In this session presented two outstanding speakers - Dr. Mal O'Neill, Vice President and Chief Technical Officer, Lockheed-Martin Corporation and Dr. Chris Pell, Head of Technology Acquisition, BAE Systems, UK. The subject was"Defense Technology Acquisition."

Prior to assuming his current duties with Lockheed-Martin, Mal had a distinguished career in the US Army rising to the rank of Lt General and serving in a variety of key positions including: Director, Ballistic Missile Defense Organization; Deputy Director, Strategic Defense Initiative Organization; and Director, Army Acquisition Corps. Chris has had an equally distinguished career in British government prior to joining the private sector in the UK. He served as Counselor (Defense Science and Technology) at the British Embassy in Washington; Director of Science (Air) at the British Ministry of Defense; and Head of Business Management at the Defense Evaluation and Research Agency (DERA).

Dr. O’Neill discussed the capabilities needed for servicing increasingly complex military requirements from his perspective both as a manager of large military programs and now as a manager of military contracts with Lockheed Martin. A key theme of his talk was that communication and integration across the board, from researchers all the way to war fighters, is key for obtaining optimal flexibility and effectiveness in a networked military.

Transforming to this state of readiness will require earlier participation of industry in the planning phases and a greater balance between technology push and end-user pull. Furthermore, achieving an acquisition vision to meet the needs of the 21st Century war fighter requires investment focus and customer oversight to ensure effective outlay of funds.

Best practices must be pursued such as rapid prototyping with potential for field deployment and an incremental, spiraling approach to development. Large, diverse organizations must horizontally integrate R&D and leverage external R&D, including collaboration with allies to share technologies when appropriate, to be most effective.

Finally, in the face of retention challenges and signs of declining technical graduates available, the US must take measures to ensure manpower for successful technology acquisition in the future.

Chris Pell, the Head of Technology Acquisition at BAE Systems, discussed some perspectives on technology acquisition for the UK MOD’s defense research & technology (R&T), as well as a UK Industry perspective on R&T from the point of view of BAE Systems.

The UK's government defense R&T program is roughly comparable in scope to the DoD 6.1, 6.2, or 6.3 in the US. Before 1991, most of the research was conducted by the largely autonomous Government Defense Research Establishments in a generally innovative environment. In 1991, a single Defense Research Agency was formed, becoming the Defence Research and Evaluation Agency. After a series of changes, most of the programme passed to the Applied Research Programme (ARP), with military officers defining the requirements and holding the budget. The ARP focuses on the shorter-term research needs of the armed forces. As the complement, the Corporate Research Programme (CRP), formed for longer-term innovative and more generic research, has remained under civilian scientific direction. Other funding goes to universities.

The government budgets for Research and Technology are limited and have tightened greatly in the past thirteen years from about $1.8 billion in 1991 to around $810 million today. Management initiatives have called for greater efficiency and relevance and increased pull-through of new technology. The main role of Ministry of Defense (MoD) research has changed from creating a technology base to accessing, integrating and exploiting existing technologies. The new main Outputs of R&T include: advice to Ministers on S&T issues; Policy and Planning; Capability Management; and availability. MoD is striving to streamline operations, outsource more to industry and universities, and simultaneously maintain technology awareness, capability in the supplier base, and innovative solutions for defense problems.

BAE SYSTEMS is a technologically-oriented Company where advanced technology and innovation is seen to be a key asset and differentiator in its capabilities and business winning. The organization focuses on advanced technology in avionics, air systems, Royal Ordnance Defense, underwater systems and submarines, C4ISR, naval ships, and future systems. BAE pursues technology acquisition through university partnerships, as well as through its own Advanced Technology Centre, Integrated Capability Programme, and the work of separate business units. Despite tightened budgets, BAE Systems maintains a considerable, leading edge technological capability both in the underpinning technologies and increasingly in demonstration/experimentation, integration and network-enabled capabilities.

Participants during the question and answer portion raised the following issues:

Often times the hardest issue in implementing new technologies is the end user in the field may not need or want it—selling the warfighter on a new technology can become a human nature issue.

There is the problem of the “tyranny of the prime,” exacerbated when innovative technologies are developed by small businesses, who end up having difficulty breaking through. Both speakers did acknowledge this issue exists. In the US, the problem exists at every level, including warfighter reluctance to embrace new technologies. In the UK, the MoD largely looks to the larger businesses to take the lead on behalf of small businesses and universities.

There is a need for finding a balance between “research to prescription” and a flexible environment that supports innovation and allows time for development.

There is difficulty in maintaining technical competence in the government and it is probably not possible to run the government from the outside. So the question remains as to how you maintain a competent technical workforce; also the goals of corporations are not always the same as the government. It was noted that uniformed science officers with battlefield experience make excellent liaisons between technologists and developers.

The cost and complexity of unmanned machines limit a full transition from manned technology. However, there are obvious benefits for having the capability to penetrate deeply into hostile territory with an unmanned machine. At this time, such machines are not viably affordable.

Moving towards more extensive use of networking virtual labs will enable researchers in many different localities to collaborate more efficiently.

The following documents were prepared by the speakers as their presentations for this luncheon. The views expressed are those of the authors and do not reflect the official policy of the United States Government.

Dr. Mal O'Neill's Presentation (PDF, 1.16MB)

Dr. Chris Pell's Presentation (PDF, 481KB)