte-
nance. The United States owns the radar
and radio equipment, and provides all
fuel, sealift and rotary and fixed-wing
airlift.
Representatives from the Canadian
Department of National Defence and
NORAD declined to provide a cost esti-
mate to field a replacement system, but
the Simons Foundation report estimated
the price tag could be billions of dollars.
Canada in 2017 released a new
defense policy which proposed an extra
AU G U ST 2 0 1 8 • N AT I O N A L D E F E N S E 27
R&D
SPECIAL
REPORT
 THE NATION’S BIG BETS ON
NATIONAL SECURITY TECHNOLOGY
For its annual research-and-development issue, National Defense
Magazine queried federally funded research centers, the service
laboratories and other organizations involved in basic and applied
national security R&D, a couple simple questions:
What is your organization’s number one R&D “big bet?” In other words,
a high-risk, high-reward technology investment that you believe will have
the biggest payoff for those in the military or national security realm.
Why? And in what ways do you think it will benefit the end users?
The following are the answers we received.

Sandia National Laboratories

THE BIG BET:
AUTONOMY FOR
HYPERSONICS
By Michael Burns, associate labs director, national security programs

Q Over the next six years, the National Nuclear Security Administra-
tion’s Sandia National Laboratories will invest $35 million from the
congressionally authorized Laboratory Directed Research and Devel-
opment Program into the development of an autonomous hypersonic
flight system.
Similar to a self-driving car, which uses cameras to perceive traf-
fic, artificial intelligence to process that information and robotics to
navigate to its destination, we will build a self-guided glide vehicle.
This flight system will make automatic, in-flight course corrections
that can compensate for
atmospheric conditions
or home in on a moving
target, while traveling in
excess of one mile per
second. The technology
we develop will also cut
down mission planning
CONTINUES ON PAGE 30

ILLUSTRATION: ISTOCK, PHOTO: DEFENSE DEPT.

AU G U ST 2 0 1 8 • N AT I O N A L D E F E N S E 29

R&D SPECIAL REPORT
time, sharpening our military’s ability to respond to fleeting
threats.
Sandia has a history of developing pathfinder flight sys-
tems, and we believe autonomy will overcome limitations
of today’s state-of-the-art hypersonics, which currently fly
fixed, pre-computed trajectories. A flight plan is calculated
in precise detail to include a host of variables — including
defenses we will encounter, heat and resistance from the
atmosphere, and, of course, the location of the target.
If any one of those variables changes, our warfighting abil-
ity can be diminished. This scenario is becoming increasingly
likely. Other countries have reported aggressive develop-
ment of their own hypersonics programs, and the nature of
threats from rogue states and non-state actors is constantly
changing.
In contrast, an agile hypersonic weapon that adapts to
the unexpected will help the United States maintain its
edge over adversaries, allowing us to effectively respond to
threats anywhere in the world without putting our war-
fighters at unnecessary risk.
Our task will require new computational tools. To teach
a vehicle to react to its environment in real-time at hyper-
sonic speeds, Sandia must develop algorithms that compress
12 hours of calculations and weeks of expert analysis into a
30 N AT I O N A L D E F E N S E • A U G U S T 2 0 1 8
single millisecond, and do so on a relatively small, onboard
computer. This will be landmark technology that will reduce
the time to create a comprehensive flight plan prior to
launch from weeks to minutes.
Success will also depend on planning a safe, effective way
to use artificial intelligence to make decisions, particularly in
pre-flight stages. Sandia is building our hypersonic technol-
ogy for “human-on-the-loop” operation, in which a human
analyzes recommendations calculated using artificial intelli-
gence before authorizing them. This operational model aims
to pair a machine’s computational speed with a human’s
critical thinking ability, harnessing the strengths of both
while providing necessary control and safeguards.
The incredible speed of travel and challenging flight
environment make hypersonics one of the most challeng-
ing applications for autonomy, but the questions we’re
asking are shared by our counterparts throughout the arti-
ficial intelligence and machine learning communities. For
instance, researchers outside of Sandia are seeking strategies
to teach drones to land safely in an emergency, like a sudden
engine failure.
That’s why Sandia is working hand-in-hand with experts
in AI throughout academia and defense. We believe that
when we address mutual challenges in an open, collabora-
tive spirit, we help spread new ideas and technologies to
industries well beyond defense, making autonomous systems
from unmanned aircraft to self-driving cars safer and more
efficient. ND
ISTOCK
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 Argonne National Laboratory
THE BIG BET:
HYPERSONIC
Air Force Rapid Capabilities Office
PROPULSION
THE BIG BET: By Keith Bradley, director, national security programs

ACQUISITION Q The Defense Department ranks hypersonic propulsion as

its number one technical priority. Foreign superpowers also
are developing the technology because hypersonic vehicles

SPEED AND flying at Mach 5 could avoid detection, tracking and inter-
ception.
The Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory

AGILITY helps bolster national security via scientific research in three

hypersonics-related disciplines: complex aerodynamics, pro-
pulsion and materials science.
Bolstering this expertise are the laboratory’s unique experi-

ISTOCK, DEFENSE DEPT.

By Will Roper, assistant secretary of the Air Force mental capabilities in hard X-ray science, modeling and
for acquisition, technology and logistics simulation, and high performance scientific computing, all
offered through on-site user facilities.
Q The dominance of today’s Air Force is the product of past Flying at Mach 5 or faster requires propulsion systems dif-
investments in leap-ahead technologies like microprocessors,
satellites and stealth.
Technology was primarily developed with government
sponsorship and took decades to mature; consequently, plac-
ing big bets strategically delineated future-shapers from the
future-shaped. Fortunately for us, our predecessors were the
former.
Today’s technology landscape is much different. Technol-
ogy is primarily developed worldwide by commercial compa-
nies in timescales measured in years — even months.
Software, not hardware, is now the lynchpin. “Seismic
readings” from fields like artificial intelligence, quantum sys-
tems, synthetic biology and advanced manufacturing indicate
a potential explosion of breakthroughs that could render
many of today’s Air Force systems operationally extinct on
the future battlefield.
Given this, the Air Force can ill afford to maintain its his-
torical technology development strategy. Instead, we must
bet on identifying, adapting and updating technologies faster
than all enemies.
Acquisition speed and agility must be — and is — our big
bet for the future. If we cannot shape the future ourselves,
we must position to ride the external waves that will.
Consequently, we have implemented a new Air Force-
wide rapid acquisition process that has already removed
decades of schedule from our portfolio, but we must do
more. We have accelerated hypersonic weapons, survivable
satellites, cyber capabilities and artificially intelligent sys-
tems as pathfinders with good results. What remains is scale.
Though it is unclear which technology will be the ultimate
deciding factor in future warfare, being able to build or adapt
it the fastest is likely a winning strategy for our future. ND

32 N AT I O N A L D E F E N S E • A U G U S T 2 0 1 8
ferent from those of modern aircraft. Argonne’s hard X-ray
capability, called the advanced photon source, sees through
hardware components into the inner workings of a hypersonic
jet engine to unravel the mysteries of complex flows and
combustion without disrupting performance. This capability
provides a path to the optimum design of hypersonic systems.
Argonne’s research also informs the design and manufac-
ture of exotic composites and ceramics that help hypersonic
aircraft withstand the stresses created by atmospheric drag.
It’s difficult to predict the behavior of such materials under
actual operating conditions. Our expertise in experimenta-
tion and high performance scientific computing allow us to
predict the performance of engineered materials before full-
scale flights take place.
Some hypersonic jet engine components can only be pro-
duced using additive manufacturing, also known as 3D print-
ing — another leading area of Argonne expertise.
The mesoscale structure of materials produced via additive
manufacturing determines their bulk properties, which are
very different from the structures that result from conven-
tional production methods. The advanced photon source can
actually image the solidification of the metal as it happens,
permitting the instant modification of the printing process to
enhance the desired properties.
The advanced photon source also reveals hidden features
in jet engine components. Manufacturers need to character-
ize each part every time they make one. But there’s such
R&D SPECIAL REPORT
variability in parts production that destructive evaluation of
a sacrificial part provides little insight about the next part. In
situ X-ray inspection by the X-ray advances the understand-
ing of component performance while also helping to resolve
the mysteries of additive manufacturing, which in many ways
remains a poorly understood process.
We are exploring the possibility of combining the in situ
characterization approach with machine learning — teaching a
computer to learn from experience — to obtain better results.
The Argonne Leadership Computing Facility at Argonne is
among several Department of Energy facilities that lead the
nation in developing next-generation supercomputers. Our
ALCF team simulates the science and engineering of hyper-
sonics at multiple scales. We have, for example, produced the
most computationally intensive simulations of fluid dynamics
to understand the phenomena at a resolution finer than we
can measure, providing fundamental insights impossible to
attain by experimentation alone.
We partner with industry and academia accelerating
hypersonics innovation. In this way the Energy Department’s
national laboratories not only help solve the nation’s biggest
problems, but they also make the U.S. defense industry more
competitive in the world marketplace. ND
AU G U ST 2 0 1 8 • N AT I O N A L D E F E N S E 33
Army Research, Development
and Engineering Command’s
Edgewood Chemical Biological Center
THE BIG BET:
SYNTHETIC
BIOLOGY
By Eric L. Moore, director, Edgewood Chemical Biological Center
Q At the Army Research, Development and Engineering
Command’s Chemical and Biological Center, we’re exploring
the enormous potential of synthetic biology in support of the
warfighter.
As the nation’s premier source for chemical and biological
defense solutions, we’re extremely excited by the new para-
digms offered by synthetic biology in the areas of chemical
and biological threat detection and protection.
Synthetic biology offers the potential to unlock new types
of materials by harnessing the natural abilities of living sys-
tems, such as self-assembly, sense and respond, and molecu-
lar-scale control and patterning. For the warfighter, these new
materials could produce uniforms or vehicle coatings that
automatically detect and respond to chemical and biological
threats, new unpowered detection technologies that dramati-
cally shrink logistical burdens, and systems to produce chemi-
cal and biological countermeasures on demand in the field.
Today, we are developing paper tickets embedded with
cellular machinery that change color in response to a range of
threats — from chemical and biological agents to explosives
to water contaminants. This technology is one of the most
mature applications of synthetic biology in the world, with
others having demonstrated detection of Ebola and Zika
34 N AT I O N A L D E F E N S E • A U G U S T 2 0 1 8
viruses in this highly fieldable format.
We anticipate that within the next five years, synthetic
biology applications in chemical and biological threat detec-
tion will become mature enough to start transitioning into
the acquisition process.
Looking forward to the 10-year mark, we expect that
novel materials derived from synthetic biology will start to be
incorporated into deployed systems. And within 20 years, we
believe smart materials with life-mimicking properties such
as sense and respond and self-healing will start to be incorpo-
rated into deployed systems.
We are positioning the center to be a leader in this rap-
idly developing field through our biological engineering for
applied materials solutions program. Within this program,
highly interdisciplinary work between biologists, chemists
and engineers is being performed with the goal of developing
our existing researchers to work in synthetic biology.
Through lectures, laboratory competitions, coursework,
visiting scientist opportunities, NRC post-doctorate hires and
scientific communication workshops, we seek to develop a
team of world-class synthetic biology experts.
A world-class workforce demands world-class infrastruc-
ture, so we’re planning laboratory infrastructure upgrades to
better support advanced research initiatives in the develop-
ment of synthetic biology materials. Planned research initia-
tives include novel materials for obscuration, DNA as an
adhesive, biosynthetic additive manufacturing and 3D-print-
ed materials with spores.
Even as we focus our synthetic biology research on chemi-
cal and biological defense, we recognize the tremendous ben-
efits it can bring to the warfighter in other areas as well. The
capability to rapidly grow limbs, the technology to 3D-print
organs, the ability to grow ballistic protection — these all
have tremendous potential impacts for the warfighter.
And while such capabilities fall outside the center’s mission
space, our research certainly overlaps with that of our sister
laboratories charged with exploring these areas. Our ultimate
vision is to make the center a leader and resource for all gov-
ISTOCK
ernment laboratories in the area of synthetic biology. ND
 Army Tank Automotive Research R&D SPECIAL REPORT
Development and Engineering Center

THE BIG BET: small bomb-sniffing robots to the largest land-crawling com-
bat vehicles, from undersea submersibles to unmanned aerial

EFFICIENT vehicles.
Given the inherent modularity of ROS-M, upgrading or
integrating new software modules becomes much simpler.

AUTONOMY With a modular code base, the software grows in capability,

collaboration between previously disparate entities becomes
more natural, and innovation sprouts from established auton-
omy titans and grassroots programmers alike.
By Kevin Mills, associate director for ground robotics An open concept like ROS-M also establishes an environ-
ment in which cybersecurity is easier to maintain. Where
Q Industrialization continues. proprietary robotics systems from a variety of different
Where a half-century ago, automation in our nation’s vendors can present as many threat surfaces to an adversary
manufacturing revolutionized how things get made, today’s as there are code bases, ROS-M reduces this susceptibil-
iteration of building robots — with all that entails — is the ity. Cybersecurity experts can develop best practices and
revolution in how things get done. defenses that need not be modified across different systems
The Army approaches this revolution, and the technologies and shared within the ROS-M community, eliminating gaps
that enable it, with an ingrained understanding that slow- in cyber defense coverage.
rolling adoption or implementation of this concept is akin to Already the Army, through TARDEC, is applying ROS-M,
standing still while our adversaries grasp an opportunity to evidenced by its automated ground resupply line-haul efforts
dig into our overmatch with vigor. and combat vehicle robotics program. The leader-follower
This understanding is also tempered by multiple cycles of behaviors, hazard identification and other autonomous
modernization programs cut short and the years and dollars actions may differ by platform’s intent, but share universal
of effort that went with them. With autonomy, how does software modules across them all due to ROS-M.
the Army get onboard in a way that will endure program Where the most successful automakers in the mid-20th
changes, cancellations and rebirths in a fiscally responsible century implemented the most efficient automation on the
manner? assembly line, so too will the most successful armies in the
The Army’s answer is in thinking more modularly about 21st century implement the best autonomy on the front line.
autonomy, at least as applicable technologies, and the Army While efficient autonomy through ROS-M is TARDEC’s
does so through its Robotic Operating System-Military, or biggest bet for the future, it’s a bet that the center knows it
ROS-M. ROS-M is a military-specific implementation of must not lose. ND
the popular ROS framework for
open robotic software development.
Although the words “operating
system” appear in their names, it is
better described as a “middleware” —
intended to reduce the complexity in
developing robotic software.
ROS-M contains a searchable “app
store” of modular autonomy software
packages for all types of robotic func-
tions, as well as tools for software
development, integration, cybersecu-
rity, simulation, data logging and visu-
alization, and other critical functions.
Developers may be from within
the Defense Department, contracted
partners, other industry members,
or academia, and need not have an
already-existing relationship with the
Army’s robotics integrators in order to
develop an autonomous behavior in
which the Army may be interested.
ROS-M, like ROS, is necessarily
ARMY

agnostic of platform, applicable from

AU G U ST 2 0 1 8 • N AT I O N A L D E F E N S E 35

R&D SPECIAL REPORT
Coast Guard Research
and Development Center
THE BIG BET:
MARITIME
ROBOTICS
By W.G. Chaves, chief, office of research, development, test
and evaluation
Q The Coast Guard Research, Development, Test and Evalu-
ation program is constantly exploring innovative new tech-
nologies to enhance enterprise-wide capability and serve as
force multipliers for Coast Guard operators.
In alignment with Coast Guard strategic priorities, the
program focuses on executing projects that will successfully
transition from R&D into ways and means of enhancing
Coast Guard missions.
The program’s number one R&D “big bet” is continuing
strategic research investments in unmanned surface, sub-
surface and aerial systems. To explore these high-risk, high-
reward technologies, the program collaborates with multiple
partners including the Department of Homeland Security
Science and Technology Directorate, Customs and Border
Protection, and the Air Force, Army and Marine Corps.
At the Research and Development Center in New Lon-
36 N AT I O N A L D E F E N S E • A U G U S T 2 0 1 8
don, Connecticut, current research in this domain spans
exploration and evaluation of unmanned surface vehicles,
unmanned underwater vehicles and unmanned air systems
across all Coast Guard mission areas.
Impacts from unmanned system capabilities could have
wide-ranging effects on the Coast Guard and the nation,
including increased security in the Western Hemisphere, a
top priority for Coast Guard Commandant Adm. Karl L.
Schultz. (See interview page 22)
In his “Commandant’s Guiding Principles,” Schultz calls
on the Coast Guard to continue its lead role in combatting
transnational crime in the Western Hemisphere; unmanned
technologies could be key in providing the persistent mari-
time domain awareness necessary to help disrupt transna-
tional criminal networks.
Unmanned technologies also hold the potential for greater
situational awareness and extended communication capabili-
ties in the Arctic.
The Coast Guard is a relatively small service with limited
resources. However, the area of responsibility is vast, and
includes the largest exclusive economic zone in the world,
comprising 3.4 million square miles of ocean and more
than 90,000 miles of coastline. Unmanned systems have the
power to extend presence far beyond the reach of traditional
assets, allowing for more comprehensive patrolling of this
vast area of responsibility.
Unmanned systems could also allow the Coast Guard to
better protect the ocean environment and marine life. With
increased and more persistent surveillance, the service could
more effectively enforce domestic and international fisheries
laws.
Effective environmental response readiness methods could
also be realized. In the event of an incident, unmanned assets
could quickly be mobilized to assess conditions and col-
lect critical data and imagery before Coast Guard boats and
crewmembers are deployed. Unmanned underwater vehicles
could assist with inspections, port security and ship’s hus-
bandry, minimizing the risk to divers conducting inspections
in often challenging conditions.
Sophisticated sensors on unmanned systems will gener-
ate large amounts of data. To manage that information, the
program must explore artificial intelligence and machine
learning technologies to aid in processing, exploitation and
dissemination of the data to ensure delivery of the most rel-
evant and actionable information to operators.
Advances in onboard data processing have the potential to
deliver ever-increasing amounts of information faster. With-
out automated processing, exploitation and dissemination,
the data gathered could overwhelm already saturated watch-
standers. Automated analysis tools could assist operators with
the sorting and prioritization of data, empowering opera-
tional commanders with critical decision-making information.
The guiding principles affirm the Coast Guard needs
modern, capable assets in order to maintain service readiness
in the maritime domain. The program will explore technol-
ogy advances and provide decision-makers the information
needed to transition solutions into the hands of Coast Guard
operators so they are ready and responsive to the challenges
NAVY
ahead. ND
 MITRE Corp.
THE BIG BET:
AI FOR SPACE
SYSTEMS
By Eliahu Niewood and Marin Halper, co-directors,
cross-cutting urgent innovation cell
Q The nature of research and development has changed fun-
damentally over recent decades. One of the most challenging
changes from a national security perspective has been the
shift from a predominantly government-funded and owned
research environment to an ever-increasing preponderance
of commercial funding.
This shift means that the U.S. national security enter-
prise must be able to quickly leverage emerging technology
to maintain the technological military advantage we have
enjoyed over the last 70 years. Unfortunately, today our
potential adversaries have shown themselves more agile in
taking technology and fielding new systems based on it. The
MITRE Corp. is committed to reversing this troubling trend.
One area where there is a clear need for leveraging
emerging technology is in the new model for space systems
pioneered by the commercial sector. Today, Planet, a small
company, operates roughly 200 satellites that image the
entire land mass of the Earth every day. Another company,
DigitalGlobe, has a Worldview-03 spectral system, for exam-
ple, which can be used to detect and identify materials based
on their spectral properties.
SpaceX is developing launch vehicles that are dramati-
cally changing the cost to orbit and a variety of companies
DEFENSE DEPT.
are exploring options for cheaper launch of small payloads.
SpaceX and OneWeb are planning very large constellations
to provide high bandwidth communications around the
globe. Another rapidly evolving technology area is artificial
intelligence, particularly in the fields of deep learning and
human language technology.
These technologies are becoming ever more prevalent in
consumer products, from self-driving cars to home control
systems. In both cases, though the U.S. national security
enterprise has recognized the allure of these technologies, it
has not been able to adopt them at any scale to address criti-
cal defense mission challenges.
MITRE is making significant internal investments to
address this gap. It has identified, in partnership with its
national security federally funded research and development
center sponsor, a short list of some of the most pressing
mission challenges faced by the Defense Department. It is
finding ways to combine emerging AI and new space tech-
nologies to help solve some of these pressing challenges.
Data from new commercial space-based Earth sensing sys-
tems can be processed at scale, taking advantage of the huge
data volumes, using deep learning techniques to understand
how infrastructure is evolving in critical regions. MITRE is
leveraging all the work done here by the commercial sector,
but applying it to signatures specific to the national security
mission set.
Advanced algorithms can be applied to novel commercial
sensing techniques to locate unique signatures across wide
areas. These approaches can help provide situational under-
standing within tactically relevant timelines. The center is
also investigating how to use deep learning and AI-produced
contextual information to enable ever smaller unmanned air
systems to provide useful capabilities in challenging environ-
ments.
MITRE is exploring how to leverage new space-based
communication architectures to provide resilient communi-
cations for command and control in contested environments,
enabling better coupling across national security systems in
different domains.
In these ways, MITRE hopes to greatly enhance the abil-
ity of our national security enterprise to take advantage of
the full range of research and development activities taking
place across the nation and the world. ND
AU G U ST 2 0 1 8 • N AT I O N A L D E F E N S E 37
 Army Natick Soldier Research,
Development and Engineering Center

THE BIG BET:

SOLDIER
PERFORMANCE
By Doug Tamilio, director, Natick Soldier Research,
Development and Engineering Center

Q The Natick Soldier Research, Development and Engineer-

ing Center has a very unique mission in that we are not
focused on a single category of technologies and systems
from a platform perspective. We have a very broad yet ele-
mental focus on the individual soldier and squad, and we’re
taking a comprehensive approach toward making them bet-
ter at what they do.
From this perspective, we’re contributing to soldiers gain-
ing, maintaining and exploiting overmatch capabilities against
well-equipped and determined enemies. Overmatch can be
further broken down into the basic functions of shoot, move,
communicate, protect and sustain.
Intelligence Advanced Understanding how science and technology can directly
or indirectly influence these five critical aspects of warfight-
Research Projects Activity ing at the soldier and/or squad level is paramount in today’s
Army and at the heart of all NSRDEC does. But understand-
THE BIG BET: ing that relationship is only the beginning.
The soldier is fundamental to every capability the Army

BIOSECURITY has today and will have in the future. Soldiers come from all
walks of life, are made up of countless different physical and
cognitive abilities, and have many individual jobs and roles
within the Army. This presents an exceptionally challenging
By Jason Matheny, IARPA director problem space for us, but one that we are committed to solv-
ing through innovative science and technology solutions.
Q There is no domain of national security that causes me We have to apply our deep technical skills to develop and
more anxiety than biological threats — whether natural, acci- deliver results and that must happen incrementally over time
dental or malicious. A century ago, a single virus caused over to keep pace with global technology developments and the
50 million deaths in a 12-month period. Quantitatively, the
Spanish flu was the most severe mortality event in human
history — more severe than any war or famine.
Today we’re still vulnerable to such pandemics. What has
recently changed is the ease for an individual or group to
cause a pandemic, whether out of malice or out of careless-
ness. Last year a few researchers used commercially available
tools to synthesize a pox virus for $100,000, demonstrating
that the equivalent of a hydrogen bomb can be built on the
cheap.
The Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity has
been investing in new technologies to increase biosecurity,
including methods for detecting disease outbreaks, tools
for assessing the risks of DNA sequences and bioforensics
ISTOCK, ARMY

approaches to detect engineered threats. I hope that most of

these tools will never be needed. ND

38 N AT I O N A L D E F E N S E • A U G U S T 2 0 1 8
 proliferation of that technology.
We are focusing our attention on the things that will give
our soldiers an advantage at the most basic level — the
human aspects of warfighting.
As an example, we recently concluded a groundbreaking
exercise with the 82nd Airborne Division — a significant
science and technology effort — to enhance soldier lethality
that will ultimately provide some of the answers about how
battlefield conditions specifically impact soldier and squad
performance.
Gaining a scientifically sound appreciation of the soldier’s
physical and cognitive breakdown markers and mechanisms
Office of Naval Research
THE BIG BET:
HIGH-ENERGY
LASERS
By Frank Peterkin, ONR senior technologist for directed
energy and the electric weapons portfolio manager
Q The rapidly evolving 21st century global security land-
scape presents a complex, often asymmetric challenge to
Navy and Marine Corps warfighters as they operate forward
— a situation exacerbated by the proliferation of low-cost
advanced weapons and other emerging technologies.
The ability of our adversaries to rapidly leverage and
evolve a large variety of commercial technologies drives the
need for U.S. naval forces to innovate on ever-faster develop-
ment cycles and achieve non-linear increases in capabilities.
High-energy laser weapons may be one such game-chang-
ing technology. They produce powerful beams of focused
laser light that can heat a target at distant range and cause
material effects such as degradation, burning or disintegra-
tion.
Missions envisioned for them include: defense of naval
platforms and forces from attack by missiles, aircraft,
unmanned vehicles — both surface and air — countering
small boat threats, and countering an adversary’s ability to
surveil our forces.
Laser weapons bring unique attributes that will comple-
ment conventional capabilities. The energy to operate a
laser weapon is simply the electricity supplied by the naval
platform, offering a deep magazine with extremely low cost-
per-shot, and preserving the inventory of higher-cost conven-
tional kinetic weapons designed to address the most stressing
threats.
Laser energy can be dialed up or down to achieve scalable
effects on a target, with precision not possible from any oth-
NAVY
er type of weapon, greatly reducing concerns about collateral
R&D SPECIAL REPORT
will allow us to work with the broader human performance
community to develop effective mitigation strategies.
This is pioneering scientific work and is tremendously
complex due to the enormous number of variables that come
into play. But we believe that significant gains in soldier per-
formance can be made in the future if the community bands
together to focus its collective attention on the game chang-
ers, and that starts with unity of purpose and thought. ND
damage. In short, they can enhance the speed and range of
engagements, footprint and accuracy of effect, and types of
targets that can be engaged successfully.
The Department of the Navy is leaning forward to realize
the potential of high-energy laser weapons. With the success-
ful operational deployment of the 30-kilowatt laser weapon
system on the USS Ponce from 2014 to 2017, the Navy
became the first U.S. military service to field a laser weapon
and set a number of precedents for future tactics, proce-
dures, policy, safety and training.
The deployment also provided numerous lessons learned
that have been fed forward into a new cycle of laser weapon
development for systems that span from a few kilowatts to
hundreds of kilowatts.
These individual efforts contribute unique knowledge
points for technology assessment, ship integration, acquisi-
tion requirements and operational concepts that, when
combined, enable an incremental strategy to operationalize
interim laser weapon capability as it becomes available while
also striving to address technology and operational barriers in
order to improve performance.
The way we fight is altered every time we improve the
means of delivering energy to the target. This expands the
options to manage conflict, the range over which we project
power, the speed of operations and more.
The Navy is betting that high-energy laser weapons will be
a game changer, delivering weaponized energy in a new way
that impacts multiple domains of conflict, expands our area
of regard and helps protect our sailors and Marines. ND
AU G U ST 2 0 1 8 • N AT I O N A L D E F E N S E 39
Government Contracting Insights BY FREDERICK BENSON, HERBERT FENSTER AND PETER B. HUTT II
Granston Memo Could Impact Qui Tam Actions
Q A January Department of Justice memorandum directs
prosecutors to more seriously consider dismissing certain qui
tam actions brought pursuant to the False Claims Act. While
the memorandum’s practical effect on pending and future qui
tam actions remains to be seen, its substance provides some
interesting and timely insights into a heretofore unresolved
constitutional question: whether the FCA’s qui tam provisions
run afoul of the Constitution’s Article II Take Care Clause.
Pursuant to the False Claims Act, private whistleblowers
may initiate civil actions and collect a portion of any judg-
ment issued against entities found to have submitted false
claims to the U.S. government. The Justice Department
retains certain rights under the statute for these actions,
including the ability to intervene and proceed with relator-ini-
tiated cases, as well as the right to move to dismiss an action.
These dismissal rights were the subject of the recently
leaked “Granston memo,” which offers guidance to federal
attorneys regarding when to seek dismissal under 31 U.S.C.
§ 3730(c)(2)(A). Describing the problems that could arise if
relators were permitted to pursue certain claims, the memo
lays out seven factors federal attorneys should consider as
grounds for moving to dismiss qui tam actions, and expressly
admonishes them to consider doing so in appropriate cases.
On their face, these factors suggest that one of the memo’s
primary goals was to curb scenarios where qui tam litiga-
tion threatens the department’s ability to effectively control
enforcement of the False Claims Act.
These issues have constitutional implications. In Vermont
Agency of Natural Resources v. Stevens, the Supreme Court
expressly reserved the question of whether the FCA’s qui tam
provisions violate the Take Care Clause. Recent litigation has
revisited the otherwise dormant question, with the Granston
memo providing important insights into how the current state
of qui tam bears on the constitutionality issue.
The question turns on whether the qui tam scheme has
diverted a constitutionally impermissible quantum of con-
trol from the executive to relators. In Morrison v. Olson, the
Supreme Court held that in order to avoid a violation of the
Take Care Clause, a statute divesting the executive of pros-
ecutorial discretion must “give the executive branch sufficient
control … to ensure that the president is able to perform his
constitutionally assigned duties.” In the context of a high-pro-
file and closely monitored investigation, Morrison concluded
that for-cause removal authority was sufficient to permit the
executive to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed.”
By contrast, the Justice Department’s responsibility to moni-
tor the qui tam bar’s “enormous docket” of cases presents a
much closer question.
The Granston memo purports to be an outline for depart-
ment attorneys on how to move for dismissal in appropriate
cases. However, its substance highlights multiple ways by
which relators are circumventing the government’s attempts
to consistently implement the statute. The introduction notes
that despite “record increases” in qui tam filings, the depart-
40 N AT I O N A L D E F E N S E • A U G U S T 2 0 1 8
ment’s intervention rate has remained static, implicitly sug-
gesting a lack of control over the expanding qui tam plaintiffs’
bar.
The consequences for failing to control qui tam relators are
also enumerated, including “significant resources in monitor-
ing [non-intervened] cases,” costs associated with “produc[ing]
discovery or otherwise participat[ing],” and “adverse decisions
that affect the government’s ability to enforce the FCA.”
Indeed, the apparent need to issue the Granston memo in
the first place is strong evidence that the unwieldy qui tam
clauses have divested the executive of the ability to “take care
that the [FCA] be faithfully executed.”
Concern about the government’s ability to tame relators
featured prominently in the Fifth Circuit’s recent decision
in U.S. ex rel. Harman v. Trinity Industries Inc. In Trinity, the
relator alleged that a manufacturer of guardrail end terminals
had failed to disclose certain design changes to the Federal
Highway Administration and state governments. The court
ultimately concluded that any purported failure to disclose
was immaterial. It also expressed dismay at the relator’s ability
to pursue his case to that stage given the government’s evi-
dent conclusion that no fraud had occurred.
If the Justice Department did indeed conclude that no
“Private whistleblowers may initiate
civil actions and collect a portion of
any judgment issued against entities
found to have submitted false claims
to the U.S. government.”
fraud occurred, Trinity plainly illustrates the government’s
inability to control meritless qui tam litigation.
In contrast with Trinity, defendants in the Tenth Circuit’s
Polukoff v. St. Mark’s Hospital case have explicitly challenged
the FCA’s qui tam provisions on Take Care grounds. After
flagging the argument as being “o[f] particular note” and con-
sidering an intervention brief by the government, the Tenth
Circuit concluded the argument was forfeited, perpetuating
this question’s status as an unresolved issue of potentially
paramount importance.
The Granston memo provides an insider perspective on
how the Justice Department views its control of the False
Claims Act docket, and may well play an important role as
courts continue to grapple with the question reserved in
Stevens. Given the document’s potential import, contractors
would be well advised to familiarize themselves with its pro-
visions when defending against ongoing and future qui tam
litigation. ND
Frederick Benson is an associate, Herbert Fenster is senior of counsel
and Peter B. Hutt II is partner at Covington & Burling LLP.
 Ethics Corner BY LAURA ALEXANDER AND CHRISTOPHER HALE
Uncertainty Persists Around Alien Tort Statute
Q As defense contractors pursue an increasing array of
opportunities abroad, they must remain mindful of the risks
of civil liability and lawsuits brought against them in U.S.
courts by foreign victims of human rights abuses.
The Alien Tort Statute, 28 U.S.C. § 1350, gives federal
courts jurisdiction over “any civil action by an alien for a tort
only, committed in violation of the law of nations or a treaty
of the United States.”
The statute provides a mechanism for foreigners seeking
accountability in the United States for violations of interna-
tional law. The reasoning is that unless the U.S. government
provided a path within its own justice system to hold viola-
tors of international law accountable, foreign nations might
instead hold the United States itself to blame.
The question then is whom does the statute allow to be
held accountable? As noted by the U.S. Supreme Court, the
wrong answer to this question could transform a law intend-
ed to “promote harmony in international relations” into one
creating “the very foreign-related tensions that … Congress
sought to avoid.”
Part of the Judiciary Act of 1789, the Alien Tort Statute
remained largely ignored for nearly two centuries before a
Second Circuit Court of Appeals case in 1980, Filártiga v.
Peña-Irala. The court allowed a Paraguayan family — unable
to adequately pursue their case in their own country — to
sue a former Paraguayan police official living in New York
for allegedly torturing their son to death in Paraguay for
opposing that country’s government. The Second Circuit
held that torture violated the law of nations and could trig-
ger jurisdiction under the Alien Tort Statute.
Over the next two decades, the federal courts grappled
with how to interpret the scope of the statute. They looked
beyond torture to consider other international law violations,
including genocide, summary execution, forced disappear-
ances, terrorism and war crimes. The courts also addressed
whom could be sued, as critics became increasingly uncom-
fortable with suits brought against multinational corpora-
tions.
However, it was not until 2004 that the Supreme Court
weighed in on the scope of the law. Seeking to rein in
an expansive reading of it, which might otherwise allow
judges to create a host of new causes of action beyond what
Congress had intended, the court held in Sosa v. Alvarez-
Machain that the Alien Tort Statute authorized actions for
violations of “a very limited category” of universally recog-
nized and clearly defined norms of international law.
But the question remained of whom could be held liable.
Significantly, a circuit split among the Courts of Appeals
emerged as to whether the statute could be used against cor-
porations. This split was fueled by views that allowing such
cases to proceed would be a judicial overstep when the rel-
evant policy matters should be decided instead by Congress.
In April, the Supreme Court answered half of the ques-
tion in Jesner v. Arab Bank. In that case, terrorism victims in
the Middle East sued a Jordanian bank under the Alien Tort
Statute, alleging that the bank kept accounts for known ter-
rorists, knowingly accepted donations to fund terrorism and
distributed payments to families of suicide bombers. In a
plurality opinion supported by the conservative justices, the
court held that foreign corporations were not liable.
The justices reasoned that permitting a lawsuit against a
foreign company would stoke the very tensions in foreign
relations that Congress had sought to avoid by passing the
law. Instead of simply providing a forum for foreign individu-
als to seek accountability in the United States for violations
of international law, allowing those individuals to sue foreign
corporations under the statute could expose businesses to
liability they did not face elsewhere in the world.
The court specifically noted that the Jesner litigation had
caused diplomatic tensions with Jordan, and said that Con-
gress — not the courts — was better equipped to weigh
policy judgments affecting foreign relations.
Importantly, the Supreme Court declined to decide
whether the statute gave U.S. courts jurisdiction over claims
against domestic corporations. Given the Supreme Court’s
current and foreseeable conservative composition, it seems
“This split was fueled by views that
allowing such cases to proceed would
be a judicial overstep when the relevant
policy matters should be decided
instead by Congress.”
likely that the judicial body would decline endorsing the
Alien Tort Statute liability for domestic corporations absent
an affirmative and clear answer from Congress.
Until Congress weighs in or the Supreme Court addresses
the issue again, there remains no clear answer as to whether
a domestic corporation is subject to liability. Given the cir-
cuit split on the issue, it could depend on where the suit is
filed.
Meanwhile, if not the corporation itself, individual mem-
bers of management or other employees might still be
subjected to liability in their personal capacity. It is critical,
therefore, that defense contractors operating with a global
reach consider seeking the appropriate legal counsel and
guidance regarding the need for a robust compliance pro-
gram addressing international law concerns, including, but
not limited to, the Alien Tort Statute. ND
Christopher Hale is a partner and Laura Alexander is an associate in
the government contracts, investigations and international trade prac-
tice group at Sheppard, Mullin, Richter & Hampton LLP. They can be
reached at chale@sheppardmullin.com and lalexander@sheppardmullin.
com, respectively.
AU G U ST 2 0 1 8 • N AT I O N A L D E F E N S E 41

Letters to the Editor
A Misguided GAO Decision
Q Recently, Oracle protested to the Government Account-
ability Office a decision to award a follow-on other transaction
contract — rather than a procurement contract — to REAN
Cloud LLC for a cloud migration program. Many government
procurement professionals view GAO protest decisions as law.
GAO does not make law and their decisions are not law or
jurisprudence. They are opinions of government bureaucrats
filtered through levels of bureaucracy and encrusted with
“business as usual” thinking, as the opinion in this case demon-
strates.
Before criticizing GAO, I will mention that it correctly
observed that the dollar approval levels applicable to pro-
totype OTs do not apply to production OTs. Its timeline of
the REAN transaction shows it was
“GAO violated much more expeditious than an
equivalent Federal Acquisition Regu-
both rules in its lation transaction.
In 2017, the contracting com-
interpretation mand engaged REAN through the
of the statute.” DIUx commercial solutions opening
(CSO) process to prototype cloud
migration services related to legacy software systems. Funding
for the project was provided by U.S. Transportation Command.
The scope of the project was expanded by an amendment to
the agreement.
While work was still in progress, DIUx determined that suc-
cess had been demonstrated and a follow-on production other
transaction agreement was awarded in the amount of $950
million with potential to make sub-awards beyond TRANS-
COM to other government agencies. The amount and scope
of the award was subsequently reduced to $65 million but not
before Oracle protested.
This case is important because it is an early example of
the follow-on production authority for OTs enacted by Con-
gress when the former prototype authority “section 845”
was repealed and new authority under 10 U.S.C. 2371b was
enacted. GAO found several errors committed by the Defense
Innovation Unit-Experimental and its contracting agent Army
Contracting Command-New Jersey. GAO’s decision is pre-
mised in large part on the theory of inadequate notice to
Oracle that a large production OT might follow a successful
prototype project. GAO also questioned the DIUx determina-
tion that the project was successful.
Other transactions do not generally fall within GAO’s
statutory bid protest jurisdiction. It has however carved out a
limited role for itself in OT protests, namely to determine if a
procurement contract rather than an OT was legally required
under the circumstances involved. In addition, GAO requires
that a protest be filed in a timely manner and that the pro-
tester be an “interested party.” In this case GAO determined
Oracle was an interested party, that its protest filed in 2018
was timely and that a follow-on production OT was not legally
authorized.
GAO’s opinion asserted that its interpretation of 10 U.S.C.
2371b, the OT statute in question, was based on the “plain
42 N AT I O N A L D E F E N S E • A U G U S T 2 0 1 8
meaning” rule of statutory construction as well as the “give
effect to all words of a statute” rule.
GAO violated both rules in its interpretation of the statute.
It denied separate meanings to the terms “project,” “transac-
tion” and “agreement” by conflating them. It added to the
obfuscation by injecting its own terminology “legal instrument”
and “OTA” to mean the same thing as conflated statutory
terms.
Both the statute itself and the CSO provided notice to Ora-
cle of a potential follow-on production award. Oracle was not
an interested party because it chose not to participate in the
CSO process that led to REAN’s receiving a prototype award.
Its 2018 protest was untimely since it had notice in 2017.
GAO’s opinion found that the prototype project was not
successful because it was still in progress when the follow-on
award was made. The statute requires a successful prototype
project as a prerequisite for follow-on award. GAO gave
no deference to the Army’s determination that the project
was successful despite that some work was in progress. Here
GAO’s conflating of terms and denying distinct meanings to
them was important. Had it discovered their distinct meanings,
it would have ruled in favor of the government. Had it found
ambiguity it should have granted deference to the govern-
ment’s interpretation.
Finally, GAO’s decision is misguided because it fails to dis-
cuss follow-on production authority contained in the predeces-
sor OT statute. Previous production authority contained the
kind of rigid approach GAO is trying to impose in its decision.
As a result, it was never used. Congress abandoned the rigid
approach in the version of production authority it added to
section 2371b. GAO apparently chose not to discuss this since
it undermines its position.
Richard L. Dunn
Founder, Strategic Institute for
Innovation in Government Contracting
On Mentorship
Q In regards to a recent “NDIA Perspective” column authored
by Women In Defense Executive Director Rachel A. McCaf-
frey from the June 2018 issue of National Defense: This article
was simply outstanding and frankly a superb reflection and les-
son on military mentorship with a modern and relevant busi-
ness application.
I am not sure how or why I let this eas-
ily understandable and applicative concept
get away from my daily interaction with
my airmen but I’m glad to have it back!
I greatly appreciated her very thought-
ful article and pass along my sincere
thanks to her. I once again have a won-
derful teaching lesson that demonstrates:
timely/appropriate mentorship, highlights
the importance of establishing and charting specific career
goals and teaches supervisors what and how to address career
development issues amongst the rank and file.
Command Sgt. Maj. Mark Henriquez
Air Force, 15th Operations Group Superintendent
Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, HI
 News

Stankowski to Receive NEW ‘CYBER-AUGMENTED

Association’s Sridhar Award OPERATIONS’ DIVISION ESTABLISHED

Q Barbara Stankowski, president and CEO of AMTIS Inc. of
Orlando, Florida, is the 2018 recipient of the National Defense
Industrial Association’s Kathleen P. Sridhar Small Business Execu-
tive of the Year Award.
Stankowski was cited for her support of small business initiatives
across Florida and her individual coaching of startup businesses,
particularly those owned by women and veterans.
Since 2014, she has been on the advisory board
for GrowFL, an organization that offers strategies,
resources and support to second-stage companies
for next-level growth.
Stankowski served 28 years in the Navy, seven
of those in command, and worked eight years for a small business
before founding AMTIS in 2007. It has about 170 employees, about
a third of whom are veterans. AMTIS provides professional and
business processing services and leader development and training to
the Defense Department and other federal agencies.
The award is named for Kathleen Sridhar, CEO of INDUS
Technology, who died in March 2004. Sridhar was active in NDIA
conferences and events and was president of the association’s San
Diego Chapter. Stankowski will receive the award and be recog-
nized during NDIA’s fall board meeting.
Q As cyber-related technologies continue to evolve and
shape the military, the National Defense Industrial Associa-
tion has established a new “Cyber-Augmented Operations”
Division.
The division — formerly known as cyber and emerging
technologies — will focus on harnessing the power of cyber-
related capabilities, such as high-speed processing, agile spec-
trum electronics and information algorithms to deliver speed
and automation for both tactical and operational advantages
in military operations.
Such technologies will expand as innovators reveal the
potential for cyberspace beyond support for intelligence
and traditional military operations. To that end, the division
has four focus areas: human augmentation and replace-
ment, such as artificial intelligence, machine learning and
autonomy; human-machine teaming, including augmented
reality, interfaces, command-and-control battle management,
decision execution and virtual reality training and exercising;
electromagnetic spectrum operations, to include spectrum
agility and management; and cyber-enabled process innova-
tion, such as additive manufacturing, acquisition and busi-
ness processes, and logistics and sustainment.

acquired by Northrop Grum-

Space Division Recognizes Thompson, Elias
Q The vice commander of Air Force
Space Command and the man behind
the Pegasus air-launched rocket are the
recipients of the 2018 Honorable Peter
B. Teets Award, the National Defense
Industrial Association announced.
Lt. Gen. David Thompson and Anto-
nio Elias, formerly of Orbital ATK Inc.,
are recognized this year by NDIA’s space
division.
In April, Thompson took over as
vice commander of Air Force Space
Command, which oversees mission-
ready space and cyberspace forces and
supports North American Aerospace
Defense Command, U.S. Strategic Com-
mand and other combatant commands.
He previously served as vice commander
and special assistant to the commander
of Space Command’s operations at
Peterson Air Force Base, Colorado.
Elias recently retired as executive vice
president and chief technical officer
of Orbital ATK, which was recently
man. In 1987, Elias conceived
and led the design of Pegasus,
the world’s first privately
funded space launcher and the
Thompson
first space launch vehicle to be
dropped from an airplane.
NDIA’s Space Division annu-
ally bestows the Teets award, its
highest honor, to recognize pub-
lic- and private-sector leadership Elias
or achievement that contributes
significantly to the development,
introduction, operational contribution or
support of space systems. ND

committee.
Association Mourns Loss of Colwell
AMTIS, INC., ISTOCK, DEFENSE DEPT., ORBITAL ATK

He served in the Navy as a nuclear

Q The National Defense Industrial
Association mourns the passing of
William Colwell, an active member
of its Procurement Division and
revered expert in federal procure-
ment, who died July 15. He was 48.
Colwell was a recognized
authority in government
contracts and had been counsel
for Northrop Grumman Corp.’s
missile defense and protective
systems division. He was involved
with NDIA’s Procurement Divi-
sion since 2012 and served with
distinction as both the vice
chair and chair of the legal
submarine officer before he became a
lawyer.
Colwell was recently bestowed the
Howard H. Cork Award for his excep-
tional service to NDIA’s Procurement
Division.
Cowell is survived by his wife, Robin,
and twin daughters, Anna and Lauren,
among other family.

AU G U ST 2 0 1 8 • N AT I O N A L D E F E N S E 43
 SEPTEMBER 16-18 23rd Annual
CALENDAR Expeditionary Warfare
Conference
Annapolis, MD
NDIA.org/EWC18

AUGUST 10-14 Fall Simulation See ad on page 46

Innovation Workshop (SIW)
Sponsored by SISO 22-25 21st Annual Systems
Orlando, FL Engineering Conference
6-9 International Explosives TrainingSystems.org Tampa, FL
Safety Symposium & Exposition
NDIA.org/SE18
San Diego, CA
See ad on page 47
NDIA.org/Intl-Explosives-Safety 13-14 Mastering Business
Development Workshop
7-8 San Diego Chapter Arlington, VA
22-24 2018 Joint Annual
NDIA/AIA Industrial Security
Gold Coast Conference NDIA.org/mbdisept18
Committee Fall Conference
San Diego, CA
San Antonio, TX
NDIA-SD.org 17-19 2018 Joint Undersea NDIA.org/jointndiaaiafall18
Warfare Technology Fall
Conference
7-9 Michigan Chapter 10th Groton, CT
Annual Ground Vehicle Systems NDIA.org/underseafall
Engineering & Technology See ad on page 46
23-25 Precision Strike
Symposium (GVSETS) Technology Symposium
Novi, MI (PSTS-18) Secret/NOFORN
NDIA-Mich.org
19-20 Manufacturing Division Laurel, MD
Meeting
NDIA.org/PSTS18
Washington, DC
8 WID HORIZONS Scholarship See ad on page 47
Celebration
Washington, DC
WomenInDefense.net/HORIZONS18 25-26 National Modeling
and Simulation Coalition NOVEMBER
14-15 Global Explosive National Meeting
Ordnance Disposal (EOD) Omaha, NE
Symposium & Exhibition TrainingSystems.org 6-8 Aircraft Survivability
Symposium 2018
Bethesda, MD
Monterey, CA
NDIA.org/GlobalEOD18
NDIA.org/Aircraft18
See ad on page 45
OCTOBER 7-8 Gulf Coast Chapter Air
21-23 Army Science & Armament Symposium
Technology Symposium 2 The Embassy/Defense Attaché Fort Walton Beach, FL
& Showcase Luncheon Series Featuring NDIAgulfcoast.com
Washington, DC Sweden’s MG Bengt Svensson
NDIA.org/Army-Science Washington, DC
See ad on page 45 NDIA.org/attacheseriesOct18 26-30 Interservice/Industry
Training, Simulation &
10 TRIAD Education Conference
(I/ITSEC) 2018
27-29 ADL iFest 2018 Chantilly, VA
Orlando, FL
Alexandria, VA NDIA.org/triadoct18
www.iitsec.org
TrainingSystems.org
See ad on page 46 11 U.S.-ROK Defense Industry
Consultative Committee (DICC)
28-29 2018 Fall IPM Arlington, VA
Division Meeting NDIA.org/usrokdicc
Hurst, TX
NDIA.org/IPMFall18
See ad on page 46

44 N AT I O N A L D E F E N S E • A U G U S T 2 0 1 8
GLOBAL EXPLOSIVE
ORDNANCE DISPOSAL
(EOD) SYMPOSIUM &
EXHIBITION
Modernizing to Meet New Threats

Join us as we examine modernization

of the force in light of the new national
security and national defense strategies.
We’ll explore counter improvised explosive
devices, counter unexploded ordnance and
combating weapons of mass destruction at
this not to miss event.

Aug. 14-15
Bethesda, MD
NDIA.org/GlobalEOD18

Be the difference in
a soldier’s success.
Plan today to be at this
important symposium with
WKH$UP\·VVFLHQFHDQG
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LQGXVWU\DVWKH\ORRNWRJLYH
VROGLHUVWHFKQRORJ\HQDEOHG
FDSDELOLWLHV
REGISTER TODAY!

Aug. 21-23 | Washington, DC

NDIA.org/Army-Science

AU G U ST 2 0 1 8 • N AT I O N A L D E F E N S E 45
 Calendar

iFest 2018 2018 FALL IPM

DIVISION MEETING

In collaboration with the National Training and Simulation

Association (NTSA), the Advanced Distributed Learning (ADL)
Initiative is excited to announce iFest 2018. iFest provides
unique opportunities for military, government, industry and
academia professionals to share the latest in distributed
OHDUQLQJLQQRYDWLRQV7KLV\HDU·VWKHPHLVWKH´)XWXUH/HDUQLQJ
Ecosystem” with a focus on interoperability, learning data/
analytics and learning science.
Aug. 27-29 | TrainingSystems.org/events Hilton
Mark Center | Alexandria, VA
2018 JOINT UNDERSEA
WARFARE TECHNOLOGY
FALL CONFERENCE
7KLV\HDU·VWKHPH´0DLQWDLQLQJ'RPLQDQFHLQWKH8QGHUVHD
'RPDLQ'XULQJ661*DS<HDUVµVSHDNVWRWKH1DY\·VNH\FRUH
competency mission of countering undersea threats to the
free and open flow of seaborne commerce and to maintaining
power projection from the sea.
Sept. 17-19 | Groton, CT | NDIA.org/USWFall18
46 N AT I O N A L D E F E N S E • A U G U S T 2 0 1 8
7KH,QWHJUDWHG3URJUDP0DQDJHPHQW'LYLVLRQ,30'
meeting is the primary forum for exchanging views and
information to promote and communicate integrated
program management best practices.
Aug. 28-29 | Hurst, TX | NDIA.org/IPMFall18
23RD ANNUAL EXPEDITIONARY
WARFARE CONFERENCE
Join us to learn about the latest advances in
expeditionary warfare, network with government and
industry representatives in the expeditionary warfare
ÀHOGDQGVHHWKHODWHVWWHFKQRORJ\RQGLVSOD\
Oct. 16-18 | Annapolis, MD | NDIA.org/EWC18
21ST ANNUAL SYSTEMS PRECISION STRIKE
ENGINEERING CONFERENCE TECHNOLOGY SYMPOSIUM
(PSTS–18)

This conference will focus on improving acquisi-

tion and performance of Defense programs and
systems, including system-of-systems engineer-
ing, systems security, net-centric operations and
data/information interoperability, and all aspects
of system sustainment.
6KDUSHQLQJ$PHULFD·V&RPSHWLWLYH(GJHZLWK+LJK
6SHHG3UHFLVLRQ(QJDJHPHQW
Symposium Will be Conducted at the SECRET//NOFORN Level

Oct. 22-25 | Tampa, FL | NDIA.org/SE18

Oct. 23-25 | Laurel, MD | NDIA.org/PSTS18

CALL FOR NOMINATIONS

Nominations are now being accepted for NDIA’s top three awards:

• Dwight D. Eisenhower Award

• James Forrestal Industry Leadership Award

• Kathleen P. Sridhar Small Business

Executive of the Year Award
Please review the purpose, criteria and past recipients for each
award and nominate a deserving candidate at NDIA.org/about

Complete the appropriate fillable PDF nomination form and return

no later than Friday, October 5, 2018 to LJones@NDIA.org

NOMINATOR AND NOMINEE MUST BOTH BE NDIA MEMBERS

For questions please contact Liza Jones at (703) 247-2560 or LJones@NDIA.org

AU G U ST 2 0 1 8 • N AT I O N A L D E F E N S E 47
Next Month

Air Power
■ No heavy bomber has lasted as long as the B-52 Stratofor-
tress, which first joined the U.S. arsenal in the 1950s. Now, as
the Air Force plans to retire the younger B-1 and B-2 bombers
to make way for the future B-21 Raider, the service will pro-
cure new engines and radars in an effort to keep the venerable
aircraft flying into the 2050s.
Light Attack
■ Last year, the Air Force kicked off an ambitious experi-
ment to test whether a commercial off-the-shelf aircraft could
perform light attack and close-air-support missions at a lower
cost than developing a new program. But after a fatal accident
earlier this year and no contract guarantee at the end of the
effort, it remains to be seen whether the experiment can truly
Amphibious Combat Vehicle
■ BAE Systems was recently awarded a contract to develop
a new platform to help Marines get from ship to shore and
conduct ground combat operations. National Defense will
examine the need for the new capability, and the path ahead
for the program.
Marine Corps Aviation
■ Whether they are tiny quadcopters or large unmanned
aerial vehicles that can be flown off ships, the Marine Corps
is gung-ho about examining how drones of all sizes can better
enable Marines. Such technology promises to give Marines on

AIR FORCE
shift the defense acquisition paradigm. the ground and at sea increased situational awareness.

AUGUST 2018 Index of Advertisers

Interact with the companies whose products and services are advertised in National Defense.

ADVERTISER INTERACT PAGE NO.

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Senior Vice President Sales Director Sales Coordinator

Meetings & Business Partnerships Kathleen Kenney Alex Mitchell
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