Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall on Feb. 12 urged companies to help the Department of the Air Force solve its operational problems, in part through boosting industry internal research and development (IRAD) spending.
Asked by an audience member at the Air Force Association’s annual warfare symposium in Aurora, Colo., what he would like from industry, Kendall replied, “That’s an interesting question. It’s a tough question.”
“One of the things I would like from industry–and there’s a burden on us to help you do this–is more help on solving our operational problems,” he said. “We were talking about this in an earlier meeting. There’s been a tendency in industry to kind of wait for an RFP once the government defines its requirements. The government’s sort of worked that way too. We said, ‘We’ll figure out on the government side what we want, and, when we’re ready, we’ll tell industry what to do.'”
“My experience going back to the Cold War was a much more cooperative relationship between government and industry where we worked together to solve operational problems, and it was advantageous to industry to be part of that process because they could influence requirements, make them better and help the government understand what industry had to offer…so a better working relationship where industry works more to help solve our problems,” Kendall said. “Quite frankly, I’d like to see more industry investment in IRAD. We need to reward that…but the defense industry buys back a lot of stock–dividends I have no problem with, but our industry investments in IRAD are relatively small. We pay for our R&D, generally. There are good reasons why that’s the case. It’s very risky to do all of new product development on the industry side because of the uncertainty on what the government will do. We need to try and help with that, but, on the other hand, industry can go a lot further in maturing technologies and getting them ready…with relatively modest investments.”
Last week, Kendall said that the Air Force is also trying to reduce the impact of delays in the approval of congressional defense appropriations bills.
Kendall said that the Department of the Air Force is finalizing its recommendation for the first “quick start” modernization program allowed under Section 229 of the fiscal 2024 National Defense Authorization Act, P.L. 118-31 (Defense Daily, Feb. 9). That section would allow the department to spend up to $100 million on the early development phases of new programs without funding line approval from congressional appropriators.