CAMP PENDLETON, Calif. – For two weeks in April, the 17 miles of undeveloped beachfront the Marine Corps maintains here became a “sandbox” in which weapon makers, operators and engineers could play in an effort to fundamentally change the way the service buys gear.
The brainchild of Lt. Gen. Robert Walsh, deputy commandant for Combat Development and Integration, the Advanced Naval Technology Exercise (ANTX) was designed so the Marine Corps could propose operational needs to industry and then rapidly prototype and test proposed technologies.
“We are bringing in our operators, our lab capability developers, technologists … along with industry … into a sandbox and let everybody play in the sandbox and help us figure out where we are going to go. With that said, I think the most important thing that we have got to do when we get done with this … we have got to produce.”
The traditional acquisition process begins with requirements and then a lengthy and often Byzantine search for a technology that fulfills them. That approach is untenable in a world where sophisticated technologies like unmanned systems are rapidly developing and readily available to adversaries, said, John Burrow, deputy assistant secretary of the Navy for Research, Development, Test and Evaluation.
“You can’t take a concept and then spend a lot of time trying to perfect requirements then go and select a precise design because when you do that, it assumes that you know from the beginning what you want,” Burrow said. “Pulling this broader community together is absolutely critical. I believe it could fundamentally change how we do business. I believe the transition of the ideas and the products here will provide the speed that we need … to get something out to operational forces as fast as possible.”
Not only the Marine Corps, but the Navy and the entire Defense Department should adopt the model when it comes to technologies like small unmanned systems, command-and-control software and other appropriate, commercially available gear that should not require traditional acquisition oversight, he said.
“If you are developing the F-35 Lightning II or a Virginia-class submarine, you are probably going to have to have a deliberate requirements process,” Walsh said. “But with a lot of the technology you’re seeing here today, this is stuff that industry is moving much faster than we are.”
Industry participants agreed that the event was well worth their while and expense. John Murphy, head of Jacksonville, Fla.-based Orion Solutions, trucked his prototype Hyper Sub across the country to show it to the Marine Corps.
“This is a great opportunity for small businesses to bring technologies to the guys and to get feedback,” he told Defense Daily. “This is the kind of venue we need because it creates a lot of access we wouldn’t other be able to get.”
The Hyper Sub was designed to perform like a speed boat above the water and dive like a submarine carrying various payload modules including a dry crew compartment that will hold about 8 Marines. The tubular compartment can be swapped out for other configurations on the fly.
“We designed the base platform as a truck so you could do different missions with one platform,” Murphy said. “For less than $10 million you get one platform that can do whatever you configure it to do. That seems to be the way the military is going – multi-mission versus a single design.”
Success ultimately will be decided by whether the Marine Corps actually transitions any of the technologies to programs of record. That would come after the 100 or so that were tested at Camp Pendleton are vetted, whittled down and tested again at Bold Alligator, a huge Marine Expeditionary Unit-level exercise off North Carolina in October, according to Brig. Gen Julian Alford, vice chief of naval research and commander of the Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory.
“We have got to drive four, five, six of these technologies into Bold Alligator, next year’s Dawn Blitz,” Alford said. “We’ve got to show industry that this is worth doing, that we are good partners. We haven’t been that great of partners in the past. This, we believe, is the model to show industry, academia, even our labs that we’re good partners.”
Walsh said that the Marine Corps has the money and legal authority to purchase new technologies. The ultimate success of ANTX will be judged on whether it results in fielded capabilities, he said.
“When it comes to money side, the ball falls in our court to figure out where the money is coming from,” Walsh said. “We will find the money if we’ve got the right technology and capabilities.”
Both the 2016 and 2017 National Defense Authorization acts provide avenues for the services to acquire some gear more quickly. The Army used the new authority to more rapidly choose a pistol to replace the Beretta M9. Walsh said the services are still figuring out the process for using those authorities, but was confident ANTX would yield some program approvals.
Responsibility for shuffling that money falls to Maj. Gen. Gregg Olson, a representative of Marine Corps Headquarters Office of Programs and Resources who was on hand for the exercises as an advocate for boosting Marine Corps modernization spending.
The Marine Corps spends about 58 cents of every dollar on personnel costs and only about 7 cents on modernization, he said. The remainder is spent on current programs, operations and maintenance.
“We’re not a technological service as much as we are a people service, but we also recognize that the 7 percent or so of every dollar we spend on modernization is probably an inadequate amount,” Olson said.
“My function this week is … to bring an advocacy back for a rewickering of percentages so we find some places where we might make accommodations. There may be some places in that other 20 some-odd percent where there can be some rewickering such that we can procure things faster or spend our money differently.”