THE MILITARY SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY BUDGET DISCUSSED BY OFFICIALS FROM DOD

FROM:  U.S. DEFENSE DEPARTMENT DEFENSE

Right:  The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s research and development in stealth technology during the 1970s and 1980s led to the world’s most advanced radar-evading aircraft, providing strategic national security advantage to the United States. Today, hypersonic technologies have the potential to provide the dominance once afforded by stealth to support a range of future national security missions. DARPA photo.  

DoD Officials Discuss Science, Technology Budget
By Cheryl Pellerin
DoD News, Defense Media Activity

WASHINGTON, April 24, 2015 – The Defense Department has maintained a steady $12 billion investment in science and technology and is using new initiatives to boost innovation and military superiority, defense officials told a Senate panel April 22.

Frank Kendall, undersecretary of defense for acquisition, technology and logistics, testified before the Senate Appropriations defense subcommittee on the DoD budget request for fiscal year 2016.

Joining him were Alan Shaffer, acting assistant secretary of defense for development, research and engineering, and Steven Walker, deputy director of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA.

The department’s science and technology budget request for fiscal year 2016 is $12.2 billion, Kendall said.

Steady Investment

“Over the last several years we have maintained, despite all the budget fluctuations, a fairly steady investment in terms of technology,” he said.

The department is committed to pursuing innovation in all its dimensions, said Kendall, adding that Defense Secretary Ash Carter endorsed the Defense Innovation Initiative unveiled last fall, and yesterday at Stanford University the secretary announced steps the department will take to foster innovation.

Kendall’s efforts cover the broader DoD acquisition enterprise, and two weeks ago he announced final details and implementation guidance for Better Buying Power 3.0.

“The Better Buying Power label originated when Dr. Carter was undersecretary for acquisition, technology and logistics … but it's really a collection of initiatives that has evolved over time,” Kendall said.

Improving DoD Acquisition

The initiatives are designed to incrementally improve the acquisition system’s performance, he said.

The acquisition system includes not only major DoD programs, Kendall said, “but everything -- all the things we contract out for, all the things the department acquires … and services are more than half of the things we contract out for. And it certainly includes our science and technology investments.”

Kendall said the most recent version focuses on innovation, technical excellence and technological superiority, and on taking steps to spur innovation and get the greatest value from research and development and from new innovation sources.

The efforts, he added, include science and technology accounts, DARPA's budget, the work of DoD labs, contracted research and development,
reimbursable independent research and development conducted by industry, the Small Business Innovation Research Program, and others.

Incentivizing Industry

Several BBP 3.0 provisions are designed to incentivize industry, Kendall said.
“One of them is … to tell industry how much we're willing to pay for enhanced performance,” he said.

Normally when the department asks for a weapon system proposal, it sets a level of threshold performance that is the minimum it will accept, Kendall explained. DoD also sets an objective -– the performance it desires and that comes with a higher price, he said.

“Industry almost uniformly bids to the threshold level and ignores the objective because the threshold level is always cheaper,” he added, noting, “It's less capable and that goes with [the lower] cost.”

The undersecretary said the department is starting to communicate to industry “how much more we're willing to pay for that higher level of performance. Industry can then make an informed judgment about whether or not to invest in technology that will get to that level of performance.”

Without that information, Kendall said, there's no incentive for industry.
More Creative Products

“We're trying to involve industry earlier-on in concept definition and requirements formulation so we have an interaction with industry.” Kendall said. “We give industry a head start … to work on how they would satisfy our requirements.”

In general, he added, “we're trying to align our financial incentive structure with the things we want. In this case, what we want is innovation -- more creative, more capable products that we can get to the warfighter.”

In his remarks, Shaffer said his office has revised the way it plans and executes the science and technology program through Reliance 21.

Reliance 21 is “an oversight construct that has created communities of interest, bringing scientists working in specific technology areas together to jointly plan and execute their departmentwide program in a more effective way,” he said.

Defense Innovation

Shaffer said his office also is directly involved in the Defense Innovation Initiative and in many specific initiatives under BBP 3.0.

He said the DII is a departmentwide effort to identify and invest in novel ways to sustain and advance military superiority for the 21st century and improve business operations.

Under BBP 3.0, he said, “we are more tightly coupling acquisition requirements and the intelligence community to more dynamically adjust to changes in potential threats,” and addressing barriers to adopting commercial technology in systems and capabilities.

Shaffer said his office is increasing its use of prototypes and experimentation departmentwide to reduce technical risk early in a program cycle and to see how systems will operate. The office also is expanding the use of modular open-systems architecture to stimulate innovation.

Breakthrough Technologies

In his remarks to the panel, Walker said DARPA’s role is to make early pivotal investments that help develop breakthrough technologies for national security.
Walker highlighted two programs that DARPA is working on with the Air Force, both in hypersonics –- referring to a flow of air with a Mach number greater than five. This means the flow speed is more than five times the speed of sound, he explained.

One program is the Tactical Boost Glide system, Walker said.

This DARPA-Air Force effort will develop and demonstrate technologies to enable air-launched tactical-range hypersonic boost glide systems, including a flight demonstration.

Basically, Walker said, “you boost it with a rocket and glide the system to the target.”

Tactical Hypersonics

The second DARPA-Air Force effort is the Hypersonic Air-breathing Weapon Concept, designed to enable transformational changes in responsive, long-range strike against time-critical or heavily defended targets.

“You also boost that concept,” Walker said, “that you then take over with the air-breathing scramjet engine on board and that also hits its target.”

This program, according to DARPA, seeks to advance air vehicle configurations capable of efficient hypersonic flight, enhance hydrocarbon scramjet-powered propulsion to enable sustained hypersonic cruise, develop affordable system designs and manufacturing approaches, and more.

“What [hypersonic speeds] buy you is a strike capability for time-critical targets from long-standoff ranges,” Walker said.

“If we can pull that hypersonic technology into a weapon-system concept … at the end of these programs the Air Force would be ready to go off into an acquisition program on those systems -- potentially, if we're successful. That's really the future,” he added.

The Sequestration Threat

During the hearing, Kendall told the panel that one threat to U.S. military superiority is “one of our own making. It is the threat of sequestration.”

In the fiscal year 2016 DoD budget request, the department is asking for funding that is well above sequestration levels, he said.

“We are trying to recover some of the readiness that was lost when sequestration was implemented in 2013. We are also trying to acquire some of the capability we need to maintain to remain competitive,” said Kendall, adding that the department is requesting increases in its investment accounts, research and development, and procurement, of about $20 billion.

“Sequestration would force us to prioritize pressing near-term needs at the expense of these investments, preserving capability now but increasing our risk in the future,” he said, adding that uncertainties about future budgets make effective planning nearly impossible.

“We urge you to permanently repeal the threat of sequestration,” Kendall told the senators. “Removing this specter would do more than any other single act to spur innovation and preserve our military technological superiority.”

PRESIDENT OBAMA, V.P. BIDEN ADDRESS NATIONAL GOVERNORS ASSOCIATION

FROM:  THE WHITE HOUSE 

Remarks by the President and Vice President at NGA Meeting

State Dining Room

11:15 A.M. EST

THE VICE PRESIDENT:  Thank you very much.  Thanks for making the Cabinet stand up for me.  (Laughter.)  I appreciate it.

It’s great to see you all.  And I don't know about you all, I had a great time last night and got a chance to actually do what we should be doing more of -- talking without thinking about politics and figuring how we can solve problems.

You’ve observed by now the reason the President and I like doing this every year is it’s nice dealing with people who know they got to get a job done, and they get a job done.  And I’ve gotten a chance to work directly with an awful lot of you in the days of the Recovery Act, and even when we were working on the gun violence; rebuilding from that super storm Sandy, which hit my state as well, and tornadoes and floods in a number of your states. 

But it never ceases to amaze me how you all mobilize.  You just mobilize.  When crises hit your states, you mobilize and you rebuild.  And you rebuild your infrastructure not to the standards that existed before, but to 21st century standards.  You balance your budgets, you save neighborhoods, and you bring back jobs to your communities.

And the other thing I pick up -- and I may be wrong.  I’m always labeled as the White House optimist, like I’m the kid who fell off the turnip truck yesterday, but I am the youngest here -- (laughter) -- and new.  But it always amazes me your sense of optimism.  You’re the one group of folks you go to with all the problems you have that you’re optimistic.  You're optimistic about it being able to be done, getting things done.  That is not always the mood up in the place where I spent a large portion of my career.

And last night I got to speak to a bunch of you, particularly about the job skills initiative the President asked me to lead, and I had a chance to speak with some of you specifically, and I’m going to ask to -- I’m going to get a chance to see more of you this afternoon.  But this is more than just -- at least from the President’s perspective and mine -- more than just a job skills initiative.  It’s about literally opening the aperture to the middle class.  The middle class has actually shrunk. 

And we always have these debates with our economists -- is the middle class $49,820 or $52,000.  The middle class to me, and I think to most of you, it’s really a state of mind.  It’s about being able to own your home and not have to rent it.  It’s about being able to send your kid to a park where you know you can send them out, and they’ll come home safely.  It’s about being able to send them to school, that if they do well in the school, they're going to be able to get to something beyond high school if they want to do that.  And you’re going to be able to pay for it.  And in the meantime, you may be able to take care of your mom and dad who are in tough shape and hope that your kids never have to take care of you.  That's the middle class.

And before the Great Recession, it was already beginning to shrink.  So together, we got to open -- Mary, you and I have talked about this -- about opening the aperture here for access to the middle class.  But we’ll be speaking a lot more about that in the next several months.  A couple of you invited me to come out your way, including some of my Republican friends.  And I’m going to be working with all of you. 

But today I just want to say thank you.  Thank you for what you always do.  You come to town; you come to town with answers.  You come to town with suggestions.  You come to town to get things done.  And believe me, we need that and the American people are looking for it.

And I want to welcome you back to the White House, and introduce you now to my friend, your President, Barack Obama.  (Applause.)

THE PRESIDENT:  Thank you, everybody.  Thank you.  Please, have a seat.  Thank you so much. 

Welcome to the White House.  I know that you’ve already been doing a lot of work, and I’m glad to be able to come here and engage in a dialogue with all of you.  I want to thank Mary and John for their leadership at the NGA.  I want to thank my outstanding Vice President, Joe Biden, who is very excited I think about the jobs initiative, and is going to be -- the job training initiative, and I think is going to be doing a great job on that.

Michelle and I had a wonderful time hosting you guys last night, and I hope all the spouses enjoyed it.  And I know Alex enjoyed it.  (Laughter.)  One good thing about living here is that you can make all the noise you want and nobody is going to complain.  (Laughter.)  And I enjoyed watching some of you with your eyes on higher office size up the drapes -- (laughter) --and each other.

We don’t have a lot of time today, so I want to be very brief, go straight to Q&A and discussion.  We’re at a moment when our economy is growing; our businesses have now created over 8.5 million new jobs over the past four years.  But, as I’ve said several times, the trends that have battered the middle class for a couple of decades now are still there and still have to be addressed.  Those at the top are doing very well.  Ordinary families still feeling squeezed.  Too many Americans are working harder than ever, and just barely getting by. 

And reversing these trends are going to require us to work together around what I’m calling an opportunity agenda based on four things.  Number one, more good jobs that pay good wages.  Number two, training more Americans to be able to take the jobs that are out there right now and the jobs that are created.  Number three, guaranteeing access to a world-class education for every American child all across our 50 states and our territories.  And making sure that hard work pays off -- with wages that you can live on, savings that you can retire on, health insurance that you can count on.

And all of this is going to take some action.  So far, just in the past few weeks, I’ve acted to lift the wages of workers who work for federal contractors to pay their -- make sure their employees are getting paid at least $10.10 an hour.  We’ve ordered an across-the-board reform of our job training programs, much of it aligned with some of the work that Mary has done during her tenure as head of the NGA.  We directed our Treasury to create a new way for Americans to start saving for retirement.  We’ve been able to rally America’s business leaders to help more of the long-term unemployed find work, and to help us make sure that all of our kids have access to high-speed Internet and high-tech learning tools in the classroom.

The point is, this has to be a year of action.  And I’m eager to work with Congress wherever I can.  My hope is, is that despite this being an election year, that there will be occasions where both parties determine that it makes sense to actually get some things done in this town.  But wherever I can work on my own to expand opportunity for more Americans, I’m going to do that.  And I am absolutely convinced that the time is right to partner with the states and governors all across the country on these agendas, because I know that you guys are doing some terrific work in your own states.

There may not be much of an appetite in Congress for doing big jobs bills, but we can still grow SelectUSA.  Secretary Pritzker’s team has put together a terrific formula where we’re attracting investors from all around the world to see America as an outstanding place to invest.  And I mentioned this at the State of the Union:  For the first time last year, what we’re seeing is, is that world investors now see America as the number-one place to do business rather than China.  And it’s a sign of a lot of things converging, both on the energy front, worker productivity, our innovation, our research, ease of doing business.  And a lot of that work is as a consequence of steps we’ve taken not just at the federal level, but also at the state level.  So we’ve got to take advantage of that.

Secretary Pritzker has been helping a Belgian company create jobs in Stillwater, Oklahoma; helping an Austrian company create jobs in Cartersville, Georgia.  So we can do more of this, and we really want to engage with you over the next several months to find ways that we can help market America and your states to businesses all around the world and bring jobs back.

Since I called on Congress to raise the minimum wage last year, six states have gone ahead and done it on their own.  Last month, I asked more business leaders to raise their workers’ wages.  Last week, GAP said it would lift wages for about 65,000 of its employees.  Several of you are trying to boost wages for your workers.  I’m going to do everything I can to support those efforts. 

While Congress decides what it’s going to do on making high-quality pre-K available to more kids, there is bipartisan work being done among the folks in this room.  You’ve got governors like Robert Bentley and Jack Markell, Susana Martinez, Deval Patrick -- all expanding funding or dedicating funds to make that happen in their states.  And we want to partner with you.  This year, I’ll pull together a coalition of philanthropists, elected officials and business leaders, all of whom are excited and interested in working with you to help more kids access the high-quality pre-K that they need.

And while Congress talks about repealing the Affordable Care Act or doing this or doing that to it, places like California and Kentucky are going gangbusters and enrolling more Americans in quality, affordable health care plans.  You’ve got Republican governors here -- I won’t name them in front of the press, because I don’t want to get you all in trouble -- who have chosen to cover more people through new options under Medicaid.  And as a result, millions of people are going to get help.

States that don’t expand Medicaid are going to be leaving up to 5.4 million Americans uninsured.  And that doesn’t have to happen.  Work with us to get this done.  We can provide a lot of flexibility.  Folks like Mike Beebe in Arkansas have done some terrific work designing programs that are right for their states but also provide access to care for people who need it.  And I think Kathleen Sebelius, a former governor herself, has shown herself willing to work with all of you to try to find ways to get that done.

On the West Coast, you’ve got Governors Brown, Inslee, Kitzhaber who are working together to combat the effects of climate change on their states.  We’ve set up a taskforce of governors and mayors and tribal leaders to help communities prepare for what we anticipate are going to be intensifying impacts of climate change.  And we’re setting up climate hubs in seven states across the country to help farmers and ranchers adapt their operations to a changing environment. 

In the budget that I’ll send to Congress next week, I’m going to propose fundamentally reforming the way federal governments fund wildfire suppression and prevention to make it more stable and secure, and this is an idea that’s supported by both Democrats and Republicans.

And finally, I want to thank those of you who have worked with Michelle and Jill Biden on their Joining Forces initiative to support our military families.  At your meeting here two years ago, they asked for your help to make it easier for servicemembers and their spouses to carry licenses for professions like teaching or nursing from state to state, rather than have to get a new one every time they were reassigned.  At the time, only 12 states had acted to make this easier for spouses; only nine had acted to make it easier for servicemembers.  Today, 42 states have passed legislation to help spouses; 45 states have made it easier for servicemembers.  We’ve got a few states remaining.  Let’s get it done for everybody, because it’s the right thing to do for those men and women who are working every day to make sure we stay free and secure. 

The point is, even when there is little appetite in Congress to move on some of these priorities, at the state level you guys are governed by practical considerations.  You want to do right by your people and you see how good policy impacts your citizens, and you see how bad policy impacts your citizens, and that means that there’s less room for posturing and politics, and more room for getting stuff done. 

We want to work with you.  And I’m committed to making sure that every single member of my Cabinet, every single person in the White House, every single member of my team will be responsive to you.  We won’t agree on every single issue every single time, but I guarantee you that we will work as hard as we can to make sure that you succeed -- because when you succeed, the people in your states succeed and America succeeds, and that’s our goal. 

So thank you very much, and I look forward to having a great discussion.  Thank you, everybody.  (Applause.)

END
11:27 A.M. EST

DOD REPORTS TO CONGRESS ON THE FUTURE OF UNMANNED VEHICLES

Members of the Unmanned Underwater Vehicle detachment, Commander, Task Group 56.1, guide a UUV as it is lowered into the water off the coast of Bahrain, June 5, 2013. U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Peter Lewis.  

FROM:  U.S. DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE 
DOD Looks 25 Years Ahead in Unmanned Vehicle Roadmap
By Jim Garamone
American Forces Press Service

WASHINGTON, Dec. 23, 2013 – Strategy and budget realities are two aspects of the Defense Department’s new Unmanned Systems Integrated Roadmap, released today.

The report to Congress is an attempt to chart how unmanned systems fit into the defense of the nation.

“The 2013 Unmanned Systems Integrated Roadmap articulates a vision and strategy for the continued development, production, test, training, operation and sustainment of unmanned systems technology across DOD,” said Dyke Weatherington, the director of the unmanned warfare and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance office at the Pentagon.

“This road map establishes a technological vision for the next 25 years and outlines the actions and technologies for DOD and industry to pursue to intelligently and affordably align with this vision,” he continued.
Unmanned aerial vehicles have received the most press, but unmanned underwater vehicles and ground vehicles are also providing warfighters with incredible capabilities.

Although unmanned vehicles have proved their worth in combat operations throughout the Middle East and Central Asia, current technologies must be expanded and integrated into the sinews of the defense establishment, the report says.

It also calls for unmanned systems to be programs of record in order to achieve “the levels of effectiveness, efficiency, affordability, commonality, interoperability, integration and other key parameters needed to meet future operational requirements.”

Of course, all DOD programs have to face the reality of the budget crunch. “Achieving affordable and cost-effective technical solutions is imperative in this fiscally constrained environment,” the report notes.

Strategy really drives the technology. Unmanned systems will be crucial as the U.S. military shifts its focus to the Asia-Pacific region and puts the air-sea doctrine into effect. In the future, unmanned vehicles will be required to operate in more complex environments involving difficult weather, terrain, distance and airspace. All this will require extensive coordination with allies and host nations, the report says.

“The road map describes the challenges of logistics and sustainment, training and international cooperation while providing insight on the strategic planning and policy, capability needs, technology development and operational environments relevant to the spectrum of unmanned systems,” Weatherington said.