The Defense Department will soon ask Congress to extend a pilot program where DoD contractor and program manager teams work together to incorporate defense exportability features into their systems earlier in the development phase, according to a senior official.
Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics (AT&L) Frank Kendall said yesterday lawmakers originally gave DoD authority to run the program, known as the Defense Exportability Features (DEF) initiative, through 2015. The idea is that it is cheaper, and easier, to introduce new features earlier in the development process. Kendall said there is a cost-sharing arrangement with industry done on a case-by-case basis as part of the program.
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| Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics (AT&L) Frank Kendall. Photo: DoD. |
“There’s obviously a win for industry in this, there’s a win for the government as well and there’s a win for our allies in it,” Kendall said at the 2013 ComDef conference in Washington. “It gives us all cheaper products (and) gets them to us sooner. (It makes them) just more interoperable and it improves the level of performance capabilities of our forces.”
Kendall said there were additional investments required during development to get features like anti-tamper into design, but he said one of the problems in doing that is when money is appropriated to DoD to do a development program, that number will not include specific features designed for affordability.
“So the pilot program perhaps gives us some more latitude to do that,” Kendall said. “But the benefit here is to both government and industry and in (this budget) environment, we’re expecting industry to make some of that investment, too.”
DoD has identified several programs where it is trying to design in early whatever is going to be required to make those products exportable, Kendall said, though he didn’t provide specifics on which programs DoD has targeted.
Kendall said in an April 24 memo that the export of defense products to friends and allies provides for economies of scale that reduce costs for all customers including domestic customers, greater commonality and interoperability with global partners and strengthened relationships. Kendall said yesterday the DEF initiative is a part of DoD’s Better Buying Power 2.0 acquisition initiative, which he said is to help give DoD acquisition professionals the tools they need to make better acquisition decisions.
DoD’s general practice, Kendall said in the memo, has been to provide for exportability features and exportable capability levels after a product has been designed, tested, and put into production for U.S. customers. But the DEF initiative builds potential exportability “up front.”
DoD is making progress in export control reform, Kendall said yesterday, which helps re-classify items related to sensitive technologies to help industry export products to friendly nations. Kendall said yesterday he is specifically involved with DoD exposure efforts, trying to streamline those processes, make them more predictable and make it easier for people to work their way through and understand what will happen.
“As I talk to our partners from around the world, it’s a common concern, how long it takes to get things done,” Kendall said. “That’s not just a DoD problem, we’re working with state department and commerce and others as well to try to improve our processes.”