NEED TO KNOW

Acquisition Research Program Newsletter

May 10, 2024       —       Issue 196

Happy Friday! And a big THANK YOU to everyone who made this week such a tremendous success.

If you joined us in Monterey, you know how extraordinary it is to get together in a place that is large enough to exchange a wide range of thinking and small enough to create a friendly sense of community.

• We hope everyone walks away inspired and energized to keep doing the important work of researching about defense acquisition and innovation.

This newsletter brings a selective recap of the two days of the symposium.

Looking for more information? 

• Some panels are available to watch on our YouTube channel (unedited from the livestreamed version for now).
• Papers are available in the symposium Proceedings.

Next week's newsletter will return to bringing other acquisition headlines.

And while it's still fresh, for those who joined us in person or virtually, please take a few minutes to give us feedback about the event.

Wednesday Highlights

Throughout the first day of the 21st annual NPS Acquisition Research Symposium, speakers hit a common theme: the critical importance of lifelong learning to lead effective change and increase impact.

The event’s keynote speaker, Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Research, Development and Acquisition (ASN RD&A) Nickolas Guertin, reminded the audience that research “makes our Navy and our nation stronger.”

Guertin himself has a long history of presenting research at the symposium, and it has prepared him well for his current role.

• When tasked to conduct the recently-released shipbuilding review, for example, he said he felt “just like I was writing an NPS acquisition research symposium paper. Because we had to grapple with hard problems, make sure that it was rigorously researched, that it would stand up against scrutiny in a peer-reviewed environment, and I think we know better now what we need to do differently.”
• Guertin challenged the audience to be lifelong learners, teach each other through experience, and push boundaries to accelerate change and results.

Guertin also argued we need to incorporate human-centered design in weapons development.

• He plans to roll out the use of human-centered design to his team at ASN (RDA).
• Our audience, he says, is sailors and marines. Do we want them to operate their systems with joy? (Yes.) We want these systems to be excellent to operate. We don’t want them to feel orphaned with something that half works.
• “When it comes to delivering capability with excellence, it needs to be fully supported. That’s not causing delay, that’s just doing our job.”

And with no prompting from the ARP team, Guertin also footstomped the importance of attending the symposium in person.

• “Being here matters.  You’re in the room. You’re in the breaks. You’re interacting with other professionals trying to do it better.”
• We agree!

In a plenary panel on the defense industrial base, panelists shared data, policy updates, areas for improvement, and success stories of effective cooperation between the DOD and industry partners, demonstrating how focused, data-driven efforts can quickly produce real results in technological superiority.

• Maynard Halliday, Performing the Duties of Assistant Secretary of Defense for Critical Technologies, gave an overview of the 300+ critical technologies that have transitioned to development or to the warfighter over the past three years.
  • These include directed energy systems that have been used in the Red Sea, space capabilities such as DIU’s small responsive launch program, hypersonics, AI and autonomy, and microelectronics.
  • These programs align to the 14 critical technology areas identified in a 2021 memo issued by Heidi Shyu, showing that focused, data-driven efforts can quickly produce real results in technological superiority.
• Scott Sendemeyer, Acting Director of Policy, Analysis, and Transition (PA&T), discussed the National Defense Industrial Strategy released in January.  We're still waiting on the implementation plan, and he anticipates it coming by late summer or fall. 

The day concluded with the student research poster session, where dozens of U.S. and international students in the Department of Defense Management at Naval Postgraduate School discussed their theses and real-world solutions with attendees.

U.S. Marine Corps Capt. Daniel Lim and U.S. Navy Lt. Cmdr. Hans Lauzen discuss their research with attendees.

Among the presenters were U.S. Marine Corps Capt. Daniel Lim and U.S. Navy Lt. Cmdr. Hans Lauzen, who shared their research on resilient satellite communications architecture and autonomous systems – a project that delivered not only research but a fieldable solution developed in coordination with industry partners and completed in less than two years.

Sidney Gottwald, CDR in German Navy, and CPT Brady Van Hoff, USA, conducted a comparative analysis of German and American acquisition systems, and were pleased to learn that their findings were corroborated by research presented separately at the symposium from members of the PPBE reform commission.

Profesor Simona Tick speaks with a student.

Thursday Highlights

On the second day of the 21^st Annual Acquisition Research Symposium, speakers illustrated repeatedly how access to the right data, viewed by a collaborative community of stakeholders, is improving defense outcomes.

Our originally planned keynote speakers for the day got called away by higher powers, and we were happy to welcome Hon. Cara Abercrombie, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, to the symposium virtually.

Abercrombie shared updates of how new competitive advantage pathway pilots are looking at portfolios of capabilities from the perspective of the kill chain across the joint force.

• “We’re finding that often it’s the lower ACAT 1 programs that are the lynchpin. They don’t cross the funding threshold, so folks in A&S would not typically see these programs. But as you look from a portfolio perspective at how multiple capabilities knit together to close a kill chain, you realize it’s this relatively inexpensive thing that’s the gap, and how do we get after it? It’s been hugely insightful."
• This integrated and data-driven approach has in some cases “literally shaved two to four years off the process to get a capability in the hands of the warfighter.”  

She also discussed lessons being learned from Ukraine, plans to streamline the Foreign Military Sales process, and more.

After her remarks, Maynard Halliday joined David Berteau on stage to talk more about how his office is transitioning critical capabilities to production, to DIU, and to the warfighter.

The plenary panel brought perspective from acquisition flag officers and leadership from industry and Defense Innovation Unit, with consideration of how these organizations are being more innovative with new acquisition pathways, policies, and other initiatives—as well as impediments to realizing that innovation.

Maj Gen Alice Treviño emphasized the need to support people through change, which is a grief cycle: shock, denial, anger, bargaining to get out of it, realizing you can’t get out of it, entering depression… and then entering the testing and experimentation phase.

• “I talk to people a lot with the goal of getting them through that change cycle as fast as possible and keep them from getting stuck in denial,” she said. She does that by educating the contracting workforce, providing access to the acquisition toolbox with 600+ tools, subject matter experts, and other resources that help them achieve those changes.
• Innovation comes from people, and it’s a mindset shift to see change as an opportunity rather than an inconvenience.

Gen Treviño exemplified the ability to embrace change by joining us via phone from her car after realizing the facility she was visiting was about to go through a fire drill.

• As panel chair Michael Williamson called it, she demonstrated true "comms at the edge."

Rear Admiral Kurt Rothenhaus, Chief of Naval Research, chaired a panel on artificial intelligence in acquisition, pointing out that all three papers supported the recently released Naval Science & Technology Strategy.

• Researchers considered how large language models can be used to streamline processes in contracting, program management, and systems engineering.
• A natural consensus on this panel was the need for clean, usable data to create AI-powered systems that can enable improved human decision making.
• Rothenhaus noted that as artificial intelligence, quantum sciences, and biosciences intersect, our ability to look downrange and predict gets harder. 

Members of the commission to reform the planning, programming, budgeting, and execution (PPBE) process agreed that some of their most significant recommendations pertain to better communications between DOD and Congress. 

• Ultimately, the two organizations need to share the right data at the right time – for instance, with DoD and the services informing Congress how and where funds are best appropriated for national security at a time when those inputs, and any necessary adjustments, have time to be reflected in appropriations bills.
• The team to work on implementing these reforms is being built out by Deputy Secretary of Defense Hicks.

In a panel on International Acquisition, Maciej Macenowicz from NATO’s Defense Innovation Accelerator for the North Atlantic (DIANA) discussed the new organization’s mission to coordinate defense needs and industrial production capacity across all member nations.

• He identified the organization’s nine priority technology areas, which are assessed every two years by member nations.
• The international, collaborative approach includes end users, academia, and industry to meet the goal of quickly identifying, producing, and fielding innovative technologies that make a real-time difference in warfighting capabilities.

Don't forget to give us feedback, and we hope to see you next year!

Save the date: May 7-8, 2025