An audit by the DoD Inspector General found that while federal law "allows for one of 4 conditions for a prototype OT award," Pentagon rules contain "no requirement to validate that the contractor met those conditions," an OIG spokesperson told Breaking Defense.
The Pentagon’s grand plans for Joint All Domain Command & Control require translating masses of data across incompatible systems. “Unless you get the underpinnings of a foundational data fabric,” Maj. Gen. Peter Gallagher told me, “it will never happen.”
“Tactical operating system” for warfighters has evolved to provide more situational awareness of the battlefield.
The experimental targeting goggles field-tested last fall didn’t work in the rain. The ruggedized version to be tested this month will fix that flaw – and more, the Army says.
Other Transaction Authority prototyping tripled from 2017's $1.6 billion, while other non-traditional vehicles, like research grants, declined from $730 million to $590 million.
After weeks of COVID delays, combat soldiers are now testing both the IBCS network and the IM-SHORAD vehicle at White Sands. The first live shots against flying targets are just weeks away.
The drone's mission set "could be anything from base defense to communications to sensing," said AFLCMC's Brig. Gen. Dale White.
Reducing cognitive overload on warfighters while improving “time to trust” for autonomous systems is a matter of design.
Industry sources say the Army shouldn’t enter its own in-house design team in the race to replace the M2 Bradley. Top Army officials told us why it would work.
“I spent the first 15 years of my career walking around in a lab with a laser, saying ‘does anyone want this…’ and the warfighter [kept] going ‘that’s adorable,’” Craig Robin recalled ruefully. “Just recently there’s been a tremendous pull [because] we simply just got out it into the user’s hands and they recognized the value.”
The Army’s urgently developing new air-launched drones, long-range missiles, and electronic architecture to go on the Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft that Bell and Sikorsky are vying to build.
Reformers like Air Force acquisitions chief Will Roper have seized on Other Transactions Authority contracts as a way to bypass bureaucracy and jumpstart innovation.
Knowing when to build on commercial systems and when to develop something new can be the difference between parity and information dominance.
The thing that delayed Defiant, it turns out, is the same thing that makes it really attractive to the Army.
“Now that they've completed the initial ground run, the team can finish its work to clear the aircraft for first flight,” said Mike Hirschberg, executive director of the Vertical Flight Society. “Assuming the Defiant team doesn't find anything noteworthy from its ground testing, it should be up in the air in the next few weeks.”
"Ultimately that is what this is all about, why I get up every morning, that’s why AFC exists: to make sure, not today’s soldier, but our kids and our grandkids have the core concepts, the organizational structures, and the capabilities they need to fight and win on a future battlefield," Gen. Murray said, "or even better yet not to fight at all, because there is nobody in the world in the future that would ever take on the United States in ground combat, because we have done our job so well."
"Our new approach is really to prototype as much as we can to help us identify requirements, so our reach doesn’t exceed our grasp," Secretary Esper said. “A good example is Future Vertical Lift: The prototyping has been exceptional."