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December 9, 2020 By cs

Combat simulators should also improve acquisition, DoD leader says

Members of the defense industry working on modeling and simulation should focus on building tools that can be used across multiple different functions in order to not only improve training, but accelerate acquisition and fielding timelines, according to a Defense Department official. 

“Think about software that will allow us to support acquisition development, training of troops, and test all simultaneously,” Alan Shaffer, deputy defense undersecretary for acquisition and sustainment, said Dec. 1st.

Modeling and simulation is used to train warfighters on virtual battlefields. Advancement in modeling and simulation technologies powered by digitization and open systems should enhance training from individual warfighters all the way up to the force level as well as revolutionize design, acquisition, sustainment and test, Shaffer said during the National Training and Simulation Association’s annual Interservice, Industry, Training, Simulation, and Education Conference.

“We are now seeing the evolution from single platform simulators and single purpose simulations to advanced multi-platform virtual systems,” Shaffer said.  “But beyond that, there is also a strong convergence in modeling and simulation capabilities being driven by the technological revolution, and the digitization of the world, and the promise of open systems.”

Keep reading this article at: https://www.defenseone.com/technology/2020/12/dod-needs-simulations-shorten-acquisition-timelines-official-says/170380/

 

Filed Under: Government Contracting News Tagged With: acquisition, acquisition workforce, Adaptive Acquisition Framework, combat environment, design, DoD, PALT, sustainment, testing

April 1, 2020 By cs

Today’s complexities demand more chefs, fewer cooks

If you’re a cook, you had better become a chef!
Do you know the difference?

A cook can follow a recipe and prepare a nice meal, but a chef can take a variety of wide-ranging ingredients, understand how they complement each other, and create a gourmet feast.

Have you ever watched “Chopped” on the Food Network? Each chef contestant is given a basket of eclectic ingredients and a challenging schedule to fix an epicurean dish that their customers, the judges, will fawn over.

Sound familiar? We live in an increasingly complex acquisition world where just following a Department of Defense Instruction (DoDI) 5000.02 recipe will not suffice to provide your customer, the Warfighter, with the “dish” needed for success. For example, if you were to have taken the Defense Acquisition University’s Intermediate Systems Acquisition course 10 years ago, you would have been shown a single, phased-approach model, the Defense Acquisition Management System (shown below in Figure 1).

Five years later, with a recognition that software is developed and procured differently than hardware, DoDI 5000.02’s refresh would have exposed you to six different models, a combination of hardware and software-dominant paths. An appreciation that the break between phases is not a smooth process led to the revamping of the hardware model, as well (Figure 2).

Today, our acquisition world’s complexity has expanded even more, recognizing that different situations require different urgencies, tools, and solutions. This has resulted in the Adaptive Acquisition Framework, whose latest draft includes the 2019 DoDI 5000.02 process as only one of the six potential paths to acquiring the best Warfighter solution (Figure 3).

You need to become a chef! Gone are the days of being able to simply follow the prescribed Milestone A, B, C recipe. But how to make the change? First, you need to understand the circumstances presented to you. What is the “speed of relevance” for your program? How flexible and/or stable are the requirements? Have you established an enduring conversation with your customer to discuss requirements options? Then you will need to apply a thorough understanding of the major ingredients that will spell success or failure for any program. What are they? Let me suggest the following as a start.

Acquisition Pathway

Where does your effort fit into the new Adaptive Acquisition Framework? Are you trying to exploit some new innovative technology and provide the Warfighter with residual operational capabilities? Explore the Middle-Tier Acquisition (MTA) Rapid Prototyping path. Is there some proven technology, perhaps exploiting a commercial use, that you can produce quickly and field within 5 years? If so, then, MTA’s Rapid Fielding path might be right for you. Is software the major acquisition product, perhaps an upgrade to a command and control product? Why not follow the Software Acquisition path? Of course, there is nothing evil about the traditional Major Capability Acquisition path, which can and should be tailored to meet your specific needs. But it is crucial that you understand the requirements and benefits, along with the risks, of taking these different acquisition pathways, and then choose the pathway most appropriate for your program.

Contracting Strategy

Congress recently expanded some tools for finding and getting the right defense industry contractor on-board for our programs. Beyond traditional contracting vehicles based on the Federal Acquisition Regulation, Other Transactions (OTs), and Commercial Solutions Openings (CSOs) have provided some great additional options. Are they right for your program? Does your program meet the Three Ps of OTs — purpose, prototype, and participation? Many of your colleagues have embraced these contract vehicles, as evidenced by a rapid increase in OT use over the past several years. However, beware of statements that imply one contract vehicle is superior to all others. Some dishes need salt, and some need sugar. Just because both flavorings are white granular substances doesn’t mean it is appropriate to use them interchangeably. A good understanding of contract strategy differences can mean the difference between success and failure. If risk is too high and you’ve demanded a fixed price contract, industry proposals will reflect that. In such a case, you can likely gain flexibility and save money using a cost-reimbursable vehicle. You can often save time using an OT, but not always. The experts say that if you’re using OTs for the sole purpose of saving time, don’t! Always remember the reason you choose a particular contracting vehicle is to properly incentivize the contractor to provide your end users with the product they need, when they need it.

Funding Strategy

How will you get the money to run your program? Beyond the traditional Planning, Programming, Budgeting and Execution (PPBE) system that requires 2 years of foresight for acquiring funds, are there other sources of more immediate funding? Are you aware that the DoD has a Rapid Prototyping Fund administered by the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering? Could that bridge the 2-year gap between a great technological opportunity now and establishing your long-term funding line through PPBE? If you can go faster via additional funds, have you explored getting on your service’s Unfunded Requirements List or pursued Reprogramming Requests? You need a thorough grasp of all of your options to get the required money, in the right appropriations, at the right time. Depending on your total budget, you will have a variety of reporting and accountability requirements. Have you accounted for those in your timelines? Can they be waived, when appropriate? Understanding your program deeply enough to predict the funds needed, in the appropriations category needed, will allow your team to ensure the money is available in time.

System Engineering, Metrics, and Risk/Opportunity Management

What is your path to getting the technical solution to work? Are you prototyping the hard stuff first — i.e., “the quickest path to failure,” as Dr. Bruce Jette, the Army’s Acquisition Executive would say. One of the most important system engineering tasks is to develop and maintain a rigorous risk and opportunity management plan. With today’s need for products to be delivered at the speed of relevance, it is essential that your team thoroughly recognizes the risks facing the proposed solution. How can those risks be mitigated? Will they be assumed, transferred, controlled, or avoided? And don’t forget about opportunities. Are any available that would increase speed or performance? What resources are needed to enable pursuit of those opportunities?

This risk/opportunity management plan is not to be built and put on a shelf, but to serve as a steady guide as the product matures. If your product is software, do you understand the Risk Management Framework and how to best exploit its virtues to improve your software product? Is agile software development the right methodology for getting your software matured and in the users’ hands? If not, why not? A good strategy for developing the technical solution for the warfighter’s requirement is essential to your program’s success.

Integrated Testing

Employing a collaborative effort with the warfighter and tester, have you established a test and evaluation plan to ensure that your product meets that customer’s needs? What type of testing does your product and chosen acquisition path demand? A program manager’s worst nightmare is to contract for a product and successfully execute that product, only for the warfighter or tester to find it inadequate. If you follow a rapid prototyping pathway, you should engage in a test-learn-fix-test approach with multiple user test points in a series of small, targeted events, while maximizing modeling and simulation to increase your speed. A Test and Evaluation Master Plan will be required for the traditional Major Capability Acquisition approach; however, you should tailor it to increase testing’s influence on your development efforts. Like many of the functional offices, these vital activities can appear to program managers as impediments. However, they serve a vital role. Engaging with them early and developing a common understanding of schedule and technical requirements can foster an environment of mutual support toward the common goal of getting war-winning technology faster into the hands of the warfighters. Still, you also need to ensure that it stays in their hands. So, it is crucial that you track sustainment and producibility, starting early in the design process.

Sustainment and Producibility

One of the potential pitfalls of the rapid prototyping path could be the neglect of production and sustainment costs in the effort to ensure that the product reaches residual operational capability within the 5-year window dictated by Congress. Studies have shown that, by the time the Preliminary Design Review is conducted, approximately 80 percent of the program’s life-cycle cost (LCC) is determined, even though only a small percentage of the program’s cumulative costs has been spent. This early design work is the place where the team has the best opportunity to impact LCC. By the time of the Critical Design Review, the LCC commitment is approximately 90 percent (Figure 4).

Production, logistics, and other considerations must be exhaustively understood and prioritized early or your program could easily become unaffordable. Prototyping emphasizes an experimental philosophy in order to get innovative technology to work. Without a strong program manager emphasis, there is little incentive to focus on future LCC drivers — i.e., production, operations, and support. Also, award fee contracts, which allow for profit margins to be influenced subjectively, and to include consideration of items such as affordability and sustainability, are highly discouraged. This may dissuade the government/contractor team from paying much heed to these longer-term factors. Like a chef who has visualized the flavor and presentation of the final dish early in the cooking process, your team must emphasize sustainment and producibility early in the design process to ensure that the final product is technologically superior, producible, and affordably sustainable.

As a former senior manager of manufacturing at one of our industry partners, which produced the interiors of the canceled VH-71 Presidential Helicopter, I can testify how early design decisions can subvert manufacturing’s ability to produce an affordable product.

Yes, a number of other factors must be decided on, managed, and tracked in order to produce a successful product for our warriors. Your team cannot forget to ensure the myriad other elements—such as environment, safety, and occupational health, spectrum certification, airworthiness, unique identifiers, energy policy, etc.—that must all be addressed for the program to succeed. However, the thorough understanding and vetting the above six major ingredients will allow you to master the complexities of today’s acquisition world. With that mastery, you will no longer feel the need to open up the DoDI 5000.02 cookbook to find the recipe for creating a good product. Instead, when you open up the basket of ingredients that the requirements and acquisition community has handed you, you’ll be able to create a gourmet, masterful acquisition strategy.  Bon Appétit!


David Riel is the author of this article, first published in the March-April 2020 issue of Defense Acquisition magazine.  Riel is professor of Acquisition Management at the Defense Acquisition University in Kettering, Ohio. He formerly had a 20-year career with the U.S. Air Force, including work with industry.  The author can be contacted at David.RIel@dau.edu.

Filed Under: Government Contracting News Tagged With: acquisition workforce, adaptive acquisition, Adaptive Acquisition Framework, Defense Acquisition System, DFARS, DoDI 5000.02, FAR, life-cycle costs, middle tier acquisition, other transaction authority, other transactions, rapid prototyping, testing

July 8, 2016 By AMK

Don’t learn the wrong lessons from rapid acquisition

Our enthusiasm must be tempered by an understanding of the wartime circumstances that made it work and the downsides that were accepted.

Johnathan WongEvery time the Marine Corps sent me back to Operation Iraqi Freedom, new and better equipment awaited: radios, armored vehicles, electronic jammers to foil roadside bombs. It was clear that the rapid acquisition policies created or updated for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars were sending high-performing, technical systems to the battlefield much faster than conventional acquisition could. They helped me do my infantryman’s job better, and helped our force adapt to evolving threats in months rather than years or decades.

Sensibly, policymakers are trying to figure out how rapid acquisition ideas could help the conventional acquisition system perform better. Early this year, the Pentagon enshrined rapid acquisition by including a dedicated section on it in the latest regulations governing acquisition. The Air Force recently announced that it is procuring its new B-21 bomber through its rapid capabilities office, and the Navy is setting up a similar office to speed up acquisitions.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2016/06/dont-learn-wrong-lessons-rapid-acquisition/129332

Filed Under: Government Contracting News Tagged With: Afghanistan, Air Force, DoD, Iraq, Marine Corps, Marines, MRAP, quality, rapid acquisition, testing, transparency

August 12, 2015 By AMK

DoD OIG: Marine Corps program met acquisition guidelines intent, but evaluation plan not in place

Initial production was begun on a Marine Corps acquisition before a test and evaluation plan was in place.

That is the finding of the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) of the Department of Defense (DoD) in an audit report issued August 6, 2015.

DOD IGThe OIG’s audit objective was to determine if the Marine Corps was effectively managing the Ground/Air Task Oriented Radar (G/ATOR) project during the initial production phase. The OIG evaluated the production plan for initial production units and planned developmental testing.

The OIG found the Marine Corps generally managed the G/ATOR program in accordance with Defense acquisition guidelines in that G/ATOR Program Management Office (PMO) officials implemented reliability improvements, planned new semiconductor technology that should reduce costs and improve performance, and obtained the milestone decision authority approval for increased initial production quantities.

However, on March 10, 2014, the milestone decision authority approved the G/ATOR system to begin initial production without an approved Test and Evaluation Master Plan (TEMP).  Officials from G/ATOR PMO and the test community stated that they were coordinating to include the test strategy for new semiconductor technology and a clarified operational reliability requirement in the TEMP.

As a result of the audit, G/ATOR PMO officials plan to complete the TEMP before developmental testing begins in the second quarter FY 2017.  Until the TEMP is updated to include the test strategy for new semiconductor technology and a clarified operational reliability requirement, the G/ATOR program is not ready for additional testing.

View the full audit report at: http://www.dodig.mil/pubs/documents/DODIG-2015-158.pdf

 

The Office of the Inspector General (OIG) of the

Filed Under: Government Contracting News Tagged With: DoD, G/ATOR, IG, Marine Corps, OIG, performance evaluation, testing

August 12, 2014 By AMK

Georgia Tech Research Institute’s Huntsville operation works to shorten modeling and simulation testing

Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI) researchers are working with a Huntsville, AL company and the U.S. Missile Defense Agency (MDA) to test high-altitude missiles without ever firing a shot.

AEgis Technologies, specialists in modeling and simulation, contracted GTRI’s Applied Systems Laboratory to collaborate with MDA on testing high-altitude air defense missiles. ASL is in its second phase of a multi-year project utilizing “hardware-in-the-loop” testing to enable more accurate modeling and simulation for its customer.

“Testing a missile can be very expensive,” said GTRI Senior Research Engineer and principal investigator Glenn Parker. “Additionally, because of the large number of control variables in a real exercise, it isn’t technically feasible to get complete testing coverage. High-fidelity simulation addresses many of these concerns, but even with modern processors it can take days to compute the trajectory and heat signature of a complex ballistic target.”

Hardware-in-the-loop simulations use portions of the real missile hardware, such as the seeker, with any missing pieces made up by simulated components.

“We use the missile’s actual guidance system and manipulate simulated inputs to make the hardware think it is flying,” Parker said. “By using real hardware in tests, confidence in the results is much higher than in fully simulated models. For non-reusable portions of the missile like the motor and warhead, the use of simulation models makes it possible to run thousands of test cycles without leaving the laboratory, and for less than the cost of one live test.”

With current testing models, thermal signature databases must be computed offline prior to the test, and can take up to three days for a mere fifteen minutes of simulation time. Any alteration to the parameters—altitude, weather, terrain, or even the position of the sun—requires a total re-coding of the database. Testing a missile launch from Hawaii, for example, to intercept a target at a certain distance, altitude and speed takes a long time to calculate all of the missile hardware inputs that are used in the test.

What GTRI is working on, according to Parker, will enable the simulated components to be “looped in” for real-time calculation, eliminating the need for database computation ahead of time. Using off-the-shelf NVIDIA graphics cards, the group will work to provide the seeker with simulated thermally emissive ballistic targets heated by atmospheric effects in real time. The team will be using CUDA, NVIDIA’s parallel computing architecture.

“Our goal is to calculate and provide inputs at up to 200 Hz, which means simulated measurements are sent to the seeker unit 200 times each second,” Parker said. “This will allow us to run dozens of tests in the amount of time we used to spend calculating data for a single run. Test parameters can be changed on the fly—MDA will be able to run many more ‘what if’ scenarios before fielding a defense system.”

AEgis Technologies in Huntsville is the prime contractor of the project. They will operate the Army-owned, hardware-in-the-loop test bed and generate scenarios for use in simulations. GTRI provides the expertise in real-time computing. Prior to this, AEgis had worked indirectly with GTRI’s Electro-Optical Systems Laboratory (EOSL) on the same program, which supported ultraviolet sensor testing.

“We selected GTRI based on what I knew of EOSL’s capabilities, and their expertise in GPU technology,” said AEgis Program Manager Dennis Bunfield. “GTRI’s CUDA expertise is a great value, and their expertise in verification and validation is invaluable.”

The system will be scalable, and the plan is to take what they learn from this project and use it elsewhere in the defense industry. The thermal solver aspect of the project, for example, will be useful for any simulation requiring a real-time solution for thermal image simulation.

“I think with some enhancements to the code framework, the capabilities can be extended to generate signatures in other regions, such as UV, the visible spectrum and for LADAR,” Bunfield said. “Aside from military applications, it could be possible to use the thermal solver for commercial and manufacturing applications, such as thermal analysis simulation.”

“We’re working with AEgis Technologies to best model and simulate firing and the performance of these missiles by providing scenario inputs at the true hardware rate,” Parker said. “Our main goal—writing a massively parallel NVIDIA CUDA thermal differential equation solver—will enable faster and more effective testing of high-cost components at hardware-in-the-loop testing centers.”

Source: http://gtri.gatech.edu/casestudy/gtri-huntsville-works-shorten-modeling-and-simulat

Filed Under: Georgia Tech News Tagged With: DoD, Georgia Tech, GTRI, MDA, Missile Defense Agency, modeling, testing

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