Roper Eyes Biotech, New Materials Funding; NGAD Gets PEO

WASHINGTON: An acquisition plan for the Air Force’s Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) concept is expected by the end of summer, when the program will be combined with the Digital Century Series program, says service acquisition czar Will Roper.

Meanwhile, he told the Mitchell Institute today, he is eyeing synthetic biology and development of new materials as candidates for future funding designed to bring cutting-edge university research into the military and other marketplaces.

Roper said that NGAD, which is fleshing out concepts for digitally coupling sixth-generation fighters with drones and missiles, currently is running in parallel with the Digital Century Series program. That program is looking at the feasibility of churning out incrementally upgraded aircraft in much quicker timeframes and at lower costs.

However, he said, the plan is to fold NGAD and the Digital Century Series together — a process he launched last October. That will be done, he explained, by the creation of a new PEO for “Fighters and Advanced Aircraft.”

“I think that’s important, that NGAD is connected with a full PEO, and that our future PEO that is working on the next generation systems — beyond where we are with F-35 — is also working on Skyborg,” he added, in order to create a “family of systems” for future air warfare.

The Skyborg project, as Breaking D readers know, is developing an artificial intelligence (AI) package to serve as the “brain” for a future virtual pilot (a concept nicknamed R2D2 after the famous Star Wars droid) — first to be mated with low-cost, attritable drones as part of the overarching NGAD concept. Currently, the Kratos Valkyrie XQ-58A is the only drone to be flight tested with Skyborg, but the service hasn’t ruled out other drone bodies to do so.

While DoD is excited about the promise of AI, he said, the state of technology isn’t yet able to support battlefield operations. Current AI networks are simply too easily spoofed, he said.

“We’re going to need a new form of AI, that is hardened against an adversary,” he said, noting that this is the goal of the $15 million AI accelerator project with MIT the Air Force launched last May.

At the same time, the success of the MIT collaboration so far has led to the launch of a new kind of Air Force Pitch Day focused on bringing government, industry, academia and the small business/startup community together with tech experts in a specific field to try to rapidly move interesting research from university labs and into the ‘real world.’

The Air Force’s first Pitch Day for the university focused awards — centering on quantum science (i.e., using high-speed particles of light) — is slated for June 15. The “Quantum Collider and Pitch Day” will focus on quantum communications, computing, timing and sensing, according to the event’s website for the event.

As Breaking D readers know, quantum science it is widely seen as the ‘next big thing’ in communications and computer — especially with regard to encrypted signals that are nearly impossible for hackers to break.

“It’s going to eventually make an impact, but we don’t know when — it’s difficult technology to mature,” Roper said. “The idea is to create a steady demand signal from the Air and Space Force,” he added, so the US military can get out in front of adversaries (read China).

“If we don’t start doing this year after year, another country, another military, might get to the quantum goal line first — at some probability I guess you should say in the realm of quantum physics,” he quipped with a laugh.

Starting with the Quantum Collider, the AFRL-led initiative aimed at universities will award the winning pitches grants under the little-known Small Business Tech Transfer Research (STTR) program, Roper explained. The STTR account, while only about “$100 million and change” a year, is focused on getting technology out of the laboratory and into programs of record, he said.

(While $100 million spread out over a number vendors would be pocket change in the world of big defense contractors, in the world of university research a one-year, $100,000 grant is huge.)

“It is meant to spin technology out of universities into companies that want to try to get it to the goal line for, you know, a mission, whether it’s commercial or military,” Roper explained. “I see huge potential to create a wonderful ecosystem between university researchers, tech startups and venture capitalists to try to get university research out of so many fields that could affect the future Air and Space Force and create a faster path to spin it out.”

That said, Roper said he wants the service to be judicious about picking a small number of research fields to concentrate the limited resources.

“What I don’t want to do is peanut-butter spread,” he said. “The worst thing to do is have a strategy where you’re putting nickels and dimes everywhere, so I’d rather make concerted moves in new fields of tech.”

The ever-enthusiastic Roper is particularly enthusiastic about the possibilities stemming from the use of synthetic biology — a subject that DoD Undersecretary for Research and Engineering Mike Griffin recently elevated within his office’s portfolio.

“What’s the next field, beyond quantum? It could be synthetic biology; it could be materials — nano-materials, meta-materials are just fascinating to me … biologically inspired materials are fascinating,” Roper said. “There’s so many breakthroughs that are happening.”

“That’s new for us,” he added. “We don’t typically think about biology as a core competency in the Air Force, but biology teaches us a ton.  Biologically-inspired machines and biology acting like a machine when it’s been hacked and gene edited — this is new. It’s like cheating on Mother Nature’s test, and I mean, who knows what advantages that’s going to give for acing the course.”

He stressed that the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) is still vetting “what’s the right area for the next move for us, and so I need to get feedback from them of where we see the greatest juice that will return from our squeeze.” But, he added, “I would not be surprised if those two fields are among the final that they decide.”

Indeed, AFRL on June 15 closes bids in a May-issued challenge contest, worth a $1 million prize, for a research team that can prove the viability of synthetic biology materials that are used as precursors for manufacturing high-temperature materials that can be used in aerospace applications. These biotech-engineered polymers could replace those now made by expensive chemical processes, according to the AFRL’s website on the effort, or even lead to brand new materials.

It is the first of three prize challenges AFRL is planning in the area of synthetic biology, said Bob Lee, Innovation Project Manager at the Wright Brothers Institute in Dayton, which is partnered with AFRL. The institute serves as the intermediary for the prize award under DoD’s “prize authority” (Section 2354a) — which is different than the STTR contracting authority.

The second challenge is limited to US citizens, so Lee couldn’t elaborate on it in public. The third, however, is open and will focus on using synthetic biology in the manufacturing of new, high-temperature fuels, he said. (High-temperature fuels could be extremely useful for hypersonic missiles, for example.) That challenge will open for bids on July 15.

The outcomes of these challenges likely will be used by the lab to figure out what specific synthetic biology applications the Air Force might want to focus on the STTR process. Indeed, the AFRL website says that the current challenge for polymers “will be run in two stages: 1) the open prize challenge to find the best ideas and approaches to build the synthetic biology products and 2) engaging with these researchers and potentially partnering them with companies that can generate the required materials using synthetic biology.”

The university research-focused Pitch Day initiative is following in the successful footsteps of the Pitch Days already being managed by the services main technology innovation hub, AFWERX, for granting Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) contracts to startups with ideas that are closer to being market-ready, Roper said.

Indeed, Roper now has elevated AFWERX — he called the revamped organization “AFWERX 2.0” — so its new director, Col. Nathan Diller, reports directly to him. Diller, as Breaking D readers may recall, is also the Team Lead for Roper’s high-priority Agility Prime effort to bring flying cars to the marketplace.