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Happy Friday!
The symposium is three weeks away, and we have a new resource for virtual attendees: the online program and calendar invites have been updated with webinar links. Heads up: you must be registered for the symposium and logged in with those credentials to see the links on the program or on the calendar invites. Load up your calendar now!
21st Annual Acquisition Research Symposium
Some virtual session highlights:
- May 8 keynote: Honorable Nickolas H. Guertin, Assistant Secretary of the Navy, Research, Development and Acquisition.
- May 9 dual keynote address from Honorable William LaPlante (Ph.D.), Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment, and Honorable Heidi Shyu, Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering
- Plenary Panel 18 (on May 9): Planning, Programming, Budget and Execution (PPBE) Reform Commissioners' Report
- And many more panels on PPBE reform, the adaptive acquisition framework, employing artificial intelligence in acquisition, and more!
Our top story brings an update from this week's budget hearings, with news that the Air Force has plans to use its newly granted quick start authority, a tool meant to counter delays in appropriations wrought by continuing resolutions.
- Secretary Frank Kendall said the service will move out on a resilient national GPS position, navigation, and timing capability and a command, control and communications battle management system.
On the Navy side, a HASC hearing highlighted the tension between lawmakers who want two submarines a year and a Navy budget that requests only one.
- Rep. Joe Courtney and others argue that the submarine industrial base needs the bigger demand signal but admit that funding will be a challenge under the Fiscal Responsibility Act caps.
DoD announced the latest tranche of projects funded by the pilot program to Accelerate the Procurement and Fielding of Innovative Technologies (APFIT). Some of the 13 projects:
- Communications Mobile Gateway Buoy, $12.940M, U.S. Navy
- Resilient Networking for Space Domain Awareness, $15.375M, U.S. Space Force
- Installation Resilience Operations Command and Control, $20.000M, U.S. Air Force
CYBERCOM is growing its acquisition organization with more billets and a commitment to using rapid practices including OTAs, the software acquisition pathway, and middle tier acquisition pathway.
- CYBERCOM was also designated a federal laboratory, giving it more authorities to work with industry and academia on technology research.
The GAO is out with its latest assessment of rising costs for the F-35 sustainment, which increased 44% from 2018 to 2023. Services have plans to reduce operating costs by reducing the number of hours the aircraft are flown.
DoD has released the latest version of the Strategic Management Plan, which aligns efforts to the National Defense Strategy.
- Three of the five priorities: Take Care of Our People and Cultivate the Workforce We Need, Make the Right Technology Investments, and Strengthen Resilience and Adaptability of Our Defense Ecosystem.
In ARP and NPS news, research from acquisition faculty member Jeff Dunlap recently provided recommendations to Commander, Naval Submarine Forces, that inform decisions about how to screen Australian candidates for admission to Nuclear Power School--a new challenge resulting from AUKUS.
Finally, you might enjoy this quote from Senator – and NPS alum – Mark Kelly in last month's hearing on defense acquisition:
- "30 years ago when I was at Naval Postgraduate School, I had one elective, and I took an acquisition elective. I was shocked at how complicated this whole process was. I mean it seemed to be more complicated than any other class I had, and I was there as an aeronautical engineering student."
This Week's Top Story
Air Force using ‘Quick Start’ authorities for resilient GPS, moving target indication programs
Mikayla Easley, Defense Scoop
The Air Force plans to leverage new authorities from Congress to initiate early development of two modernization efforts that have not been officially funded by lawmakers, according to Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall.
Through the Department of Defense’s Quick Start authority approved in December as part of the Fiscal 2024 National Defense Authorization Act, the Air Force has received approval to begin work on a “resilient national GPS position, navigation, and timing capability and [command, control and communications, or C3] battle management for moving target indication,” Kendall told lawmakers Tuesday during a Senate Armed Services Committee meeting.
Specific details on the two Department of the Air Force’s two approved programs remain scarce, but they will likely be included in the department’s budget request for fiscal 2026 that will be submitted next year.
The Quick Start rapid acquisition authority allows the Air Force and other services to begin development on new programs without a congressionally approved budget. The authorities look to address the often long periods between when the services ask for funding for new programs in annual budget requests and when lawmakers pass appropriations — during which those new efforts are effectively in limbo.
“The DAF deeply appreciates the ‘Quick Start’ provision placed in the FY24 NDAA and will take full advantage of this opportunity to save precious time,” Kendal wrote alongside Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Allvin and Chief of Space Operations Gen. Chance Saltzman in a joint statement ahead of Tuesday’s hearing in a joint statement.
Kendall proposed the initiative in April 2023 and advocated for it throughout the year, emphasizing that it would effectively move modernization programs through the early stages of development, such as requirement studies, risk reduction and design work, without having to pause for official funding approvals.
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