Then-Assistant Secretary of the Army (Acquisition, Logistics and Technology) Heidi Shyu with a Precision Sniper Rifle
Story updated March 10, 2022 at 4:37 pm ET to correct the DoD official with whom Shyu spoke about RDER.
The Pentagon will soon begin the planning stages of the second “sprint” of a new joint experimentation initiative on track to take place in fiscal 2024, the Defense Department’s chief technology officer recently said, focusing in part on “contested logistics.”
Speaking at the NDIA Pacific Operational Science and Technology Conference in Hawaii, Under Secretary for Research and Engineering Heidi Shyu pointed to Russia as an example of how important the oft-overlooked area can be.
“Looking at the logistics problems the Russians are having. It’s a contested logistics environment. It’s not even that contested — it could be a lot more contested, a lot more difficult. So we truly want to focus on that area,” she said.
Shyu said she met with Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks last week to discuss the second round of the Rapid Defense Experimentation Reserve (RDER), an effort aimed at addressing capability gaps and emerging technologies.
“In order to plan for the FY24 [experiment], you really need to start now, right?” she told reporters at a roundtable after her keynote remarks. “It takes time to go through the entire process in terms of informing industry, soliciting ideas and for them to write a white paper and then for us to evaluate it… All of that takes some time.”
In addition to contested logistics, RDER will focus on the areas of all domain command and control and long-range fires. Shyu said she wants to engage with industry and nontraditional companies for the second experiment, which will address contested logistics.
“So if you’re a small company and have a great idea, we’re interested in hearing your ideas. We are initiating that process pretty quickly. Probably in the next few weeks we’re starting our second sprint,” she said in her keynote.
Shyu said she initially wants to focus on 32 technologies, including both classified and unclassified efforts, in the first sprint starting in FY23 and plans on doing two RDER demonstrations per year.
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Two sprints per year would allow companies to have the opportunity to make changes or upgrades to their prototypes, she said.
“Even, let’s say, the joint staff says, ‘Nah, you didn’t quite hit the mark … in terms of what we’re looking for,’ that doesn’t mean you’re dead forever,” she said. “You can go back and innovate, right? Come back again when you have modified your equipment or come up with another idea.”
Shyu also said she wants a “transition pot money” to make it easier for small businesses to participate in RDER and help ramp up their capabilities into production quicker. She has previously mentioned the Pentagon in its FY23 budget request is asking to fund three “tranches” of phase II Small Business Innovation and Research funding to help industry pave over the technology “valley of death” between the lab and battlefield.
It doesn’t matter if that capability is “either internally funded or via one of the DoD laboratories that’s working on it or some small company that’s working on a commercial product that could fulfill that gap,” Shyu told reporters. “I’m just interested in closing the gap. I think it’s important for us to provide the capabilities as quickly as possible to the component commanders.”
