Interview with Undersecretary of the Navy Robert Work
Conducted by Lance Leventhal, Technology Editor
1. What do you see as the major issues in the procurement of high-end communications, control, and computing defense systems today?
The two most significant issues are cost and the rate of change in technology. For reasons such as platform deployment schedules and availability, as well as the time to procure new systems, our communications, control, and computing systems are often dated before they are even completely installed throughout the fleet. This combined with costs - procurement, installation, and overall lifecycle costs - are the major issues we face in procuring systems.
Improving technology delivery to our fleet continues to be our main focus. Our systems need to be agile and flexible to change and respond to the dynamics of the field environment, as well as defend against the variety of technological threats that our adversaries may employ. This is especially true for technologies that can give us a marked advantage over our adversaries through command, control, and intelligence capabilities. Our acquisition process and technology insertion must be rapid enough to meet the warfighter’s needs while adhering to common architecture and security standards.
We need to accomplish this in a cost-effective manner given the Department’s limited resources. We need to carefully consider development and lifecycle costs as an integral part of the full spectrum of Total Ownership Costs (TOC). And we need to do this as an enterprise, coordinating across the many boundaries of the Department of the Navy.
2. What do you believe is the appropriate role of COTS and open systems platforms in procurements? How do you account for the fact that such technologies reflect commercial conditions and requirements, not military ones (e.g., they assume reasonable environments and no hostile activities)?
We need to use Commercial Off the Shelf (COTS) and open architecture to the greatest extent possible. The commercial marketplace has been able to generate new capabilities both quickly and effectively. However, often we cannot utilize COTS because commercial technologies do not meet critical military requirements or are not designed for the rigors of the fleet or battlefield environments. But, whenever possible, we need to leverage the private sector investment in COTS in our programs. We are looking for the maximum advantage for our warfighters. We’ve had great success in some areas using open architectures, specifically in our submarine combat systems, and we’re working hard to expand this approach into other areas. The Department is committed to open architectures and has developed implementation roadmaps for some Navy and Marine Corps warfare domains and IT programs.
3. How can the military reconcile its needs for modularity, open systems, interoperability, standardization, maintainability, and reduced lifetime costs with contract vehicles that give awards to the lowest bidder for each system separately? Doesn’t that approach inevitably lead to “stovepipes” that do not interoperate, are difficult to maintain or update, and are totally individualized?
Solving these complex issues will be challenging, and for a variety of reasons, we may never fully rid the Department of “stove-piped” contracts. An important step towards solving these complex problems is for the Department to execute its role as overall systems integrator properly. In addition to integrating systems with one another, we also need to assure joint integration with the other services and coalition interoperability with our allies.
Because many systems we have today are interconnected, we must maintain a robust enterprise architecture framework. Enterprise Architecture driving open architecture systems is a key enabler to interoperability. We have a process that has been established under the Chief Information Officer and Chief Management Officer at both the Department of the Navy and the Department of Defense level to manage enterprise architecture, including business systems. We are at the nascent stage of this effort and we have a lot of work left to do, but I believe we are heading in a very constructive direction.
4. What can the military do to speed up its procurement procedures? Will our armed forces forever be at the point where commercial technology products (that our opponents can acquire easily) are often cheaper, easier to use, more mobile, and more capable than the militarized versions provided to our warfighters?
Where possible, we would like to be able to select a COTS solution to satisfy our procurement requirements. But, in many cases we will still require a hybrid COTS or even pure militarized solutions.
The Department of the Navy is always exploring ways to accelerate our acquisition programs to meet the ever changing needs of our warfighters. Use of special acquisition authorities, incremental acquisition strategies, and designing systems with open architectures will help expedite our accession of commercial technology products. As the Chief Management Officer of the Department, I consider this one of my top priorities. It is also a major role of the Service Acquisition Executive and the Department of the Navy (DON) Chief Information Officer.
5. What is the military doing to improve access for smaller companies with innovative technologies? Obviously, long procurement cycles, expensive environmental testing requirements, and complex contracting procedures mean that small companies with limited resources shy away from the military/defense area.
The Department of the Navy is strongly committed to providing access and opportunity for small businesses to participate in supporting the mission of our sailors and Marines. We spend billions of dollars annually making significant purchases from the small business sector. In addition, the Department has had a very successful relationship with small companies using the Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) programs. Many of our most successful programs owe all or part of their success to relationships with small businesses. One of the most successful was the Submarine Advanced Rapid COTS Insertion program which originated as an SBIR program. It served as the basis for developing an open architecture business model that allows small businesses to work with large contractors in innovative ways that benefits the government as well as all the participants. Another successful avenue for many small businesses has been through our Seaport-Enhanced multiple award schedule. This vehicle enables qualified firms to receive task orders against indefinite quantity or indefinite requirement contracts, thereby reducing the typical lead-time of traditional procurement methods. The Department is continually looking for innovation from small businesses, and we conduct many outreach events to help them understand our unique requirements and to meet with our procurement activities. Our Blue and Gold Coast Small Business symposiums have been very well received. I would encourage any small business interested in marketing to the Department to visit www.sellingtonavy.org.
Robert Work is the Undersecretary of the Navy. You can contact him via his Public Affairs Officer Lieutenant Callie Ferrari at callie.ferrari@navy.mil.