Irad defense
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Irad defense software#
The engineering expertise needed to build complex software systems exists outside of the big primes, within nontraditional defense companies and innovative technology startups.Ī recent experience at Anduril underlines how this system deprives warfighters of crucial technology. While the major defense primes successfully built the hardware systems that defined the last century of combat, today’s conflicts will be defined by software first, hardware second. This is problematic not because it hurts new companies, but because it deprives the military of the tools they need to fight the conflicts of tomorrow and even today. ” DoD and Congress must do everything they can to simplify their processes to enable new entrants into the system to drive the technology innovation they so desperately desire. Companies are left to choose: do I fight for short-term funding to survive, taking on unknowable and unmeasurable political risk, or do I scrape, beg, borrow to get by and pay my employees for 2 years before material dollars can be realized in what quickly becomes the 4th year of the customer relationship? Michèle Flournoy highlighted this problem in a paper earlier this year, bemoaning the “lack of flexible funding to bridge the gap (often a year or more) between a successful prototype or demonstration and a production contract. For these companies, and particularly new start-up companies, a three-year wait to transition from the initial pilot or prototype to a production contract funded in the budget is a death sentence. This will sound familiar to any non-traditional defense company trying to do business with the Pentagon. There’s just one catch: the soonest you can get meaningful funding through the Program Objective Memorandum (POM) process is in 2–3 years’ time. The warfighters need this capability, and their commanding officers want to buy it. Thanks to DoD’s innovation initiatives, you find it easier than ever to secure pilot funding - in the order of $500,000-$1 million - to demonstrate your system. How does the “valley of death” kill innovation? Imagine you are an innovative defense startup that has developed a novel unmanned aerial system, which you have proven through DoD demonstrations to be better than anything the military has on offer. This would allow promising defense technology companies to bridge the 2-year “Valley of Death” between pilot program and program of record.
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The Pentagon and Congress should establish an annual “Scaling Innovation for the Warfighter” fund to provide funding for select, promising technology pilots incubated by innovation organizations. In other words, it is time to take the next step. Handing out hundreds of small awards through these entities without providing a pathway to bigger contracts is an inefficient use of DoD resources. The ultimate purpose of defense innovation is to create new technologies that scale, going from pilot programs to fully fledged programs of record at the speed of relevance. But DoD should not confuse these critical first steps with a finished job. To DoD’s credit, it has established initiatives designed to spur innovation like the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU), AFWERX, and NavalX. Instead, we propose a solution to DoD’s struggles to scale emerging technologies. This post will not rehash the innovation problem that the Department of Defense faces our colleague Trae’ Stephens laid out the challenge ahead at length in a recent op-ed. Brown, “We must accelerate change, or lose.” America produces the most sophisticated software technology in the world, but if none of it ends up in the hands of our warfighters, our military will cede leadership to peer and near-peer competitors like China and Russia. In the words of Air Force Chief of Staff Ge. įaced with its most technologically sophisticated adversaries for at least the last few decades, the United States military has two choices. The innovation problem faced by the DoD was outlined by Anduril Chairman Trae’ Stephens in an op-ed in Defense News.
Irad defense series#
This post is the first in a series by Anduril Industries to provide recommendations and solutions to address the challenges of scaling technology within the Department of Defense.