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AUGUST 2019 VOLUME CIV, NUMBER 789
NDIA’S BUSINESS AND TECHNOLOGY MAGAZINE
W W W . N AT I O N A L D E F E N S E M AG A Z I N E . O R G

Army Small Arms 22

Q The service plans to outfit soldiers
with a variety of new systems to include
next-generation rifles and machine guns.
Prototyping efforts are underway and
the Army wants to move fast to field the
technology.
Cover Story 32
Q The Defense Department’s new Arctic strategy
zeroes in on the threats posed by competitors such as
Russia and China. Melting sea ice is opening up new
transit routes and access to minerals, prompting U.S.
efforts to bolster its military presence in the region.
Key pillars of the Trump administration’s strategic
BEST OF
engagement plan include building situational aware- UP FRONT 4 THE WEB 7
ness, enhancing operations and strengthening the
rules-based order. Cover image: Defense Dept.

Drones 30
Q European countries have BUDGET NEWS
MATTERS 10 BRIEFS 12
ambitious plans to inte-
grate robotic wingmen into
their future combat air sys-
tem. Meanwhile, the U.S.
Air Force is already testing
unmanned aircraft that
could accompany manned
platforms into battle. VIEWPOINT 16 NONLETHAL 20

READ BREAKING NEWS AND WEB EXCLUSIVE STORIES AT:

W W W . N AT I O N A L D E F E N S E M A G A Z I N E . O R G

AU G U ST 2 0 1 9 • N AT I O N A L D E F E N S E 1
VIEWPOINTS COVER STORY AUGUST 2019
32 Great Power Competition VO L U M E C I V
16 Environmental Industry Can Extends to Arctic N U M B E R 789
Serve as Soft Power Tool As the climate warms, the region is becom-
There is a vast body of literature and policy ing a hot spot for economic activity.
that draws attention to the environment- BY CONNIE LEE EDITOR IN CHIEF
security linkage. Stew Magnuson
BY GREGORY D. FOSTER (703) 247-2545
36 Non-Military Factors Shape
SMagnuson@NDIA.org
18 Realizing the Potential Arctic Power Balance
Of AI on the Edge CREATIVE DIRECTOR
Brian Taylor
Most of the Pentagon’s artificial intel- DEPARTMENTS (703) 247-2546
ligence efforts have been focused on soft-
ware algorithm development on existing 3 NDIA Perspective BTaylor@NDIA.org
microprocessors and hardware. A Case Study in Compliance vs. Ethics
BY JAMES S.B. CHEW BY ANNE R. HARRIS MANAGING EDITOR
Jon Harper
4 Up Front (703) 247-2542
FEATURES Random facts and figures from industry JHarper@NDIA.org
and government
BY STEW MAGNUSON SENIOR EDITOR
20 Directorate Wants to Change
Yasmin Tadjdeh
View of Nonlethal Weapons 6 Editor’s Notes (703) 247-2585
Some military officials see a growing need BY STEW MAGNUSON
for nonlethal options to conduct operations YTadjdeh@NDIA.org
in the “gray zone.” 7 Best of the Web
BY YASMIN TADJDEH STAFF WRITER
A sample of breaking news stories from the Connie Lee
National Defense website (703) 247-2543
22 New Army Small Arms to
CLee@NDIA.org
Boost Soldier Lethality 9 Algorithmic Warfare
A slew of new weapons are coming down What’s coming in artificial intelligence, EDITORIAL ASSISTANT
the pipeline. big data and cybersecurity Mandy Mayfield
BY YASMIN TADJDEH BY YASMIN TADJDEH
(703) 247-9469
10 Budget Matters MMayfield@NDIA.org
24 What Lies Beneath:
Who’s funding what in Washington?
Inside DARPA’s BY JON HARPER
Subterranean Challenge
The Defense Advanced Research Projects 12 News Briefs ADVERTISING
Agency is about to kick off a competition BY CONNIE LEE AND MANDY MAYFIELD
aimed at furthering robotics technology.
BY JON HARPER Christine M. Klein
15 NDIA Policy Points SVP, Meetings & Business Partnerships
Army Takes On IP Rights (703) 247-2593
26 SOCOM Plans New Artificial Conundrum
CKlein@NDIA.org
BY HANNAH HARPER
Intelligence Strategy
Special Operations Command is examining Kathleen Kenney, Sales Director
how it can improve its AI capabilities on a
37 Government Contracting Insights (703) 247-2576
Changes in Treatment of Confidential Info
data-driven battlefield. KKenney@NDIA.org
CONTRIBUTED BY COVINGTON & BURLING LLP
BY CONNIE LEE

38 Ethics Corner Alex Mitchell, Sales Coordinator

28 Space Development Agency’s (703) 247-2568
39 NDIA News AMitchell@NDIA.org
Future in Question
It is unclear if recently departed Director
Fred Kennedy’s vision for the new organi- 40 NDIA Calendar
zation will hold up. Complete guide to NDIA events National Defense
BY MANDY MAYFIELD 2101 Wilson Blvd., Suite 700
44 Next Month Arlington, VA 22201
Preview of our next issue
30 Europe, U.S. Targeting Robotic
NDIA MEMBERSHIP: The
Wingman Programs 44 Index of Advertisers National Defense Industrial
A number of NATO countries have plans Association (NDIA) is the premier association
to pair unmanned aircraft with advanced representing all facets of the defense and technol-
fighter jets. ogy industrial base and serving all military services.
For more information please call our membership
BY JON HARPER
department at 703-522-1820 or visit us on the
web at NDIA.org/Membership

National Defense (ISSN 0092–1491) is published monthly by the National Defense Industrial Association (NDIA), 2101 Wilson Blvd., Suite 700, Arlington, VA 22201–3060.
TEL (703) 522–1820; FAX (703) 522–1885. Advertising Sales: Kathleen Kenney, 2101 Wilson Blvd., Suite 700, Arlington, VA 22201–3060. TEL (703) 247–2576; FAX (703)
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2 N AT I O N A L D E F E N S E • A U G U S T 2 0 1 9
 Perspective BY ANNE R. HARRIS
A Case Study in Compliance vs. Ethics
QAs a compliance and ethics consultant, I am often asked to
clarify the difference. Usually, compliance is “black and white”
— you’re either in compliance or you’re not — whereas ethics
is rife with “gray areas.”
With compliance, the boundary is defined by a law, rule,
regulation or policy and adherence is mandatory. Ethics,
though, involves judgment and making choices about conduct
that reflect values: right and wrong or good and bad. Words like
“integrity,” “transparency” and “honorable behavior” crop up. The
usual catchphrase is that ethics is about “doing the right thing.”
Is it possible to be ethical, but not compliant? Certainly.
Imagine breaking a rule in order to save someone’s life; jump-
ing on the subway tracks to pull a fallen child out of a train’s
path, for example.
And what about the converse: being compliant, but unethi-
cal? In the defense contracting arena, there is a very interesting
drama currently unfolding that amounts to a case study in cor-
porate compliance versus ethical business conduct.
TransDigm Group Inc. sells parts for military and commer-
cial aircraft. It has grown over 25 years largely through acquir-
ing companies that design, manufacture and sell — usually as
sole-source provider — specialized and proprietary products.
Since almost every aircraft flying today contains parts pro-
duced under the TransDigm umbrella, the business can count
on long-term recurring aftermarket — in other words, spare
parts — sales. It’s a very successful business. In 2018, its sales
totaled $3.8 billion, of which defense accounted for approxi-
mately 35 percent. Their 2018 annual report states its goal is
to give shareholders “private equity-like” returns and, in fact,
according to The Motley Fool, its shares have appreciated by
more than 1,200 percent over the past 10 years.
The company has been in the news lately, because the
Defense Department’s office of the inspector general issued a
report in February on its investigation into TransDigm’s pric-
ing practices. The inquiry requested by members of Congress
concerned potential fraud, waste and abuse of taxpayer dol-
lars. The OIG studied a sample of 47 parts and concluded
TransDigm realized excess profit — using an OIG-determined
benchmark of 15 percent profit as “reasonable” — on 46 of
them. Many of the parts examined had realized excess profit
percentages greater than 500 percent and some went up to
as much as 4,400 percent. The sensational examples in the
report included a nonvehicular clutch disk that cost TransDigm
$32 to produce and for which the military paid $1,443, and a
quick disconnect coupling half that cost $173 to produce and
for which the customer paid $6,986.
Those profits seem extraordinary and prompt one to ask
why the Defense Department would agree to these exorbi-
tant prices. It’s partly because of complex acquisition rules
that allow this to happen. The Federal Acquisition Regulation
and the Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement
require contracting officers to “purchase supplies and ser-
vices from responsible sources at fair and reasonable prices.”
But determining whether a price is fair and reasonable is not
always straightforward. And in some situations, such as com-
mercial items or contracts for dollar amounts below certain
thresholds, acquisition staff do not have regulatory authority to
obtain cost and pricing data from vendors. In addition, as the
sole manufacturer of certain parts, TransDigm was able to set
market prices even for “competitive” awards.
Another reason the department agreed to these prices is
simple: it needs the parts for aircraft, and TransDigm is the
sole provider. The Collins English Dictionary defines a “profi-
teer” as “one who makes excessive profits, especially by taking
advantage of a shortage of supply to charge exorbitant prices.”
Think of Martin Shkreli, who raised the price of the Daraprim
drug over 5,000 percent and was called “the most hated man
in America” in the press. When judging ethical conduct, one
key factor is intent. While TransDigm’s business conduct in
this regard is not illegal, what is offensive is that it seems to
have taken advantage of regulatory loopholes to raise prices to
extreme levels because it can, with the intent to make as much
profit as possible. And in the defense industry context, the
money at issue is taxpayer dollars.
TransDigm is totally transparent about its strategy of acquir-
ing sole-source providers of aircraft parts that are assured of
having a long-term aftermarket demand, and then maximiz-
“Ethics is about ‘doing the right thing.’”
ing profits by raising prices and cutting costs. Certainly, some
would laud this as a winning business strategy. TransDigm’s
investors clearly don’t object: since the OIG inquiry was
requested in 2017, its stock has continued to increase by 136
percent.
But taxpayers don’t like their money wasted or abused, and
this company conduct may backfire; it has drawn negative
attention to the business and may result in further burden-
some regulatory changes to curtail this type of conduct. So far,
TransDigm has agreed to voluntarily reimburse the govern-
ment $16.1 million in excess profit. A “responsible source”
should not only have a good record of past performance, but
also of integrity and ethics.
The TransDigm website states it has a code of business con-
duct and ethics that reflects the company’s commitment to
honesty, integrity and the ethical behavior of employees, offi-
cers and directors. Published statements by company represen-
tatives emphasize compliance, but never mention ethics.
Kevin Stein, TransDigm CEO, told the House Committee
on Oversight and Reform, “the IG found that TransDigm did
nothing in contravention of the federal acquisition laws and
regulations with respect to its pricing.” The words integrity,
transparency and “doing the right thing” did not come up. ND
Anne R. Harris is founder and principal of Ethics Works LLC, an ethics
and compliance consulting practice with a focus on government con-
tractors. She formerly served as ethics officer for General Dynamics
Corp. She is an NDIA senior fellow.
AU G U ST 2 0 1 9 • N AT I O N A L D E F E N S E 3
 FURTHER READING
UP FRONT COMPILED BY STEW MAGNUSON
“DoD Digital Modernization
Strategy: DoD Information
Resource Management
Esper: Don’t Forget China’s Intermediate-Range Missiles Strategic Plan, FY 19-23”
Q Russia violated the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty and the Trump
administration formally pulled out of the agreement in February. Q The latest plan to lay out the
So what now? Secretary of the Army Mark Esper was asked in his Senate confirma- Defense Department’s information
tion hearing to become the next secretary of defense. technology related modernization
“We obviously need to prepare air-missile defenses to goals comes five years after the last
defeat those intermediate range missiles. The Army has been blueprint.
working on that. I know the other services are as well,” he In the new plan,
testified. the department’s
The other step is to develop new conventional “INF-range” chief information
missiles that deal not just with Russia, but China, he said. officer spells out
“Most of China’s inventory is intermediate-range missiles. a vision to create
So we need to make sure we have the capability as well to “a more secure,
Esper
respond should we — God forbid — get in a fight with them coordinated, seam-
one day.” less, transparent and
cost-effective IT architecture that
No Favoritism for Army Programs transforms data into actionable
Q Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., asked information and ensures depend-
Gen. Mark Milley about his top modernization priorities at the hearing to confirm able mission execution in the face
the general as the next chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. of a persistent cyber threat.”
Even though Milley spearheaded the push for the Army’s top six modernization The CIO’s priorities are: cy-
priorities during his tenure as the service’s chief of staff, he didn’t say a word about bersecurity, artificial intelligence,
them in his answer. cloud computing and the three Cs
No. 1 is “the modernization and recapitalization of the nation’s nuclear triad — I — command, control and com-
think that’s critical,” he said. His second priority is space technology. “We have a munications. The modernization
considerable amount of both commercial and military capabilities in space that need goals are: innovate for competitive
to be protected and all the technologies that go with space. In addition to that, I advantage; evolve cybersecurity
would say that artificial intelligence and hypersonics — and there’s many, many other for an agile and resilient defense
technologies — but those two are at the top of my list for putting modernization posture; and cultivate talent for a
investment.” ready digital workforce.
As for the latter, “competition
Army Weapons Buyer Loves Lasers for high quality, experienced digital
Q The Army’s pursuit of directed energy weapons will provide the abil- workforce personnel is constant
ity to have an “unlimited magazine,” according to a top service official. and increasingly aggressive,” the
“We were shooting $100,000 missiles at $7,000” drones, Lt. Gen. plan states. The Defense Depart-
Paul Ostrowski, principal military deputy to the assistant secretary of ment is one of the three largest
the Army for acquisition, logistics and technology, said at an AUSA talk. markets for cyber talent due to its
“This puts us in a position where we’re not spending that kind of money to do that.” size and requirements, the plan
The service has plans in place to field a platoon of four Strykers mounted with notes.
50-kilowatt directed energy weapons in fiscal year 2022, he noted. The Army has In 2018, the Defense Depart-
multiple efforts to arm systems with these weapons, which have had varying levels of ment began converting to a new,
power. The service is also working with the Navy to increase the power of one of its more agile personnel program
systems from 100 kilowatts to 250 kilowatts. The weapon is mounted on a family of developed specifically for its cyber
medium tactical vehicles platform, he said. workforce.
It is providing hiring managers
Schwartz Tapped to Lead IDA with greater options for sourcing
Q Former Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Norton Schwartz was candidates and the ability to offer
named the next president and CEO of the Institute for Defense more competitive compensa-
Analyses. He will take the reins of the nonprofit corporation tion packages. Also, a new cyber
that operates three federally funded research-and-development workforce qualification program
centers next January. is under development, which
Schwartz Since his retirement in 2012, Schwartz served as president of incorporates flexible attainment
DEFENSE DEPT., IDA

Business Executives for National Security along with serving on of credentials and performance-
the institute’s board of directors. based assessments to achieve a
David Chu is retiring as the president and CEO of IDA after serving for 10 years. department-wide standard baseline
— Reported by Connie Lee and Stew Magnuson of cyberspace capabilities. ND

4 N AT I O N A L D E F E N S E • A U G U S T 2 0 1 9
 NDIA History Snapshots
A look back at the history of the association
as it celebrates its centennial year.
S
ince its founding, the National Defense Industrial Asso-
ciation’s core mission has included “disseminating among
its members information and guidance on the design,
development, production and supply of ordnance equipment.”
Industry experts have used NDIA’s tools and its forerunners to
facilitate meetings of minds at events and in research reports,
academic articles and white papers.
In the 1920s, Army Ordnance, the magazine of NDIA
predecessor the Army Ordnance Association, featured both
technical articles and editorials. Topics included industry
trends and case studies on specific goods and processes. This
collection of written expertise complemented AOA’s annual
gatherings at the Aberdeen Proving Ground, where govern-
ment and industry leaders shared ideas face
to face.
Experts continued to share new ideas dur-
ing and after World War II. Maj. Gen. C.T.
Harris Jr., the commanding general of Aber-
deen Proving Ground, provided a prescient
insight in 1945 when he wrote: “Rockets in
this war, like the tank in the last, are in their
infancy.” In the 1950s, when basic prepared-
ness had long ceased to be a contentious issue,
articles speculated about the future role of the
atomic bomb.
To encourage development of innovations
with practical applications, the association cre-
ated commodity and technical support divisions after World
War II. These divisions evolved into today’s defense industrial-
government network of 29 divisions and three industrial com-
mittees, in addition to NDIA’s ad-hoc working groups.
The association also formalized two longstanding pillars:
national events every year that focused on “in-the-flesh”
networking, speakers and demonstrations, as well as regular
seminars held by local chapters.
Over the years, the association had focused on written
scholarship and events in turn; the postwar era showed leaders
that there was a tangible ongoing need for both.
Ordnance, the next iteration of Army Ordnance and the
predecessor publication of National Defense, helped educate
members of industry on materials progress, air armament,
underwater ordnance, missiles and astronautics, chemical and
biological defense and other new developments.
Coming in August
Q National Defense will be covering the annual Global Explo-
sive Ordnance Disposal Symposium and Exhibition, Aug. 6-8,
in Bethesda, Maryland. Michael Cardash, former commander
of the Israeli National Police Bomb Squad, and Kirk Yeager, the
NATIONAL ARCHIVES
FBI’s chief explosives scientist, will be featured speakers.
The association at its headquarters in Arlington, Virginia, will
host Navy Rear Adm. Francis Morley, director of the Navy’s
During NDIA’s next 50 years, publications continued to
be vehicles for educational advancement. In addition to the
monthly magazine, The Common Defense stayed on top of
current events in Washington. Armament targeted members
affiliated with the organization’s technical divisions. Firepower
emphasized the role of preventive maintenance in all arma-
ments. Following the 1997 merger of the American Defense
Preparedness Association and National Security Industrial
Association into NDIA, meetings and events became the
top priority. However, today’s NDIA leaders have worked to
rebuild the association’s scholarship in the defense-industrial
community. In its centennial year, the association is continu-
ing to refine its voice, propose what-ifs and kick-start much-
needed discussions.
Its leaders are addressing even the most contentious issues.
Weighing in on the recent debate over funding for a border
wall, NDIA President and CEO retired Air Force Gen. Hawk
Carlisle offered commentary in an Air Force
Times piece. “Declaring an emergency for a
chronic challenge to leverage defense funds
could hyper-politicize the defense budget
process,” Carlisle wrote. “At best, this could
set a worrisome precedent, inviting future
presidents to use this tactic to raid defense
resources for congressionally unsupported
priorities. At worst, members of Congress
leery of strong defense spending or who wish
to cut it to mitigate budget deficits may see
this as an opportunity to return to Budget
Control Act caps, crippling military readi-
ness.”
Carlisle also appeared on a Reagan National Defense Forum
panel in December 2018. The topic: “Evaluate the historic les-
sons of the Strategic Defense Initiative and their implications
for today.”
NDIA seeks to spread knowledge of the communities it
supports, on and off the soapbox. Today, that takes the form
of continuing education courses on business development — a
vital private sector skill — as well as the inner workings of
Washington, including valuable insider tips on how the De-
fense Department operates.
Thought leadership through NDIA’s publications, studies,
events as well as intelligent discourse and educational oppor-
tunities continue to be key to the association’s mission now
and looking to the future, as one of the strongest unifiers in its
continued commitment to military preparedness against all
present and future threats. — The History Factory
international programs office, for a breakfast talk on Aug. 15.
The magazine will also be at the Association for Unmanned
Vehicle Systems International’s Unmanned Systems—Defense.
Protection. Security. conference in Washington, D.C., Aug. 20-
21.
NDIA affiliate, the National Training and Simulation As-
sociation, will host its annual iFest conference, which centers
on distributed learning systems, in Alexandria, Virginia, Aug.
26-28. ND
AU G U ST 2 0 1 9 • N AT I O N A L D E F E N S E 5
Editor’s Notes BY STEW MAGNUSON
The Road to Acquisition Reform ‘Nirvana’
Q Ninety-nine years of magazines sit in a bookcase located in
the association’s office. What began as Army Ordnance in July
1920 would eventually morph into National Defense.
It’s interesting to flip through the back issues, especially those
published prior to 1970, which we will be doing more of as we
prepare for the big centennial issue coming out in November.
There is one constant theme in back issue pages: no one
has ever been happy with the Defense Department’s acquisi-
tion system. Complaints from association members found in
the 1930s and 1940s sound similar to ones heard today: the
services aren’t clear on their requirements; the system moves
too slowly; payments come too late, and so on, and so on. The
litany is well known.
The takeaway from this is that the road to “acquisition nir-
vana,” where everyone is happy with the system, will probably
never be reached. But that won’t stop the defense community
from trying with blue-ribbon panels, National Defense Autho-
rization Acts and think tank reports — nor should it. Acquisi-
tion reform is a never-ending story.
With that in mind, the Government Accountability Office
in June produced three separate reports related to defense
acquisition. Add them to the Section 809 Panel’s final recom-
mendations on acquisition reform and there is a lot to chew
on.
The first report out of
the gate: “DoD Acquisi-
tion Reform: Leadership
Attention Needed to
Effectively Implement
Changes to Acquisition
Oversight” mostly exam-
ines the recent initia-
tive to move oversight
of major defense acquisition programs from the office of the
secretary of defense back to the services. GAO’s conclusion:
It’s going fairly well. Of course, keep in mind that once upon
a time, someone thought that the answer to the department’s
woes was to move oversight of major acquisition programs
from the services to the OSD. It will be interesting to see if
the pendulum someday swings back in that direction.
The report also looked at the breakup of the OSD’s office
of the undersecretary for acquisition, technology and logistics.
One wonders if a decade or two from now, a reform-minded
blue-ribbon panel or lawmaker will declare: “We need to com-
bine the OSD’s office of the undersecretary for research and
engineering with the office of the undersecretary for acquisi-
tion and sustainment so one person can have oversight of pro-
grams from beginning to end. That will fix things.”
This report’s other big reveal: The 2016 NDAA gave more
freedom and cut some red tape for managers of middle-tier
acquisition programs. The services’ response was to declare
about everything a “middle-tier” program, which they could
do because no one has clearly spelled out the definition of
“middle tier.” Therefore, the Army categorized its multi-billion
6 N AT I O N A L D E F E N S E • A U G U S T 2 0 1 9
dollar effort to develop the next-generation combat vehicle a
“middle-tier” program.
“We found that approximately half of the programs initi-
ated to date would be categorized as major defense acquisition
programs if they were not being pursued under a middle-tier
pathway,” the report stated.
Perhaps the road to defense acquisition nirvana would be to
declare everything “middle tier.” The Columbia-class subma-
rine: middle tier! The F-35: middle tier! Protected communica-
tions satellites: middle tier, of course!
The next report: “KC-46 Tanker Modernization: Aircraft
Delivery Has Begun, but Deficiencies Could Affect Opera-
tions and Will Take Time to Correct” drills down into one
specific program, but as GAO said, it “identified a number of
insights that could benefit other programs.” The Air Force and
prime contractor Boeing entered into a firm fixed-price incen-
tive contract to deliver the first four aircraft, which currently
doesn’t seem to be benefitting anyone as the program is three
years behind schedule and the aircraft have a number of defi-
ciencies that will cost taxpayers $300 million. That loss will be
temporarily made up as the Air Force withholds 20 percent
payment on each aircraft.
However, lessons-learned about the benefits and pitfalls of
“Complaints from association members
found in the 1930s and 1940s sound
similar to ones heard today.”
firm fixed-price contracts are not in this report, and are not
going to be shared by the Air Force until the program is com-
plete in 2021. As GAO noted, that is of little help to those
considering such contract vehicles now.
At the end of June, GAO published, “Contract Financing:
DoD Should Comprehensively Assess How Its Policies Affect
the Defense Industry.”
Great idea! Why hasn’t anyone thought of this before?
The report specifically is referring to performance-based
versus fixed-price contracts and payment rates, another debate
that could be found in decades-old yellowed pages of the
magazine.
The last time the Defense Department comprehensively
analyzed this topic was 1985, according to the GAO. Think
of all the changes to the industry in the last five years, then all
the way back 34 years.
“Until DoD conducts a comprehensive assessment and
ensures they are done on a recurring basis, it will not be in
a position to understand whether current or future contract
financing policies are achieving their intended consequences,”
the report said.
There is a lot more to these three reports. But they all prove
that the pursuit of acquisition reform nirvana will fill the pages
ISTOCK
of National Defense for years to come. ND
 mine allies’ military capa-

D BEST OF THE WEB bilities by depriving them

of cutting-edge American
technology, she noted.
“What’s been particu-
EU Defense Programs larly interesting is that
many of the European companies that we have spoken with
Have Trump Administration were unaware of the situation that exists and some of the unin-
tended consequences,” she said. “So a large part of my efforts
Talking Retaliation during the Paris Air Show this year is to make sure that both
European and U.S. industry understands what’s at stake.”
Q PARIS — The Trump administration might adopt new mea- However, Lord suggested that the Trump administration
sures that would limit European companies’ opportunities to isn’t about to pull the trigger when it comes to potential retal-
participate in the U.S. defense market, a top Pentagon official iatory measures.
said. “We are not rushing to any actions,” she said. “We are hav-
The move, if approved, would be in retaliation for European ing all kinds of dialogue. At this point there is no intention of
initiatives that administration officials believe could unfairly doing anything abrupt or disruptive.” ND
hurt American firms, Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisi-
tion and Sustainment Ellen Lord told reporters at the Paris Air Posted by Jon Harper @ NationalDefenseMagazine.Org, June 17
Show.
The European Defence Fund and
the Permanent Structured Cooperation
project — known as EDF and PESCO,
respectively — aim to boost Europe’s
indigenous military capabilities. However,
Trump administration officials are wor-
ried that some of the language shaping
those initiatives could undermine U.S.
industry, Lord said.
“The U.S. is very concerned about pro-
visions in EDF and PESCO that would
limit U.S. and other third parties outside
of the EU in terms of participating in
programs moving forward,” she said.
“Right now, European companies enjoy
an enormous amount of business in the
U.S. and we want to make sure that U.S.
companies have the same opportunity”
in Europe.
“As we read the language right now,
even European-based subsidiaries of U.S.
corporations with European facilities
or European employees would not be
allowed to participate with intellectual
property exchange and a number of
other issues on programs that grow out
of EDF and … into PESCO,” she added.
President Donald Trump has shown a
willingness to use tariffs and other eco-
nomic tools to punish other countries for
what he views as unfair trade practices.
The administration is pondering next
steps.
“The interagency right now is discuss-
ing where this might go on a whole range
of actions that we’ve discussed” including
retaliatory measures, Lord said.
Meanwhile, administration officials are
DEFENSE DEPT.

trying to make the case that excluding

American firms from European programs
would be counterproductive and under-

AU G U ST 2 0 1 9 • N AT I O N A L D E F E N S E 7
Best of the Web
JEDI Cloud Computing
Contract Award Imminent
Q A contract decision for the Defense Department’s highly
anticipated and controversial joint enterprise defense infra-
structure program is expected by the end of August, said the
Pentagon’s chief information officer.
The multibillion-dollar initiative, known as JEDI, is meant to
create an expansive cloud computing system for the Defense
Department. It is currently in the source selection process,
which is pitting Amazon Web Services and Microsoft against
each other for the lucrative contract. Cloud technology allows
users to store and access data from anywhere at any time over
the internet rather than on a local computer hard drive. The
program — which could be worth up to $10 billion — was
READ BREAKING NEWS AND WEB EXCLUSIVE STORIES AT:
W W W . N AT I O N A L D E F E N S E M A G A Z I N E . O R G
embroiled in a legal challenge before the Court of
Federal Claims brought by Oracle America, which
objected to the contract going to a single vendor.
The Pentagon is eyeing late summer for an indefi-
nite-delivery/indefinite-quantity firmed-fixed price
contract award, said Dana Deasy.
“We have a source selection process that ... will
complete its natural process towards the end of
August,” he told reporters prior to the dismissal of the case.
“We’re not waiting for the [court’s] decision in that it doesn’t
impact the source selection process. ... Right now they are two
disconnected events.”
As the Pentagon moves closer to a contract award, it is start-
ing to chart out what a general-purpose cloud environment
would look like for each branch of the military, he said.
“It’s the logical time to sit down with the various services,
start to describe what we believe the general purpose cloud
environment will start to look like and, more importantly, for
them to start thinking about what activities set will they have
coming up this fall and going into next year that might be a
good candidate” for JEDI, Deasy said.
Update: The court case was dismissed in July. ND
ISTOCK
Posted by Yasmin Tadjdeh @ NationalDefenseMagazine.Org, June 25.
 Algorithmic Warfare BY YASMIN TADJDEH
Academia Key to Maintaining U.S. Lead in AI
Q Academic institutions will be critical to sustaining the
United States’ overmatch in artificial intelligence technology,
experts say.
While countries around the world are investing big in AI,
the United States’ advantage is in its talent pipeline and uni-
versities, said Dana Deasy, the Defense Department’s chief
information officer.
“There is no doubt in my mind that we continue to have
the most exquisite capability in terms of people, academic
talent [and] startups as a nation,” he told reporters during a
recent meeting in Washington, D.C.
While experts can run stats and figures that compare the
amount of money adversarial nations are investing in AI to the
United States, Washington still has the upper hand, he added.
“We’re going to continue to have to have the best academic
environment in the world,” Deasy said. “It all starts there. You
can look at any great set of technology that’s come out of the
U.S. that’s ended up being used and you could find its roots
first by somebody who came out of some academic environ-
ment [and] then went into either a startup role or some tech-
nology firm.”
The Defense Department is then able to leverage the inno-
vation occurring in colleges and universities across the country
and apply it to its own weapon systems, he said. Artificial
intelligence is a key focus area.
“AI at some point will become part of the fabric of how we
build solutions from the lethality standpoint, how we’ll think
about deterrence,” he said.
But with each passing day, foreign nations are becoming
more competitive as they build their own AI arsenals, Deasy
noted.
Elsa B. Kania, an adjunct senior fellow at the Center for
a New American Security, a Washington, D.C.-based think
tank, said that in order for the United States to maintain
dominance in artificial intelligence, there must be a focus on
education.
“If we are looking at the long-term trajectory of rivalry
with China, talent will really be the critical determinant of
comparative advantage going forward,” she said during a panel
discussion hosted by CNAS.
“On one hand, I’m very heartened that the Department of
Defense has launched a great strategy for AI,” she said, ref-
erencing an overarching Pentagon strategy for artificial intel-
ligence that was released earlier this year. “On the other hand,
I wish the Department of Education were equally active in
thinking about ways to both enhance STEM education and to
leverage AI to augment existing educational opportunities.”
Ensuring there is equality of opportunity in STEM educa-
tion — as well as thinking about the interdisciplinary inter-
sections in such fields — will be critical in building a talent
pipeline, Kania said.
At the same time, the U.S. government should be mindful
of not putting undue restrictions on foreign students studying
in the country, she noted. Washington has increasingly been
concerned that some foreign scholars enrolled at U.S. academ-
ic institutions may be working as agents of adversaries to gain
access to sensitive information that they can then pass on.
“I’d be concerned to see any restrictions on immigration
because I think when we are thinking about our long-term
competitive advantage, … openness and inclusion and wel-
coming students and scientists from all over the world is abso-
lutely vital,” Kania said. “I hope that we can sustain that and
embrace that as a source of strength and recognize that that is
something unique to the United States.”
Kara Frederick, an associate fellow at CNAS, said Washing-
ton must look at talent as a strategic imperative.
“We’re not used to looking at it as a national security imper-
ative, but it will play that role increasingly,” she said. “There
should be all sorts of on-ramps, off-ramps. Give people a taste,
whet their appetite for the Pentagon, Silicon Valley, and vice
versa.”
There are numerous programs that allow those in the
military to work in the tech community for a short period
of time, eventually returning to their post with a wealth of
knowledge, she said.
These are “sort of embryonic initiatives right now,” she said.
One concrete example includes the Air Force beginning to
“The United States’ advantage is in
its talent pipeline and universities.”
consider the computer programming-language Python for for-
eign language study, she said.
These are steps in the right direction toward fostering the
workforce that the U.S. government needs going forward, she
said.
There is also a need to make software development a more
appealing avenue to pursue, Frederick noted.
“Make software sexy,” she said. “I’ve used to great advantage
in the field some of these beautiful machines that get your
targeting work done. But at the same time, it’s the software
that really is running these to their full effect.”
There should be an emphasis on payload over platform and
software over payload, Frederick said.
“That’s something we need to impress upon our workforce,
especially those in the Pentagon when we’re talking about the
military applications of artificial intelligence,” she said.
However, it still remains to be seen what leadership in AI
looks like exactly, Kania noted.
“That is to be determined — what metrics we use, what
priorities we set,” she said. “But I do think focusing on the
human dimension of this technology, and both building a
pipeline of talent and welcoming talent and ensuring that our
development is in line with our values, is one way to set a
foundation going forward, not only for AI but for the range of
emerging technologies that will really shape the course of the
century.” ND
AU G U ST 2 0 1 9 • N AT I O N A L D E F E N S E 9
BUDGET
MATTERS
BY JON HARPER
Electronic Warfare Spending on the Rise
Q The Defense Department plans to boost investment in
electronic warfare capabilities as it gears up for great power
competition.
Gen. Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,
told National Defense that EW is the No. 1 functional area
where investments need to be made in the coming years.
“Being in a position to achieve superiority in the electromag-
netic spectrum is absolutely critical,” he said.
Using unclassified sources, the Congressional Research Service
estimates that the department is seeking $10.2 billion for these
types of capabilities in fiscal year 2020.
“Based on statements by several senior defense officials and
the conclusions of the National Defense Strategy Commis-
sion, it could be expected that DoD is likely to substantially
increase funding for EW programs,” military capabilities analyst
John Hoehn wrote in a recent CRS report titled, “U.S. Military
Electronic Warfare Investment Funding: Background and Issues
for Congress.”
The Pentagon wants to increase EW research, development,
test and evaluation funding and procurement funding by 9.7
percent and 7.1 percent, respectively, in 2020 relative to the
previous year’s request, the report said. The Trump administra-
tion aims to boost EW spending by $1.48 billion in 2021 (a 16.3
percent increase), $1.53 billion in 2022 (a 16.9 percent increase)
and $1.41 billion in 2023 (a 14.8 percent increase), it added.
In total, the Defense Department plans to spend $27.8 billion
on procurement and $25.8 billion on RDT&E over the course
of the future years defense program, according to the report.
Congress has demonstrated strong interest in electronic
warfare projects, Hoehn noted. For fiscal year 2019, lawmak-
ers provided nearly $700 million more for electronic warfare
projects than the administration requested.
Meanwhile, adversaries have been investing heavily in their
own EW capabilities, analyst say, and the United States can’t risk
falling behind.
“If you take a look at what China and Russia … are doing in
terms of their warfighting strategy, they emphasize being able to
operate effectively in the EMS — the electromagnetic spec-
trum,” said Mark Gunzinger, a non-resident senior fellow at the
10 N AT I O N A L D E F E N S E • A U G U S T 2 0 1 9
Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. That includes
being able to deny an enemy’s ability to control the spectrum.
It is a domain where wars can be won or lost, he said.
“If you think about how we maneuver, if you will, in the EMS,
it’s more than just communications,” he said. “It’s active and pas-
sive sensing, it’s the ability to create cyber effects through the
EMS. So it’s integral to just about everything our military does.
And if they are denied that — or their ability to maneuver in
the EMS is degraded — it could have significant implications to
the way we prosecute military operations.”
Electronic warfare capabilities — such as jamming and spoof-
ing — can be used against enemy airborne, sea-based, land-
based, space-based and cyber capabilities and weapon systems,
he noted. They can also undermine an opponent’s ability to
locate and attack targets and assess the effects of their opera-
tions.
The U.S. military must take steps to ensure that it can “win
the battle for the airwaves,” he said.
“It’s going to require new investments in electronic warfare
capabilities as well as development of new operating concepts,”
he said. “It’s more than just a matter of [buying] things, but
thinking through how we should operate in the EMS as part of
multi-domain operations as well as the technologies we should
invest in.”
New offensive and defensive capabilities that could be useful
include directed energy weapons such as high power micro-
waves that are capable of destroying electronic components, and
new unmanned systems with EW weapons, he said.
The stealthy F-35 joint strike fighter can also perform EW
missions, he noted. “That is a very capable electronic-attack air-
craft. And you couple that with … new operating concepts, and
that is a real step ahead in electronic warfare capabilities.”
Gunzinger said the Pentagon didn’t spend enough on EW
technology after the end of the Cold War, but that trend is
changing.
“We see that already,” he said. “I think there will be invest-
BAE SYSTEMS
ments in major new weapons systems [because] the ability to
operate in the EMS is going to be integral to every military unit
we field in the future.” ND
 Pentagon Underinvesting
In Artificial Intelligence
Q In recent years, defense officials have been banging the
drum about the importance of adopting artificial intelli-
gence to assist with everything from operating autonomous
platforms to intelligence analysis to logistics and back office
functions. But the Pentagon is not pumping enough money
into this technology, according to one expert.
“The critical question is whether the United States will be
at the forefront of these developments or lag behind, react-
ing to advances in this space by competitors such as China,”
Susanna Blume, director of the defense program at the
Center for a New American Security, said in a recent report
titled, “Strategy to Ask: Analysis of the 2020 Defense Budget
Request.”
The request includes just $927 million for the Pentagon’s
AI efforts, about 0.13 percent of the department’s proposed
$718 billion topline, she noted.
“Given the enormous implications of artificial intelligence
for the future of warfare, it should be a far higher priority for
DoD in the technology development space, and certainly a
higher priority than the current No. 1 — development of hy-
personic weapons,” she said. “While DoD is making progress
in AI … it is, quite simply, still not moving fast enough.”
The Pentagon is hoping to leverage advances in the
commercial sector, which is investing far greater amounts
of money into AI. It has a number of initiatives aimed at
building bridges with companies in tech hubs such as Silicon
Valley, Boston and Austin, Texas. However, not everyone in
those places is on board with assisting the military, Blume
noted.
“While DoD labs and agencies
continue to do good and important
work in this space, the primary AI
innovators are tech companies such
as Google,” she said. “Unfortunately,
engaging with these companies has
sometimes proved challenging for
DoD.”
As an example, Blume noted
that Google pulled out of Project
Maven — which utilizes artificial
intelligence to analyze drone foot-
age — after protests from employ-
ees who didn’t want their work to be used for warfighting
purposes.
On the brighter side, the Pentagon is investing more in
unmanned platforms that could use AI, Blume said. The de-
partment requested $3.7 billion for autonomous systems in
2020. Plans include acquiring a variety of unmanned aircraft,
ships and undersea vehicles.
“These autonomous systems all have the potential to al-
leviate many of the services’ readiness and manning woes,
while generating additional capacity and capability,” she said.
“They also create opportunities for innovative operational
concepts that can help the U.S. military maintain and extend
a position of dominance against its most challenging com-
ISTOCK
petitors.” ND
Analysts: Democrats
At Risk of Suffering
McGovern-Like Defeat
Q A coalition of liberal activists is urging Democratic presi-
dential candidates to adopt a platform that calls for massive
cuts to the military’s budget, a move that could spell disaster
for the party in the 2020 election, analysts warn.
As part of an initiative they are calling “People Over Pen-
tagon,” 22 left-leaning groups — which include Code Pink,
Greenpeace USA and MoveOn.org — sent a letter to each
of the Dems vying for the nomination that said: “Pentagon
spending has spiraled out of control. It is long past time to
eliminate excess Pentagon spending and invest the savings in
urgent domestic and human needs priorities — environmen-
tal protection, education, infrastructure, health care and more
— that will make the United States stronger and more just.”
The undated letters urged the candidates to support an
agenda that calls for cutting annual defense expenditures
by at least $200 billion, well below this year’s $716 billion
budget and the $750 billion that President Donald Trump
requested for fiscal year 2020.
In a recent op-ed published on the Brookings Institution’s
website and in USA Today titled, “Democratic Presidential
Candidates Shouldn’t Give in to Demand They Slash De-
fense Spending,” foreign policy analysts Michael O’Hanlon
and Frank Rose said such reductions would be a big mistake
from a national security perspective.
“A $200 billion cut is too much for a world with threats
like today’s revanchist Russia, rising China, activist Iran and
nuclearizing North Korea,” they wrote.
Calling for those types of decreases could also be politi-
cally devastating in the 2020 election, they noted, and lead
to the kind of landslide defeat that Democratic nominee Sen.
George McGovern, S.D., suffered against President Richard
Nixon in the 1972 election and other party nominees faced
against Ronald Reagan in the 1980s.
“Pressure is growing from the left of the political spectrum
to take dramatically different positions from the president on
matters of national security,” they wrote.
However, “Democrats should avoid the temptation to
move in the kind of McGovern-like anti-defense directions
that doomed the party to political setbacks starting in the
1970s — and that would allow Donald Trump to run on a
Reagan-like platform of being the main candidate who favors
a strong national defense,” they added.
Would the Dems really nominate another candidate who
calls for slashing the military budget?
“All bets are off” because progressive candidates might be
inclined to “trend towards the deep-cut position,” O’Hanlon
said in an email to National Defense. “I don’t know how to
handicap the race but I think the issue is up for grabs now.”
ND
AU G U ST 2 0 1 9 • N AT I O N A L D E F E N S E 11
NEWS
BRIEFS
BY CONNIE LEE
AND MANDY MAYFIELD
Army Assessing Marine Corps Unmanned System
Q A platform designed for the Marine Corps is being tested for
the Army’s robotic combat vehicle initiative.
The expeditionary modular autonomous vehicle, or EMAV,
program started in 2017 and was originally developed for the
Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory, said program manager
Brian Barr.
The Marine Corps “had a lot of experience doing autonomy
work on current vehicle platforms … and they got to a point
where they needed a custom, purposed vehicle to continue
the work in off-road autonomy,” Barr said. “We developed this
robotic platform for that.”
The EMAV is a tracked, diesel-electric series hybrid un-
manned ground system that weighs 6,800 pounds and can
carry a payload of 7,200 pounds, Barr said.
Now the Army has a next-generation combat vehicle
initiative to develop a new family of systems that will replace
its aging fleet. As part of the service’s plan to modernize the
force, a cross-functional team was set up to pursue the tech-
nology.
Col. Warren Sponsler, deputy director of the cross-function-
al team, said during the National Defense Industrial Associa-
tion’s Robotics Capabilities Conference and Exhibition in
12 N AT I O N A L D E F E N S E • A U G U S T 2 0 1 9
Columbus, Georgia, that the service was preparing for phase 2
of its robotic combat vehicle work.
The service is aiming to develop the vehicles in light, me-
dium and heavy variants. It held a phase 2 demonstration and
assessment at Texas A&M University in May.
EMAV was assessed for the light and medium vehicle
categories during the assessment, Barr said. During the event,
platforms were separated by payload capacity, allowing the
EMAV to compete in two categories, Barr noted.
Meanwhile, the Marine Corps is also experimenting with
the vehicle’s first two prototypes.
The systems participated in an experiment with Marines in
fall 2018 and another assessment of the platforms was slated for
August at an Army National Guard base in Indiana, Barr said.
The Marine Corps is “continuing to experiment with it and
they are reaching out to collaborate with Army customers to
PRATT & MILLER ENGINEERING
witness those experiments,” Barr said. “There’s good collabora-
tion going on.”
While Pratt & Miller Engineering has developed two pro-
totypes that have been in testing for over a year, the company
is currently building two additional platforms and recently
recieved an order for another two units, Barr said. - MM
 Army Developing Robotic
Trauma Care System
Q The Army is working on an autonomous robotic
trauma care system that can treat wounded soldiers on
the battlefield.
The University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and
Carnegie Mellon University were each awarded four-
year contracts totaling over $7.2 million to develop the
system, according to a news release.
The trauma care in a rucksack, or TRACIR, is envi-
sioned to be a device carried by soldiers in backpacks,
Artur Dubrawski, a research professor at CMU’s Robot-
ics Institute, said in an interview. The ultimate goal is to
create a fully autonomous system that can be thrown by
a wounded warrior, self-inflate and “crawl” on top of the
warfighter to begin providing medical treatment, he said.
Besides stabilizing the patient mechanically, the suit
would also be able to put pressure on bleeding wounds,
measure and diagnose a person’s injuries and insert nee-
dles into veins for fluid resuscitation, he noted. Portable
ultrasound technology would help the system insert the
needles, Dubrawski said.
TRACIR would be especially useful during the “golden
hour,” which is the period of time in which medical
treatment is the most important for a wounded soldier.
“If the help is provided promptly, we can very well
save lives and actually keep those individuals in good
shape throughout the rest of their lives,” he said. “But if
we fail to provide this critical help at the critical moment
then we lose them.”
“This device in our vision is abstract,” he noted. “It may
actually end up having [a] different form factor than
what we originally thought, depending on the actual
circumstances of the application and needs that need to
be satisfied.”
The Defense Depart-
ment wants a fieldable
prototype by 2028, said
Ronald Poropatich, di-
rector of the University
of Pittsburgh’s Center
for Military Medicine
Research. Engineers
hope to produce a prototype within the timeframe of
the four-year contract, but it will not be “fieldable in the
true sense of what the DoD is looking for,” he noted.
“We’ll be having providers interacting with the tech-
nology solution being semiautonomous, and then over
time incrementally we will have a fully autonomous
system,” Poropatich said. “Hopefully we’ll get there by
2028.”
Researchers are taking “baby steps” towards the final
goal, Dubrawski noted.
CARNEGIE MELLON, ISTOCK
“Even though our ultimate vision involves … [a
system] that is fully autonomous and robotic, it is quite
likely that we are going to proceed along the sequence
of developments that will be partially automated and
partially autonomous,” he said. - CL
Small Businesses Sought for
Space Accelerator Program
Q The Air Force Research Laboratory Space Vehicles Directorate
is reaching out to small businesses to explore space-based intel-
ligence, surveillance and reconnaissance technologies.
The service is looking for companies that can fill technol-
ogy gaps by working alongside the Catalyst Space Accelerator
program, which is a public-private partnership. KiMar Gartman,
director of the accelerator, said the research lab is interested in
systems such as space-based sensors that can discriminate be-
tween different objects.
The organization offers a 12-week program that connects busi-
nesses with the military and subject matter experts in areas such
as finance and law, she noted. This helps companies determine if
their technologies would be able to meet the needs of potential
customers, she noted. The program will culminate in a demon-
stration day for vendors to show their products to investors, such
as the other military services.
“It just helps them to get an idea of whether or not their
technology is relevant to the problem statement — those com-
mercially and in the DoD,” she said. “We try to bring in the Army,
the Navy [and] other Air Force units that would have interest in
the technology.”
The goal is to have eight companies participate in the upcom-
ing accelerator, which is scheduled for September, Gartman said.
The next demonstration day is slated for November. The events
are held in Colorado Springs, Colorado, which is “one of the hubs
of space,” Gartman said.
“We’re able to bring in all of these potential customers from
the [military] bases and ... [other] entities that are located right
in the Colorado Springs area,” she said.
Connections made through the program could potentially
result in federal grants, contracts or other transaction authority
agreements, she noted.
“These companies can start applying for those [small business
innovation research grants] and there seems to be more interest
because they’ve gone through an accelerator,” she said.
Past event topics have included positioning, navigation and
timing, and resilient commercial space communication, she
noted. For the upcoming accelerator, the program will exclude
ground-based technologies.
“We figured if we included ground-based, we’re going to get a
lot of the same companies that we had in the last two,” she said.
“[We] felt it would just be too broad of a swipe. They were want-
ing to narrow it down a little bit.”
Candidates for the program are recruited through sources such
as social media, websites and conferences, she noted. - CL
AU G U ST 2 0 1 9 • N AT I O N A L D E F E N S E 13
News Briefs
3D Training Tool Upgraded
For Apache Maintainers
Q Lockheed Martin has launched the newest version of its
advanced 3D instructing technology for AH-64 Apache sen-
sor maintainers.
RELY3D is an advanced visualization and training tool
that leverages capabilities from mainstream gaming technol-
ogies to train system maintainers, according to the company.
The product is made of four modules. The first provides
users with an animated version of the sensor system, said
Mike Taylor, program director for Apache M-TADS/PNVS
international and fleet support.
The module “is an animated version of what our system
looks like and allows the user to touch … different pieces of
the system, rotate it, move it around [in] real time on a lap-
top or tablet and kind of have an exploded diagram,” he said.
The second module focuses on troubleshooting and
provides users with a step-by-step guide on removing and
reinstalling repairs, he noted.
The third is a wiring diagram “that shows all of the cabling,
harnesses and wiring connectivity between the various pieces
of our system,” Taylor explained.
The last module gives users the ability to download the
likely path to troubleshooting system issues.
Lockheed Martin began building the training tool in 2012
and fielded the system in 2015 with the first two modules,
Taylor said.
“RELY3D very obviously [and] clearly demonstrated
what a visual-based training tool can do versus an electronic-
based” tool, he added. The system is currently in its second
version.
The technology has shown the ability to provide a 50 to
70 percent proficiency increase with users and gives them
the ability to pinpoint problems on a wiring diagram module
rather than on a drawing, he said. The office also conducted
a case study through which they saw a 60 percent efficiency
increase, he noted.
The training simulator undergoes continuous upgrades.
“Capability is constantly being added to the system,”
Taylor said. “We are about to field [a] modernized day sensor
assembly which is a huge game changer.”
There will be more updates to the system as the platforms
gather more data, he noted.
“We pull all of our data … out of our engineering systems
and pour it right into any upgrades we apply to RELY3D,
and that will continue,” Taylor said. - MM
14 N AT I O N A L D E F E N S E • A U G U S T 2 0 1 9
Viasat Awarded
Contract to Deliver Link 16
Capable Spacecraft
Q The Air Force has awarded a contract to Viasat to build
a low-Earth orbit satellite equipped with a Link 16-capable
terminal.
The company was awarded the contract by the Space
Enterprise Consortium, which falls under the Air Force
Research Laboratory Space Vehicles XVI program.
The initial contract is to build one small satellite to put in
low-Earth orbit (LEO) to demonstrate that it can connect to
the Link 16 tactical data network, Ken Peterman, president of
Viasat’s Government Systems business told National Defense.
The network is used by U.S. and coalition forces to pass
information and provide situational awareness.
“Then that proof of concept demonstrates the viability
of a low-cost constellation of small sat LEOs that would be
very affordable and could be fielded in what’s called a prolif-
erated LEO constellation,” Peterman said.
The contract is for a $10 million pilot program that
involves the development of the capability, integration and
delivery.
Under the agreement, the company will construct a 12U
form factor satellite, which is about the size of a dorm room
refrigerator, Peterman said.
“We put this Link 16 terminal on the LEO [satellite] and
now because the LEO is at higher altitude, it provides a
range extension relay and it demonstrates the feasibility and
the proof of concept of this … tactical data net,” he noted.
Once the satellite is on orbit, a variety of tests and valida-
tions will be conducted to prove the system is equipped to
become a full-fledged member of the network, Peterman
said.
The system will be compatible with Air Force, Army,
Navy, Marine Corps and Special Operations Command Link
16-enabled platforms, such as ground vehicles, aircraft and
maritime vessels.
The contract also includes options for future satellites,
Peterman said. The satellite is expected to launch in the
summer of 2020, he added.
A constellation could later include hundreds or thousands
LOCKHEED MARTIN, VIASAT
of Link 16-capable satellites, offering persistent and continu-
al coverage at low-Earth orbit, he noted.
“It’s a real game changer, in terms of extending the reach
of this proven network that we all rely on so heavily,” Peter-
man said. - MM
 Policy Points BY HANNAH HARPER
Army Takes On IP Rights Conundrum
Q “Enabling Modernization Through the Management of Intel-
lectual Property,” the Army’s new policy, tries to balance the
government’s priority to maintain U.S. military competitive
advantage by leveraging advanced American technologies while
also allowing inventors and companies to fairly benefit from
their intellectual work.
Both the government and the defense industry strive to
provide warfighters with the best capabilities, but the govern-
ment must act in the best interest of taxpayers and the defense
industry in the best interest of corporate shareholders. The ten-
sion between controlling costs and increasing revenues creates a
battle over who benefits from IP.
The legal protections surrounding IP establish boundar-
ies and terms for its use. Protections, like trademarks, patents,
copyrights and trade secrets, give entrepreneurs the legal
security necessary to earn a return on their investments, making
them a lucrative asset.
Industry faces two major challenges when selling intellectual
property to the government. The first stems from the govern-
ment’s rights to use, modify, adapt, disseminate, reproduce or
disclose IP. The government’s rights in these scenarios directly
depend on how much funding it provided for development.
Under some circumstances — falling under the right to
disclose or disseminate — the government may share acquired
data with third parties. These third parties sometimes include
direct competitors of the IP-generating company.
The second challenge concerns the protection of exclusion-
ary rights inherent to IP. The Bayh-Dole Act requires govern-
ment contractors to disclose inventions derived from federal
funding, leaving contractors vulnerable to a government
decision to exercise its “march-in” rights. Under the act, when a
contractor breaches their obligation to commercialize a patent,
the government may effectively seize control of the intellectual
property and grant licenses to third parties. Although the gov-
ernment reportedly has never exercised this option, contractors
worry about being the first victim.
The government also faces significant intellectual property
challenges. The biggest of these challenges is “vendor lock,”
which occurs when vendor-controlled IP precludes competition
for sustainment or upgrade contracts. When the government
fails to obtain the rights to certain key parts of a new capabil-
ity’s intellectual property, it loses the ability to work with
other contractors to drive better sustainment deals or develop
innovative upgrades, which drives up costs and limits capability
development.
Another challenge arises when the government lacks an
intellectual property strategy at the beginning of a major
defense acquisition program. This lack of strategy can result
either in the government accepting a costly long-term contract
with a single company or vendor, or the government requiring
ownership of the entire technical base as part of the request for
proposals. Lack of strategy frequently results in the government
acquiring more rights and information than it needs.
In a discussion June 18 about the new policy at the Center
for Strategic and International Studies, Alexis Lasselle Ross,
the Army’s deputy assistant secretary for strategy and acquisi-
tion reform, acknowledged this misguided practice prioritizes
acquisition officer ease and comfort over program savviness. IP
control overreach can carry excessive financial costs and disin-
centivize industry innovation, she said.
To visualize the tension between the two sides, it may be
helpful to envision a spectrum of intellectual property rights.
On one side, the IP is completely proprietary to the innovator,
and on the other side, the government owns everything. Inno-
vators and government have traditionally begun negotiations on
opposite sides of the rights spectrum. The new policy seeks to
incentivize finding middle ground, with focus placed on early
negotiation and custom licenses.
The new policy emphasizes four tenets to effectively value
IP rights. They include: opening communication; early plan-
ning and development of customized IP strategies; negotiation
of custom data and licenses; and early negotiation to secure
competitive prices.
The heavy focus placed on early negotiation and developing
custom strategies and licenses will benefit both the Army and
industry. By incentivizing program managers to determine in-
tellectual property strategies early in the procurement process,
the Army addresses its problem of waiting too long and paying
“The new policy seeks to incentivize
finding middle ground.”
too much. The Army will need to think about what it needs to
build and sustain capabilities before developing its strategy for
acquiring the requisite IP. Providing a space for planning and
negotiations early in the acquisition process also helps to re-
duce innovators’ risk of losing intellectual property on the back
end of the contract, reversing the chilling effect on innovators
from the government’s current practice of generally requesting
every piece of data.
The policy also encourages negotiating custom data and
licenses so both government and industry have transparent un-
derstanding of data rights and obligations from program incep-
tion. In some cases, especially when thinking about competitive
sustainment and upgrade potential, the rights required by the
government will be significant. In other instances, the need for
extensive intellectual property ownership by the government
will be much less. Either scenario requires clearly defining
agreements reached during contract negotiation, ultimately
ensuring both government and industry understand how rights
will be divided moving forward.
The Army’s new intellectual property policy creates repeat-
able procedures that build predictability into the acquisition
process to deliver better capabilities at lower cost, benefiting
both government and companies. ND
Hannah Harper is an NDIA junior fellow.
AU G U ST 2 0 1 9 • N AT I O N A L D E F E N S E 15
Viewpoint BY GREGORY D. FOSTER
Environmental Industry Can Serve as Soft Power Tool
Q Fully two years into the Trump administration, it is obvious
that it views all things environmental and climate-related with
total disdain and, accordingly, has sought to undermine and
marginalize the institutions of government charged with over-
seeing such matters.
Considering such deep-seated predispositions, how ironic
is it to suggest a systematic effort to integrate the private sec-
tor — in particular, the highly profitable, globally influential
environmental industry — into the conduct of U.S. statecraft,
precisely for the purpose of compensating for America’s strate-
gic shortcomings and contributing to a more vibrant, compre-
hensive approach to national security?
However unlikely it might be for something so heterodox
to take hold in this decidedly 20th-century administration, the
prospects of such transformative 21st-century strategic think-
ing might yet be within reach come January 2021.
What is the environmental industry? The most widely
accepted definition comes from Environmental Business
International, a private firm that is the source of nearly all the
industry’s most authoritative data. EBI includes those firms
involved in environmental testing and analytical services;
wastewater treatment; solid waste management; hazardous
waste management; remediation and industrial services; envi-
ronmental consulting and engineering; water equipment and
chemicals; instruments and information systems; air pollution
control equipment; waste management equipment; process
and prevention technology; water utilities; resource recovery;
and clean energy power and systems.
These and other related business activities make up the
$363 billion a year environmental industry, a predominantly
service-oriented sector in a predominantly service-oriented U.S.
economy. It represents over 3 percent of U.S. gross domestic
product, involves 118,000 public and private organizations
and firms — ranging from small businesses with a handful
of employees to global mega-firms with tens of thousands of
workers — and accounts for 1.7 million jobs in a $1.05 trillion
global environmental business market. It’s a huge sector with
a huge global market and a potentially huge, yet-to-be-fully-
realized impact.
Other business sectors typically command immediate atten-
tion when it comes to national security: aircraft, shipbuilding,
armaments, land combat vehicles and information technology
among them. But what makes the environmental industry so
unique is that it operates at the very intersection of environ-
ment and security in dealing with conditions — environmental
degradation and resource scarcity/maldistribution — that
determine the state of human well-being, thereby heavily
affecting the relationship of humans to their governments,
even as they link security at the individual/human level to
security at “higher” national and global levels.
It deals directly with the conditions that underlie the often
overlooked root causes of unfulfilled human needs and dissat-
isfaction that can mutate into unrest, violence, destabilization
and conflict. As such, it is a singularly strategic industry, an
16 N AT I O N A L D E F E N S E • A U G U S T 2 0 1 9
incalculable prospective instrument of statecraft for exercising
a “soft power” alternative to coercive military power.
There is a vast body of literature and policy that draws
attention to the environment-security linkage. Innumerable
commissions and study groups have spoken authoritatively
on the subject — including the 1987 World Commission on
Environment and Development, also known as the Brundtland
Commission, the 1995 Commission on Global Governance,
the 1997 Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Con-
flict, and the 2004 UN Secretary-General’s High-Level Panel
on Threats, Challenges and Change. All have delivered much
the same message: Environmental stress is both a cause and an
effect of political tension and military conflict. Environmental
stress, caused by large populations and shortages of land and
other natural resources, can contribute to civil violence.
More contemporary analyses — a 2015 Defense Depart-
ment response to Congress, “National Security Implications of
Climate-Related Risks and a Changing Climate,” and a 2017
Climate and Security Advisory Group report, “A Responsibility
to Prepare: Strengthening National and Homeland Security in
the Face of a Changing Climate” — have echoed similar senti-
ments: Global climate change will aggravate existing problems
— such as poverty, social tensions, environmental degradation,
ineffectual leadership and weak political institutions — that
threaten domestic stability in a number of countries. Climate
change risks to critical military and civilian infrastructure, to
operations, and to stra-
“There is a vast body tegic interests, span the
domestic and international
of literature and policy landscape.
Most recently, in terms
that draws attention that have drawn White
to the environment- House opprobrium, the
U.S. intelligence commu-
security linkage.” nity’s “2019 Worldwide
Threat Assessment” has
argued: “Global environmental and ecological degradation,
as well as climate change, are likely to fuel competition for
resources, economic distress and social discontent through
2019 and beyond. Climate hazards such as extreme weather,
higher temperatures, droughts, floods, wildfires, storms, sea lev-
el rise, soil degradation and acidifying oceans are intensifying,
threatening infrastructure, health and water and food security.”
Beyond such authoritative statements, it is instructive to
consider the relationship between the environmental perfor-
mance and the corresponding stability of the world’s countries.
The annual Yale/Columbia Environmental Performance Index
and the Fund for Peace’s Fragile States Index together tell us
that 16 of the world’s top 26 environmental performers — the
United States, perhaps surprisingly, ranking 27th — are also
among the most stable states, while 17 of the 25 worst envi-
ronmental performers are also among the world’s most fragile
states. Though an imperfect correlation, it warrants the studied
attention of those concerned with the security implications of
 global instability.
Additionally, it is an undeniable fact that, due largely to
climate change, natural disasters occur the world over with
increasing frequency, intensity and catastrophic consequences:
an average annual death toll of 77,144 over the period
2000-2017, with an annual average of over 193 million lives
affected, and total costs over roughly the same period of $2.9
trillion. Disaster response remains an ultimate measure of the
social contract between governments and people. It also is
ground zero for the environmental industry.
Degraded environmental conditions and resource scarcity
feed the deprivation and dissatisfaction that can lead to insta-
bility and conflict, which is the business of governments; but
they also represent environmental markets — the business of
business. This, then — cynical though it may sound — is the
predicate for establishing the strategic role the environmental
industry could play as an instrument of statecraft.
The global landscape for environmental business is immense
and growing, a fact ably captured by the more than 35 CEOs
and civil society leaders of the Business and Sustainable Devel-
opment Commission. They contend that sustainable business
models — based on support of the 17 sustainable development
goals agreed to by the UN in September 2015 — could open
economic opportunities worth up to
$12 trillion and increase employment
by up to 380 million jobs by 2030.
The United States has enormous
capability for exploiting and shaping
this global landscape — not militarily,
but environmentally. Of the top 200
environmental firms, ranked annually
by Engineering News-Record on the
basis of annual revenues, many are
construction, contracting and reme-
diation firms like Fluor and Bechtel;
consulting and studies firms like Jacobs
and Tetra Tech; and engineering and
design firms like Black & Veatch. All
but 15 of the top 200 are headquar-
tered in the United States. They exert
extensive influence worldwide with
some of them working in as many as 75 countries.
These companies are just a small sample — 200 of 118,000
enterprises — of the strategic reach the United States has
and could have through the vehicle of environmental busi-
ness. Moreover, since the 1992 Amendments to the Export
Enhancement Act, U.S. policy has sought to foster the healthy
export of environmental technology goods and services abroad.
Today, U.S. environmental exports stand at a relatively modest
$48 billion in an international market with some $713 billion
of export potential, which suggests that, beyond the indepen-
dent activities of environmental companies such as the forego-
ing, there are markets yet to be fully tapped.
That said, environmental business goes where the business is.
It’s a business that does socially redeeming, humanistic things,
but for the purpose of making money — even in the aftermath
of disaster. In a more perfect world, “markets of plenty” would
align with “markets of need.” But they typically don’t. As
things now stand, over 70 percent of the prime international
markets for the top U.S. environmental firms are in Canada,
ISTOCK
Europe and Australia/New Zealand.
At one level, this is simply a call for recognition of the envi-
ronmental industry’s inestimable value in serving U.S. strategic
interests and fulfilling U.S. strategic aims.
According to public opinion, there is a sense of how impor-
tant such recognition is. Domestically, Americans think the
United States should continue to play a major or leading
role internationally, but that it is losing influence and respect.
Americans consider the environment an important national
policy priority, much more so than climate change, but less so
than such things as the economy, health care, education and
terrorism. And the public thinks government is doing too little
to protect the environment and reduce the effects of climate
change.
Internationally, the United States is in fact losing respect, is
considered less helpful than in the past in addressing major
global problems, and is even viewed as a major threat by many.
And most of the world’s countries are far ahead of the ideo-
logically driven United States in seeing climate change as a
major threat.
The Trump administration’s actions to date leave no doubt
about the difficulty of achieving such recognition. Since enter-
ing office, it has sought to reverse more than 70 environmental
rules, while withdrawing from the Paris Climate Agreement,
revoking the Obama executive order
and memorandum on climate and
national security, giving only gratuitous
mention to environmental matters in
the 2017 White House National Secu-
rity Strategy document, and no mention
at all in the Pentagon’s 2018 National
Defense Strategy document.
At another level, even more difficult,
is the looming question of how to go
about integrating the private sector into
the strategic deliberations and actions of
government. There is no ready answer
because this is totally virgin bureau-
cratic territory. For starters, it would be
propelled by the experience of the envi-
ronmental community which doesn’t
exist or operate in isolation. It is part of
an extensive “ecosystem” of stakeholders and has evolved well
beyond the legacy of command direction, enforcement, com-
pliance and public-private conflict that spawned the industry’s
growth.
There is heightened commitment to public-private partner-
ing, and the private sector itself has increasingly moved ahead
of government — beset by political and ideological inertia —
to establish and even enforce environmental requirements and
standards.
All of this suggests an elevated, expanded conception of
“whole-of-government” action that includes public-private-
philanthropic and interagency-intergovernmental-international
collaboration. It also suggests a much more creative, robust
approach to financing mechanisms that could turn “markets of
need” into “markets of plenty.” ND
Gregory D. Foster is a professor at the National Defense University
and former director of the Environment Industry Study group of
NDU’s Dwight D. Eisenhower School for National Security and
Resource Strategy. The views expressed here are his own.
AU G U ST 2 0 1 9 • N AT I O N A L D E F E N S E 17
Viewpoint BY JAMES S.B. CHEW
Realizing the Potential of AI on the Edge
QIn the late 1970s, the outlook for the internal combustion
engine was bleak. Faced with complying to both aggressive
fuel economy standards and stringent emission regulations, the
American driver seemed destined for a future of small, under-
powered cars.
But something funny happened. Engineers and researchers
began to study the technological state of those engines. They
discovered that while those engines performed adequately, the
technology had not progressed much since the development of
the Otto cycle. These engines were designed to perform opti-
mally at one set of operating conditions — open road, nonstop
driving. Internal combustion research-and-development efforts
were executed to develop technologies and components,
which would allow the internal combustion engine to operate
optimally at all common operating conditions.
These efforts followed a systems approach to re-examine
the basic engineering principles to understand and optimize
subsystems, then optimize subsystem to subsystem to system
interactions. Because of this system-
of-systems approach, today we have
four-cylinder engines that produce
more horsepower and torque than the
1960s-era muscle car engines while
achieving average fuel efficiencies of
over 30 miles to the gallon. We have
V-8 engines that produce horsepower
and torque once reserved only for
special-purpose racing vehicles — all
while achieving fuel efficiencies that
are far better than the 1980s-era sub-
compact cars.
The same system-of-systems optimi-
zation approach must be followed to fully realize the potential
of artificial intelligence. With the advent of AI at the edge and
the associated need to make intelligent decisions in an unte-
thered mobile environment, upwards of three Tera-MACs per
watt are needed. To achieve that kind of performance, industry
must examine new AI hardware architectures and software
solutions that are tailored to the broad range of missions across
the military and aerospace landscape. To create these new solu-
tions, new design methodologies, architectures and innovation
in the development and verification of AI-related hardware
and software is required that go well beyond the frameworks
of today.
Today, continued advancements in microprocessor technol-
ogy and the availability of big data provide a natural founda-
tion that fuels the interest in AI-enabled devices, as well as
machine learning-enhanced design and verification processes.
Most of the Defense Department’s artificial intelligence efforts
have been focused on software algorithm development on
existing microprocessors and hardware. Organizations within
the department are leveraging the potential of state-of-the-
art microprocessors to develop new AI-enhanced warfighting
capability.
18 N AT I O N A L D E F E N S E • A U G U S T 2 0 1 9
As impressive as the results have been, these efforts will
not address the Pentagon’s need for mass adaptation of AI-
enhanced devices. The limitation is that they all rely on being
tied to a computer center resource. While there have been
significant advances in cloud computing, there is a multitude
of defense scenarios in which the resulting data latency would
render AI-enhanced warfighting capability useless.
The solution is the development of AI-enabled electronics
that can learn and tailor themselves to the goals of the mis-
sion in an untethered and mobile environment, thus “AI on the
edge.” The implementation of such an approach requires the
development of optimized AI-specific semiconductors that,
just like the engine examples above, can be configured to meet
the correct mission parameters in a robust, verified way.
In the commercial sector, application-specific integrated
circuits are seeing fast growth for edge applications that span
mobile phones as well as medical, drones and industrial appli-
cations that include vision and speech. They have a longer-
term value proposition for edge
applications because of advantages
in power and decentralized indepen-
dence. According to a May 2019 Trac-
tica report on AI, these circuits will
represent 52 percent of global deep
learning chipset revenue by 2025. The
implication is that the train is coming,
and technology developers can either
get on the train or get in front of it.
This is far easier in the commercial
sector, but to realize the potential of
AI on the edge, the Defense Depart-
ment and defense industrial base
technology must inevitably follow a similar path, only with
more stringent requirements around verification, particularly as
these edge devices get integrated into existing systems.
Of course, incorporating AI on the edge does not mean the
elimination of the cloud, but, better yet, an implementation
that yields the most efficient and optimal results for the over-
all system. This implies a system architecture that leverages
the computational resources available in the cloud, with high-
performance, low-power system-on-a-chip (SoC) at the edge.
There are two main stages of AI: training/learning and infer-
ence. The training/learning stage performs analysis on available
data — the more data, the better — develops neural network
structures and requires substantial computational resources.
The inference stage is where the neural network structures are
deployed, and reactions/decisions are made based on the input
into the system. To move the inference stage to the edge, cer-
tain characteristics are required to drive the feasibility of this
efficient architecture such as: low power, high performance/
efficiency, optimized processing, etc.
While off-the-shelf devices exist for AI processing at the
edge, most of these devices are general-purpose AI engines and
ISTOCK
none are optimized for their specific tasks at hand. The recent
introduction of embedded AI engines, such as the DNA100 DSP
from Cadence, allows the development of application-specific
system-on-a-chip that delivers the optimal AI-at-the-edge imple-
mentation with advanced inference capabilities, so systems can
make real-time decisions without the latency —and cost — asso-
ciated with data transfer and response times with a cloud-based
implementation. In addition, these chips also enable a software
programmable implementation that allows for the repurposing
of SoC-based AI resources, bringing long-term flexibility to the
overall system such as adaptability to future algorithm and sys-
tem requirements.
The size, weight and power desire for commercial and defense
AI-on-the-edge devices is driving the semiconductor industry to
smaller node sizes, stretching the limits of Moore’s Law and cre-
ating a class of “more than Moore” customers. It has also created
a growing number of small, “two-pizza AI-specific hardware”
development companies within Silicon Valley.
The reason for the rapid
“Industry must growth of these companies is
simple — the state-of-the-art
examine new AI electronic document access tools
and processes, as well as the
hardware architec- best-in-class emulation devices,
tures and software can support such development.
In fact, the best-in-class emula-
solutions ...” tion devices can be configured to
develop an artificial intelligence
innovation hub, creating an AI hardware emulation center that
can allow for the free flow of hardware design ideas, as well as
AI hardware design emulations. By following the commercial
electronics industry design best practice of using the best-in-
class emulation systems to emulate before fabrication, one can
be assured that the final AI on the hard device will achieve
first-pass success and be future-proofed.
It wouldn’t be prudent for the Defense Department to inde-
pendently initiate AI-on-the-edge hardware development efforts,
or, for that matter, any artificial intelligence effort, without
leveraging the billions of dollars of past and current commercial
industry investment. The undersecretary of defense for research
and engineering, Congress and the office of science and technol-
ogy policy should require that all current and new defense AI
efforts show the commercial industry leverage to ensure the
most efficient use of resources. The good news for defense AI
science and technology and the acquisition and sustainment
communities is that these state-of-the-art electronic document
access tools and processes — as well as the best-in-class emula-
tion devices, which can support such development — are now
available at several Defense Department facilities.
The foundation for the department to realize the potential
of artificial intelligence and machine learning is now in place. It
would behoove it to reconfigure and enhance that foundation
into a Defense Department AI innovation hub, allowing for the
establishment of a leadership position by realizing the potential
of this capability. ND

James S.B. Chew is chair of NDIA’s Science and Engineering Technology

Division and group director, aerospace and defense at Cadence Design
Systems. Vic Markarian, Cadence senior group director, Tensilica product
line; Steve Carlson, systems solutions architect; and David White, techni-
cal fellow and senior group director, research and development, contrib-
uted to this article.

AU G U ST 2 0 1 9 • N AT I O N A L D E F E N S E 19

Directorate Wants to Change
View of Nonlethal Weapons
BY YASMIN TADJDEH
FREDERICKSBURG, Va. —
Modern warfare is often char-
acterized by heavy firepower such as
guns, tanks and attack aircraft. But as
the United States faces operations in the
“gray zone” — actions that remain below
the level of conventional armed conflict
— there is an increasing need for nonle-
thal options.
In charge of the Pentagon’s effort to
develop such weapons is Marine Corps
Col. Wendell Leimbach, director of the
Defense Department’s joint nonlethal
weapons directorate. Leimbach, a former
tank officer and self-described “lethality
junkie,” said nonlethal weapons will play
a key role in the future of warfare.
“We are not currently fielding capabil-
ities that enable our warfighters that are
out there engaging in those gray zone
operations to actually compete,” he said
during remarks at the National Defense
Industrial Association’s Armament Sys-
tems Forum in Fredericksburg, Virginia.
U.S. adversaries around the world
know that the United States is reticent
to escalate conflict, and they take advan-
tage of that through unconventional
tactics, he said.
“Lethality is absolutely critical in the
modern combat environment that we
find ourselves, but the world’s most
lethal, incredible force must also be able
to compete in all the other phases of
combat,” Leimbach added.
However, it has often been a slog try-
ing to convince officials and industry of
the need for greater investment in non-
lethal systems, he noted. That struggle
was awkwardly illustrated during the
conference when nearly half of the
attendees in the ballroom billowed out
as the panel discussion transitioned from
guns and ammo to Leimbach’s portfolio.
“The mass exodus that occurred right
before our eyes is indicative of precisely
the problem,” he told the remaining par-
ticipants. “While I don’t dispute that the
lethality is an absolute necessity, there
is another part of the conversation. …
[But] you saw everybody walk out the
door because they don’t even want to
talk about it because it’s nonlethal.”
Leimbach noted that the directorate
20 N AT I O N A L D E F E N S E • A U G U S T 2 0 1 9
is doing well and has created a myriad
of effective capabilities, but it is up to
the various services to determine the
prioritization of such systems, he said.
“Because we are nonlethal, we are not
prioritized and all of those capabilities
that are developed by the directorate
successfully have languished and do not
get fielded,” he said.
To remedy that, Leimbach wants to
embark on a new conversation with
military officials and industry.
“We are trying to change the way
people talk about nonlethal capabili-
ties and to talk about how they actually
ought to be employed,” he said. “I like
to use the term ‘intermediate force.’ We
need to stop talking about nonlethal and
start talking about intermediate force
capabilities that exist.”
He hoped refocusing the conversation
to the term “intermediate force” would
yield better results.
“Hopefully intermediate force will
allow me to have a follow-on conversa-
Nonlethal
weapons
testing
tion with somebody and that will enable
me to get … the services to start priori-
tizing the investment in these capabili-
ties,” he said.
Gray zone tactics have been employed
by numerous nations but China, Russia,
Iran and North Korea make up the lion’s
share, according to a July 2019 report,
“By Other Means: Part One: Campaign-
ing in the Gray Zone,” by the Center
for Strategic and International Studies, a
Washington, D.C.- based think tank.
“With the significant costs of engag-
ing the United States in combat, and
the growing range of indirect and non-
military tools at their disposal, rivals
are finding avenues for threatening U.S.
interests without triggering escalation,”
the report said. “Their coercive tools
range the spectrum of fake news and
online troll farms to terrorist financing
and paramilitary provocations. Such
approaches lie in the contested arena
somewhere between routine statecraft
and open warfare — the ‘gray zone.’”
Russia and China are the most wor-
risome of the group, the report said.
“China is the most concerning, followed
by Russia, given the breadth and quality
of each state’s toolkit and their relative
potential effects on U.S. interests,” it
said.
John Schaus, a fellow at CSIS’ inter-
national security program, said gray
zone strategies thrive at the margins
of acceptable state behavior and are
intended to delay or paralyze competi-
tors’ decision-making.
Such actions can create difficulties
for other countries, not only in deciding
whether to respond, but also how and
with which organizations and tools, he
noted in a CSIS paper titled, “Compet-
ing in the Gray Zone.”
Leimbach said there are numerous
examples of the United States facing
such tactics.
For example, “we do not field capa-
bilities that enable the warfighter to
push back against fishing vessels that
are clearly not fishing vessels — but
we can’t prove it — and yet they play
chicken with our ships,” he said. “We
can’t do anything about that because we
aren’t going to be the guy that shoots …
an innocent fishing vessel.”
Another example includes the sce-
nario of a child throwing a rock at a
tank, he said.
“That’s a no-win proposition for the
tank,” Leimbach said. “We’re not pre-
paring that tank crew to engage in that
environment. I was a program manager
for tanks. I know exactly what that tank
could do, and it could either sit there
and do nothing, ... go home or, the
inconceivable, which is kill the kid.”
It would not be difficult to incor-
porate ocular interrupters or acoustic
devices on military platforms — such as
the amphibious combat vehicle — that
would solve that issue, he said.
The directorate is working on numer-
ous projects, including directed energy
weapons, said David Law, chief of its
technology division.
MARINE CORPS
The organization is investing in active
denial systems that use a high-power
beam of 95 gigahertz waves to repel
individuals without killing them, he said.
“You don’t see the beam but you feel
the beam,” he said. “It doesn’t take long
for … [an enemy combatant] to stop
doing whatever they were doing.”
While the beam would not kill some-
one, it could still hurt them, Leimbach
said. “Nonlethal is not non-painful,” he
added.
The directorate is working on ways to
reduce the size of its active denial sys-
tem, Law said.
“The key was to develop and shrink
that technology,” he said. “We’ve been
well underway to do that now.”
The directorate has gone from a heavy
expanded mobility tactical truck-type
system to an adjunct system with solid-
state active denial technologies that will
allow it to integrate with smaller tactical
platforms, he said.
Law noted that the beam can move at
the speed of light. As long as a user has
access to electricity, they have an unlim-
ited magazine.
“You can hit individual targets, or you
can scan and push everybody back,” he
An active denial system
said. “That’s a unique capability.”
Additionally, the beam can go through
windshields and be used to thwart vehi- and now the Air Force security forces The center facilitates its broad agency
cles or vessels, he said. can come and take care of the situation.” announcements, he added.
“Active denial is definitely something Within two to three minutes, the tar- Because the joint nonlethal weapons
… we have been interested in and con- geted automobile can be restarted and directorate falls under the purview of
tinue to be interested in, but we need to driven off, he added. the commandant of the Marine Corps, it
continue to reduce the size and weight “Akin to that is our high powered also employs the service’s small business
and cost of the system,” he added. microwave counter-electronic effects to innovation research/small business tech-
Using nonlethal systems in concert stop vehicle and vessel engines,” he said. nology transfer program, Law said.
with lethal systems can have a powerful “We’re doing that now at hundreds of “We are a big SBIR and STTR super
effect, he added. meters … so we can stop threat vehicles, user,” he said.
The directorate is also working on vessels and really anything that has elec- Additionally, starting next year, the
a pilot program with the Air Force to tronics on it.” directorate will be part of the Marine
create electrified vehicular barriers on Law noted that the directorate is Corps’ rapid innovation funding initia-
bases, Law said. developing a new science-and-technol- tives, he said.
“The services across the U.S. have ogy strategic plan, which will be rolled Kevin Swenson, acquisition division
been having a really hard time with folks out in the next few months. chief of the directorate, said the organi-
running the gates,” he said. “Mechanical Additionally, it is planning to release zation is planning an advanced planning
barriers work very well, but sometimes new broad agency announcements in brief to industry that will run from the
they work too well, and we’ve had lots fiscal year 2021. In fiscal year 2020, it third quarter of fiscal year 2020 to the
of loss of life.” plans to start looking for specific BAA second quarter of fiscal year 2021.
Last year, the Air Force approached topics, he added. “We’re partnering with the services,”
the directorate and asked for help to The organization utilizes a number he said. The event will have a range
create a nonlethal solution, Law said. of contracting vehicles including other component for vendors. It will also
Via the pilot program, the organiza- transaction authority agreements via the incorporate a symposium-like aspect
tions have developed a technology Department of Defense Ordnance Tech- reminiscent of the annual Modern Day
where probes located in the ground zap nology Consortium, or DOTC, he said. Marine Exposition, he added.
vehicles with 500,000 to 600,000 volts It “should be no surprise that we, too, There will also be an advanced plan-
of electricity. love DOTC,” Law said. Such consor- ning brief to industry that includes not
The electricity goes “into the under- tiums have become increasingly popular just the Marine Corps but interested
carriage of the vehicle, that disrupts the throughout the Pentagon. parties across the Defense Department,
engines on that vehicle [and] it will stop It also works with Naval Surface Customs and Border Protection and the
that vehicle,” he said. “The vehicle stalls Warfare Center Indian Head, he said. National Guard Bureau, he said. ND

AU G U ST 2 0 1 9 • N AT I O N A L D E F E N S E 21
New Army Small Arms to Boost Soldier Lethality
BY YASMIN TADJDEH
FREDERICKSBURG, Va. —
A slew of new weapons that
will increase the lethality of troops are
coming down the pipeline, according to
Army officials.
The systems — which include every-
thing from the next-generation squad
weapon to machine guns — are within
sight, said Lt. Col. Steven Power, the
Army’s product manager for individual
weapons.
Speaking during a panel discussion
at the National Defense Industrial Asso-
ciation’s Armament Systems Forum in
Fredericksburg, Virginia, on the eve of
the 75th anniversary of D-Day, Power
said the significance of soldier weapon
systems cannot be overstated.
“The importance of individual soldiers
as they made their way onto Omaha
Beach and the importance of the indi-
vidual equipment that they carried is as
true today as we face near peer adversar-
ies … as it was then,” he said.
Over the past year, the program office
has reached numerous milestones across
several portfolios, Power said. One of the
biggest was fielding more than 200,000
M4A1 rifles.
The “next-gen [squad weapon] is
going to be awesome when it comes out.
But in the meantime, the fact that we
have put a quarter of a million M4A1s
in the hands of soldiers in a year is some-
thing I’m extremely proud of,” he said.
The service has also completed nearly
64,000 M4 to M4A1 product improve-
ment program upgrades to existing
systems over the last 12 months, accord-
ing to Power’s presentation slides. It is
pursuing the Army acquisition objective
of more than 850,000 systems by fiscal
year 2022, and is 70 percent there now,
he added.
Additionally, there is an M4A1 follow-
on competition which will be full and
open to industry, Power said. It is cur-
rently in source selection and an award
will be made in the first quarter of fiscal
year 2020.
Power noted that sometimes people
wonder why the Army is pursuing a new
M4 when it is also going after the next-
gen squad weapon program.
“Depending on what happens with
next-gen, most of the Army — at least in
the short term — is going to continue to
22 N AT I O N A L D E F E N S E • A U G U S T 2 0 1 9
have M4s,” he noted.
Another large program is the squad
designated marksman rifle, he said. The
Army has been working to put the sys-
tem into the hands of soldiers and had
its first unit equipped at Fort Bliss, Texas,
last year.
“That precision capability in the squad
level is tremendously important if we
fight a near-peer” competitor, he said.
The service in May also had its first
unit equipped for the sub compact
weapon — which is also known as the
sub machine gun — for protective ser-
vices battalion soldiers, he said.
It’s a “very niche capability within the
Army,” he said. “We did it in a year and
the soldiers love them. … [The weapon]
is absolutely a blast to shoot.”
The Army has also produced
over 50,000 modular handguns
over the past year with another
335,000 systems still on contract
with Sig Sauer, Power said. They
will be distributed across the ser-
vices and other government agen-
cies.
In June, the Army awarded a
contract worth up to $151 million
for the Grenadier sighting system
— which will be outfitted on the
M320 grenade launcher — to Wil-
cox Industries Corp. of Newington,
New Hampshire.
“We are buying over $30 million
worth of those systems in the first
delivery order,” Power said. “It’s
going to tremendously increase the
lethality in the squad of the M320,
especially with those munitions that the
[program manager for maneuver ammu-
nition systems] is developing for us.”
The system will provide soldiers with
a day and night capability, he noted.
An upcoming opportunity for industry
is the follow-on to the M320 program,
Power said. Currently Capco Inc., a
Grand Junction, Colorado-based com-
pany, manufacturers the system for the
Army, he said.
“We will bring whoever wins this
next competitive solicitation on board
to produce that for us going into the
future,” he said. The “M320 is going to
be in the Army formations for a long
time, largely because of the incredible
munitions that PM MAS is working on
for that … partnered with the Grena-
dier sighting system.”
Progress is also being made on the
next-gen squad weapon, said Lt. Col.
Jason Bohannon, product manager for
next-generation weapons. The program
— which includes a rifle and automatic
rifle — will replace the M4 carbine and
the M249 squad automatic weapon.
It provides a common cartridge
between the two systems as well as fire
control, he said. “It’s treated different
because each of those items indepen-
dently aren’t standalone,” he said. “We’re
treating them as a system for the squad.”
The weapons are envisioned to be
fielded initially to about 100,000 sol-
diers. The program has three lines of
effort including a science-and-technology
element and two prototyping compo-
M320
grenade
launcher
nents, Bohannon said.
The first prototyping effort is reaching
its culmination now and included five
companies and six different platforms,
he said.
“We asked them to do some hard
problem solving for us. They did and we
learned some things,” he said. “It was a
technical system demonstrator. We’re
in receipt or we’ll be in receipt of those
weapons very, very shortly.”
Bohannon noted that through pro-
totyping the Army was able to validate
new technology.
The second prototyping effort will
focus on a systems approach, he said.
“That’s the one we believe will poten-
tially lead to production,” he added.
ARMY
The question posed to industry was,
“‘We know you can fire projectiles in
extreme velocities, but if you were to
balance that automatic rifle with a light-
er weight rifle … what trades would we
have to make?’” Bohannon said.
Speed is critical to the next-gen squad
weapon program, he said.
People sometimes say, “‘Well, you’ve
got Section 804 authority from Congress
and that’s the reason you can go fast,’”
Bohannon said. “But it’s not. The reason
we can go fast is because we have con-
stant and open dialogue with industry.”
Bohannon noted that he is on the
phone with members of industry on a
regular basis and there’s never a question
that should go unanswered.
“If you call my office, we’re going to
get you an answer,” he said.
The Army is taking advantage of new
contracting authorities and methods as it
works to prototype and field technology
M4A1
faster, said Col. Elliott Caggins, product
manager for soldier weapons.
“We think that we should embrace
middle-tier acquisition,” he said. “It
doesn’t mean you’re going to cut corners.
What it means is you’re going to take ...
a different technique in order to achieve
the outcome that you desire.”
The authorities — which were granted
under Section 804 of the fiscal year
2016 National Defense Authorization
Act — is meant to deliver capabilities in
a period of two to five years.
However, just because the program
office isn’t using the joint capabilities
integration development system, which
is commonly referred to as JCIDS, or
the DoD 5000 doesn’t mean acquisition
officials are cowboys in the Wild West
and skirting the rules, Caggins said.
“[We have] instilled our own disci-
pline and rigor into the system,” he said.
“You’re still going to test things. You’re
still going to work to priorities.”
But by adopting middle-tier acquisi-
tion processes, the Army is able to proto-
type and field capability faster and more
affordably, he noted. “This is the way we
should do business,” he added.
Meanwhile, the service is working
on a number of new soldier systems
through Army Futures Command,
which was stood up last year. It is
intended to shake up the service’s acqui-
sition process and speed up the delivery
of new technologies. The organization
— which is based in Austin, Texas —
includes a number of cross-functional
teams, or CFTs, that are focusing on
long-range precision fires, next-genera-
tion combat vehicle, future vertical lift,
the network, air-and-missile
defense and soldier lethality.
The solider lethality team
is working closely with the
Defense Department’s close-
combat lethality task force. The
task force, the brain child of
former Secretary of Defense
Jim Mattis, has a goal to
develop, evaluate, recommend
and implement improvements
to U.S. squad-level infantry
combat formations in order
to ensure close-combat over-
match against high-tech adver-
saries.
Such formations have his-
torically accounted for almost
90 percent of the military’s
casualties.
Matthew Walker, a capabilities devel-
oper with the soldier lethality cross-func-
tional team, said both organizations are
partnering to get troops better technol-
ogy. Part of that effort is recognizing that
soldiers at the squad level need special
equipment and tools that are different
from the rest of the Army.
“Everything you can imagine that an
infantryman uses we used to give to Lot-
tie Dottie everybody in the Army,” he
said. “I didn’t get a mechanic’s tool set. I
didn’t get all the cool stuff that the guys
over in the engineering side got, but they
got everything I got as a tool of war.”
In the past, every time an acquisition
official tried to get something better
for troops at the front lines, the effort
would grow exponentially to include
new equipment for every single soldier,
he said.
“It would then be cost ineffective and
we would never get anything better,” he
said.
Now the cross-functional team is try-
ing to keep numbers as low as possible,
Walker said.
It is working on a variety of efforts
including the next-gen squad weapon,
situational awareness tools, body armor,
training and human performance, he
said.
Meanwhile, the Army is working on a
major effort to upgrade the service’s five
government-owned, contractor-operated
ammunition plants, said Brig. Gen.
Alfred Abramson, senior commander of
Picatinny Arsenal and program executive
officer for PEO armaments and ammu-
nition.
The ammo plants include Holston
in Kingsport, Tennessee; Radford in
Radford, Virginia; Lake City in Inde-
pendence, Missouri; Iowa in Middleton,
Iowa; and Scranton in Scranton, Pennsyl-
vania, he said.
Most of those facilities were built in
the 1940s and still look like they date
from the World War II era, he said.
“We’ve got to modernize those to get
capability for the future.”
The service has requested $475 mil-
lion in President Donald Trump’s fis-
cal year 2020 budget proposal for the
upgrades, Abramson said. That is more
than the $458 million that was allocated
for this fiscal year.
Modifications and upgrades at the
facility are slated to come online within
the next two to three years, he said.
Additionally, Abramson noted that the
Army is investing heavily in ammuni-
tion. Despite moves across the service to
realign resources for its top six priorities,
the ammunition and armaments portfo-
lio is well supported by Army leadership,
he said.
The service received nearly $2.3 bil-
lion for ammunition and armament
procurement in 2019. The 2020 budget
request calls for $2.59 billion for those
accounts, Abramson noted.
There has also been an uptick in its
research, development, test and evalua-
tion funding.
“The takeaway from that is we need
more munitions, but we also have com-
mitted to … making those munitions
better, making them do more than what
they did before,” Abramson said. ND
AU G U ST 2 0 1 9 • N AT I O N A L D E F E N S E 23

What Lies Beneath: Inside
DARPA’s Subterranean Challenge
BY JON HARPER
The military, law enforcement
and search-and-rescue teams
have different missions but face a com-
mon problem: operating underground.
The Defense Advanced Research Proj-
ects Agency, better known as DARPA,
is about to kick off a competition aimed
at furthering robotics technology to help
them do their jobs.
The subterranean operating environ-
ment is multifaceted. For example, mili-
tant groups like the Islamic State and
Hamas have built extensive networks of
underground passageways to move fight-
ers and protect themselves from aerial
attack. Drug cartels are using tunnels
to smuggle contraband into the United
States from Mexico. A former Thai
navy SEAL died last year while trying
to deliver oxygen tanks to kids trapped
inside a cave.
Meanwhile, top defense officials
believe the U.S. military will have to
do battle in megacities and other urban
areas that have complex underground
facilities such as subway systems.
“Subterrain is just going to be some-
thing that we have to contend” with,
said Army Lt. Gen. Robert Ashley Jr.,
director of the Defense Intelligence
Agency. “That will be part of the war-
fighting in the future.”
The U.S. military will need technol-
ogy to sense and understand what is
taking place underground, he noted dur-
ing remarks at a technology summit in
Washington, D.C., last year.
“You may not want to put a person in
there. You may not want to put a soldier
at risk or a Marine,” he said. “It may be
something you do from a robotics stand-
point where you put an autonomous
vehicle into” the threat area.
DARPA’s Subterranean Challenge
is trying to address those needs. It’s
a multi-phase competition aimed at
promoting robotics technologies that
24 N AT I O N A L D E F E N S E • A U G U S T 2 0 1 9
can traverse, navigate, map and search
underground environments. It will fea-
ture three different circuits — tunnel,
urban underground and cave — before
culminating in the grand finale that
combines elements of each.
“The genesis of the SubT Challenge
is the ability for us to operate in … the
underground environments where we
can’t take advantage of GPS, we can-
not guarantee that there’s even lighting,
and certainly can’t say that the terrain
is going to be friendly,” Tim Chung, the
SubT program manager in DARPA’s
Tactical Technology Office, said during
an interview at the agency’s headquar-
ters in Arlington, Virginia.
For the competition, DARPA is inter-
ested in four technical areas: mobility,
perception, autonomy and networking.
“They all have to come together in order
to get these things to work,” said Chung.
There are a number of different
potential ways for robotic systems to
move around, he noted.
“Whether that’s to be able to crawl,
walk, run, drive, bounce, hop, fly — all
of these different approaches, especially
for things like [moving inside] elevator
shafts or mine shafts, other vertical pas-
sageways — really drives thinking about
mobility in a particular way,” he said.
The robots also need to sense and
understand their underground environ-
ment. “That requires not only the higher
levels of perception that we’re asking
from our competitors, but the autonomy
and the decision-making that allows you
to do something with it,” Chung said.
For the networking component, the
agency is hoping to identify break-
throughs that will improve the way
information is sent from where it origi-
nates to the operators who need it.
Any team that can’t bring all four
types of technologies to bear will likely
struggle in the competition, Chung
noted.
DARPA has been communi-
cating with a variety of stake-
holders, including the Army,
Marine Corps, law enforce-
ment and first responders to
get their input.
“We really reached out
quite broadly to learn what
problems they have, see how
indeed they all seem to share
a common problem space and
then tackle those types of …
problems in the design of the
rules and the way we’ve constructed the
challenge,” Chung said.
There’s a high demand for technolo-
gies that help keep people out of harm’s
way. The SubT Challenge aims to mini-
mize the level of human involvement
required so that personnel won’t have to
be part of the first wave of forces enter-
ing a potentially hazardous subterranean
environment in the future, he said.
Why would DARPA use a challenge
competition to pursue these technolo-
gies?
“We really want to identify and open
up the aperture to not just a [single]
type of performer or a type of vendor,
but in fact the perspectives that come
from quite frankly all around the world,
and use that to … come up with new
ways of doing things,” Chung said. “A
challenge is really great for fostering
both that kind of wide aperture collec-
tion of ideas and vetting them in a [rig-
orous] setting.”
The agency has sponsored high-profile
challenges in the past. In the 2000s, it
hosted a Grand Challenge for driverless
vehicles to traverse a variety of terrains.
“We’re seeing the fruits of that type of
a challenge come to bear in the types of
technologies that are being advanced by
the commercial self-driving car compa-
nies out there,” Chung said.
While the agency has established rules
and scoring criteria for the SubT compe-
tition, it is giving teams as much latitude
as possible to come up with innovative
solutions.
“We haven’t given them the answer
of how to do it,” Chung said. “It really is:
here’s the problem, you have to come
up with creative ways to set yourself
apart from your fellow competitors and
win the challenge.”
Eleven teams — seven funded by
DARPA and four self-funded — will
compete in the first round, the tunnel
DARPA
circuit, which is slated for Aug. 15-22
at a defunct Pennsylvania mine. Partici-
pants will come from as far away as Aus-
tralia and Switzerland, and include top
tier academic organizations such as the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
and the California Institute of Technol-
ogy, as well as companies such as Sierra
Nevada Corp. and Endeavor Robotics.
Teams were selected to participate
based on qualification materials that
they submitted.
“We had evaluation criteria … that
really focused on how well aligned are
they with this DARPA mission of being
bold and audacious in their technologi-
cal approach,” Chung said. “We’re look-
ing for really those teams that have a
vision and an approach that’s reasonable,
that will really be stretching the limits
of what current technologies can do and
they have a path to get there.”
The agency is still accepting applica-
tions for the urban underground and
cave circuits, which are scheduled to
take place in February 2020 and August
2020, respectively. Registration informa-
tion can be found on the SubT website
(www.subtchallenge.com).
While tunnels, urban undergrounds
and caves pose similar problems, they
each have unique attributes that create
challenges.
Manmade tunnels can be dry and
dusty or wet and muddy, and include
obstacles such as rails, doorways, gates
and bulkheads, Chung explained. Urban
undergrounds can include metro transit
systems, storm drains and other chal-
lenging infrastructure such as stairs, esca-
lators and elevators.
“These are the things you might find
where pedestrians and humans live
that make it great for humans to walk
around and navigate, but could poten-
tially be quite challenging for robots,” he
said.
Caves, on the other hand, are natural-
ly occurring and “a lot less predictable”
in some ways than manmade environ-
ments because of their geological struc-
tures, he said.
The SubT Challenge circuits will test
the platforms’ ability to handle each of
the different environments.
“It’s really the combination of all
those three that we’re interested in from
a technology point of view,” Chung said.
Robots may have to navigate through
narrow and confined spaces the size of
manhole covers, he noted.
“There’s so many different variables
like amount of vertical extents or the
width and height of the passage ways,”
he added. “There are places where you
might see featureless environments. It’s
really easy to get lost in storm drains
that look the same at meter one as they
do at meter 500.”
Obstacles to mobility aren’t the only
challenge.
“What are the types of autonomy and
perception approaches that can handle
the dust-filled corridors of a mine or can
handle the darkness of a subway transit
tunnel, [and] can also then match the
complete darkness that one might face
in a cave?” Chung said.
Being underground can also make it
difficult to network. For example, when
commuters go into a subway station,
they may lose cell phone connectivity,
he noted. Technologies will be needed to
help robots overcome that.
DARPA wants the challenges to take
place in areas that are multiple kilo-
meters in scale with missions lasting an
hour or more.
“These are things that are intended
to push us out of some of the technical
envelopes that we might currently
reside in” with existing systems,
Chung said. That will test the
endurance and range of the sys-
tems, he noted.
The final event, slated for
August 2021, will bring it all
together to see which robots are
the most versatile.
“The analogy here … is you
may be a good swimmer or a
decent runner, but that doesn’t
necessarily make you the best tri-
athlete,” Chung said. “What we’re
looking for in these technological
solutions is the versatility to handle the
unknown. And that’s what we’re trying
to capture in that final course.”
Teams will be scored based on their
system’s ability to find and identify vari-
ous objects such as thermal mannequins,
cell phones and fire extinguishers.
Chung declined to provide more
details about the courses, saying he
didn’t want to give too much away to
the competitors. “We want these auton-
omous systems … not knowing what lies
beneath and being able to manage, if not
conquer, those environments.”
In addition to the systems track,
the competition will also feature a
virtual track where teams can test out
technologies in a realistic simulation
environment. Competitors in the latter
track can access DARPA’s digital model
library, known as the SubT tech repo,
and mix and match different robots
with various sensors in a virtual setting.
“The types of insights that you can
derive from there are now countless,”
Chung said. “Basically, you can design
the autonomy and perception, all the
software-based components that you
would want to leverage in a solution and
play it out.”
The virtual competition for the tunnel
circuit began July 1 and was slated to
last about a month.
DARPA expects the digital model
library to expand and potentially include
robots and other capabilities developed
by the systems track teams, or those
envisioned by the user community.
“That just leaves many more opportu-
nities for exploration and maybe poten-
tial breakthroughs from those types of
technologies,” Chung said.
The competitors aren’t just chasing
the glory of victory. There’s also a lot of
cash on the line. Teams in the final event
for the systems track will compete for
SubT
Integration
Exercise
up to $2 million in prizes, while those
in the virtual track will battle for up to
$1.5 million in prize money.
What happens when the event is over
and the prizes have been handed out?
“We intend and anticipate that a com-
munity will have arisen around that
SubT Challenge that can carry … not
only the research but also the defense-
related technologies forward, civilian
commercial-related applications forward,
and then identify what the next research
hurdles are,” Chung said. “I certainly
don’t expect that the technologies that
arise out of the SubT challenge will go
on a shelf, but rather will start to make
dramatic impacts to those first respond-
er and warfighter communities.” ND
AU G U ST 2 0 1 9 • N AT I O N A L D E F E N S E 25
SOCOM Plans New Artificial Intelligence Strategy
BY CONNIE LEE
TAMPA, Fla. — Advance-
ments in technology are spur-
ring Special Operations Command to
examine how it can improve its artificial
intelligence capabilities on a data-driven
battlefield.
“We really wanted to focus on grow-
ing the discipline,” David Spirk Jr., the
organization’s chief data officer, said dur-
ing a speech at the Special Operations
Forces Industry Conference hosted by
the National Defense Industrial Associa-
tion. This “applies to people, applies to
technology and applies to the culture
and those changes in the formation to
get there.”
To do this, the command is crafting a
new artificial intelligence and machine
learning strategy to inform its future
spending, he said. These advance-
ments are expected to improve
technologies across the core military
services as well, he noted.
“Data-driven technologies can be
used in every function that we have,”
Spirk told National Defense on the
sidelines of the conference. “We hope
to demonstrate the capability and
then allow that to just grow in the
services where, naturally, it should.”
The Defense Department earlier
this year released an AI strategy geared
toward advancing the technology to
counter peer competitors such as Russia
and China.
SOCOM’s roadmap is being created
using ideas such as Jeff Bezos’ strategy
for developing Amazon, trends in indus-
try and lessons learned through the Joint
Artificial Intelligence Center, Spirk said
during his speech.
The command is “taking those data
principles and recognizing that it’s really
about freeing your data — it’s about
open [application programming interfac-
es],” he said. “It’s not about closed block
technology or systems. We’ve modeled
our data strategy out of that.”
The blueprint will help SOCOM
determine asset allocation for AI as it
builds its program objective memoran-
dum for fiscal years 2022 to 2026, Spirk
said.
“We’re going to start the crafting of
a real roadmap,” he said. “This will help
the command … talk about the invest-
ments we need to make and the resourc-
26 N AT I O N A L D E F E N S E • A U G U S T 2 0 1 9
es that we’re going to need.”
All of the SOF components will
gather at a symposium in September to
begin developing the new strategy, he
noted. The meeting will be limited to
the military, which will first establish its
goals for investing in AI and machine
learning before reaching out to academia
and industry for input, Spirk said
“We’re not bringing industry and aca-
demia in there yet,” he said. “What we’re
going to do is we’re going to establish
our requirements, we’re going to set
what that roadmap is, and then we’ll
probably have a follow-on [event] where
you can talk to everybody about what
our conclusions were and the direction
that we’re going.”
SOCOM has not decided if the entire
report will be publicly releasable, he
added.
The “crux” of the roadmap will be
based on a “three-six-five” strategy that
has three lines of effort, six focus areas
and five collective outcomes, Spirk said.
The lines of effort include having an
AI-ready workforce, AI applications and
AI outreach, according to his presenta-
tion slides.
The command has pilot projects in the
works that are “maturing to the point
that we’re ready to showcase them,” he
noted. At the end of the first three years,
the goal is to be able to measure the
progress it has made in this technology,
he noted.
“We’ll understand programmatically
where we need to put resources, where
we need to invest, where we might need
to divest and the opportunity to transi-
tion,” he said.
SOCOM needs to have personnel that
are focused on artificial intelligence and
machine learning initiatives, he noted.
The command must show that there is
a financial benefit to working in these
fields “and let the nerds get promoted,”
he said.
“The modern AI-ML workforce is
really where I worry about the delivery
and sustainment of some of these initia-
tives,” Spirk said. “We need to talk about
how do we make this a career opportu-
nity to continue developing what really
amounts to ... almost a language-type
skill.”
The six focus areas of the strategy will
be: perception and action; planning and
maneuver; communication resilience and
cyber protection; recruiting, training and
talent management; predictive mainte-
nance, logistics, planning and forecasting;
and vendor contract and budget manage-
ment, according to the slides.
Technologies within the focus areas
could potentially be combined into an
algorithmic warfare cross-function-
al team similar to the one execut-
ing Project Maven, a Defense
Department initiative focused on
using AI and machine learning to
sift through drone video footage
and identify items of interest to
warfighters, Spirk said.
Technologies that SOCOM is
eyeing include “artificial reality,”
intelligence, surveillance and recon-
naissance capabilities, and identity
management, according to the presenta-
tion.
“You can see how we’re beginning
to fuse those technologies, fuse those
data sets to build smart systems that
are capable of improving our operators’
capability to execute successful opera-
tions at a rate of precision and speed that
has never been accomplished before,”
Spirk said.
The collective outcomes that the
strategy aims to achieve are: established
cloud-empowered data and services;
ubiquitous use of agile practices in
unclassified and classified software devel-
opment environments; normalized accel-
eration of procurement; a recognized
talent acquisition, development and
coaching pipeline; and a codified transi-
tion plan to a sustained digitally-enabled
future, the presentation stated.
When operating in a data-driven
battlefield, the command will not be
able to rely on having large amounts of
information about an adversary, Col.
ISTOCK
Mike McGuire, director of the combat
development directorate for SOCOM, ny to build an SQL database for you or draw up requirements for future tech-
said during a panel discussion. Instead, you could teach your people to do SQL nologies and “to ensure that everything
the command will need to focus on databasing and own it forever,” he said. we’re bringing in now … works together
predicting the adversary’s next move in To develop and explore new tech- and isn’t the closed, old block technol-
order to react faster, he noted. nologies, the command is building a ogy,” Spirk added.
“When we look at things at the tacti- digital data mission management team The command will need to examine
cal level, how can we predict … and at SOCOM headquarters at MacDill the time, expense and complexity associ-
mitigate those risks that come with act- Air Force Base, Florida, Spirk said. Pro- ated with data technology gaps, which
ing early?” he said. “I don’t think we’re fessionals will be brought in to either will help leaders decide if they can be
ever going to win if we all wait for per- manage programs or work on the tech- filled in-house or if they need to out-
fect information. … We want to get the nologies themselves, he noted. source work to industry, he noted. SOF-
right information to the right person at “This is where we’ll be able to pro- WERX — the command’s initiative that
the right time and in the right format grammatically begin applying and advo- fosters technology experimentation with
so they can actually take some kind of cating for policies and the technologies nontraditional partners — will be used to
action.” that currently exist,” he said. “But we bring data experts together, he said.
The command is also examining how need to infuse [those] inside our own “What we’ve determined is, we don’t
it can leverage artificial intelligence to workflows and the headquarters.” need to be everywhere. What we need
improve how it trains its warfighters, He is also working with SOCOM to make sure is that we’re connecting
Spirk noted. AI could help SOCOM Acquisition Executive Jim Smith to everywhere,” he said. ND
recruit potential candidates as well as
improve the performance of its opera-
tors, he said.
“How do we tailor our training so that
we can maximize their effort and grow
them at a faster rate and hold them in
the force?” he said. AI can also be used
to measure performance, he noted. “This
is where we can turn to technologies
that already exist in the sports world,
that already exist in some of our medical
professions.” We build projects that support our
Additionally, data-driven technology national defense in marine, aerospace
could be used to predict maintenance and nuclear and help maintain the
issues before they arise, he noted. The readiness of our nation’s fleet.
command is currently experimenting
with this idea using the 160th Special
Operations Aviation Regiment and plans
to expand that work to the Air Force
Special Operations Command’s fleet of
CV-22 Ospreys, he said.
“I think we’re going to start to make
some pretty good progress against that
over the coming 12 months,” he noted.
All special operators will need to
understand how data can be used on the
battlefield, McGuire noted. Similar to
how commandos must know basic skills
such as putting on a tourniquet, each
one must learn how data applies to the
current fight, he said.
“It doesn’t take a force full of PhDs,”
he said. “It just takes everybody to have a
little bit of understanding quickly.”
This would reduce the need to out-
source tasks such as structured query
language databasing, which is used to
retrieve data and interface with data-
bases, he said.
“Fifteen years ago we already had a
decision point within our organization
where you can either hire some compa-
VIGOR.NET MARINESALES@VIGOR.NET SALES@VIGOR.NET
AU G U ST 2 0 1 9 • N AT I O N A L D E F E N S E 27
Space Development
Agency’s Future in Question
BY MANDY MAYFIELD
The future of the newly creat-
ed Space Development Agency
is cloudy after the abrupt departure of
its first director, analysts said.
After only four months leading the
agency, Fred Kennedy stepped down
from his position. A week prior to his
resignation, he touted his vision for the
new office at an event on Capitol Hill
despite the fact that the agency had yet
to receive funding from Congress to
begin full operations. President Donald
Trump’s fiscal year 2020 budget request
seeks $150 million for the SDA, but as
organizational and personnel shakeups
continue to rock the Defense Depart-
ment, it is unclear if Kennedy’s vision
for the agency will hold up.
Former Acting Secretary of Defense
Patrick Shanahan ordered the creation
of the Space Development Agency in
March, which will answer to the office
of the undersecretary of defense for
research and engineering rather than the
Air Force.
Derek Tournear, the Pentagon’s assis-
tant director for space in the office
of the undersecretary of defense for
research and engineering, became the
acting director of the SDA in late June.
The Defense Department did not
respond to requests for comment
regarding Kennedy’s resignation.
Prior to leaving, the former SDA
director’s top priority was to create a
28 N AT I O N A L D E F E N S E • A U G U S T 2 0 1 9
meshed communications network of
satellites in low-Earth orbit that would
serve as the backbone for all its other
proposed systems, he said in April dur-
ing remarks at the annual Space Sym-
posium in Colorado Springs, Colorado.
The announcement marked the first
proposed military satcom system since
the transformational-satellite commu-
nication and system, or TSAT, program
was canceled in 2009.
The technology behind a meshed
communications network in low-Earth
orbit, or LEO, would not be a stretch as
there are already existing commercial
constellations that act as communica-
tions networks, said Todd Harrison,
director of the aerospace security
project at the Center for Strategic and
International Studies, a Washington,
D.C.-based think tank.
“The idea that [Kennedy] had pro-
posed is pretty sound,” Harrison said.
“It’s not a big technological reach by
any means, but it is a big paradigm shift
for DoD. … [It’s] a shift away from the
types of communication systems that
DoD has traditionally bought.”
However, the proposal will likely
face resistance from some members of
industry, the acquisition workforce and
the operational community because it is
different from the status quo, Harrison
noted.
Ken Peterman, president of Viasat’s
government systems business, said he
believes the private sector could quickly
bring forward the capabilities to fulfill
Kennedy’s vision for a meshed commu-
nications network in LEO.
“This is clearly a fresh perspective
and I think it’s garnering a lot of sup-
port,” Peterman said. “It is an enduring
opportunity regardless of the fact that
Fred might move on, or take a different
position.”
Elaborating on his proposal, Kennedy
said he would rather the network oper-
ate under a leased-services model than a
government-owned model.
“I would be very happy to simply
lease commercial services from these
mega providers and just say, ‘This is
great. Services, go buy your radios, do
your job, we’ll put some nodes on those
networks and we will build it out,’” Ken-
nedy said.
Although leasing from the commer-
cial sector is doable, different agreement
options would bring implementation
challenges, Harrison said.
There are many ways to lease that are
practical, including signing onto long-
term leases that are locked in before a
satellite launch, to spot-market leases, to
leasing parts of payloads or just paying
by the service, Harrison said.
“The challenge though is getting the
acquisition community to kind of open
up to these new ideas and to be able to
move quickly and to also get the money
ISTOCK
appropriated in time,” he added.
 Kennedy said he recognized that the
military has unique requirements and
national security objectives but he still
believed in using private sector capabili-
ties as much as possible.
“There may be things we need to do
with that network that will not quite
translate to [the] commercial market,
but the more that I can leverage com-
mercial, the better off we are,” he said.
The leasing model would allow the
Defense Department to leverage an
ever-improving technology track that
is largely funded by the private sector,
Peterman said.
The Defense Department “stays on
the cutting edge by leasing,” he said.
“Whereas owning, in many cases, repre-
sents DoD buying a capability and then
living with it for a long term.”
“There was a time when 2G was
state-of-the-art, but if you bought 2G
and lived with it for 20 years, you would
find yourself really quickly being the
only 2G person in a 5G world,” he
added.
Leasing offers the opportunity to
ride this technology wave and bring the
warfighter a continuum of capability
that’s constantly improving and con-
stantly getting better, Peterman said.
Kennedy set an aggressive sched-
ule for putting satellites on orbit,
even though at the time of his
proposal there was only one other
employee in his office.
“We want to put our first capabil-
ity up in 2022, with on-orbit demos
next year,” Kennedy said. Before the
end of 2020 the agency aimed to
put a system on orbit with the hope
that the first traunch would reach
operational capability by 2022, he said.
He favored small, low-cost satellites that
could be manufactured in large quanti-
ties quickly, similar to what some space
startups are proposing.
Having operational capability on orbit
by 2022 is more than just a goal for the
agency, he said. “If we don’t get there, I
feel we have failed,” he said. “If I have
to come back to you all in 2023 and say,
‘Well, there’s a delay,’ I’ve already blown
the case.”
Harrison said he believes the timelines
Kennedy set were too aggressive for the
Defense Department.
“If you just think about the DoD
DEFENSE DEPT.
budget cycle for doing anything, just for
funding something, it’s typically a two-
year cycle from when you have the idea
to when you can actually have appro-
priations available,” he said. “That’s the
best case scenario. The idea of actually
getting things on orbit and demonstrat-
ing technologies within two or three
years — I think is really hard to do in
our current system.”
Peterman said Kennedy’s proposal
to utilize the private sector’s emerging
technologies to meet the Pentagon’s
needs is something Viasat has been
advocating for some time.
“In many ways, Fred Kennedy’s per-
spective when he came on the scene
with SDA was a fresh perspective,” he
said. “There was an untapped opportuni-
ty for DoD to move fast and to leverage
this accelerated technology trajectory
coming forward in the private sector
and … to address emerging DoD needs,”
Peterman said.
Another problem Kennedy was aim-
ing to address was the slow acquisition
system and the high costs of developing
space assets.
“What we’re offering within the Space
Development Agency is the leveraging
of that confluence of threat and oppor-
tunity,” Kennedy said. “Let’s move away
from an exquisite approach that gets us
Kennedy Tournear
capability in decades to something that
might give us some less exquisite capa-
bility on the order of a year or two.”
Kennedy, who formerly served as
director of the Defense Advanced
Research Projects Agency’s tactical tech-
nology office, compared cubesats to the
iPhone. The first version may not have
been great, but as each iteration came
out, it became better and better.
The thought process behind the Space
Development Agency has always been
to transition it into the space force, if
and when the proposed military branch
is established, Kennedy said. Congress is
still debating its merits. Kennedy said he
wanted two to three years to integrate
the agency. However, trying to stand up
the space force and the SDA simultane-
ously could create more chaos then the
Defense Department needs, he said.
“The question becomes a glide-slope
of when you would actually bring the
agency in,” he said. “I was initially argu-
ing for something on the order of two
or three years to give us a good glide
slope.
“The bottom line is that that may be
out of our hands,” he noted. “We’ll wait
and see … what Congress decides they
wish to do.”
Skepticism of the agency is warrant-
ed, Kennedy said.
“Something like what we’re doing is
intended to be provocative and intended
to be disruptive,” he said. “In 10 years, if
we’re done and we’re no longer disrup-
tive and useful, I’m the first to say, ‘Let’s
sign off and stop.’”
It appears that part of the reason Ken-
nedy resigned was over disagreements
on how to proceed with the develop-
ment of the agency and what the pri-
orities and roles of commercial space
companies should be, Harrison said.
“That means a lot of this — at least
in the near term — is going to be in
jeopardy, that it may not really happen,”
Harrison said. “Quite frankly, I’m not
convinced that the SDA has staying
power.”
Meanwhile, the House Armed
Services Committee rejected in July
a Pentagon request to reallocate $15
million dollars to the SDA, Chairman
Adam Smith, D-Wash., and Ranking
Member Mac Thornberry, R-Texas,
confirmed in a letter addressed
to Pentagon Comptroller David
Norquist, according to Space News.
The lawmakers cited their appre-
hensions around the agency’s lack of
predictable direction and management.
“The committee is concerned about
the turmoil surrounding the Space
Development Agency and uncertainty
about program plans and leadership,
shortly after its establishment in March
2019,” said the letter.
Despite all of the uncertainty sur-
rounding the Space Development
Agency, the new office released its first
request for information in July asking
interested contractors to submit white
papers by early August. The agency is in
search of information related to “satel-
lite bus, payload, applique, and launch
concepts that can contribute to an agile,
responsive next-generation space archi-
tecture,” according to the solicitation. ND
AU G U ST 2 0 1 9 • N AT I O N A L D E F E N S E 29

Europe, U.S. Targeting
Robotic Wingman Programs
BY JON HARPER
PARIS — At this year’s Paris
Air Show, European powers
and the United States laid out ambi-
tious plans to pair stealth fighters with
unmanned aerial vehicles that could
serve as robotic wingmen in high-end
combat.
The big news from the opening day
of the biennial confab — which brings
together government and aerospace
industry leaders from around the world
— was the unveiling of a mockup of the
future combat air system, or FCAS. The
Franco-German-Spanish project envi-
sions a sixth-generation stealth fighter
teamed with autonomous drones, known
as remote carriers, via an “air combat
cloud” to facilitate data sharing.
“The progress we have achieved on
the FCAS program in recent months is
remarkable,” Dassault Aviation Chair-
man and CEO Eric Trappier said in a
statement. “It will shape Europe’s most
decisive military air-combat program for
the decades to come.”
The program will soon shift from a
joint concept phase which began earlier
this year to a demonstrator phase, which
will run through mid-2021 and serve as
a starting point for demonstrators and
technology development for the systems
to fly by 2026, prime contractors Das-
sault and Airbus said in a joint press
release.
Contract awards for the demonstrator
phase are expected by the end of this
year.
While Dassault will take the lead on
developing the new stealth fighter, Air-
bus will serve as the prime contractor for
the remote carriers and the air-combat
cloud.
“The idea behind the remote carriers
is that you will have a manned mother-
ship, so to speak, accompanied by …
drones that are flying in the swarm,
which are having [to perform] different
tasks depending on the mission,” Florian
Taitsch, head of media relations for Air-
bus Defense and Space, said in an inter-
view at the air show.
Those missions could include a variety
of tasks such as reconnaissance, electron-
ic jamming, and marking or destroying
30 N AT I O N A L D E F E N S E • A U G U S T 2 0 1 9
targets, he said.
Having many “loyal wingmen” working
in tandem with the manned platform
will provide a “very powerful” capability
for warfighters, he added.
The drones could be a tactic to keep
airmen out of harm’s way. In a high-
threat environment, it would be prefer-
able to send a remote carrier than a
manned platform, Taitsch said.
Program participants are also looking
to ease the cognitive burden for pilots,
he noted.
“We need to make the [remote car-
rier] system as intelligent as possible,”
Taitsch said. “What is a big help is the
current huge steps in terms of artificial
intelligence to make these drones
not just dull [platforms] but
really intelligent carriers with
also a certain amount of auton-
omy” to navigate and perform
tasks on their own, he added.
An important variable will
be the size and weight of the
drones, he noted. Larger plat-
forms could be launched from a
runway. “But there might be also
smaller ones that you put, for
example, into an A400 [trans-
port aircraft], fly them into the
scenario and then you open the
A400 … back door and they
are dropping out and then fly-
ing next to their manned fighter
aircraft. It’s one of those things we are
currently investigating,” he said.
Post-mission aircraft recovery is anoth-
er factor that must be considered.
“There could be the possibility that
there are some small ones where you
say, ‘OK, we can produce them rather
cheaply’ and you simply don’t recover
them,” he said. “Then there are more
important and more expensive assets
where you need to make up your mind
on how to recover them” to include
potentially programing them to fly back
on their own, he added.
The next-generation fighter is expect-
ed to achieve initial operational capabil-
ity in 2040, but some FCAS technologies
might be ready sooner. Basic configura-
tions of remote carriers could potentially
be paired with Eurofighters by the mid-
2020s, Taitsch said.
Airbus anticipates that development
and certification cycles will be much
shorter for future iterations of remote
carriers than manned platforms, he
noted.
During the air show, Airbus and
Pittsburgh-based ANSYS announced a
partnership for ANSYS to develop new
technology to enable safe and sophisti-
cated flight operations for the drones.
The companies hope to achieve autono-
mous flight of the platforms by 2030.
ANSYS already has a Scade tool for
flight controls that is being widely used
by its customers, but designing, certify-
ing and embedding verified and certified
software code for an advanced, autono-
mous drone is much more complicated
than it is for manned aircraft, said Eric
Bantegnie, vice president of the systems
business unit at ANSYS.
“The envelope of flight and the enve-
lope of maneuvering of unmanned air-
craft is much bigger because you don’t
have the constraints of having the pilot
in terms of Gs, in terms of acceleration,
in terms of evading maneuvers,” he said.
“It’s really a good case for introducing
AI-based algorithms for all of these new,
different capabilities.”
The plan is for Airbus to train neural
networks and have them learn advanced
and sophisticated motions and maneu-
vers to operate the remote carriers.
“Then they would rely on ANSYS tech-
nology to move from the trained neural
network to a safe, real time, certified,
software-based implementation of that,
… to a code that can be executed safely
by a [flight control] computer on an air-
craft,” Bantegnie explained.
As the technology progresses, the
 sophistication and the complexity of the
algorithms could grow 10-fold or 100-
fold, he said. The remote carriers must
be able to conduct complex, high speed
operations in real time, he noted.
“The sheer volume of code and [arti-
ficial] intelligence that could be poten-
tially added to the systems is really huge,
and there is no way [to do] that without
properly automating all the verification
steps” to ensure that the algorithms will
function properly and the drones will fly
safely, he added.
ANSYS is also working on percep-
tion software tools that could be used
to enhance safety. Tasks such as sensor
fusion, threat detection and target iden-
tification for the FCAS are envisioned to
be based on AI, Bantegnie noted.
There are “very specific technolo-
gies for vision, which is different from
[flight] controls,” he said. A new product
announcement is expected in the com-
Remote carrier mockup
ing months.
Meanwhile, Europe-based missile-
maker MBDA, an FCAS program team
member, has a plan to develop a family
of remote carriers that could operate
in anti-access/area denial environments
where advanced anti-aircraft systems are
deployed.
During the air show, the com-
pany unveiled two system concepts
— the RC-100 and its “big brother,” the
RC-200.
“In our conception of the remote car-
rier, we will … have a lot of synergy with
our missile world” including the size,
shape, weight, propulsion, flight enve-
lope and modular payloads that com-
prise the systems, said Sebastien Palaprat,
JON HARPER
an engineer with MBDA. “To be ahead
of the threats you have to share a lot of
characteristics with the missile” weapons,
he added.
For the smaller RC-100, “our idea is to
have something so compact, light [that it
would be] completely compatible with
the launchers” on the next-generation
fighter, he said. They would share char-
acteristics with MBDA’s “tactical-type
weapons family” such as the SmartGlid-
er. The systems could operate in swarms
and be networked with other weapons,
he noted.
The RC-200 would be larger and
possess greater endurance, range and
payload capacity, Palaprat said. MBDA
envisions them being deployed from
ground- and sea-based vertical launch
tubes, or from larger aircraft.
“In an A2/AD environment, the
remote carrier is here with its own sen-
sor … where it’s so dangerous for your
[manned] platform that you won’t go
there even if you have stealth,” he said.
The drones could be used
to detect and trigger enemy
air defense systems, and be
equipped with electronic
warfare capabilities, he noted.
MBDA is still considering
various characteristics of the
remote carrier concept such
as speed and stealth.
“The idea now with the
remote carrier is that they
are expendable,” Palaprat
said, so stealth capabilities
might not be necessary.
The platforms are expect-
ed to be operational no later
than 2040 as part of the
FCAS. But an intermediate
capability in the form of a “remote car-
rier-like” system — perhaps an evolved
smart weapon with new AI technology
— could potentially be ready in the late
2020s, he said.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Air Force is mov-
ing forward with its own robotic wing-
man project. During the Paris Air Show,
Kratos announced that its XQ-58A
Valkyrie drone completed its second
successful test flight at Yuma Proving
Grounds, Arizona, that lasted 71 min-
utes.
The XQ-58A demonstrator, developed
by Kratos in partnership with the Air
Force Research Laboratory, is part of the
low-cost attritable strike demonstrator
program. The goal of the initiative is to
“break the escalating cost trajectory of
tactically relevant aircraft,” Kratos said in
a press release.
The Valkyrie is a multi-mission,
runway-independent unmanned aerial
system capable of long-range flights at
high-subsonic speeds, according to Kra-
tos.
It is the first technology of its kind
that will “change the way we fly and
fight, and build and buy,” AFRL program
manager Doug Szczublewski said in a
press release.
A total of five test flights are planned
for the Valkyrie to evaluate system func-
tionality, aerodynamic performance, and
launch and recovery systems.
“We’re very happy with the perfor-
mance,” Assistant Secretary of the Air
Force for Acquisition, Technology and
Logistics Will Roper said during a meet-
ing with reporters at the air show.
“That was our first foray into attritable
aircraft,” he said. “It’s expensive enough
to be lethal but cheap enough to be used
in an aggressive, non-risk averse way. …
It’s certainly not a throwaway but it’s
cheap enough that you can take a level
of risks that we couldn’t take with a
manned platform.”
Warfighters want the service to buy
20 to 30 aircraft for a series of experi-
ments that would team Valkyries with
the fighter force, he said. “I’m now look-
ing at ways to do that and what the cost
would be.”
“Depending on what comes out of
that campaign the idea would be to look
to do ... a program of record or to start
spiraling the development to get some-
thing better,” Roper said. A program of
record could be included in the 2021
program objective memorandum, he
added.
Greg Ulmer, vice president and general
manager of the F-35 program at Lock-
heed Martin, said the joint strike fighter
could be a prime candidate for network-
ing with drones.
“The data sensor fusion approach to
the airplane, as well as our relationship
with our brethren at the Skunk Works
[division of the company], I think very
well align relative to unmanned team-
ing and the F-35’s ability to play in that
realm,” he told reporters at the air show.
If the green light is given, the Valkyrie
could go into production and fielding
relatively quickly in two to three years,
Roper said. “What I’m really pleased to
say is we’re getting strong buy-in, strong
appetite and pull for attritable systems
by our pilots.” ND
AU G U ST 2 0 1 9 • N AT I O N A L D E F E N S E 31
 ARCTIC
STRATEGY
GREAT POWER COMPETITION
EXTENDS TO ARCTIC
 BY CONNIE LEE
For years the Arctic’s harsh environment has
prevented countries from mining its rich natural
resources and accessing prime shipping routes. But as
the climate warms and thick barriers of ice continue to
melt, the region is now becoming a hot spot for economic
activity.
“The region has become an arena for power and for
competition, and the eight Arctic states must adapt to this
new future,” Secretary of State Michael Pompeo said dur-
ing remarks at the 11th Ministerial Meeting of the Arctic
Council in May. “We’re entering a new age of strategic
engagement in the Arctic, complete with new threats to
the Arctic and its real estate, and to all of our interests in
that region.” The council is an intergovernmental forum
and its members include the United States, Canada, Den-
mark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Russia and Sweden.
The Defense Department’s new Arctic Strategy,
released in June, zeroes in on these threats, noting that
Russia views itself as a “polar great power.” Since the
creation of Russia’s Northern Fleet Joint Strategic Com-
ISTOCK
mand in 2014, Moscow has ramped up its presence in the
region with refurbished airfields, new military bases and
a network of air-defense systems, according to the docu-
ment.
“Russia’s commercial investments in the Arctic region
have been matched by continued defense investments and
activities that strengthen both its territorial defense and
its ability to control the” Northern Sea Route, the docu-
ment said.
Although China has no territorial claims in the Arctic,
it is looking to increase its presence in the region as well
by declaring itself a “near Arctic state.” The United States
does not recognize this status, according to the strategy.
By increasing its economic outreach, investments in stra-
tegic sectors and scientific activities, China hopes to gain
access to natural resources and new sea routes.
“China and Russia pose discrete and different challeng-
es in their respective theaters, but both are also pursuing
activities and capabilities in the Arctic that may present
risks to the homeland,” the report said.
The Defense Department’s strategy provides a broad
AU G U ST 2 0 1 9 • N AT I O N A L D E F E N S E 33
USS Hampton surfaces
during an Arctic exercise.
idea of how it should bolster its military presence in the
region. The strategic approach is based on building situational
awareness, enhancing operations and strengthening the rules-
based order.
“Within the context of [national defense strategy] imple-
mentation more broadly, DoD will continue to prepare and
posture the joint force to ensure that the Arctic is a secure
and stable region where U.S. national interests are safeguard-
ed, the U.S. homeland is defended and nations work coopera-
tively to address shared challenges,” the strategy said.
Although the strategy “does not have anything in it that we
didn’t already know,” it laid the foundation for Congress to
begin making decisions on how to provide resources toward
the region, said Victoria Herrmann, president and manag-
ing director of the Arctic Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based
think tank.
“It is almost a summary of what we have been talking
about informally in D.C. and in the military community for
a few years,” she noted. It is a piece of paper that Congress
can point to and say, “‘This is a critically important region and
this is why we need to fund an additional icebreaker. This is
why we need to allocate funding for a deep water port,’” she
added.
Conditions in the Arctic are changing fast, and the next
decade or two will have strategic implications, Mark Serreze,
director of the National Snow and Ice Data Center, said in
an interview. According to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory,
Arctic sea ice in September is declining at a rate of 12.8 per-
cent per decade.
Things are “heating up in the Arctic and I would say more
than just heating up and losing the ice,” Serreze said. “The
geopolitical stakes are getting higher and higher.” Over the
next decade or two, “that’s really where things are going to
play out” among rival nations, he said.
The ice is also melting in areas that provide Russia with a
strategic advantage, he noted. Much of it is disappearing along
the Northern Sea Route, a passageway that connects the Ber-
ing Strait with the Kola Peninsula, he said. Many of the con-
tinental shelves rich with oil and natural gas deposits are in
34 N AT I O N A L D E F E N S E • A U G U S T 2 0 1 9
Russian waters, providing it with easier access to such assets.
“All along the Northern Sea Route along the Russian coast,
you’ve been seeing significant retreat of the ice in summer,”
he said. The section from Murmansk to the Bering Strait has
been losing ice, he noted.
Now, the United States is “catching up” to competitors by
building new icebreakers and establishing a vision for its role
in the region, Herrmann said.
“The United States is often nicknamed the ‘reluctant Arc-
tic power,’ unlike … Canada or Russia,” she said. “It has not
invested in the Arctic. It is not invested both strategically and
operationally.”
The Coast Guard has a statutory responsibility to maintain
and operate the nation’s fleet of icebreakers and is expected
to take on a stronger presence in the region. Plans include
acquiring six new icebreakers, known as polar security cut-
ters. The service currently has one heavy icebreaker, the Polar
Star, and one medium, the Healy, which is primarily used for
research.
In contrast, Russia has about 40 icebreakers and is continu-
ing to expand its fleet. Russian news agency TASS reported
in May that the country is preparing to sail nuclear-powered
icebreakers for year-round use.
The Coast Guard’s first three heavy polar security cutters
are slated to be fielded by around 2027, Adm. Karl Schultz,
the service’s commandant, told reporters in May during an
industry conference at National Harbor, Maryland. In April,
VT Halter Marine Inc. — which is based in Pascagoula, Mis-
sissippi — was awarded a $745.9 million contract to build the
first ship, with options included to build two more.
Elements of VT Halter’s design are “right near the money
where we want to be,” Schultz noted. The icebreaker will
have the ability to crack up to 21 feet of ridged ice, hold 135
crew members and add detached crews, he said.
“This ship is going to be a modern capability that’s going to
NAVY, COAST GUARD
allow us to do the full spectrum of Coast Guard missions up
there,” he said during a keynote speech. “Where there’s more
activity, there’s higher risk of a major search-and-rescue case.”
The service also released a new Arctic strategic outlook in

U.S. Coast Guard
Cutter Healy
April, written to acknowledge operational changes the Coast
Guard must make to adjust to the changing conditions.
“As the region continues to open and strategic competition
drives more actors to look to the Arctic for economic and geo-
political advantages, the demand for Coast Guard leadership
and presence will continue to grow,” the document said.
Besides icebreakers, the service hopes to invest in aviation
assets, unmanned and autonomous systems and additional per-
sonnel, the strategy said. Equipment must be interoperable and
ARCTIC STRATEGY
upgradeable so they can be used for a variety of activities.
The service’s new offshore patrol cutters will be able to car-
ry the Coast Guard’s full range of helicopters and potentially
drones. This will help the service “put some more capable ships
closer to the problem set,” Schultz said.
Part of the Coast Guard’s new strategy also involves improv-
ing communications in the region, which can be difficult
because satellites in geostationary orbit don’t cover the Arctic
and links are often disrupted by ice on platform antennas and
violent seas.
The Coast Guard partnered with the Department of Home-
land Security’s science and technology directorate to launch
small cubesats in the region late last year, but establishing
secure communication channels will likely require a stronger
approach, Schultz noted.
“There’s not a roadmap or a specific Coast Guard plan to
solve communications in the Arctic yet, but … as we lean in
about how important that space is geostrategically, that is a
conversation we’ve got to start working on,” he said.
The Coast Guard strategy also includes a line of effort
geared toward promoting a rules-based order in the region by
strengthening institutions such as the Arctic Council, Arctic
Coast Guard Forum and the International Maritime Organiza-
tion.
Although the Coast Guard is expected to take the lead on
Arctic operations, the Navy is also looking at ways to partici-
pate in the region. Secretary of the Navy Richard Spencer said
in December that he has a “wish list” of needs that includes

ARCTIC STRATEGY
opening a strategic port in Alaska and conducting freedom of
navigation operations in the Northwest Passage. Doing so will
also help the Navy mitigate risks such as attacks on commer-
cial ships, he noted.
“Can you imagine the Carnival line cruise ship having a
problem and the Russians … do the extraction?” he said during
remarks at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
“We need to focus on this. But it’s [also about] resource man-
agement.”
Although the Navy recognizes the threats presented by great
power competition, it believes that there is unlikely to be a
large-scale conflict in the region, according to its Arctic stra-
tegic outlook that was released January 2019 and obtained by
National Defense. Nations are, so far, abiding by international
law, the document said. Because of this, the service is more
concentrated on deterring conflict and protecting U.S. interests,
it noted.
“While there are recognized threats, opportunities and risks
in our return to an era of great power competition, the Arctic
is assessed to be low risk for conflict because nations have
demonstrated the ability to resolve differences peacefully,” the
strategy said.
Although the Coast Guard fulfills most maritime missions in
the Arctic, the Navy is slated to continue working with inter-
national partners through initiatives such as the Arctic Coast
Guard Forum, the document said. The service will also work
with the Royal Canadian Navy “to ensure common Arctic
region interests are addressed in a complementary manner.”
“Through these partnerships, the Navy and Coast Guard
are committed to ensuring safe, secure and environmentally
responsible maritime activity in Arctic Ocean waters and to
promoting U.S. interests in the Arctic,” the document said.
Challenges of operating in the Arctic seas include constant
changes in environmental factors such as ocean currents, wind,
water and air temperature, sea spray and daylight duration, the
document noted. There is also a lack of accurate navigational
charts for many areas.
The Navy’s biennial submarine Arctic Ice Exercise, or ICEx,
is also used to validate tactics, techniques and procedures with
regional partners. In 2018, multiple submarines conducted
Arctic transits for the exercise, according to the service. ND

NON-MILITARY FACTORS
SHAPE ARCTIC POWER BALANCE
Q Establishing a military presence is
only one side of the coin to gaining
influence in the Arctic region, accord-
ing to one analyst. Besides establishing
a military presence, there are also eco-
nomic and diplomatic factors that must
be taken into consideration.
For example, most of China’s focus
in the region is based on economics,
said Victoria Herrmann, president and
managing director of the Arctic Institute,
a Washington, D.C.-based think tank.
The country has made significant invest-
ments in shipping and transportation
infrastructure in areas such as Iceland
and Greenland, she noted.
“I wouldn’t consider China to be a
military threat in the Arctic,” she said.
“All of that is very much focused on
economic potential and not on any form
of military engagement.”
Additionally, much of the ice is melt-
ing in places that fall within Russian ter-
ritory. Because of this, the United States
has limited say in operations around
important areas such as the Northern
Sea Route, she said.
In addition to fielding icebreakers,
the U.S. could extend its influence by
making a scientific claim to an area
with a continental shelf
extension, she noted.
This means the United
States could extend the
seabed in which it has
the sovereign right to
minerals and oil. But
this would require sign-
ing the United Nations
Convention on the Law
of the Sea, or UNCLOS,
which Washington has
yet to do, she noted.
“The U.S. not only has
a limited engagement in
anything within Russian waters and the with the Arctic Council, the United
Northern Sea Route, but it also has a States did not sign an agreement meant
limited engagement in what they can do to establish a sustainable way of manag-
beyond its own 200 nautical mile exclu- ing the region to counter global warm-
sive economic zone,” she said. ing.
However, it is unlikely that the United “That is seen as weak in the Arc-
States will decide to sign the UNCLOS tic,” Herrmann said. Secretary of State
pact, she noted. Michael Pompeo reportedly declined to
“Arctic advocates like Sen. Lisa sign the agreement over disagreements
Murkowski have continuously tried to regarding global warming.
champion becoming a signatory,” she This means “that we are seen as a
said, referring to the Republican law- non-cooperating power and that we
maker from Alaska. However, “it hasn’t don’t have as much influence in those
gotten much traction with a Republican forums because we aren’t seen as a good
majority,” Herrmann added. strategic partner as we have been in the
ISTOCK

beyond its exclusive economic zone Additionally, during a May meeting past,” Herrmann said. - CONNIE LEE

36 N AT I O N A L D E F E N S E • A U G U S T 2 0 1 9
 Government Contracting Insights BY KEVIN BARNETT, PETER HUTT II AND NOOREE LEE
Changes in Treatment of Confidential Info
Q In June, the Supreme Court significantly altered how gov-
ernment agencies will treat confidential commercial informa-
tion protected from disclosure by Exemption 4 of the Freedom
of Information Act (FOIA) — an issue that recurs repeatedly
with respect to information submitted by contractors to gov-
ernment agencies.
In Food Marketing Institute v. Argus Leader Media, the court
overturned 45 years of lower-court precedent requiring that
the submitter show both that the information was not publicly
disclosed, and that its release would cause substantial competi-
tive harm. The court’s decision seemingly expands the scope of
Exemption 4 by removing the “substantial competitive harm”
requirement. However, the effect of this apparent expansion is
unclear, because the court did not resolve whether the exemp-
tion also requires a showing that the submitter’s information
was provided under an assurance by the government that it
would keep the information confidential.
Nevertheless, Food Marketing points the way to steps that
contractors can take to protect their commercial and financial
information under the new interpretation of Exemption 4.
The exemption protects from disclosure under FOIA “trade
secrets and commercial or financial information obtained from
a person [that are] privileged or confidential.” In 1974, the
D.C. Circuit held that this language meant contractors must
show that the disclosure of the information would cause sub-
stantial competitive harm. To meet this test, contractors gener-
ally submitted affidavits explaining how competitors could use
the information to cause the company competitive harm. In
1992, the D.C. Circuit limited the test to mandatory submis-
sions. For voluntary submissions, it held that the submitter
need only show that it does not customarily release the type of
information in question to qualify for Exemption 4 protection.
In Food Marketing, the Supreme Court rejected these tests.
It reviewed the dictionary definition of “confidential” and
found two potential conditions: information “customarily kept
private, or at least closely held,” by the submitting party; and
information disclosed when the receiving party provides “some
assurances that it will remain secret.”
The court concluded that the first condition must always be
established, because Exemption 4 should not treat something
as secret or private if the information’s owner does not. But it
declined to answer a second question — whether confidential
information could lose that status if provided to the govern-
ment “without assurances that the government will keep it
private.” Summarizing its holding, the court concluded that
information is protected under the exemption “[a]t least where
commercial or financial information is both customarily and
actually treated as private by its owner and provided to the
government under an assurance of privacy.”
Without clear guidance from the court as to whether, or
when, a government “assurance” may be required, it now falls
to FOIA officers and district courts to define the boundaries of
the exemption.
There are important takeaways for contractors. One is to lay
the groundwork for proving confidentiality. Food Marketing
presents contractors with a new landscape when arguing that
an agency should withhold information under Exemption 4.
Gone are arguments over competitive harm. But companies
will need to establish that information is “customarily kept
private, or at least closely held.” Agencies will likely expect
contractors to provide information such as: company policies
prohibiting disclosure; use of contracts requiring confidentiality
or nondisclosure provisions; document markings; documented
history of opposing disclosure in discovery; and declarations
describing how records were subject to limited disclosure
within the organization.
Contractors should review their information security poli-
cies, contract terms and marking practices to make sure they
are sufficient to make this kind of showing, and ensure that
periodic employee training emphasizes the need for informa-
tion privacy.
They should also lay the groundwork for proving assurance
of confidentiality. Contractors rarely receive the kind of explic-
it government assurances that the companies in Food Marketing
received. That said, there are other ways to meet the “assur-
ance” test, if it is deemed necessary. For example, the Trade
Secrets Act imposes criminal penalties on any government
“Companies will need to establish that
information is ‘customarily kept private,
or at least closely held.’”
employee who discloses information that “concerns or relates
to trade secrets, processes, operations, style of work, or appa-
ratus, or to the identity, confidential statistical data, amount
or source of any income, profits, losses, or expenditures of any
person.”
Courts have long recognized that the Trade Secrets Act’s
prohibitions on disclosure are at least as broad in coverage as
FOIA Exemption 4. Thus, it is reasonable to argue that con-
tractors submitting data covered by the Trade Secrets Act have
a statutory assurance of confidentiality.
Additionally, contractors should consider updating their
standard protective legends to include language confirming
their understanding that information is being provided under
an assurance of confidentiality, and that government confiden-
tiality is assured under the Trade Secrets Act, applicable con-
tractual provisions, protective orders, or otherwise.
Stay tuned. Given the court’s re-interpretation of Exemp-
tion 4, the Department of Justice’s office of information policy
will issue new guidance soon, and agencies will update their
FOIA procedures. These documents will shed significant light
on how FOIA officers will view the scope of the exemption
after Food Marketing. ND
Peter Hutt II is a partner, and Kevin Barnett and Nooree Lee are
associates at Covington & Burling LLP.
AU G U ST 2 0 1 9 • N AT I O N A L D E F E N S E 37
Ethics Corner BY BRIAN E. SWEENEY
Compliance Guidance for Smaller Contractors
Q In April, the Department of Justice issued updated guidance
regarding the evaluation of corporate compliance programs to
assist prosecutors in deciding whether they were adequate and
effective at the time of an offense, as well as at the time of a
charging decision. It builds upon earlier guidance and provides
further specificity as to the factors the department will con-
sider in their evaluations.
The department disclaims using “any rigid formula to assess
the effectiveness of corporate compliance programs,” but
instead makes “an individualized determination in each case”
based on three fundamental questions: Is the program well
designed? Is it being applied earnestly and in good faith? And
does it work in practice?
For each of these questions, the department posits a list of
factors to consider. However, when it comes to small- and
medium-sized businesses, some of the features described by
the department may be out of reach in terms of staffing, oper-
ations and cost. While large corporations can take the guidance
and turn it into a checklist to determine that their compliance
programs have all the features endorsed by Justice, smaller
companies must make a very different and difficult assessment:
what program elements can they effectively implement, and
how much compliance can they afford?
As to program design, Justice will look at five elements: risk
assessment; policies and procedures; training and communica-
tions; confidential reporting and investigation processes; third
party management, if any; and procedures for compliance
issues in mergers and acquisitions. Setting aside the last ele-
ment, small- and medium-sized defense contractors should
already have these basic elements in place, given the require-
ments of the Federal Acquisition Regulation Part 3.1002 for
a written code of business ethics and conduct as well as an
internal control system that promotes compliance, and FAR
§52.203-13, which requires the contractor to adopt a code for
contracts expected to exceed $5.5 million.
But for many companies, both risk assessment and reporting
and investigation structures may pose challenges to organi-
zational and financial resources. Justice looks for a risk man-
agement process, with risk-tailored resource allocation, and
ongoing revisions based on lessons learned. Smaller organiza-
tions that lack internal audit or legal resources should consider
engaging outside compliance experts to help them meet these
expectations. Given that a solid risk assessment will allow
the company to focus its limited resources where the need is
greatest, this is a worthwhile investment that can save money
in the long run, because compliance problems often can be
identified and remediated before they become offenses.
With respect to policies and procedures and training and
communications, contractors can look to several nonprofit
organizations for guidance and model policies, training materi-
als, and other resources available at the cost of membership.
The Ethics & Compliance Initiative, the Defense Industry
Initiative on Business Ethics and Conduct, and the Society of
Corporate Compliance and Ethics offer assistance. Member-
38 N AT I O N A L D E F E N S E • A U G U S T 2 0 1 9
ship fees are typically graduated based on company size.
In determining whether a compliance program is being
implemented effectively, the department looks for a commit-
ment by senior and middle management to foster a culture of
ethics and compliance with the law, while also watching out
for management tolerance of compliance risks in pursuit of
new business or increased revenues or encouraging employees
to act unethically to achieve goals. Management’s persistent
focus on ethics and compliance is perhaps the most important
and least expensive element of an effective program.
The department also looks for employee incentives and dis-
ciplinary measures. Companies can integrate them into their
employee evaluation, compensation and development process-
es. Recognition of positive behavior, along with promotions or
bonuses, can significantly reinforce an ethical culture.
The question of whether a compliance program works in
practice often arises once an enforcement action is underway
and a charging decision is before the prosecutor. Here the
department looks for evidence of “continuous improvement,
periodic testing and review,” which presumes auditing, updat-
ing risk assessments and measuring the culture. For many
small- and medium-sized companies, these activities can only
“A careful assessment ... can mean the
difference between a compliance disaster
and a compliance success.”
be provided by outside resources, which means potentially sig-
nificant added cost.
Justice also looks for a “well-functioning and appropriately
funded mechanism for the timely and thorough investigation”
of allegations of misconduct. For most small- and medium-
sized companies, that requires engagement of outside coun-
sel, which can be expensive. If, however, these questions are
being raised in a government investigation or prosecution, the
company will likely already have outside counsel engaged to
respond and investigate.
Finally, the department looks to a company’s follow-up to a
compliance breach — root cause analysis and remedial actions,
or gleaning lessons learned — as the ultimate indicator of an
effective compliance program. These efforts will almost always
be the outcome of an investigation or enforcement action, and
the follow-up required is often necessary to avoid suspension
or debarment under FAR by demonstrating “present responsi-
bility” in remediating past misconduct.
For contractors, a careful assessment and prudent invest-
ments in compliance can mean the difference between a com-
pliance disaster and a compliance success. ND
The Law Office of Brian E. Sweeney focuses on technology,
aerospace and defense, government and commercial contracts,
and ethics and compliance programs. He can be reached at
besweeney@besweeneylaw.com.
 News

Association Bestows
Award to Thompson
Q The 2018 Dr. Desmond G. Newman Award for
Supply Chain Excellence has been presented to
Ronald Thompson.
Thompson, the program manager for critical
electronics and energy programs at SAIC’s Crane,
Indiana, office, received the honor during the Na-
tional Defense Industrial Association’s Manufactur-
ing Division June meeting.
Since 2016, the Newman Award has been
presented annually to a member of industry in rec-
ognition of noteworthy contributions or meritori-
ous service in the area of supply chain management
and its implementation in supporting the defense
manufacturing base. The award was established to
stimulate thought and develop programs which will benefit Ronald Thompson, left, is presented the Dr. Desmond G. Newman Award by
Hawk Carlisle, president of the National Defense Industrial Association, right.
industry and the public, and encourages planning techniques or
solutions to troublesome problems for supply chains support-
ing the defense manufacturing base.
Throughout his 50-year career in printed circuit board man- secretary of the Navy as the executive agent for printed circuit
ufacturing and management, Thompson has worked diligently board and interconnect technology, thereby ensuring access to
to ensure a secure and reliable U.S.-based circuit board supply reliable, trusted and affordable fabrication and assembly prod-
chain for national security-related electronic applications. His ucts and technologies that meet the highest Defense Depart-
work culminated in DoD Directive 5101.18E, designating the ment quality, performance and security requirements. ND

Women In Defense Awards Annual HORIZONS Scholarships

Q Twelve women from around the
country will share more than $126,000
for their academic pursuits as the Wom-
en In Defense HORIZONS Scholarship
class of 2019-20.
The awardees were chosen from
among 30 applicants for the annual
scholarships that help fund women
studying for careers in defense
and foreign policy. A panel of
three WID National Coun-
cil members reviewed the
submissions.
“These women and their
varied studies demonstrate the
power of diversity in strengthening
our national defense,” said Rachel Mc-
Caffrey, executive director of WID and
a retired Air Force intelligence officer. “It
MELANIE YU / NDIA
the National Defense Industrial Associa-
tion, congratulated the awardees. WID is
an affiliate of NDIA.
“This class of HORIZONS honor-
ees continues WID’s and NDIA’s dual
commitment: to bolster women in their
studies and careers in service to our
national security and, in doing so, bring
the best to our warfighters,” he
said. “It takes a diverse, inclusive
team to ensure the security of
our nation. These women offer
their exceptional talent and
ideas in support of the military
and our country.”
NDIA provided $100,000 toward
the scholarships. The remaining funds
came from WID’s strategic partners
Dell Technologies, Carahsoft, Bloom-
A conference to celebrate the recipi-
ents is slated for Aug. 8 at the offices of
Bloomberg Government in Washington,
D.C.
The winners include Priya Balasub-
ramanian, Cornell University; Camille
Bobiak, Stevens Institute of Technology;
Alexandra Bruer, Harvard University;
Lauren Finkenthal, Georgetown Univer-
sity; Jillian Joffe, Purdue University; Al-
lison Maddux, Georgetown University;
Taylor Martin, Georgetown University;
Schuyler Moore, Georgetown University;
Amber Morgan, Middlebury Institute of
International Studies at Monterey; Mar-
garita Valkovskaya, Syracuse University;
Megan Ward, University of Washington;
and Elizabeth Wright, The George
Washington University.

is their leadership, dedication and drive berg Government, Deloitte, Lockheed The 2020-21 HORIZONS Scholar-
that demonstrate their potential and Martin, Leidos and Standard Technology ship class will open for applications in
their commitment to our nation.” Inc., as well as private donations from early 2020. For more information, visit
Hawk Carlisle, president and CEO of WID chapters. WomenInDefense.net. ND

AU G U ST 2 0 1 9 • N AT I O N A L D E F E N S E 39
 9 21-23
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GREAT LAKES CHAPTER
10th Anniversary Celebration
23-27
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35th Annual National
Logistics Forum
Tampa, FL
NDIA.org/Logistics19

40 N AT I O N A L D E F E N S E • A U G U S T 2 0 1 9
 DEFENSE SYSTEMS
MASTERING BUSINESS ACQUISITION
DEVELOPMENT MANAGEMENT
WO R K S H O P ( D SA M ) CO U R S E

September 11 – 12 | Arlington, VA September 23 – 27 | Arlington, VA

NDIA.org/MBDSept NDIA.org/DSAMSept

2019
UNDERSEA WARFARE
TECHNOLOGY
FALL CONFERENCE

Preserving Undersea Superiority –

A System of Systems

September 16 – 18 | Groton, CT | NDIA.org/USWFall

AU G U ST 2 0 1 9 • N AT I O N A L D E F E N S E 41
 Calendar

22ND ANNUAL
SYSTEMS
& MISSION
ENGINEERING CONFERENCE

October 21 – 24 | Tampa, FL | NDIA.org/SME

FALL 2019
JOINT NDIA/AIA
INDUSTRIAL
SECURITY
CONFERENCE
Themes and challenges addressed will include:
- Continuing security clearance reforms and implementation
- Insider threat guidance
- Transitioning cybersecurity requirements and policy
- Sharing knowledge of “the business” of security
- Late-breaking special security and NISPOM issues, and more

October 21 – 23 | Scottsdale, AZ | NDIA.org/ISCFall

42 N AT I O N A L D E F E N S E • A U G U S T 2 0 1 9
24 TH ANNUAL
EXPEDITIONARY
WA R FA R E C O N F E R E N C E

SAVE THE DATE

Enhancing Expeditionary Superiority
Join military, government, industry, and academic
leaders at the 24th Annual Expeditionary Warfare
Conference, an intellectual collaboration that centers
on current operations, capabilities development,
information warfare, autonomous systems, and
more. In addition to dynamic keynote speakers and
congressional panels, there will be tabletop displays
showcasing the latest technology and information in
expeditionary warfare.

October 22 – 24
Annapolis, MD | NDIA.org/EWC

2019
AIRCRAFT
SURVIVABILITY
S Y M P O S I U M
SAVE THE DATE
Evolving Today’s Force to Dominate
Tomorrow’s Threat
Join representatives from across the survivability
community as we convene to discuss the latest
technological advances, future threat trends, combat
lessons learned, and more in a classified setting.

Naval Postgraduate School | Monterey, CA

November 5 – 7 | NDIA.org/Aircraft19

AU G U ST 2 0 1 9 • N AT I O N A L D E F E N S E 43
Next Month

Sixth-Gen Fighter Jets Marine Corps Weapons

■ Over the past year, European ■ The service is pursuing a slew of new technologies to give
nations have made a big splash infantrymen the edge on the battlefield. Everything from
by unveiling mockups of sixth- optics to the weapons themselves are getting revamped.
generation fighters at international
air shows. Meanwhile, the United Marine One Replacement
States is pondering what its future ■ The experimental helicopter anticipated to replace Marine
systems will look like. What capa- One made its debut at Washington D.C.’s July 4 celebration.
bilities are these next-generation National Defense will dive into the Pentagon’s effort to provide
platform expected to possess? a new aircraft for presidential use.

Fourth-Plus-Generation Fighters Amphibious Combat Vehicle

■ Production is ramping up for the fifth-generation F-35, and ■ The Marine Corps has been pushing to develop amphibious
militaries are already looking ahead at acquiring sixth-gen sys- combat vehicles capable of transporting its warfighters onto
tems. But industry is upgrading their fourth-generation fighters land. The service is moving forward with plans for different
with additional capabilities that are intended to keep them variants of the system.
operating effectively in the decades to come.
CBRN

JOHNNEWTON8 / WIKI
Tanker Update ■ The Pentagon is developing technology to counter chemical,
■ The Air Force received its first delivery of the KC-46 tanker biological, radiological and nuclear threats. In the next issue,
in January after years of production issues and cost overruns. the magazine examines the Defense Department’s priorities
What is the latest trajectory for fielding the new aircraft? and investments.

AUGUST 2019 Index of Advertisers

Interact with the companies whose products and services are advertised in National Defense.
ADVERTISER INTERACT PAGE NO.
Collins Aerospace . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Collinsaerospace.com/gnc . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Cover 4
FlightSafety. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .flightsafety.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Cover 3
Kaman. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .kamansensors.com. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
Landguard Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .www.landguardsystems.com. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .35
MAG Aerospace . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .MAGaero.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .8
Oshkosh Defense. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .oshkoshdefense.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Cover 2
SKB . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .skbcases.com/industrial . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Vigor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .vigor.net . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .27

ADVERTISING
For information on advertising in National Defense or one of NDIA’s electronic offerings, contact:

Senior Vice President Sales Director Sales Coordinator

Meetings & Business Partnerships Kathleen Kenney Alex Mitchell
Christine M. Klein (703) 247-2576 (703) 247-2568
NDIA’S BUSINESS AND
(703) 247-2593 KKenney@NDIA.org AMitchell@NDIA.org
TECHNOLOGY MAGAZINE
CKlein@NDIA.org Fax: (703) 522-4602 Fax: (703) 522-4602
NationalDefenseMagazine.org

NDIA MEMBERSHIP: The National Defense Industrial Association (NDIA) is the premier association representing
all facets of the defense and technology industrial base and serving all military services. For more information please
call our membership department at 703-522-1820 or visit us on the web at NDIA.org/Membership.

44 N AT I O N A L D E F E N S E • A U G U S T 2 0 1 9
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