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J u l y 2 0 1 3 • N a t i o N a l D e f e N s e 1

NDIA’S BUSINESS AND TECHNOLOGY MAGAZINE

volume xcviii , number 716

WWW.nATionAlDeFenSemAGAZine.orG

News FeaturesBudget

18 Sequestration’s Silver Lining: a More resilient u.S. army WhilebudgetcutsarecausingtheArmyto tightenitsbelt,it’salsopresentingnew opportunities.

By JAMES W. MANCILLAS, NICOLE SIKULA AND JOHN MCDONAGH

Cargo Aircraft

20 Navy to Consider New Ways To Shuttle Passengers, Supplies To aircraft Carriers TheNavywantstomodernizeitsfleetof cargoplanes,andisconsideringwhether topurchasenewV-22Ospreysorupgrade andreplaceitsfleetofC-2AGreyhounds. By SANDRA I. ERWIN

Gaming

22 Simulation, gaming Sector Plagued by fiscal Challenges

Whilethemilitaryinsiststhatdemandishighforsimulationtraining,industryisfeel-ingthepainasitcontendswithfundingdelaysandincreasedcompetitionforfewercontracts.By VALERIE INSINNA

Simulation 22� Thegamingindustryisfacinganuncertainfuture,somemilitaryleadershavesaid.Whilesimulationtrainingcansavethefourservicesmoney,contractsarebecomingfewerandfurtherbetween.

Special operations technology 28� AsthewarinAfghanistanwindsdown,specialoperationsforcesarelookingtoincreasetheirpresencearoundtheworldandexpandtheirinventoryofintelligence-gatheringdevices.

cover Story 30� Afteryearsofdelays,industryiswaitingtodukeitoutforacontracttobuildanarmed,carrier-basedunpilot-eddronecapableofgatheringintelligenceandlaunchingattacksfortheNavy.

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J u l y 2 0 1 3 • N a t i o N a l D e f e N s e 1

2 N at i o N a l D e f e N s e • J u ly 2 0 1 3

July 2013

volume xcviii number 716

EditorSandra I. Erwin (703)247-2543SErwin@ndia.org

Managing Editor Stew Magnuson(703)247-2545SMagnuson@ndia.org

StaFF WritEr Dan Parsons(703)247-2585DParsons@ndia.org

StaFF WritEr Valerie Insinna(703)247-2542VInsinna@ndia.org

dESign dirEctor Brian Taylor(703)247-2546BTaylor@ndia.org

EditoriaL aSSiStant Yasmin Tadjdeh(703)247-9469YTadjdeh@ndia.org

advErtiSing Dino Pignotti(703)247-2541DPignotti@ndia.orgFor additional advertising information, go to the Index of Advertisers on the last page.

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National DEfENSE (ISSN 0092–1491) is published monthly by the National Defense Industrial Association(NDIA),2111WilsonBlvd.,Suite400,Arlington,VA22201–3061.TEL(703)522–1820;FAX(703)522–1885.advertising Sales:DinoK.Pignotti,2111WilsonBlvd.,Suite400,Arlington,VA22201–3061.TEL(703)247–

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Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance

24 Battlefield Sensors Continue to Make Technological Leaps Thepastdecadesawabooninsensor technologyforthemilitary,butmoreis needed,especiallywhenitcomestousing theminaccessdeniedwarzones. By STEW MAGNUSON

27 research arm for Intel agencies Looking for Nontraditional Sensors

28 u.S. Special operation Command Seeks Intelligence Capabilities for Duty Worldwide AsSpecialOperationsCommandmoves tobecomeaglobalforce,itneedsnew information-gatheringtoolsthatwillwork inamyriadofconditionsandwithdifferent platforms. By DAN PARSONS

Cover Story

30 fight Begins over Navy’s armed Drone Program Fourmajordefensecontractors— LockheedMartin,GeneralAtomics,Boeing andNorthropGrumman—arevyingfor thechancetobuildtheNavy’s UCLASSdrone. By VALERIE INSINNA

Unmanned Systems

32 remotely Piloted aircraft Strikes Score Victories But Could Backfire in the Long run Usingunmannedaerialvehiclesfortargeted killingsofsuspectedterroristsmayput fewertroopsinharm’sway,butitalsomay becreatingfutureadversaries. By DAN PARSONS

35 unmanned aircraft Proponents See future Beyond Battlefields Fromadvertisingtoagriculture,numerous industriesareembracingdronesandhope tousethemfornon-militarypurposes. By yASMIN TADJDEH

37 robotic Mule Vendors Seek opportunities outside Military Asmilitaryspendingwindsdown,defense contractorsarelookingtoselltheir mechanizedmulestothecommercial sector.Frombordersecuritytothelogging market,industryseesabrightfuture. By STEW MAGNUSON

Departments4 readers’ forum

6 President’s Perspective TimeIsRighttoCleanUpDefense Acquisition by Lawrence P. Farrell Jr.

8 Defense Watch Ruminationsoncurrentevents by Sandra I. Erwin

10 Inside Science + TechnologyTacklingthemilitary’stoughestproblems

by Dan Parsons

11 Ethics Corner

12 Business + Industry NewsWhat’snewandnextfortheindustrialbase

by Valerie Insinna

14 homeland Security News Monitoringthehomefront by Stew Magnuson and Yasmin Tadjdeh

39 NDIa News

40 NDIa Calendar CompleteguidetoNDIAevents

44 Next Month Previewofournextissue

44 Index of advertisers

35

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4 N AT I O N A L D E F E N S E • J U LY 2 0 1 3

Technical Skills Needed in DoD� In reference to the April 2013 Defense Watch editorial, “Pentagon, Contractors Clash Over Profits,” a critical compo-nent of the acquisition process that is often overlooked is the expertise of the defense laboratories and warfare centers. It is their job to be subject matter experts and to maintain a technical capabil-ity in the core competencies needed to develop, field and sustain the weapon systems required.

Many game-changing advancements evolved from the in-house work at war-fare centers. The personnel at these insti-tutions are educated and experienced in the technology and challenges required for defense and weapon systems.

With respect to the issues stated in the editorial, warfare centers provide the pro-gram management offices with a rigorous review of cost and schedule to evaluate industry proposals. A fundamental require-ment for “should cost” is a clear under-standing of the technical challenges and requirements, which the warfare centers provide.

Unfortunately, when defense budgets are reduced, warfare center program support is often the first to be cut. This degrades not only their current capability, but the ability to protect and sustain a technology base for future needs. In this, there is a parallel to the needs of industry to maintain a trained workforce.

Similar to the adversarial relationships between program managers and contractors cited in the editorial, warfare centers have also experienced an increase in adversarial relationships with the program offices that they exist to support. This reduced trust degrades the warfare center’s ability to do its job.

Government civilians at the warfare cen-ters are professionals who can advise pro-gram managers on the tradeoffs between technical risk and program funding. The program manager may not accept the high-er-cost, lower-risk approach, but warfare centers help them make informed deci-sions.

Some of the most successful programs have benefited from a strong partnering relationship between the warfare center and program manager. Warfare centers can reduce technical risk by conducting in-house research, development and test and evaluation to refine the requirements prior to major contract actions. They can act as the direct technical authority for the pro-

gram manager, providing day-to-day over-sight and contract management. Or they can act as technical advisors in the develop-ment and execution of a program plan.

All of these roles, and more, are focused on helping the program managers and their industry partners succeed in meeting war fighter requirements.

In the battle over declining defense bud-gets, please don’t forget about the critical role of warfare centers in maintaining the technical capabilities required for national defense.

Alan Canfield, P.E.Sent by email

Simplify Defense Acquisition� The Defense Department’s acquisition process exists only to provide technologi-cally advanced tools to the war fighter. An honest analysis over the last 20 years can only conclude that successful acquisition programs are rare.

The April 2012 Defense Business Board study, “Linking and Streamlining the Defense Requirements, Acquisition and Budget Processes,” highlights the problems in the balkanized acquisition structure. To quote from the study: “The Department of Defense’s acquisition system continues to take longer, cost more and deliver fewer quantities and capabilities than originally planned.”

We are living with an acquisition pro-cess designed in the 1970s and 1980s, with every reform from the Packard Com-mission, Goldwater-Nichols act, Defense Secretary Perry’s initiatives, and yes, Better Buying Power 2.0 simply piled on top of an increasingly dysfunctional system.

Each service, with its own acquisition bureaucracy, has multiple duplicating func-

tions both internally and across ser-vices. The net result: Infighting, lack of accountability and a waste of resources. I challenge anyone to sit down and write the organization chart for the ser-vices’ acquisition functions. If it doesn’t end up looking like a plate of spaghetti, you haven’t done it right. Organiza-tional spaghetti isn’t conducive to pro-viding cutting-edge products on time and within budget.

It is a paradox that as our weapon systems get more complex, the organi-zations and processes to manage those systems must get simpler.

The defense acquisition process and organizational structure must not be reformed, but completely disbanded and re-established from a clean start. This is what the acquisition process should be: Seven technical reviews and three deci-sion points. That’s it, three decision points. At each decision point, a single paper, less than 100 pages, is required. Not the 40-odd documents required now. A single deci-sion coordinating paper to answer three questions: How will it help the mission? Is it technically feasible? Is it worth what it will cost?

The answer to those three questions is all the information the milestone decision authority needs. If the decision coordinat-ing paper answers those three questions satisfactorily, the program moves on.

I know what you are thinking. What about regulatory and statutory require-ments? They can be changed. We have congressional liaison people on the payroll. Put them to work. This is a fight we can win.

Next up, disband the disparate service specific acquisition organizations and reor-ganize them under a single organization. Our war fighters deserve an acquisition organization backing them up. The net result: Better interoperability, less duplica-tion and lower costs.

Jeff WindhamRock Island, IL

Email your comments to SErwin@ndia.org

Readers’ Forum

and to maintain a technical capabil-ity in the core competencies needed to develop, field and sustain the weapon

Many game-changing advancements evolved from the in-house work at war-fare centers. The personnel at these insti-tutions are educated and experienced in the technology and challenges required for

tions both internally and across ser-vices. The net result: Infighting, lack of accountability and a waste of resources. I challenge anyone to sit down and write the organization chart for the ser-vices’ acquisition functions. If it doesn’t

Correction: The article “Advocates Tout Small Nuclear Reactors for Military Installations” in the June 2013 edition of National Defense misidentified the location of an accident that killed a test plant’s three-man operating crew as Fort Belvoir, Va. It took place in Idaho.

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6 N at i o N a l D e f e N s e • J u ly 2 0 1 3

When the Defense Department submitted its fiscal year 2014 budget, the possibility of sequester was not considered.

Industry executives, administration officials and politicians on Capitol Hill all assumed that some solution would be found. The prevailing thinking could be summed up as follows: “Sequestration won’t happen, but I don’t know how it won’t happen.”

Well, it did happen, and maybe we all need to consider that if we don’t know how something won’t happen, then we need to prepare for it to happen. The resulting budget crisis has the Pentagon scrambling to catch up. To be fair, many leaders in the defense industry’s largest companies always expected the worst, and those firms, while hurting like other businesses, are much bet-ter positioned to weather the storm. The real problem, though, is the considerable damage that will happen to the nation’s industrial base at large as the military builds down in an unplanned and inef-ficient way.

Since the sequester for fiscal year 2013 was triggered March 1, the Defense Department has been allowed to reprogram funds to balance its accounts, and is preparing a major amendment to the 2014 budget. The 2015 spending plan, now in preparation, will assume that the Budget Control Act of 2011 (BCA) caps will remain in place. The real issue that now must be faced, and can no longer be ducked, is where will another $500 billion be found in an already depleted budget? The needs are many, but the pressing imperative for operations and maintenance funds puts research, procurement and force structure squarely in the crosshairs.

Investment funding represents approximately 30 to 40 percent of the budget. It remains to be seen how much of that money will be taken from these critical accounts to pay the BCA bill. Obvi-ous answers are program cancellations and reduced procurement quantities.

There is a better way to save money, though, and that is through administrative changes to the Pentagon’s acquisition system. Many studies show that cost overruns in major acquisition programs average around 70 percent. Some large programs have unit costs overrunning many times the average unit cost targets. A much more efficient and disciplined acquisition system has the potential of lowering weapons costs substantially, perhaps as much as 10 to 20 percent. The savings over time could add up to hundreds of bil-lions of dollars.

So how is this efficiency to be achieved? One place to start is the Goldwater-Nichols legislation, which needs to be adjusted to bring the service chiefs back into the acquisition chain of com-mand. Only a service chief can effectively make tradeoffs among budget, requirements and program performance. There ought to be much more focus on disciplining the requirements process. Adjusting requirements downward is a much needed process that is done poorly. And “block” development, where a system is developed in increments, on time and on schedule, seems to have been forgotten.

Then, there is massive red tape. Every program is saddled with a plethora of reviews and administrative procedures that seem to have plunged the entire system in quicksand. Program managers spend more of their time building PowerPoint slides and briefing their program than they do on actual program management. This is nothing new. The Packard Commission identified the same prob-

lem in its seminal study on acquisition nearly three decades ago. “All of these pressures, both internal and external to DoD, cause the program manager to spend most of his time briefing his program. In effect, he is reduced to being a supplicant for, rather than a manager of, his program,” the commission said.

If anything, the process today is even more encumbered than it was in the time of the Packard Commission. Recall, too, that one of the objectives of Goldwater-Nichols was to create a direct line from program manager to program executive officer, and then to service acquisition executive. Today, this is being violated in the extreme.

One alarming consequence of this dysfunctional system is that talented program managers are becoming an endangered, almost extinct species. Managers who can push back against unreasonable requirements or burdensome processes, and can execute to cost and schedule, are hard to find.

We have a system that doesn’t properly select, grow and nurture acquisition talent. Nor do we have a system that frees up talented managers to execute programs that are unencumbered by excessive process. The system we have fails to recognize that acquisition is a profession much like law, medicine or investment and financial planning.

What is needed is a system where top leadership is deeply involved in the process of growing properly credentialed acquisition professionals, where that leadership is deeply involved in balancing budgets, requirements and program performance, and where pro-gram content is adjusted downward to preserve budget flexibility and balance.

This system needs to be staffed by top players and must have strong functional support in the areas of cost, engineering and contracting. It should focus on setting a “baseline” in programs and structure them in true evolutionary developmental fashion, by taking account of technology readiness at major program milestones.

This might seem hard to do, but in reality it is simple. The tough part is to back away from the excessive layering of processes that involves literally thousands of overseers who have a say in, but no responsibility for, acquisition performance. It is impossible to hold acquisition managers accountable when they have little to no say in program strategy. Indeed, it is impossible to hold anyone account-able for program performance in the system we have today. Clearly, we have more reviewers than workers.

But the system can be fixed, and the incentive is clearly there. The Defense Department needs to reduce spending and there is plenty of money to be squeezed from inefficient acquisition pro-grams. A properly functioning procurement system could easily save about 10 percent of total defense spending. Poorly planned programs, with undisciplined requirements, that are burdened by excessive process with little accountability must become a thing of the past.

Defense programs that deliver incremental capabilities on cost and on schedule must be the goal. This will happen if we are willing to let go of the status quo.

That 10 percent budget savings in the investment accounts sure would be nice to have in this tough fiscal environment.

President’s Perspective by lawrence p. farrell jr.

Email your comments to lfarrell@ndia.org

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8 N at i o N a l D e f e N s e • J u ly 2 0 1 3

After spending $50 billion over the past decade on failed weapons programs, the Pentagon is grasping for answers.

Assorted procurement reforms have been tried, but they have deliv-ered only marginal results.

With military budgets on a downward slope, Pentagon officials have warned that there is no more room for expensive errors. The Defense Department last year rolled out a 36-point blueprint on how to lower the cost and risk in weapons acquisitions.

It is also seeking to bring back the magic of the 1950s and ‘60s, when the United States produced a spate of first-rate military war planes that became icons of American airpower.

Behind much of that technological success was a secretive opera-tion in Burbank, Calif. — called Skunk Works — run by Lockheed Corp. Now Pentagon officials are considering resurrecting the busi-ness practices of Skunk Works to inject innovation into weapon programs and cull bureaucratic bloat.

The success of Skunk Works was such that the name became a catchphrase for a business that produces advanced technology with high efficiency, and was mostly free of red tape and corporate meddling.

With the Pentagon now under growing pressure to bring pro-grams to fruition faster and cheaper, it is understandable why Frank Kendall, undersecretary of defense for acquisition, technology and logistics, is turning to Skunk Works for inspiration.

“That is not how we do business today,” Kendall told an indus-try gathering hosted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Decades of budget overruns, schedule delays and overall misman-agement have made Defense Department acquisition programs a target of congressional critics, watchdog groups and even the Pen-tagon’s own leadership. Kendall said that while there are positive signs of progress in some programs, there is no clear path forward for fixing a procurement process that Marine Corps Commandant Gen. James Amos described as “constipated.”

Kendall defined the problem as more than just having to cut costs in times of shrinking budgets. The Pentagon also worries about los-ing its technological edge to emerging powers such as China, which are developing advanced weaponry. Under the current procure-ment regime, it takes decades to bring a new combat aircraft from the drawing board to the flight line.

“Some people are challenging us,” said Kendall. During the height of the Iraq War, when U.S. military vehicles became fre-quent targets of buried bombs, then Defense Secretary Robert Gates prodded the bureaucracy to expedite the purchase and deliveries of mine-resistant trucks known as MRAPs. That pro-gram showed “how we can do things quickly,” Kendall said. But buying trucks should not be compared to designing and building next-generation combat jets, he cautioned. The realization that the Defense Department’s procurement system cannot deliver complex technologies at warp speed prompted the Skunk Works idea.

“I think it’s something to aspire to,” Kendall said.Skunk Works received a contract from the CIA in 1955 to build

a spy plane that would be flown over the Soviet Union. Named the U-2, the aircraft’s first flight took place July 4, 1956. In subsequent years, Skunk Works brought forth the SR-71 Blackbird, the F-117 Nighthawk and the F-22 Raptor.

The organization’s success is attributed to chief engineer Clar-ence Leonard “Kelly” Johnson. He was credited with putting together small teams of government and industry engineers who worked closely and chased specific, well-defined goals. Kendall said he would like to see the Skunk Works’ culture of teamwork and trust in current programs.

“I’ve asked the [military] services to propose a program they would like to take that approach with,” said Kendall. To operate like Skunk Works, program leaders will be relieved of the onerous paperwork demands and layers of administrative oversight that are common in most Pentagon projects. There would be “onsite reviews” by senior defense officials, said Kendall. “We focus on the substance” rather than on the administration. In exchange for that relative freedom, the program managers will have to assure senior leaders that both government and industry have a professional team, that requirements are precisely defined and that everyone works well together, said Kendall. “I want people who really under-stand the work.” In contrast to the current environment of mistrust, one of the pillars of the Skunk Works approach is a collegial envi-ronment where everyone strives toward a common goal, said Kend-all. “This is an experiment worth trying. If we have some successes we might be able to broaden it.”

That is a big “if,” a former Skunk Works executive warns. There is such deep mistrust these days between government

managers and contractors that creating a Skunk Works-like environ-ment would be a tall order, said Frank Capuccio, former executive vice president and general manager of Lockheed’s advanced tech-nology programs who served on the original F-117 team.

Leaders such as Kendall “have the desire to make changes,” Capuccio said in an interview. “But as you go down lower in the system, they are more concerned with telling industry how to do something than deciding what they really want,” he said. The cul-ture is “adversarial, to the point of being hostile between industry and the acquisition people.”

Bad management dooms programs, he said. “Everyone wants to believe they can ‘review’ success into a program, and [as a result] elaborate program decks come into being.”

Capuccio sees Kendall’s effort as an attempt to not only speed up development of weapons and lower costs, but also protect industrial skills that would erode in the absence of new programs.

Ultimately, the Pentagon is looking to turn around a blemished record of weapon acquisitions. “I have been watching programs get canceled because they weren’t affordable. We have done too much of that,” Kendall said. Countless initiatives to reform weapons-buy-ing rules, including major legislation that Congress passed in 2009, so far have been mostly powerless against cost overruns.

Every defense secretary since at least the Nixon administration has sought, largely unsuccessfully, to reduce waste in Pentagon programs by rewriting policies, changing regulations and increasing oversight. There are no easy fixes, said Kendall, “that are going to ‘reform’ acquisition and make everything infinitely better overnight with one or two policy changes.”

If the Pentagon is ever going to bring back the glory days of mili-tary weapon development, the Skunk Works experiment should be worth a try.

Defense Watch by sandra i. erwin

Email your comments to serwin@ndia.org

Pentagon Tries to Recapture Tech Glory Days

10 N at i o N a l D e f e N s e • J u ly 2 0 1 3

When two dozen Navy SEALs stormed Osama bin Laden’s Abbottabad, Pakistan compound in May 2011, each was

wearing a $65,000, state-of-the-art set of night-vision goggles unavailable to any other fighting force.

It is one of many examples of how U.S. special operators have access to the most technologically advanced weapons and gear on the market. Still, they are always looking for improvements.

Special Operations Command constantly solicits industry for technologies that improve upon existing gear or that can perform a desired function that is beyond the reach of current equipment.

Lisa Sanders, SOCOM’s science and technology chief, in May ran down a wish list of gadgets and capabilities at the Special Opera-tions Forces Industry Conference in Tampa, Fla.

Topping the list are lighter and more flexible body armor, advanced night-vision goggles and portable infrared sensors. Opera-tors also need improved forensic devices to gather information from “sensitive sites” in the field, and biometric tools that can identify combatants that hide among civilian populations.

Through broad agency announcements (BAA), the directorate is able to gain access to off-the-shelf technologies and engineering breakthroughs.

The directorate hosts an experimentation event three times a year to allow industry, academia and other government agencies to see how certain technologies work in an operational environment.

The latest BAA, which called for proposals for a tactical assault light operator suit (TALOS), was released the day of Sanders’ SOFIC speech and has drawn proposals from industry and govern-ment agencies.

The suit is seen as an infantry uniform that can provide enhanced strength and improved ballistic protection while preserving the wearer’s fluid movement. Using wide-area networking and sensors attached to their bodies, operators will have more situational aware-ness of the action around them and of their own vital signs.

SOCOM has no patience for drawn-out development programs. Only gear that is ready for fielding is given serious consideration, Sanders and other SOF officials said. The idea behind the BAAs and subsequent technical experimentation events is to find out what is on the market, identify items that work for SOF and field them in as little time as possible.

Participants had to submit a summary of their proposal describ-ing how each would achieve the desired characteristics with current and emerging technologies — just two weeks after the BAA was issued. Demonstrations are scheduled for early July at MacDill Air Force Base, Fla. Envisioned as a hybrid of body armor and battle uniform, the initial TALOS capability should be ready within a year, and SOCOM would like to field the suit within three years.

Sanders described four main areas in which SOCOM wants to advance its technological capabilities: Comprehensive signature man-agement to conceal the purpose and origin of communication signals in the field; human performance, which includes gear like the TALOS suit and lethal and non-lethal weapons; weapons and gear for use in anti-access, area denial situations; and improvement of battlespace awareness to include biometric devices and other portable sensors.

SOCOM also wants to improve what it calls “small-unit domi-nance” — allowing a handful of operators to infiltrate a contested environment and, through a combination of technology and train-ing, have the capabilities of a much larger force.

On a micro-scale, SOCOM is also interested in addressing anti-access, area-denial scenarios or A2/AD. While the parent services are concerned with nations like Iran and North Korea and their abilities to deny access to certain areas of the globe, SOF operators don’t worry about countering ballistic missiles and the like.

“We might not be dealing with a large, technically advanced threat, but we might also be outside the theater of declared, active conflict,” Sanders explained. At issue for small teams of two or three operators is “not standing out in the environment that [they are] in.”

That calls for communication devices that don’t look like military radios, tactical vehicles that look more like beat-up old trucks than Humvees or aircraft that are not immediately identifiable as military.

SOF operators are called to perform policing duties and intel-ligence gathering as often as direct-action operations. They need improved technologies that can identify enemies hiding among civilian populations and that can accomplish that task in short order under different circumstances, said Mike Fitz, program manager for SOCOM sensitive site exploitation.

“We can’t seem to find technologies out there that are meeting our requirements at this time,” Fitz said at SOFIC. “We have a lot of interest in biometrics capabilities — it’s been very successful, we’ve captured a lot of bad guys. Sometimes half the battle is finding out who the enemy is.”

Desired items include digital fingerprint imaging devices and remote facial recognition tools. Where DNA matching currently takes several days in a conventional lab, SOCOM wants a device that can complete the task in under an hour. Fitz said several vendors are currently undertaking the latter challenge (See story, page 15).

“We need these to be portable and very accurate,” Fitz said. “On the forensic side of the house — people hide stuff from us, and we need to be able to find out where it is and what it is.”

The requirement for detection technologies extends past explo-sives and booby traps — though they remain a top concern — to sensitive information and intelligence, as well.

“Our capability to identify explosives is presumptive. It works, but it’s not 100 percent accurate so we’re always looking for a bet-ter way to do that,” Fitz said.

Other biometric tools work well in some situations, but not in others — day versus night or when a subject is being cooperative versus being combative toward submitting a DNA sample for example. SOCOM needs tools that can perform in as many sce-narios as possible, Fitz said.

“Sometimes, for instance, technologies work better on a live per-son than a dead person and we’re interested in knowing who that enemy KIA is,” he said.

Companies with proposals for these capabilities can submit their technologies to any of a series of rolling technological experiments where SOCOM puts commercial technology in the hands of opera-tors. Two experiments have been held in Indiana and Florida this year. A third will take place before the year’s end at Camp Roberts, Calif., focusing on maritime technologies.

“It is not intended to be a show and tell,” Sanders said. “It is not intended to necessarily result in a contract. … It is intended to help determine how to make your product better,” and for SOCOM to learn what is available on the market.

Inside Science + Technology by dan parsons

Email your comments to dparsons@ndia.org

Special Operators List Equipment Needs

J u l y 2 0 1 3 • N a t i o N a l D e f e N s e 11

Many companies that have provided goods and services to the U.S. military are now evaluating new markets with state

and city law enforcement agencies, which are seeking sophisticated security systems to address their expanding public safety needs.

Before making this leap, vendors should understand that states, cities, regional authorities and other local governments also bring into play a new world of contracting and political compliance requirements.

In this world, the Federal Acquisition Regulation and the Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement don’t count. However, pay-to-play laws may derail even the best proposals.

Pay-to-play laws are anti-corruption measures enacted by at least 22 states, as well as a number of cities and regional authorities such as the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Author-ity. These laws often are legislative responses to scandals in which elected officials awarded contracts — particularly no-bid contracts — to individuals or companies that made substantial donations to an official’s campaign.

While the awards may not have been influenced by the con-tributions, the appearance that the public official may have been improperly influenced by the contributions was sufficient to pro-voke the legislation.

While each pay-to-play law is unique to the enacting jurisdic-tion, the laws generally come in three flavors: Those that disqualify a contributor or fundraiser from bidding on contracts; those that bar an existing contractor from making campaign contributions or fundraising; or those that require contractors to report all campaign contributions and fundraising.

In general, political contributions over certain minimum amounts and fundraising activities will trigger the laws. The sources of such contributions include corporate treasury, company political action committees (PACs), subsidiaries and personal contributions from owners, directors, corporate officers or any employee who is involved in soliciting, administering or managing contracts with a pay-to-play jurisdiction. In Pennsylvania and Kentucky, all employees are included. And in many jurisdictions, spouses and minor children are covered.

New Jersey provides a perspective on how pay-to-play laws can affect a business plan.

There, a bidder may not be awarded a contract with the state worth more than $17,500 if within 18 months preceding the start of contract negotiations, or during the term of office of the elected official, a business entity — including the company, company PAC, corporate director, corporate officer, owner or partner, or spouse of any of the above — solicited or contributed over $300 for the candidate, candidate’s committee or local political party.

In Maryland, vendors with contracts aggregating over $100,000 in a year must file disclosure reports that identify all contributions over $500 within a 24-month pre-award period, and submit subse-quent semi-annual reports. The reports must include contributions from the contractor, contractor’s PAC, subsidiaries, personal contri-butions from the contractor’s directors and officers, and personal contributions from the subsidiaries’ directors and officers.

Failure to comply with pay-to-play laws may result in the compa-ny’s disqualification, debarment, or being subject to fines depending upon the jurisdiction.

From the compliance viewpoint, staying within the pay-to-play laws may be particularly difficult because the laws are triggered by

legal acts — contributing to a political campaign — that are integral to the political process, and carried out by individuals who may not be corporate officers or employees such as spouses and minor children.

Clearly, companies planning on contracting with states and local governments must have a political contribution compliance program in place. Such programs would have, at a minimum, several elements.

Companies may require their directors, corporate officers and employees involved in the soliciting, administering and managing contracts with states and local governments to pre-clear personal campaign contributions. In this case, corporate policies tailored for the company, board of directors, PACs and employees are necessary.

Further, the policies must be effectively communicated to per-sonnel. Email or memos should be forwarded to corporate officers and employees individually, since they are direct, personal, hard to ignore and provide evidence of corporate due diligence if the employee should make a contribution that triggers the restrictions. Annual certification that these individuals have pre-cleared all political contributions and fundraising is also valuable as a reminder.

Companies can also subscribe to a service that provides current and comprehensive reporting of pay-to-play laws. In-house tracking and analysis of applicable legislation would overwhelm most legal departments.

Pre-clearance procedures for the company, members of the board and PACs should also be established. For employees, one common procedure is to require them to review a list of pay-to-play juris-dictions in advance of making a campaign contribution. If the can-didate is not in one of the pay-to-play jurisdictions, the employee may make the contribution. If, on the other hand, the candidate is running for office in a pay-to-play jurisdiction, then the employee must contact a political contribution compliance office to obtain approval before making the contribution.

When keeping records of contribution requests, it is important to maintain confidentiality, because many employees prefer not to disclose their political preferences. Employees must be assured that their requests will not be disclosed unless required by law. Records of requests, approvals and disapprovals must be maintained in order to meet the reporting requirements of some jurisdictions, and also to demonstrate good faith compliance by the company should a violation occur.

Like all compliance systems, effective controls must be imple-mented and periodically tested. Communications to employees — particularly during campaign seasons — training and annual certifications help prevent unintentional violations.

Periodic updates of lists of employees who are subject to the pay-to-play restrictions also are necessary. Test controls by searching websites maintained by many jurisdictions that identify political donors for employees who have made donations without seeking pre-clearance.

The bottom line is if a company plans to enter the state and local government market, it should prepare in advance to respond to new and challenging compliance requirements, including pay-to-play laws.

Ethics Corner by STEVE EPSTEIN

Beware of State, Local Pay-to-Play Laws

Steve Epstein is the chief counsel, ethics and compliance for The Boeing Company. The views expressed are solely those of the author.

12 N AT I O N A L D E F E N S E • J U LY 2 0 1 3

The Army is moving closer to field-ing a next-generation infrared sensor

that will allow soldiers to detect an enemy’s heat signature at greater distances.

Raytheon officials said its third wave of forward-looking infrared devices, called FLIR, could be in soldiers’ hands within a few years.

“We’re working with the U.S. Army and other services to identify where in the cycle of programs it should feed in,” said Hector M. Reyes, chief engineer for Raytheon mis-sile systems. “I think that clearly we’ll see it in the [Ground Combat Vehicle] when it is fielded, and my guess is probably before that.”

Like night-vision goggles, soldiers can use FLIR to see in the dark. However, night-vision devices still need a small amount of light in order to work because they amplify existing light, said Donald Reago, acting director of the Army’s night vision and electronic sensor directorate at the communications and electronics research, development and engineering center at Fort Belvoir, Va.

FLIR, which uses heat signatures to amplify an image, can be used in pitch-black conditions.

Raytheon demonstrated its newest infra-red sensor system — the eLRAS3 — at a media day in May. It has also been demon-strated to the Army, Reyes said.

The new FLIR is about half the weight of the ones currently in use and can be car-ried by one person instead of two, Reyes said.

The eLRAS3 can also detect a wider range of the infrared spectrum than its predecessors, said Jerry Toby, a business development executive for Raytheon Mis-sile Systems’ combat and sensing systems division.

“What does that do for us? It gives us the ability to see through many more dif-ferent kinds of atmospheric conditions, both natural” and those artificially created by the enemy, he said. “It also lets us take advantage of the physics of the smaller frequencies that will allow us to shrink the optics and put more capability into

the same size or smaller package than we have today.”

Earlier FLIR models required that the Army modify its vehicles to integrate the new sensors, but third-generation systems can easily be swapped with those currently mounted on combat vehicles, Reyes said.

Raytheon is currently looking into how it can affordably produce the technology

for use on vehicles and for dismounted sol-diers. It’s also looking at how it can further increase the system’s range, reduce power consumption and boost video quality to high definition.

“The Army needs to be able to buy these sensors in quantity, so reducing the price to acquire these is extremely important,” Reago said.

BY VALERIE INSINNABusiness + Industry News

SOLDIER TECHNOLOGY

� The military increasingly is inter-ested in software that can ana-lyze massive amounts of data and provide intelligence on security threats, but Eglin Air Force Base in Florida is harvesting data for a more mundane cause: To cut down energy costs.

A team of engineering, energy and software companies is working on an energy management system for the base that will use more than 20,000 sensors in 100 buildings to gather information from light switches, valves, thermostats, air con-ditioners and other sources to pinpoint

where savings can be found.The system is projected to save the

Air Force $2.5 million annually with a payback period of less than three

years, said Bill Cull, vice president for the public

sector at Splunk, a San Francisco-based soft-ware company spe-cializing in big-data analytics.

Eglin Air Force Base now can build

data on information such as the occupancy

of buildings and the use of heating, ventilation and cooling units throughout

the year, which will give its maintenance staff greater awareness of how energy is

ANALYTICS

New Lightweight Infrared Systems Under Development for Army

Air Force Uses Big Data To Glean Energy Savings

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J U L Y 2 0 1 3 • N A T I O N A L D E F E N S E 13

� Having to lug around batteries during missions has long been a complaint of soldiers. They typically carry an average of seven different kinds of batteries that weigh a total of 16 pounds, according to the Army Research Laboratory.

Executives from a Canadian company named Panacis said its new battery, the SharePack, is a lighter way to not only power devices, but also to harvest energy from anything from a solar blanket to a Humvee battery.

The device can store and use energy like a battery, as well as connect directly to other power sourc-es and pull energy without the need of an intermedi-ary device. Its name comes from its ability to connect to other SharePacks to make a single unit, which Panacis executives say will help eliminate the waste of dead or partially-depleted batteries.

“What we’re hearing from actual soldiers is when they use just a battery, there’s a ten-dency to only use about 70 percent of the battery capacity, and then they get nervous and they unplug it and they put a fresh one in,” said Steve Carkner, Panacis’ chief technology officer. “Because of the way our

system networks with itself, you don’t have to discon-nect the batteries. … Being able to actually use 100 percent of the energy that you’re carrying is a great efficiency benefit.”

The SharePack weighs 2.2 pounds and has a USB port and two military con-nector ports. Its LCD display shows information such as the level of charge and how long before it is empty. The device comes in two configu-rations — one that fits into a double M4 magazine ammo pouch and a wing-shaped one that fits around the body.

Panacis showcased the SharePack at

the Special Operations Forces Industry Conference held in May in Tampa, Fla. The company believes the product’s

light weight and flexibility makes it an especially good fit for special operations, said Janet Mason, chief executive officer of Panacis.

Special Operations Com-mand has invited the com-

pany to submit proposals on the SharePack, she added.

Panacis executives also want to market the SharePack to the Marine Corps for its squad power network, a program administered by the Office of Naval Research, Mason said.

POWER SOURCES

Company Pitches Multi-Purpose Battery To Military Customers

consumed, Cull said. “From there, main-tenance staff can make adjustments in energy usage [and] track these trends over time.”

Personnel from the companies have been on site at Eglin for more than a year, said Brian Gilmore, program manager for McKenney’s, a mechanical contracting and engineering company also working on the system. Other businesses involved include Gulf Power and Chevron Energy Solu-tions.

Besides cutting energy costs, the Air Force can also use the data to identify when equipment isn’t working properly by comparing it to similar devices or past usage, Gilmore said.

McKenney’s is in talks with the mili-tary about expanding the project to oth-er installations, Gilmore said, though he declined to say where or when.

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A survey of bomb squads in the United States found that only a small

percentage of improvised explosive device incidents are reported to a national data-base, said a federal official tasked with preventing terrorist bombings.

“You have IED incidents occurring all across the United States daily that never get put into a database, never get brought forward and are only seen in the news,” said Edwin Bundy, program manager of the improvised device defeat subgroup of the technical support working group at the com-bating terrorism technical support office.

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms is tasked with keeping track of all IED-related incidents in its Bomb Arson Tracking System database.

The problem is that there is no law requiring that bomb disposal units file reports, Bundy said at the GovSec confer-ence in Washington, D.C.

Suspecting that there was serious under-reporting, TSWG conducted a survey of all 468 public safety bomb squads in the United States in 2011. The report found that the units were called into action some 32,000 times in 2010. Meanwhile, the ATF database showed about 3,400 incidents.

An incident was defined in this survey as

anytime a bomb squad was dispatched, including hoaxes, suspicious packages that turn out to be harmless, or real explosive devices. Each case requires that a unit use its resources to respond, Bundy said.

Only 27 percent of bomb squads were reporting to the database, and of those, only 50 percent were reporting 100 percent of the incidents, he said.

The survey also found that some bomb disposal units were only reporting what they considered “serious incidents.” The problem is that a “serious incident” is not defined, Bundy said.

The bomb squads “don’t understand that here in D.C., things are driven by statistics. If you’re not keeping accurate records, you’re not getting all the resources that you need,” Bundy said.

On Feb. 26, the 20th anniversary of the first World Trade Center bombing in New York City, President Obama released the countering improvised explosive devices presidential directive that, among other items, called for cooperation and informa-tion sharing about IEDs among federal, international and private sector partners.

It also directed agencies to identify IED networks; bomber tactics, techniques and procedures; and to enhance the reporting

on and dissemination of criminal intelli-gence, incident information and suspicious activity involving explosives.

Six weeks after its release came one of the more high-profile terrorist bombings in recent years, the Boston Marathon attack.

Bundy said: “Our officials need to be able to talk to people realistically about IEDs. They have to have accurate information. And right now, it just is not happening as well as it should. Unfortunately, the bad guys are better at sharing information than we are when it comes to IEDs.”

As for the survey, “If only 27 percent of the people are reporting information, how do you know what the domestic environ-ment even looks like?” he asked. “Do you want your science-and-technology develop-ments based on 27 percent of the available information? Or do you want as much information as you can possibly get on it?”

It is an important question for TSWG, a federal agency tasked with finding techno-logical solutions to terrorist threats.

Rooting out bomb-making networks, scanning crowds for suicide bombers and disarming explosives once they are found are some of the challenges the group is try-ing to solve.

The pressure cooker bombs used during the Boston Marathon were relatively small devices, he noted.

There are sensors that can scan for such IEDs, but they can be large, impractical and have high false-positive rates. Are they accurate enough for a police officer to rap-idly make the decision to shoot a would-be bomber?

“How well do you think that would go over in the United States if one or two people got killed who had no device on them at all?” he asked.

The problem is once all the different tim-ers, explosives materials, switches — and items that enhance the IED such as gaso-line, propane or shrapnel — are included, there are about 9 million variations of a homemade bomb.

Trying to defeat all these myriad types of bombs is called “chasing the device” in the counter-IED lingo, he said. That is not the best strategy, he added.

“There is some network stuff going on, people trying to stop [chemical] precursors [used to make bombs] and that type of thing, but we are still spending the majority of our time trying to defeat a device that is already made and already on its way to the target. We need to change that mindset, ” Bundy said.

14 N at i o N a l D e f e N s e • J u ly 2 0 1 3 14 N at i o N a l D e f e N s e • J u ly 2 0 1 3

Survey Exposes Flaw in Domestic Improvised Explosive Device Reporting System

by Stew MagnuSon anD yaSMIn taDJDeHHomeland Security News

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J U L Y 2 0 1 3 • N A T I O N A L D E F E N S E 15

� Collecting DNA from would-be immi-grants or criminal and terrorist suspects is relatively easy.

It only takes someone to run a cotton swab on the inside of a cheek to collect enough cells to provide a sample.

Receiving the results, though, can take weeks or months because of backed-up laboratories.

Federal agencies, including the Depart-ment of Homeland Security’s U.S. Citizen-ship and Immigration Service, last decade began asking if there was some way to speed up the process. Officials who work in refugee camps wanted a way to verify identities. If a family wanted to immigrate to the United States and had several chil-dren, they wanted to ensure that all of them belong to the parents, and they are not part of a human trafficking scheme.

Ideally, a device would take 45 minutes to produce a result and cost about $100 per test, they said.

After six years of development, inte-genX, a Pleasanton, Calif.-based company, has taken a laboratory that normally en-compasses two sterile rooms, about eight instruments and the skills of a highly edu-cated technician and reduced it all into something the size of a desktop copy ma-chine.

The process takes about 90 minutes and costs about $300 per test, which is not quite what USCIS is looking for, but close.

“We’re not there yet. But we’re driving in that direction. But 90 minutes opens up lots of possibilities,” said the company’s Chief Technology Officer Stevan Jovanov-ich.

The RapidHit 200 Human Identification System promises to radically alter the way law enforcement conducts investigations, he said. All federal agencies and 27 states allow for officers to collect DNA samples from ar-rested criminal suspects and to enter them into a national database. The database has DNA collected at sexual assault, murder or burglary crime scenes that remain unsolved. The problem is that traditional labs take weeks or months to return a finding, which in some cases allows criminals to be released before police know the results, said Bob Barrett, the company’s head of marketing.

The 90-minute window will return a result by the time the suspect is finished undergoing normal arrest processing pro-cedures, Jovanovich added.

RapidHit 200 uses microfluidics to pro-cess and extract the DNA inside a dispos-able cartridge, which can do five to eight

samples taken from inside a cheek at a time. Since it is enclosed, there is no risk of contamina-tion. The machine itself will cost “a couple hun-dred thousand dollars,” Barrett said, declining to be more specific.

There is a good return on investment for law en-forcement agencies since it has the potential to reduce investigators’ workload and force criminals into plea bargains instead of cost-ly trials, Barrett said.

“It is absolutely a huge game changer,” he added.

DHS, the FBI and military and intelligence agency cus-tomers have bought some of the machines and are testing them, Barrett said.

It can also be used to quickly identify victims of di-sasters, he noted.Barrett said this does not

mean the end for the labs. “It takes a lot of routine stuff out of [the technicians’] hands and

allows them to focus more on the tough stuff, the things that keep them coming to work every day like the really difficult sexual assault sample that has multiple mixtures in it.”

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16 N AT I O N A L D E F E N S E • J U LY 2 0 1 3

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� If hackers can steal a company’s top-secret data, they can just as easily destroy a company’s network, experts said recently.

Instances of cyber-espionage have been well documented throughout the world — hackers sneaking behind network barriers have stolen huge amounts of intellectual property from the private and public sec-tors alike. However, these intruders also have the capability to permanently erase data, said Richard Bejtlich, chief security officer for Mandiant, a Washington, D.C.-based cybersecurity company.

“Whenever you hear someone say, ‘Don’t worry, it’s just espionage.’ [It’s important to realize that] espionage easily can esca-late to destruction. It’s just the prerogative of the intruder,” Bejtlich said at the Center for National Policy, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank.

Once a hacker has breached a network, he has the ability to steal, spy or destroy data, he said.

“If we were to break into the network here and I just snooped around, I would have the same ability … to destroy everything that’s there.

So it’s just a question of intent at that point,” said Bejtlich.

Another issue Bejtlich highlighted was the corruption or manipulation of data, which he called a “middle ground” between espionage and destruction.

“In some ways, it’s the toughest one to identify because most companies don’t necessarily know what the data should be,” he said.

In February, Mandiant released a report that blamed Unit 61398 of China’s People’s Liberation Army for numerous cyber-intru-sions. The unit, which is based in Shanghai, curtailed its activities after the report’s ini-tial release, but it recently picked up where it left off, said Bejtlich.

Unit 61398 has stolen hundreds of tera-bytes of data from at least 141 organiza-tions, the majority of which are based in English-speaking countries. It is possible that the unit employs hundreds of opera-tors, the report said. In total, Mandiant is tracking 24 separate known hacking groups.

There is already evidence of cyber-attacks causing damage, said Emilian Papa-dopoulos, chief of staff at Good Harbor, a Washington, D.C.-based cybersecurity risk management company.

“I think we’re hitting on a trend that we’re starting to observe across the board, particularly from espionage or theft of information to disruption or damage,” said Papadopoulos. “We saw the Shamoon virus attack against Saudi Aramco, which wiped out data of 30,000 computer terminals. … Thankfully, that didn’t jump from the corporate network over to the actual … oil production and operation network. If it had, that would have been potentially devastating.”

Shamoon was a 2012 cyber-attack on Saudi Aramco, the state-run Saudi Ara-bian oil company. It is widely believed Iran launched the attack.

Email your comments to SMagnuson@ndia.org

Cyberspies Can Destroy, Corrupt Data As Easily as They Snoop

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Sequestration has created considerable challenges for the Army. In addition to the short-term uncertainties surrounding budget cuts, the service also faces long-term difficulties adapting to a changing world.

Leaders are seeking answers to questions that will affect strategic, doctrinal and train-ing decisions: What will future warfare look like? Where will it occur? How it will be fought? How should we prepare?

Although sequestration-related cuts will doubtlessly cause near-term pain, overall, it appears likely that they will accelerate a transformation process which would have otherwise proceeded, albeit at a much slower pace. Hence, it seems appropriate to consider how the abrupt disruption of sequestration may generate opportunities to rapidly transform, rather than slowly evolve, the Army into a force that is best positioned to support national defense objectives.

Resilience science might help provide some answers. Resilience is defined as the ability of an ecosystem to return to its origi-nal state after being disturbed. Although developed through the study of ecosystems, resilience principles and methodologies have allowed managers to study, model and manage a wide range of complex systems — from coral reefs and old growth forests to non-physical domains such as cyberse-curity, economics, organizational decision processes and the human psyche.

By applying resilience science methodol-ogies, actions that shape the Army — ener-gy projects, for example — are evaluated with respect to how they affect, positively or negatively, the Army’s ability to provide mission services under both normal and disrupted conditions.

A proposed project’s value is linked to its ability to enhance desired outputs dur-ing times of disruption. Projects shown to reduce risks are given precedence over projects that provide fewer direct mission benefits. As a result, limited resources are directed toward projects that best help accomplish a goal.

As a science, resilience examines how entities absorb and adjust to unpredict-able and unforeseeable disruptive events. Unlike traditional risk management tools that focus on quantifying and balancing known risks against available resources, resilience addresses a system’s capacity to

retain core functions in the face of both predictable, calculable threats and unpre-dictable disruptions.

Throughout the Army’s long history, it has perpetually adapted to changing con-ditions, needs and resources. It will do so again. As the Army responds to the short-term challenges of sequestration, applying resilience methodologies and principles can provide a mechanism to cope with the chal-lenges. Viewing sequestration through the lens of resilience science, it becomes evident that sequestration presents opportunities.

Scalable Army: Sequestration presents an opening to develop an Army that is more readily scalable. Such a pursuit would result in investments in information tech-nologies that would transform logistics and increase the Army’s ability to manage the proximity, density and diversity of its resources. This would ultimately result in a more capable, more agile and less resource-dependent force.

Increased Modularity: Sequestration offers the chance to roll back significant bureaucratic creep that has resulted in a rigid and uncommunicative specialist-based operation. Specialists excel in crafting solu-tions that protect systems against specific risks. But narrow solutions are insufficient to meet today’s multi-dimensional chal-lenges. Current military systems must be able to withstand unforeseen challenges from many directions, and many such chal-lenges cross the boundaries between areas of specialist expertise. Budget cuts could spur the consolidation of programmatic responsibilities and areas of functional expertise and promote increased cross talk. Leaders should focus on the integration of interdisciplinary generalists or “multi-specialists” who promote cross-disciplinary teaming and problem solving. This will broaden the perspective of staffing ele-ments and lead to improved decision mak-ing and project oversight.

Organizational Simplicity: Numerous offices, commissions, working groups and task forces — each claiming ownership over specific efforts or areas — have populated the Department of the Army. Sequestra-tion presents an imperative to streamline or methodically eliminate many of these groups and enact a more rigorous prioriti-zation of their activities. The consequence would be the simplification of many

activities, initiatives, and approval regimes. Resilience science can provide defensible evidence to overcome some of the forces that tend to subvert rational decisions.

Organizational Openness: Sequestration provides an opportunity for the Army to examine existing bureaucratic structures and processes. This restructuring could result in a bureaucracy more open to innovation and cross-fertilization, which would facilitate broader knowledge sharing and development of expertise. Attention would be directed toward solving complex challenges.

Revised Priorities: Tightening budgets should drive efforts to eliminate projects that do not demonstrably benefit the Army. The elimination of these projects will liber-ate resources for more beneficial purposes.Distinguishing between numerous worthy projects, however, can present significant challenges. Resilience as a lens provides a useful tool for assessing and ranking multiple proposed projects. This science can provide support to overcome existing momentum and resistance.

Information as an Economic Multiplier: As the Army seeks to reduce operational costs, information-based tools can be valu-able. Since the 1990s, U.S. combat forces have been equipped with advanced com-mand, control, communication and intelli-gence technologies. The increased ability to synchronize activities, coordinate initiatives and adjust movements in real time has transformed the U.S. war fighting mindset.

The right information, provided in the proper format to the right recipients in a timely manner can remove the need for significant investments in hardened and redundant infrastructure. In a similar fashion for installation infrastructure and energy, a tight information feedback loops can provide near real-time awareness of potentially disruptive events.

Sequestration offers the Army a rare chance to embrace resilience science as a means to better manage fiscal and political uncertainties, thus proving that sequestra-tion’s dark cloud does, indeed, have a silver lining. ND

Sequestration’s Silver Lining: A More Resilient U.S. Army

James W. Mancillas Ph.D., is environ-mental technology branch chief at the U.S. Army Environmental Command located in San Antonio, Texas. Nicole Sikula is an environmental ecologist and John McDonagh is a member of the command’s office of legal counsel. The views expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not reflect the official policies or positions of any department or agency of the U.S. govern-ment.

VIEWPOINTBy JaMES W. MaNcIllaS, NIcOlE SIkula aND JOhN McDONagh

20 N at i o N a l D e f e N s e • J u ly 2 0 1 3

By Sandra I. ErwInThe Navy will decide over the next

two years how it will modernize its fleet of 35 cargo planes that move passengers and supplies from bases on land to big-deck air-craft carriers at sea. The nearly five-decade-old transports, called C-2A Greyhounds, are still in working order, but a portion of the fleet must be either refurbished or replaced before its lifespan ends in 2028.

The Naval Air Systems Command’s carrier onboard delivery advanced devel-opment program office plans to solicit industry bids in 2014. The competition is likely to become a showdown between incumbent Northrop Grumman Corp., the original manufacturer of the C-2, and Bell-Boeing, maker of the V-22 Osprey tiltrotor aircraft.

Northrop Grumman will propose to rebuild existing aircraft and extend their service life by nearly two decades. Bell-Boeing will offer the V-22, a hybrid that combines the functions of a helicopter and a turboprop aircraft. The company has the backing of the Marine Corps, a champion of the Osprey that has made no secret of its desire to see a larger V-22 presence across naval forces.

The Navy insists that more than just two options will be considered for the modernization of the C-2 fleet. An analy-sis of potential choices was completed in 2013. The study looked at multiple alter-natives, said Naval Air Systems Command spokeswoman Paula A. Paige. Among them: A service life extension program for the C-2A; new construction of improved C-2s, V-22s and improved V-22s; a common sup-port aircraft (C-XX) concept, and a “clean sheet” aircraft design.

Bidders were asked to submit white papers in June. A solicitation for contractor proposals will go out in late 2014, with a due date 90 to 120 days later, Paige said. A contract award is now planned for fiscal year 2016.

The contents of the Navy’s analysis-of-alternatives study have not been released, but industry insiders with knowledge of the findings said the V-22 option scored more favorable reviews than anyone had expected. They surmise that Northrop’s and Bell-Boeing’s bids will be fairly evenly matched, and that the battle for the Navy’s contract will be contentious.

The Navy declined to comment on spe-cific contractor proposals. “It is too early

in the process to speculate on details of a competition and potential alternatives lead-ing into a competitive procurement,” Paige told National Defense.

Bell-Boeing officials said they have not seen the study, but are optimistic about their chances against industry powerhouse Northrop Grumman. The company — a partnership of Bell Helicopter in Fort Worth, Texas, and Boeing Rotorcraft Sys-tems in Ridley Park, Pa. — regards the C-2A modernization program as pivotal to its future, as U.S. military orders for the V-22 soon will plateau.

The V-22 first flew in 1989. The Marine Corps began testing it in 2000 and fielded it in 2007, despite a series of crashes that cast doubts on the safety of the aircraft. It is currently in service with both the Marine Corps and Air Force Special Operations

Command. The Osprey is now part of the presidential helicopter fleet and in recent years was deployed in both combat and rescue operations over Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya.

Northrop Grumman, for its part, believes it has the upper hand because rebuilding existing aircraft will cost the Navy far less than buying $67 million apiece Ospreys.

The Greyhounds have been workhorses since they started flying in 1964, and are responsible for ferrying passengers and sup-plies from shore bases to carrier decks. The fleet of 35 aircraft is showing its age, and the Navy will need to start a mod-ernization program before the airframes begin to experience fatigue-related prob-lems. Northrop Grumman has proposed to update the airframes with new com-ponents that would be common with the Navy’s E-2D Advanced Hawkeye radar plane, which the company expects to begin building in 2015.

Remanufacturing C-2 aircraft with com-ponents that already are being bought for the E-2D will reduce costs for the Navy, said Steve Squires, director of C-2 Grey-hound programs at Northrop Grumman Aerospace Systems. “We want to provide

the Navy with the lowest cost alternative,” he said in an interview.

“We will be remanufacturing the existing fuselage and replacing the necessary com-ponents with parts of the in-production E-2D Hawkeye,” he said. A modernized C-2 would include the cockpit, wings, engines and digital avionics of the E-2D.

The Hawkeye recently completed fleet

Navy to Consider New Ways to Shuttle Passengers, Supplies to Aircraft Carriers

C-2A Greyhound Navy

tests, and Northrop is negotiating terms for a multiyear contract for 32 aircraft. It is projected to join the fleet by fall 2015.

Squires said minor modifications would extend the service life of the C-2 fleet by 20 years, or 7,500 flying hours. This calcula-tion is based on the Navy’s average use of the C-2 of 375 hours per year.

Refurbishing naval aircraft can be a risky proposition because airframes take a beating at sea and damage might not be noticeable until the aircraft is disassembled. Squires said the C-2 fleet is not expected to suffer fatigue problems until the 2020s. “There is a lot of capability in this airplane,” he said.

The C-2 program is a reminder of the risks involved in remanufacturing older air-frames. The Navy unsuccessfully sought in the late 1990s to extend the life of outdat-ed P-3 Orion maritime surveillance aircraft, some of which had been flying since 1962. The Navy in 1994 awarded a contract to Raytheon Co. to remanufacture 32 P-3s. The work involved replacing, upgrading, and refurbishing the fuselage, wings, spar

caps, flaps and empennage, installing new control cables and portions of the avionics and electrical wiring. Raytheon found that there was more corrosion-related damage than had been expected. Because it was a fixed-price contract, Raytheon concluded that the additional damage could not be repaired for the previously established cost. So the Navy and the company agreed to

end the contract after only 13 aircraft.Bell-Boeing officials hope that past trou-

bles with remanufacturing programs will persuade the Navy to buy new airplanes, even if that requires a larger upfront expen-diture. “They are going to put a 40-year-old fuselage underneath all this new equip-ment. … Invariably all this ends up costing more than budgeted,” said Ken Karika, manager of military business development at Bell Helicopter, and a former Marine Corps V-22 pilot. The Osprey would cost more money upfront than the remanufac-turing option, but the Navy would save in the long run, he said.

Another consideration for the Navy is how the Osprey would blend with car-rier flight operations. The V-22 would be a new addition to the carrier deck, although the aircraft has been flying off large-deck amphibious assault ships.

The Navy agreed to test the Osprey’s ability to land on a carrier and deliver cargo, and to conduct COD [carrier onboard delivery] missions during breaks in combat jet launch and recovery cycles.

Brian Scolpino, program manager at the COD advanced development program office, said V-22s have flown off flight decks on five separate aircraft carriers. As part of “risk reduction efforts,” he said in a statement, the V-22 program completed in April the “crawl” and “walk” phases of a test known as a military utility assessment. The third phase, which he called “run,” was

scheduled for mid-June. These utility assessments, Scolpino cau-

tioned, should not be characterized as “trials,” as their only purpose was to check how the V-22 integrates with aircraft car-rier operations.

Karika said Bell-Boeing officials, at press time, had not been informed of the results of the military utility assessment.

He said the company is optimistic about the V-22’s prospects in a future competi-tion. The Osprey, said Karika, beats the Greyhound in cargo capacity. Its maximum internal capacity is 20,000 pounds, com-pared to 10,000 pounds in the C-2. The expected service life of a V-22 airframe is 10,000 flying hours.

Karika acknowledged that transitioning from the C-2 to the V-22 for COD duties might appear simple in theory but would require adjustments in how logistics mis-sions are planned and executed.

“We’ve been doing COD missions the same way since the 1960s,” he said. The C-2 flies to the carrier and, after it lands on deck, crews distribute the cargo to multiple helicopters that ferry passengers or deliver supplies to the rest of the strike group.

With the V-22, deliveries could be made point-to-point because it can land and take off vertically, like a helicopter, while the C-2 requires a runway. “This approach would save time and fuel,” Karika said. Ospreys also would be able to conduct res-cue missions or medical evacuations from any surface ship or submarine in the strike group, he said. “The carrier becomes more relevant with Ospreys.”

Navy officials have expressed concerns about the V-22 downwash when it lands. “Everyone asks [about the downwash],” Karika said. “It’s really a matter of under-standing the V-22. It is different from a helicopter,” he said. “Downwash are narrow areas. If you know them, you avoid them.”

Karika said the Navy also might consider using the Osprey as a refueling tanker for Hornet jets during recovery and launch operations. Bell-Boeing will be testing the Osprey in refueling missions later this sum-mer, he said.

The pressure on Bell-Boeing to win the C-2 competition will grow if sales to the Marine Corps and the Air Force begin to taper off. “We have a hot production line,” said Karika. About 230 aircraft have been delivered to the Marine Corps and Air Force Special Operations Command, and 60 more are under contract. Company officials expect future orders from foreign customers such as Israel and possibly other Middle Eastern nations. ND

J u l y 2 0 1 3 • N a t i o N a l D e f e N s e 21

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V-22 Osprey Navy

22 N AT I O N A L D E F E N S E • J U LY 2 0 1 3

BY VALERIE INSINNARestrictions on the travel of govern-

ment officials gutted the Defense Gam-eTech Users Conference held during April in Orlando, Fla. Total attendance at the conference, which aims to increase the use of serious games by the Defense Depart-ment, dropped to a third of the previous year’s show.

The few military attendees, who had taken personal time off work, wore pink ribbons on their badges that stated, “I’m not really here.”

The state of the GameTech conference illustrates how simulation companies are facing many of the same challenges as other defense contractors. Even as military officials assert that the need for simulation tools has only increased, the industry is contending with funding delays, consolida-tion and increased competition over fewer contracts.

With the fiscal climate looking “pret-ty bleak,” the simulation industry should not depend on the U.S. military as its sole source of business, said Frank C. DiGiovanni, Defense Department director of training, readiness and strategy, during a keynote speech at the conference.

“You’ve got to look for surrogates in other sectors. So what are the sectors that could use your capabilities?” he asked a crowd of industry officials. “I really encour-age you to think about the business model you are using.”

Not all of the discourse was so nega-tive. At the Interservice/Industry Training, Simulation and Education Conference in

December 2013, military officials said sim-ulations would be vital to training troops during the budget crunch because they are cheaper than live training.

“We have a moral obligation as leaders to make sure that those soldiers, sailors, air-men and Marines that we send forward are ready,” said Marine Corps Maj. Gen. Glenn Walters, then the commanding general of the 2nd Marine Aircraft Wing. Simulation “is the one key to get us there at the best bang for the buck, no doubt in my mind.”

But just because military officials see the value of simulators and serious games doesn’t mean that money is available to buy them. Budget cuts have delayed work on contracts for the Army’s Program Exec-utive Office for Simulation, Training and Instrumentation, for example, and likely will be a problem for some time.

“We have a large list of gaming require-ments that have been awaiting funding. Given our current level of funding, many will be on the waiting list for a while,” said Kristen McCullough, spokeswoman for PEO-STRI. This includes both new games as well as contract modifications, she added.

An award for the flagship simulation of the Army’s Games for Training program was due to be announced in May. PEO-STRI was able to secure funding for the platform, but the announcement will now be made at least a month late, McCullough said.

Budget cuts have also delayed some of Alion Science and Technology Corp.’s con-tracts with the military, said retired Rear Adm. Gary Jones, vice president and man-ager of the company’s advanced modeling, simulation and training operation.

“I did have some slowdowns in some of the work I was doing for the Army in the area of providing them services for some of their sim centers,” said Jones, who is also the former commander of the Navy’s Training and Education Command. He declined to provide specifics.

The simulation industry recognizes the impact of budget cuts, but DiGiovanni’s remarks were “a little too restrictive,” said Tom Baptiste, executive director of the National Center of Simulation and a for-mer Air Force pilot.

Baptiste said he disagrees with the asser-tion that the overall market for military simulations is decreasing, but allowed that there will be some negative effects on industry.

Consolidation, especially of smaller busi-nesses, is likely on the horizon, he said. “Some of the little guys are going to get acquired by big corporations that want to enhance their portfolio. Others will not be able to compete and will disappear. I think those are all realities.”

While consolidation isn’t a threat to the simulation industry as a whole, there is risk of losing some of the innovation small busi-nesses bring to the table, he added.

Small businesses are “the ones that can be agile enough to do some of the really, really cutting edge kinds of things that we see on the horizon … whereas the big guys — you know it’s difficult to steer that big, old ship,” Baptiste said.

The marketplace for simulation compa-nies is crowded, Jones said. And while use of simulation by the military will probably

Simulation, Gaming Sector Plagued by Fiscal Challenges

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increase, the Defense Department may choose to wring more out of current simu-lators rather than buy new ones.

Yet another issue is that there are fewer big opportunities on the horizon, especially for expensive flight simulators. With con-tracts for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter and KC-46 tanker simulators already awarded, prime contractors will likely bully small businesses out of remaining contracts, Bap-tiste said.

“Can a small company compete against the … business development power of a Lockheed Martin?” he asked. “You know, it might be tough.”

The Pentagon’s increased need for simu-lation technologies and its need to save cash are not mutually exclusive, said Andrew Tosh, president and founder of GameSim, an Orlando-based software engineering company. Industry must be able to deliver both in order to stay relevant, he said.

To cut costs for its government custom-ers, GameSim’s strategy is to repurpose technologies coming out of the entertain-ment industry for use in military simula-tion, Tosh said.

The military and commercial industry is similar in terms of the technology it needs, Tosh said. Military officials want their simu-lations and serious games to look like the video games their children play even though they are produced with less money.

“The better answer to that person is that we need to use the same technology as games, and then bring it over to the military,” he said. “The only cost-effective way to do that is to make the government a customer, not the [only] customer.”

It’s always good advice to tell a business to diversify its portfolio, Baptiste said. But for the average government contractor, it’s not as easy as flipping a switch and selling products commercially.

“They don’t have a big sales force. They don’t have a marketing team. They don’t do the things necessary to sell 10,000 of these things that they produce like a commercial company might be able to,” he said.

Contracting with the government is “a totally different animal” than selling prod-ucts commercially, Tosh noted. For GameS-im — which splits its business between military and commercial sales — chal-lenges include ensuring that the company’s accounting system is compliant with rules and regulations for defense contractors, and making sure that the cost burden isn’t unfairly put on the commercial side.

Baptiste believes there are opportunities for companies to expand to the medical and transportation sectors. Partnering with commercial vendors could help interested military contractors spin off their products

to a non-defense market, he said.Repurposing military simulations for

other industries is another way companies can grow their business.

That is what Alion is trying to do with its measure of total integrated system surviv-ability software, which allows Navy engi-neers to redesign ships and then test their survivability with simulated explosions. Alion is redeveloping the system for use in the oil industry.

“We’ve done some pilot studies already where we’ve seen that it’s successful and we’re in discussions with several custom-ers,” said Peter Jacobs, the company’s direc-tor of communications.

Many military simulators can also be used by or reworked for Department of Homeland Security personnel, local law enforcement and first responders, Baptiste said.

“Training first responders for [the Federal Emergency Management Agency] is not much different than training soldiers. You change the scenario from force-on-force combat to an earthquake or a tidal wave or a hurricane, but the command-and-control required to control a wide, expansive natu-ral disaster is no different than a theater of war,” he said. “You can use computer-based, constructive simulation to train battle staffs that work for FEMA just like you train a battle staff that’s conducting combat opera-tions in Iraq.”

Simulation companies also see big oppor-tunities in foreign military sales.

The Army in May awarded a $21 mil-lion contract to Cubic Corp. to provide its Engagement Skills Trainer 2000 for small arms training to an unnamed foreign coun-try. Systems, weapons and in-country sup-port by a subcontractor are also included in the contract.

But breaking into international sales is difficult, especially for smaller companies that have little experience working with the State Department and no legal experts who can help parse regulations, Baptiste said.

For larger contractors, increased aircraft sales to foreign countries will present an opportunity to sell corresponding simula-tors, he continued. “When we sell Black Hawks to the United Arab Emirates, you know they’re probably going to want a simulator to go with it.”

The Navy has expanded its use of Alion’s Navy continuous training environment — which can virtually bring together disparate parts of a strike group for simulated war games — to allied and coalition partners. Such hands-on experience shows foreign countries the benefits of virtual training, Jones said.

However, the high up-front cost of simu-lations is a barrier to potential foreign customers interested in buying their own systems, he continued. “What we have to do is to articulate, ‘For this amount of investment, here are the savings you can achieve.’”

But it’s not all bad news for the simula-tion industry. That venture capital firms are interested in acquiring smaller serious gaming and simulation companies is a sign of the health of the industry, Baptiste said.

A New-York based private equity firm in January bought Bohemia Interactive Simulation, an Australian company best known for creating the Virtual Battlespace games used by the Army. Bohemia in April acquired TerraSim, which produces software for mapping and creating virtual terrain.

Baptiste predicts budget cuts ultimately will drive simulation to become a larger part of training, and that companies should see them as a challenge to become more innovative.

“We are going to have to rely even more heavily” on simulation, he said. “I think what you will see is a calculated response to the austere budget by each of the services to relook at the balance of live versus simu-lated training.” ND

J u l y 2 0 1 3 • N a t i o N a l D e f e N s e 23

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By STEW MAGNUSONOver the past dozen years, the U.S. military has rapidly fielded next-generation battlefield sensors to find road-side bombs and the insurgents who plant them.

Hyperspectral and wide-area surveillance sensors are two exam-ples of technologies that military leaders have touted as success stories.

But the military can’t stand pat, one government researcher said.“The last 10 years we have been concentrating on [intelligence,

reconnaissance and surveillance] in envi-ronments where people can freely say, ‘We are swimming in sensors and drown-ing in data,’” said Stefanie Tompkins, dep-uty director of the strategic technology office at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

But the permissive environment, where unmanned aerial vehicles carrying such sensors fly over warzones unmo-lested, may not be the situation in which the military finds itself in the future.

DARPA is thinking about new ways to gather data in access-denied areas, she said.

Operating in contested environments means either employing sensors from stand-off distances, or somehow secretly placing them inside enemy territory, she said.

The ultimate challenge would be something buried underground, with a lake over it, a jungle to the side “and maybe a bunch of people trying to shoot at you as well,” she said recently at the Defense Security and Sensing Confer-ence in Baltimore.

In the future, peer adversaries will be doing everything possible to pre-vent the military from experiencing that “drowning in data” situation, she said. Meanwhile, in permissive areas of opera-tion, there are challenges remaining, she stressed. Finding a specific person in a crowd, for example, hasn’t become any easier, she said.

“At the same time, we are moving into an environment of incred-ible cost constraints, so we have to try to do the most with less,” she added.

One example is the time and funding the Navy spends hunting for submarines.

DARPA has looked at placing small, inexpensive sensors at the bottom of the ocean in optimal spots to turn them into “underwater satellites.” Instead of a top-down approach to submarine hunting, the looking up tactic has been receiving some positive results in experiments, she said.

These are a “couple of orders of magnitude cheaper than any-thing we have looked at before,” she said. Using submarines to hunt

submarines is expensive, she noted.“I don’t think the cost constraints are going to go away anytime

soon, so I think we should embrace it and really redirect ourselves to a whole new set of really exciting questions,” Tompkins said.

Vendors at the conference, many of them small businesses or research labs, showed that there are still plenty of new ideas and products that can improve the military’s ability to gather data that leads to better battlefield situational awareness.

Advanced Reconnaissance Corp. of Fishkill, N.Y., is working on refining hyperspectral sensors, which became important over the previous decade during the fight to defeat impro-vised explosive devices. They perceive shades of colors that can’t be discerned by human eyes. They have been used to look for disturbed earth where insurgents may have buried roadside bombs.

“The fundamental technology is hyper-spectral, but we have developed some technologies within that sphere that are absolutely unique,” said Mark Westfield, the company’s president and CEO.

The first innovation permits automatic, on-board processing of the data to tell users what they are seeing.

“The Holy Grail is automatic target recognition, and we have achieved that. We tell you exactly what it is,” he said.

The “drowning in data” problem is caused by a lack of human analysts who must wade through hours of video to find what they are seeking.

The processing of hyperspectral and electro-optical sensors inside the com-pany’s Precision ARTIS system provides operators with an image and an annota-tion on what they are seeing. Disturbed earth caused by someone burying a bomb is different than tire tracks. It can discrim-inate between the two, Westfield said.

“We don’t have analysts in the middle,” he said. The onboard processor is trained to look for specific objects. “Once our

system is trained to find a certain thing, it always finds it,” he said.The Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization

bought two of the company’s airborne sensors for use in Afghani-stan on manned reconnaissance aircraft. They have one-quarter meter per-pixel resolution at 11,000 feet.

The company was able to strip some of the features needed for the airborne sensor and mount a smaller version on a vehicle that can scan ahead for disturbed earth.

JIEDDO is also interested in a version for dismounted soldiers, Westfield said.

It also has agricultural applications. It can fly over a field and spot unhealthy crops or find an illegal marijuana patch hidden among corn, he added.

Battlefield Sensors Continue To Make Technological Leaps

Hyperspectral sensors have commonly been used to look for disturbed earth where IEDs have been buried. ABOVE: DEfEnsE DEpt. / BElOw: ADVAncED REcOnnAissAncE cORp.

Another company using the color spectrum is Solid State Sci-entific Corp. of Nashua, N.H. Its 16-color multi-spectral imager is being marketed as something than can quickly defeat camouflage. It is tuned to detect chlorophyll, which is found in every plant, said company representative James Murguia. The processor tags everything green in a scene that doesn’t have chlorophyll in it. Camouflaged items pop out on a view screen.

The Air Force will test it and put it on an unmanned aerial vehicle within the next year, he said.

Another problem that has plagued soldiers first in Iraq and now Afghanistan is brownouts when landing helicopters. The downwash

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kicks up dust and sand, which makes for hazardous conditions.

Phase Sensitive Innovations, of Newark, Del., is using passive millimeter wave imag-ing to give pilots a view of what is behind dust clouds. The Coast Guard could also use it for port security during foggy con-ditions, said Dan Mackrides, a research engineer at the company, which was spun off from a University of Delaware program.

Passive millimeter wave technology uses background radiation to form its images. It has been employed by the Transportation Security Administration to scan underneath passengers’ clothing for weapons or bombs.

In this case, the imager takes radiation emitted from people, other living objects and the ground and contrasts it with the cold sky, which reflects off materials dif-ferently.

“If there are any people in the clouds, they are like light bulbs with millimeter wave,” he said.

The sensor uses a distributed antenna array in order to minimize size, weight and power demands on helicopters.

The research-and-development funding came from the Office of Naval Research, and the company is looking for industry partners to take the technology to the next level, Mackrides said.

There are still improvements to be made

in two battlefield sensors that have been around for decades: radar and night vision.

As far as radar, work continues on giv-ing operators 3D images instead of flat 2D pictures, said Thomas Goyette, an imaging scientist at the University of Massachusetts. The school’s laboratory is doing work to help the military add this capability.

“Adding the third dimension to it makes it look more like what you are looking at optically,” he said. A front, side and top view help an operator gain a better idea of what he is seeing.

“Let’s just say [the services] have always been interested in 3D imaging, however, it’s been done with varying degrees of success,” he said.

As for night vision, one long-time goal has been to accomplish this without the long image intensifier tubes that stick out from the eye.

One research institute believes it is grow-ing closer to a solid state device that will be flat against the eye like a pair of glasses or goggles. SRI International’s division in Princeton, N.J., has been working on the problem for 10 years, and is preparing to introduce a product at this year’s Asso-ciation for the United States Army annual symposium in Washington, D.C., in Octo-ber.

The new imager uses complementary

metal oxide semiconductors — more com-monly known as C-MOS. These chips are known for low power consumption and smaller size. The new C-MOS system is not quite as good as the night-vision goggles currently being used. Thomas Vogelsong, senior business development director of imaging systems, said the military is never interested in taking a step backwards in terms of performance.

However, the new night-vision sensor could be used in some applications, he said.

“I think there are areas where it will be useful right away,” Vogelsong said. One example would be unmanned aerial vehi-cles. “They don’t need the high perfor-mance of a foot soldier 50 feet away,” he added.

The important development is that military customers now see the possibili-ties, Vogelsong said. The technology has improved enough over the past few years that they have changed their thinking from “if” there will be a solid-state night-vision goggle that doesn’t use tubes to “when” it will finally come to fruition.

After October, SRI wants to put the new sensors in the hands of customers who can go out and do field testing and try it for dif-ferent applications, he said. ND

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■ The Intelligence Advanced Research Project Activity is funding long-term research for several sensors, although not necessarily the kinds that are installed in a ball underneath an unmanned aerial vehicle.

“Sensors produce data and people make decisions. It has always been that way,” said Peter Highnam, the agency’s director. IARPA stresses the human factor in almost everything it does. “It’s all about people,” he said of the programs the agency is funding.

It has only existed since 2006, and is modeled on the more famous Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, DAR-PA.

It “invests in high-risk, high-payoff research programs that have the poten-tial to provide the United States with an overwhelming intelligence advantage over future adversaries,” the agency’s website said. It funds three to five-year projects, and is not interested in “low-hanging fruit,” it added.

Highnam said IARPA serves 16 agencies, about half of which are in the Defense Department. The rest are in the intel-ligence community, along with some sur-prising customers such as the Treasury and State Departments.

Those two departments have just as hard and just as interesting problems as anybody else, he said. They had been “crying out for technology help to come in.”

Most of the agency’s customers don’t actually control the sensors that provide them with data, he noted.

“What happens when we don’t control the sensors, but we have to make use of the data that comes from the technology?” he asked at the Defense Security and Sensing Conference in Baltimore.

Sorting through and making sense of the glut of data in order to “make tough deci-sions” has been a widely reported problem of late, but it has always been an issue in the intelligence community, he said.

“People use the data that comes from these sensors, and frequently people are the sensors,” he added.

One example of “people as sensors” is the TRUST program, or tools for recogniz-ing useful signals of trustworthiness.

“If I meet you for the first time, how do I know I can trust you? This isn’t a lie detec-tor test. This is how do I know I can trust, begin to work with you and do something

productive?”Research shows there are physiological

indicators that are generated within that give a person a good initial understanding of whether someone is trustworthy. But then cultural components override these signals and that insight is lost, Highnam said.

The question is whether an intelligence officer can become a sensor and pick up on these cues. “If this works, then when I walk up to someone in the field I will be instru-mented. I will be fully calibrated, and I will get that immediate feedback … before my own cultural stereotypes begin to override” it, he said.

“It is tough to do right, but it is a fasci-nating program with a lot of papers being produced,” Highnam said.

Although he is growing tired of the “big data” buzzword, another effort, the open source indicators program, will seek to fuse “diverse, publicly available data” to auto-matically alert analysts to changes in the behavior of populations. The agency wants an early warning for events such as political and humanitarian crises, mass violence and migrations, disease outbreak and resource shortages.

“Publicly, everything is a sensor,” he said.As far as the more traditional notion of

a sensor, IARPA is working on some new ideas.

Bio-intelligence chips, or BIC, will seek to collect sweat and saliva and “perhaps other things” from individuals to determine if a person has been working with danger-ous materials such as nuclear weapons, toxic chemicals or explosive materials. The goal of the program is to develop portable lab-on-a-chip devices that provide simulta-neous read-out and analysis of these signa-tures. The sensor might use microfluidics to do the test, he added.

Another traditional sensor program is HFGeo (High Frequency Geolocation). Radar and radio systems have used high frequencies in the ionosphere to operate at long distances for almost a century. But the ever-changing ionosphere creates an unfavorable signal to noise ratio, and makes pinpointing the origin and type of signals traveling through the zone difficult. Recent technological advances may make geolo-cating and characterizing the HF emitters possible, Highnam said.

— Stew MagnuSon

J u l y 2 0 1 3 • N a t i o N a l D e f e N s e 27

Research Arm for Intel Agencies Looking for Nontraditional Sensors

The TRUST programTools for recognizing useful signals of trustworthiness seeks to assess whether or not a person can be trusted under certain conditions.

Bio-Intelligence ChipsBIC will seek to collect sweat and saliva from individuals to determine if a person has been working with dangerous materials such as nuclear weapons, toxic chemicals or explosive materials.

HFGeoHigh Frequency Geolocation. Recent technological advances may make geolocating and characterizing HF emitters possible.

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By DAN PARSONSSpecial Operations Command has honed its information

gathering capabilities during the wars of the past decade, but its requirements are expected to change as it evolves into the glob-ally networked force envisioned by Adm. William McRaven, com-mander of Special Operations Command.

Special operators have relied on industry and their parent ser-vices to provide the extensive intelligence, reconnaissance and surveillance capabilities needed to fight two simultaneous wars, said Lt Gen. Joseph L. Votel, commander of Joint Special Operations Command. He and fellow SOCOM commanders asked industry to keep it up as they assume a new role within McRaven’s “SOCOM 2020” plan.

“How do we transition this very excellent capability that we have invested in and built over the last 10 or 12 years into the new, emerging environments that will not be the same combat zones we have come to understand in places like Iraq and Afghanistan?” Votel asked a roomful of industry officials at the Special Operations Forces Industry Conference in Tampa, Fla.

Given the drawdown from Afghanistan, declining budgets and with operators spreading out from concentrations in the Middle East, SOCOM’s need for information gathering in multiple envi-ronments and the ability to access and transmit that data will grow, officers said in May at SOFIC. While they praised industry’s ability to provide advanced ISR capabilities through more than a decade of combat, SOCOM commanders asked for a variety of new technolo-gies and help revamping old systems.

Votel said ISR equipment that works in multiple environments and with a wide array of vehicles is key to the success of a globally deployed force.

“Plug-and-play ISR is very important for us,” Votel said at SOFIC.

“We need to be able to select the right tool for the right environ-ment and be able to work in a standardized fashion in the aircraft that we are operating,” Votel said.

He listed full-motion video and the ability to access and share the vast amounts of data gathered as areas where SOCOM needs continued help from industry.

“We will need to have an ability to continue to search large data bases to identify enemies and information that helps us understand and gives us clues into what [terrorist] networks are doing out there,” Votel said.

Val Shuey, intelligence program manager for Special Operations Command, said processing, exploitation and dissemination of data-heavy intelligence streams like color and full-motion video will

require continued cooperation between parent services and their SOF compo-nents.

“For SOF to go global, it can’t own the entire architecture,” she said. “We have to partner out.”

“With everything we do within SOF, we’re looking to share the data, use other people’s data, use other people’s tools and applications,” Shuey added.

SOF has several programs underway to help facilitate that global flow of information, gathered by everything from high-end airborne platforms to troop-worn cameras and tracking devic-es. McRaven has directed that acquisi-tion efforts be focused first on outfitting an array of aircraft — both manned and unmanned, fixed and rotary wing — with advanced ISR and data storage capabilities that will work in multiple environments.

In many parts of the world, U.S. military aircraft are immediately recog-nizable to the indigenous populations, said Rich Chudzik, a business unit sales manager for Moog Inc.’s tactical missile

solutions division. Operators who want to fly — or drive — below the radar of potentially hostile forces need ISR equipment that can be quickly and easily mounted to less obvious vehicles, he said.

“These guys are operating in 70-plus countries, depending who you talk to,” Chudzik said. “They sometimes are restricted to con-ventional, standard U.S. aircraft when they would like to fly some-thing that’s a little less conspicuous in a covert-type mission set. In some of these places, flying over an objective inconspicuously is easier on an aircraft that maybe the local populace is used to seeing on a regular basis.”

As important as intelligence and information gathering is to operators in the field, capabilities and acquisition have suffered the same fate as other programs under budget cuts and the threat of sequestrations, Shuey said.

“We took hits in every line,” she said. “But we had enough time to look out in advance of our contracts and we’ve made all the adjust-ments we could to sort of bridge us through that.”

To save cost while continually refreshing operator’s equipment,

U.S. Special Operations Command Seeks Intelligence Capabilities for Duty Worldwide

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SOCOM engineers rarely consider equipment that can’t immediately be fielded. Because operators’ requirements are so dynamic and varied, officials want to test and evaluate a constant stream of gear that, if useful, can be bought and put in the hands of troops, said Jennifer Powers, deputy program man-ager for hostile forces tagging, tracking and locating, or HFTTL.

TTL, as the mission is commonly called, involves placing a tracker on a target suspect, their equip-ment or vehicles and spying on them using satellite imagery and other sensors. The program uses only commercial-off-the-shelf equipment. Because the technologies advance quickly and SOF require-ments are constantly in flux, buying gear that can be immediately fielded cuts cost and speeds delivery to troops, Powers said.

“If you are going to present me with a new kit or device, it needs to be ready to be fielded imme-diately. We are not looking for anything other than [technology readiness level] 9 gear,” which is fully functional and commercially available, she added.

HFTTL is a single program of record with mul-tiple systems, including the SOF tactical video sys-tem, remote surveillance target acquisition system and the austere location force protection kit — “a self-contained force protection system consisting of remote video sensing, unattended ground sen-sor, standoff video surveillance, radar, sniper detection, and power generation components,” according to SOF requirements.

Operators tailor which and how many tags to carry depending on the environment from a list of 190 items.

They also choose what imaging technologies they carry to keep track of tagged enemies and for field surveillance, Powers said. The tactical video system, a component of the HFTTL program, includes an array of long- and short-range cameras for day and night still and video imagery. Also available to troops are sensors that col-lect and disseminate seismic, infrared, acoustic and fiber-optic data.

SOCOM plays its cards close to its vest when it comes to spe-cific equipment requirements. But operators will increasingly take on village support roles and partnership building as they transition from kicking doors and raiding Taliban strongholds, in step with McRaven’s plan to “change the narrative” after Afghanistan.

For those missions, SOCOM will need small, portable sensors also for perimeter security and village support operations by a small group of operators deep inside potentially hostile territory, Chudzik said.

“These are whole new mission sets for, for example [Army] SOC with building partner capacity,” he said.

Sensor manufacturers looked to the Southern U.S. border for monitoring technologies that are portable and can be remotely operated, said Richard Huftalen, business unit engineering manager for Moog sensor and surveillance systems. Over several years, Moog engineers transitioned border-security sensors to military fulfill requirements. As with other technologies, much design work went into making the systems small and light enough to be carried and used by a single operator.

“You’ve got big truck-mounted scopes and there’s all sorts of traffic that comes in under your scope,” making them less than ideal for precise monitoring of enemy advances, Huftalen said of current systems. “So these are mid-range thermal and daylight cameras … wireless setup with solar cells that run it.”

There are two sets of tripod-mounted cameras, each about the size of a shoe box that can be carried in a rucksack, deployed and left to transmit still and video images to a laptop carried by an

operator. Used for border security and perimeter monitoring, a single operator can watch up to six videos feeds at once.

Business opportunities abound providing com-munications and ISR gear for special operations, Powers said. Program managers are almost con-stantly evaluating and injecting technology into the SOF portfolio. The HFTTL program is constantly evaluating new tags and tracking technology, she said.

“We are specifically looking ... for devices that have the ability to use multiple [communications] paths in a single device,” she said. “We are looking for devices that can operate in GPS denied areas, tags that include capabilities such as data logging and efficient battery use.”

SOCOM is in constant need of better ways to track enemies and hostile vessels at sea, she said.

SOCOM also has a quick reaction capability requirements to field an airborne LIDAR imaging system that is grouped together with the tracking program, Powers said.

Lisa Sanders, SOCOM science and technology director, said much has been learned about the

abilities of LIDAR — which uses lasers and radar to measure dis-tance and can be used for mapping and imaging — to help special operators navigate through degraded visual environments where vision or awareness is temporarily obscured.

Experimentation with LIDAR showed the technology can help operators tell dusk from smoke, for instance, and to see through brownout and low-light conditions, Sanders said. ND

J u l y 2 0 1 3 • N a t i o N a l D e f e N s e 29

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Survillance nodes MOOG INc.

By valerie insinnaNorthrop Grumman’s X-47B unmanned aerial vehicle in May took off from the USS George H.W. Bush, circled back to the vessel and skimmed its wheels

across the flight deck before taking flight again. It was the first time a drone performed a touch-and-go landing aboard a moving aircraft carrier and a major step toward making UAVs a regular part of car-rier operations.

With the demonstrator program ending this summer, the Navy is set to rev up the design phase for an armed, carrier-based unpiloted aircraft capable of gathering intelligence and launching attacks. While Northrop’s experience with the X-47B may give the com-pany an edge, other contractors have designs in the works and are ready to start the competition.

After years of delays, the Navy plans this summer to release a request for proposals for the preliminary design phase for its unmanned carrier launched airborne surveillance and strike aircraft, called UCLASS. The final RFP is set to be issued in early spring 2014.

Naval Air Systems Command in its presolicitation said four defense contractors — Lockheed Martin, General Atomics, Boeing and Northrop Grumman — “have credible, existing, comprehensive UCLASS design solutions” that will be ready for Navy evaluation in the third quarter of fiscal year 2014. The service plans to issue four contracts of an unspecified value to those companies for the design phase.

Officials from those companies said they are all gearing up for battle.

The eight-to-10 month preliminary design phase will not elimi-nate any competitors but is intended for the Navy to “evaluate the technical maturity and progress of the designs,” said Bob Ruszkows-ki, Lockheed Martin’s director of UCLASS program development.

Draft specifications for UCLASS indicate that the final aircraft will have a “light strike capability,” but will primarily be used to autonomously conduct intelligence, reconnaissance and surveillance operations, Ruszkowski said.

“That provides some operational flexibility … that right now you don’t necessarily have with land-based UAVs, where you might have to ask a host nation for permission to operate there,” he said.

Final requirements are still in the works, but preliminary specifications state that UCLASS should be able to carry weapons currently available to aircraft that fly from carriers, such as the 500-pound joint direct attack munition, Ruszkowski said.

It will be required to perform persistent coverage of a target at a distance of less than 1,000 nautical miles from the carrier, though the range of its strike capability will be farther than that, he added.

Ruszkowski said part of the challenge will be creating a drone that can integrate seamlessly with an aircraft carrier’s normal deck cycle — the schedule whereby aircraft are launched and are recov-ered on the ship’s flight deck. “That could be 12 hours or more for one aircraft away from the carrier,” he said.

The Navy also has set aerial refueling requirements for the air-craft. UCLASS must be refuelable while in flight, and the Navy would also like it to be able to deliver fuel to fighter jets, Rusz-kowski said.

Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works in April debuted a tailless fly-ing wing UCLASS design, which will reuse hardware and software from the company’s F-35C Joint Strike Fighter and RQ-170 Senti-nel unmanned aerial system.

“We have flown aircraft very similar to our flying wing design, including the Polecat demonstrator that we flew a few years ago ... which was a high altitude flying wing unmanned aircraft. We have a lot of experience with aircraft of this type,” Ruszkowski said.

Citing the ongoing nature of the competition, officials from General Atomics, Northrop Grumman and Boeing declined to give interviews regarding their offerings.

Lockheed Martin’s decision to reuse hardware from the Sentinel and Joint Strike Fighter is a smart one because affordability will be a key concern of the Navy going forward, said Phil Finnegan, director of corporate analysis at the Teal Group.

Lockheed is in the process of evaluating subcontractors and sup-pliers to become part of its UCLASS team, including for the engine and sensor systems. The company is considering using its electro-optical targeting system, or EOTS, a forward-looking infrared sensor used on the F-35, Ruszkowski said.

30 N at i o N a l D e f e N s e • J u ly 2 0 1 3

Fight Begins Over Navy’s Armed Drone Program

Northrop Grumman’s X-47B unmanned combat air system (UCAS) demonstrator Navy

Lockheed Martin

Boeing

General Atomics

Fight Begins Over Navy’s Armed Drone Program

J u l y 2 0 1 3 • N a t i o N a l D e f e N s e 31

UCLASS will operate autonomously most of the time, but a pilot will control the aircraft during critical mission segments. Ultimately, Lockheed wants its design to allow one operator to fly as many as four aircraft at the same time, he said. “There’s going to be inher-ent systems aboard the aircraft and in the loop that will ensure safe separation” between the drones.

Lockheed Martin is taking an open architecture approach with the design so that the Navy can equip the drone with newer, more advanced hardware as needed.

Open architecture “has to be in the communications infrastruc-ture within the aircraft, it has to be within the sensor backbone that’s within the aircraft and the central processing system,” Rusz-kowski said. “So we’ll be able to rapidly integrate, for example, a new sensor.”

Analysts believe Northrop Grumman may already be ahead of the curve because of its work on the unmanned combat air system aircraft carrier demonstrator program, or UCAS-D.

The program was developed by the Navy to learn how to inte-grate an unmanned system on an aircraft carrier and prove that a drone could take off and land while the ship is in motion.

Northrop Grumman will likely use the X-47B aircraft flown for UCAS demonstrations as the basis for its final UCLASS design, Finnegan said.

The UCAS program hit several major milestones in May other than the touch-and-go landing. Northrop Grumman and the Navy accomplished the X-47B’s first catapult launch earlier that month.

The company also demonstrated an arrested landing — which is performed when the aircraft catches its hook on a heavy cable extended across the landing area, bringing it to a complete stop —

onshore at Naval Air Station Patuxent River in Maryland. Carrier-based arrested landings this summer will be the final

demonstrations, said Carl Johnson, Northrop Grumman’s program manager for UCAS-D. The company is conducting additional shore-based arrestments and gathering data to prepare for the final leg of the program.

“Northrop is really the company to beat in part because of the work that it has been doing on this program,” said Finnegan. “Also, if you think more broadly, Northrop Grumman has a very strong position in the Navy” because of its experience building maritime equipment such as the Fire Scout, an unmanned helicopter that will be used by naval special operations forces.

Right now, Northrop Grumman has the advantage of being the only company that has landed a drone on a moving aircraft carrier, Finnegan said. Developing the UCAS has also given it experience working on preventing electromagnetic interference and corrosion resulting from the harsh maritime environment.

“This unmanned system is different from all of the systems that have been designed” before it, Johnson told National Defense. “Every other system knows where it’s taking off and landing,” but the X-47B has to be able to autonomously return to an aircraft car-rier that has sailed away from its starting position.

The Navy’s specifications for UCLASS are different than what the company was required to achieve for the UCAS program, but “we believe that we have a very good understanding of the problems and solutions” going forward into the UCLASS program, Johnson said. He declined to elaborate.

Ruszkowski from Lockheed Martin downplayed the impact UCAS-D will have on the competition.

“The fact that Northrop does have this experience with the X-47 is good, but I don’t think it gives them an unfair advantage,” he said. But “if the roles were reversed, I would say certainly it’s an advantage to have the experience.”

In order to level the playing field, Northrop’s competitors will have access to some of the data from UCAS-D, Ruszkowski added, although the extent of that access is undetermined.

Like Lockheed Martin, General Atomics is reusing hardware and software from its other systems in order to cut down cost. The company will offer the Sea Avenger, a carrier-based aircraft derived from the Predator C Avenger.

General Atomics designed the Predator C while keeping in mind the Navy’s require-ment for a carrier-based UAV, according to material released by the company. It incor-porated features into the original design that would help the drone integrate onto an aircraft carrier, such as folding wings and an internal weapons bay.

The company conducted a wind tunnel test on a model of the Sea Avenger in 2011.

Of the competitors, Boeing has been the most reticent to release specific information about its proposal.

“Boeing will give the Navy a UCLASS platform that can provide a persistent … [intelligence, surveillance and reconnais-sance] and strike capability supporting 24/7 carrier operational coverage,” said Didi Van-

32 N at i o N a l D e f e N s e • J u ly 2 0 1 3

Nierop, spokeswoman for Boeing Phantom Works.

Finnegan and other analysts believe the company will propose a design based on the Phantom Ray. That aircraft originated from Boeing’s X-45C prototype, a tailless flying wing developed for the UCAS-D competition but ultimately axed in favor of Northrop’s X-47B.

Boeing used internal funding to car-ry on development of the Phantom Ray, which made its first flight in April 2011 at Edwards Air Force Base in California.

Three years have passed since the Navy first requested information for UCLASS, but disagreements among Navy leader-ship surrounding the requirements delayed the program’s start. At issue was whether UCLASS should harness the latest, most advanced technology or the most afford-able.

“As I understand it, there’s still a differ-ence within the Navy over the require-ments for the UCLASS,” Finnegan said. “To my understanding, it hasn’t been ironed out yet.”

The three-year delay gave contractors time to develop technology, but having draft specifications in hand only a few months before the start of the design phase doesn’t give companies a lot of time to adjust their concepts, Ruszkowski said.

“It puts us in a little bit of a difficult situation, but we’re managing,” he said. “It would have been better to have seen draft specifications a year ago instead of two months ago.” ND

By DAN PARSONSLess than a week before Farea Al-

Muslimi testified on Capitol Hill in April, a missile launched from a U.S. drone struck his home village in Yemen.

Now a journalist based in Sana’a, Yemen, Al-Muslimi testified April 23 that he was “torn between this country I love and the drone above my head.” It was the first hear-ing the Senate Armed Services Committee held on U.S. drone policy.

“Drone strikes are the face of America to Yemenis,” he testified. “I have a personal experience of the fear they cause.”

Al-Muslimi and his villagers are part of the debate over the use of drones in tar-geted killings. Also at issue are the legality of such strikes and widening concerns that U.S. action is setting a dangerous precedent for when and how technologically superior nations can and should wage war.

Few dispute the legitimate use of drones for scouting and information gathering in combat zones. Unmanned aircraft of all

shapes and sizes have given troops an unmistakable tactical edge in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

But using drones offensively has stirred emotions and brought to light legal con-cerns that distress foreign policy experts, lawmakers and some members of the American public. The process of choosing targets for drone strikes has been largely shrouded in secrecy while the Central Intelligence Agency continues to fire on militants on sovereign soil.

Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., called the April 23 SASC hearing to weigh the issue and attempt to solicit transparency from the Obama administration about how it chooses targets for drone strikes. The administration declined to send a repre-sentative to the hearing. The snub riled Republicans, who worry Obama’s policy on targeted killings is so broad and vague that armed unmanned aircraft could poten-tially be launched against U.S. citizens on American soil.

Since President Obama took office, there have been at least 300 drone strikes inside Pakistan that have caused at least 3,000 deaths and many more casualties, Peter Ber-gen, director of the national security studies program at the New America Foundation, said during the hearing.

The Bureau of Investigative Journalism has counted 13 CIA drone strikes in Paki-stan since Jan. 1 that killed between 50 and 100 people.

Bergen said Obama has authorized at least 47 similar attacks in Yemen that caused between 400 and 700 casualties, mostly of low-level operatives loosely tied to al-Qaida. With each authorized strike, there are fewer legitimate targets to kill, Bergen said.

“Militant leaders are not being killed in any great number,” Bergen said. “What started as a program to kill high-level al-Qaida leaders has devolved into a kind of counter-insurgency air force.”

In a May 23 speech to the National Defense University, Obama vowed drone strikes would taper off in coming months. Yet days later a Reaper strike reportedly killed seven people in Pakistan.

Strikes have also been launched against suspected Islamist militants in the African country of Mali and in the Philippines, said Rosa Brooks, a professor at the Georgetown University Law Center.

Ten years ago, the use of drones in tar-geted killings was occasional and restricted largely to high-value targets, Brooks said. Over the ensuing decade, armed unmanned aircraft have increasingly targeted lower-ranking and fringe al-Qaida militants in more and varied geographic locations out-side the two major U.S.-led wars, Brooks

Remotely Piloted Aircraft Strikes Score Victories But Could Backfire in the Long Run

A fully armed MQ-9 Reaper taxis down a runway in Afghanistan. Air Force

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said at a forum on drone policy hosted by the Cato Institute in April.

“Many targets are associated with an affiliate or an affiliate of an affiliate,” she said. “al-Shabab may not be a nice group of people, but no one would argue that they had a hand in 9/11 or that they pose an imminent threat to the United States,” she said of the Islamist militant group based in Somalia.

“When we have a technology like this that enables us to engage in targeted killing far more frequently at lower short-term risk … are we creating new terrorists faster than we can kill them?” Brooks asked, para-phrasing former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

Retired Marine Corps Gen. James Cart-wright, who now holds the Harold Brown chair in defense policy studies at the Cen-ter for Strategic and International Studies, warned that U.S. drone operations outside of active war zones was eroding the nation’s international reputation.

“My concern is that we may have ceded some of our moral high ground in this endeavor,” Cartwright testified at the SASC hearing. “Some element of transparency in the process, in decision making, and an understanding of the people of … the coun-tries we are working in is going to be essen-tial to regaining that moral high ground. I believe that in several areas of the world, our current drone policies have left us in a situation where we are engendering more problems than we are solving.”

The 2001 Authorization for Use of Mili-tary Force (AUMF), which was reinforced by the 2013 National Defense Authoriza-tion Act, gives the president war powers against al-Qaida, especially militants and terrorists that can be linked to the 9/11 attacks.

In defense of his authorization of drone strikes against targets he deems viable, Obama in his NDU speech challenged Congress to repeal the powers the AUMF affords his administration.

Ilya Somin, a professor at the George Mason University School of Law, echoed the concern over the secrecy of Obama’s meth-ods for choosing targets. Targeted killing in wartime is nothing new, nor is it illegal, he told SASC members, citing the assassination of Japanese Adm. Isoroku Yamamoto during World War II as a lawful example.

But relying on other governments to detain or kill a terrorist who poses an immi-nent threat to the United States also carries a number of risks, he said.

“It depends on if the foreign country has a reasonable rule of law and is reason-ably cooperative with us in prosecuting an enemy combatant,” Somin said. “For groups

we’re at war with, we can target them at any time. We should amend the AUMF to more precisely define which groups we can legally target. It would be a mistake to ban a particular technology once we have deter-mined that we’ve chosen the right target and that it is legal for us to strike.”

Benjamin Wittes, senior fellow and research director in public law at The Brookings Institution, said remotely piloted warplanes are unique among weapons of war because the very characteristics that make them useful also stray from public impressions of how war should be con-ducted. They are a weapon like any other and should be considered along with jets and ballistic missiles once a strike is deemed necessary and lawful, he said.

“There are many ways to target and kill somebody,” Wittes said at the Cato forum. “Drones are only one of them. The person is no less dead if you insert a SEAL team and kill them at point-blank range with a rifle. Instead, we should look at how and when and under what legal construct we should target individuals for killing.”

“One question is, when do you want to be doing this, if at all?” he added. “The second question is, if you want to be doing this, what is the optimal weapons system with which to do it?” he asked.

From a humanitarian point of view, unmanned aircraft are actually more dis-criminatory than manned aircraft or long-range ordnance. Their ability to loiter over a certain area allows for extended surveillance of a target, which makes UAVs “more lethal and more careful at the same time,” Wittes said.

Stephen Vladeck, a professor and associ-ate dean for scholarship at American Uni-versity’s Washington College of Law, voiced concerns held by many drone detractors that the technology could open the door to war where the United States would not oth-erwise project military might, but chooses to because an unmanned aircraft is less risky than dispatching manned jets.

“When we are the only country in the world to have the technology to carry out these operations, we might not be so wor-ried about the consequences. We may not be so worried about things coming home to roost,” Vladeck said at the Cato forum. “But increasingly … it is a very serious concern that we make sure we are not set-ting a precedent pursuant to which other countries … would claim similar if not broader powers.”

“That’s not about drones specifically. It’s about the use of force on the territory of a foreign sovereign,” he added.

While some lawmakers are worried about a drone strike on an American sitting in a

cafe on Main Street, U.S.A., the precedent being set overseas could lead to unilat-eral strikes on foreign nationals on U.S. soil, experts feared. That concern was the thrust of a marathon, 13-hour filibuster launched by Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., earlier in April.

In conflicts like World War II or Vietnam, there was little doubt whether there was a state of armed conflict and where it was tak-ing place. That was the case even in recent conflicts like the civil wars in Libya and Syria, Brooks said.

In a geographically diffuse war against international terrorism by non-state actors, the ability to distinguish the boundaries of armed conflict go out the window, she said.

By using unmanned aircraft in targeted killings on the soil of a foreign sovereign, the United States is essentially declaring to the world that its military and civilian lead-ers choose where there is declared armed conflict, who is a combatant and which of them are imminent threats to the United States, she said.

“We also decide whether [a foreign nation] can be relied upon to capture or kill that threat without our intervention,” she said.

Nations that are actively developing robust unmanned aircraft capabilities are taking notes, experts warned. When the United States and its close allies are no longer the sole operators of offensive drone technology, American foreign policy over the last decade could be a blueprint for unilateral global oppression, they said. What developed nations could once denounce as illegal assassinations or extrajudicial kill-ings, the U.S. government may have tac-itly approved by its actions in countries like Yemen.

Brooks offered the 1976 assassination of former Chilean defense minister Orlando Letelier as an example. When Letelier was ousted by the military regime of Augusto Pinochet, he moved to the United States. Pinochet found his outspoken criticism of the Chilean junta distasteful, so he ordered Letelier’s assassination. He and his Ameri-can assistant were killed when a car bomb exploded beneath their vehicle in Washing-ton, D.C.

When the U.S. strikes unilaterally within sovereign nations, “it’s pretty hard to assume that is not going to come back to bite us,” Brooks said. “What would the Chilean gov-ernment say to us today if they carried out that assassination? We just told them what to say. We have just handed every despot in the world a little playbook for explaining why it’s acceptable for them to kill dissi-dents in foreign countries.” ND

Email your comments to DParsons@ndia.org

By yasmin TadjdehFlying over London’s Tower Bridge

and the Thames River, dozens of small unmanned aerial vehicles equipped with lights flew in formation displaying the iconic Starfleet Academy emblem in the night sky.

The demonstration, which took place in March, was an advertisement concocted by Paramount Pictures and Ars Electronica, an Austria-based company, to promote the recently released Star Trek Into Darkness film.

The light-hearted promotion stands in contrast to the images of war that UAVs often conjure and is an example of a grow-ing interest to use unmanned aircraft for non-military purposes.

“The ability for us to utilize this technology is unbelievable,” said Michael Toscano, president and CEO of the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International. “It’s almost like the Industrial Revolution or when we made a determination that we would go to the moon. This has some real, tremendous capabili-ties.”

The agriculture industry would be one of the first to adopt commercial UAVs. They could help end global hunger, he said.

Precision agriculture carried out by UAVs could increase harvest yields significantly and feed rising popula-tions, Toscano said during a panel discussion at the New America Foun-dation, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank.

“That’s where there is going to be a tremendous ability for us to be able to produce more food. So when you think that you will be able to feed … hundreds of millions of people, you can almost do away with starvation on the planet by utilization of this technology,” said Toscano.

Over the next five to 10 years, the agri-culture industry will come to rely on UAVs, said Missy Cummings, an associate profes-sor of aeronautics and astronautics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a former fighter pilot.

“What’s happening right now is kind of a quiet revolution,” Cummings said. “This is an industry where we just can’t get enough people to do the job that we need done, and farmers desperately need the technol-ogy both for healthy crop surveillance

[and] being able to see what’s happening with the tractors in the field.”

UAVs could also aid in the movement of goods.

In Afghanistan, Lockheed Martin’s K-MAX unmanned cargo system is already proving its worth. Two helicopters have delivered over 3.2 million pounds of sup-plies for the military since 2011.

The K-MAX, which has dual intermesh-ing rotors, can rapidly transport myriad items, including food, water, medical sup-plies and ammunition.

Domestic cargo companies will likely fol-low suit, Cummings said.

“I think that you will see the civilian car-

go community go that way as well. There is certainly a lot of interest from FedEx and UPS, who can reduce costs quite a bit and possibly improve safety,” said Cummings, who predicted it would take about 15 years for the industry to adopt the technology.

For the moment, companies or agencies interested in using UAVs are stuck in limbo as they await new regulations and guidance. The Federal Aviation Administration Mod-ernization and Reform Act of 2013 man-dated that the FAA integrate unmanned aircraft into the domestic airspace by 2015. A key deadline establishing six pilot sites by August 2013 was not met.

Initially, UAVs allowed to fly in national airspace will be small — they will have to be less than 55 pounds and flown below 400 feet. Their introduction would be a boon for countless industries, said Toscano. Within three years of integration, 70,000 new jobs will be created and $14 bil-

lion dollars will be pumped into the economy, he said.

Back in London, the group behind the Star Trek promotion was Ars Elec-tronica, a public company owned by the city of Linz, Austria. Almost every week performances are held in the city, said Horst Hörtner, senior direc-tor of the Ars Electronica Futurelab. When not performing for the citizens of Linz, the company tries to take the show to other cities and countries, such as England and Norway.

The swarm, as they are called, are modified Hummingbirds, also known as quadrocopters, built by Ascending Technologies, a German UAV manu-facturing company. They can be used for large advertisements, like the Star Trek promotion, or even rented out for birthday parties. The company is constantly working on new concepts, Hörtner said.

“We … have hundreds of ideas con-cerning more astonishing possibilities with our swarms,” Hörtner said in an email to National Defense. “The ‘drone-vertisment’ is quite young, and it has … huge potential. The Star Trek logo really has just opened the door.”

Using UAVs for advertising purposes is an important stepping-stone toward inclu-sion of the aircraft in the domestic airspace, said Cummings.

“It may sound like a small event, but it’s actually a huge event because now we are really illustrating another aspect of drones which I don’t think many people think about, and that’s the entertainment aspect,” said Cummings.

For journalists, UAVs could also open up huge opportunities, said Michael Holmes, a

J u l y 2 0 1 3 • N a t i o N a l D e f e N s e 35

Unmanned Aircraft ProponentsSee Future Beyond Battlefields

Modified Hummingbird UAVs equipped with lights flew in formation to promote a recent Star Trek film release in London. Ars electronicA

36 N at i o N a l D e f e N s e • J u ly 2 0 1 3

journalism professor at Ball State Univer-sity in Muncie, Ind.

This fall, Ball State will begin offering a graduate-level class focusing on the use of drones in journalism, Holmes said. Stu-dents will spend about one-third of their time learning how to operate and fly DJI Innovations’ Phantom Quadcopters, which are equipped with GoPro cameras. The remainder of the class will be devoted to the study of the legal and ethical issues of using unmanned aircraft in journalism.

“What we want to focus on is, how do you use this effectively? How do you use it in a way that adds to the message, that adds to the news story, that adds to the per-suasive message? We want our students to wrestle with thinking about best practices of storytelling. We also want the students to be wrestling with the ethical and legal issues,” said Holmes.

UAVs will add another layer to storytell-ing, Holmes said. For example, they are able to take low-altitude photography or videography that can accurately and inti-mately capture the devastation of a local flood, he said.

If the FAA allows news organizations to use the technology, it would help save money, Holmes said.

Purchasing manned helicopters for news-gathering purposes can be “daunting” cost-wise, Holmes said. An inexpensive drone could save organizations thousands of dol-lars.

Matthew Waite, a journalism professor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and the founder of the Drone Journalism Lab there, said the cost benefits associated with unmanned aircraft are huge.

“The economic argument is actually the winning argument here for journal-ism. Those TV news helicopters are multi-million dollar aircraft and they cost many hundreds of thousands of dollars every year to maintain,” Waite said. “[When] you’re talking about something that you can buy for less than a $1,000 and do just about what you need it to do, it’s a really, really powerful argument.”

Waite, like Holmes, also challenges his students to consider the ethical and legal ramifications of gathering news with remotely piloted aircraft.

“Just because you can [do something], doesn’t mean you should,” said Waite.

UAVs are also being used to monitor the weather. At the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, scientists are using both small, hand-launched drones and large, long-endurance unmanned air-craft such as Global Hawks, said Robbie Hood, director of unmanned aerial systems at NOAA.

“There are times when it could be very, very useful in helping us to get detailed information in … [places] that we can’t quite get to with other kinds of assets,” said Hood.

NOAA is a data-driven organization, Hood said, and drones collect a tremendous amount of information and do it more cheaply than a satellite.

A Northrop Grumman-built Global Hawk can provide more data and coverage than a satellite because of its long-range and long-endurance abilities, Hood said.

“What a Global Hawk would be able to provide is a system that would be able to go out and stay with the storm much, much longer,” Hood said. “A satellite will pass over it once or twice, or you may have a geostationary satellite that’s going to take continuous pictures, but still you’re going to be able to take a closer look at a storm for a longer period of time, and it fills that niche that we can’t quite satisfy right now.”

NOAA is also making investments in AeroVironment-built Puma systems, Hood said.

“We really like those because they land in the water and a lot of the observations that we collect at NOAA are ocean-based,” said Hood.

At the World Wildlife Fund, unmanned aircraft will soon assist with animal conser-vation, said Carter Roberts, the organiza-tion’s president and CEO.

With a grant from Google, WWF plans to

begin aerial tracking animals and poachers, Roberts said.

“In Nepal and in Namibia, we’re right now looking at using cell phone technolo-gies to track animals,” Roberts said. “You’ve got a chip in a … rhino that can send text messages, that instead of being collected by a satellite, can be collected by a drone that NASA would have.”

The remotely piloted aircraft would then transmit data to rangers who can stop poachers “before it’s too late,” Roberts said.

Previously, the organization used satellite collars to track animals. The collars were costly and could be removed by poachers, Roberts said. UAVs would not only yield tremendous cost savings but would be more efficient, he said.

Poachers are becoming increasingly sophisticated, Roberts said. Just this year, Roberts expects poachers to kill 800 rhinos in South Africa.

“It’s become a huge crisis, and the bad guys are extremely sophisticated. They have night-vision goggles, they’ve got heli-copters, they have all kinds of funding and resources, and we need to up our game to combat what they’re doing,” said Roberts.

Using thermal imaging cameras attached to an unmanned vehicle, rangers can track poachers, and then follow them back to traders who are the heads of the criminal syndicate. That’s the real upside for UAVs, Roberts said.

“That’s the way we’re going to interrupt this crisis,” said Roberts.

There are skeptics. It won’t be feasible economically for the aircraft to replace couriers or standard delivery methods for some time, said Konstantin Kakaes, a fellow at the New America Foundation.

“Yes, you can say you can get a drone for $300 but the cheap drones are not that capable, and the capable ones are not that cheap,” said Kakaes. “It’s going to take time because they not only have to be able to do something, they have to be able to do something cheaper than the alternatives can.”

And while unmanned aircraft have been invaluable during wartime, they will not, for the time being, be able to transition to peacetime operations, he said.

“If you’re flying into the mountains of Afghanistan, there are lots of reasons you might not want to have a pilot. That’s a lot less true if you’re flying cargo from Mem-phis to [Chicago] O’Hare. The benefits you get from not having a pilot in a war-zone, many of those benefits are conspicu-ously absent over American airspace,” said Kakaes. ND

Email your comments to YTadjdeh@ndia.org

The K-MAX unmanned cargo system Lockheed Martin

By STEW MAGNUSONThe idea to employ robots to carry

gear for overburdened troops has been around for more than a decade.

Mechanized mules are at an advanced technology readiness level, and some have been used in war zones.

But with a slowdown in military spending and no formal requirements forthcoming, manufacturers are looking for customers outside of the armed forces.

Lockheed Martin is eying border patrol, perimeter security, mining, logging and con-struction markets for its robotic mule, said Myron Mills, the company’s squad mission support system (SMSS) program manager.

“We are certainly looking at the possibil-ity of those types of mission sets for this system and being able to take the man out of the loop,” he said.

Robots are often applied to jobs that are dull, dirty and dangerous, and robots designed to autonomously carry gear for ground forces can be converted to other tasks, Mills said.

“The fundamental technology, the algo-rithms, sensors, computing, things that we have done so far will be very applicable to address some of those other markets,” he

added. John Deere introduced its M-Gator small

utility vehicle in 1999 without a single specific market in mind. The company identified at least 10 different tasks users could perform with it. It went on to sell more than a half million of them, including to military customers.

In 2006, it created a robotic version, the R-Gator, in part to address the Army’s effort to lighten soldiers’ loads.

“When you make it autonomous, it is kind of up to your imagination what sort of missions it may or may not accomplish,” said Mark Bodwell, the company’s military vehicles manager.

Marc Raibert, founder and CEO of Bos-ton Dynamics, said there are several pos-sible applications for ground robots in the emergency response, disaster recovery, security, law enforcement and agriculture realms, basically “anywhere that is too dirty or dangerous for people to go.”

Boston Dymanics is most famous for its BigDog rough-terrain experimental robotic mule that walks on four legs. Unlike the other systems based on small vehicle chas-sis, BigDog stands two and a half feet tall, and actually resembles a mule. It moves at

about 4 miles per hour and can carry 340 pounds.

The Defense Advanced Research Proj-ects Agency and later the Army Research Laboratory have funded its development. Raibert has been working on four-legged robots that can move in difficult terrain since the 1980s.

BigDog is not ready for fielding. It is still too noisy for stealthy operations, and Boston Dynamics wants to increase its autonomy, according to company literature.

Although the military has contributed to its development, the company sees many opportunities in the commercial and public safety world, Raibert said in an email.

“If we had better robots available during the Fukushima accident it may have been easier and quicker to get things under con-trol,” he said.

John Deere came to the military robotic mule market from a different path. The company first began looking into making its agricultural equipment autonomous in the 1990s. Farmers could save a great deal of time, fuel, and therefore money by employ-ing precision farming techniques. Most fields are not perfect rectangles or squares, Bodwell pointed out. They are all sorts of odd shapes. Mapping a farm beforehand and letting the implement autonomously take the most efficient path instead of the farmer doing that himself saves fuel and allows him to apply pesticides and fertilizer more efficiently. It also plants seeds down

J u l y 2 0 1 3 • N a t i o N a l D e f e N s e 37

Robotic Mule Vendors Seek Opportunities Outside Military

Lockheed Martin’s squad mission support system LOCKHEED MARTIN

38 N at i o N a l D e f e N s e • J u ly 2 0 1 3

to the exact centimeter.After the M-Gator was intro-

duced in 1999, the company began to look at applying some of the precision farming software to other platforms. The military’s need to lighten the load for ground troops was an obvious application, Bodwell said.

“We’re 176 years old, so we have been in a lot of different conflicts with the military,” he added.

The company’s first R-Gator sale to the military, however, was not for a mule, but for perimeter secu-rity. The Navy’s Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command in San Diego bought one to autonomously patrol an island.

Other R-Gators made it into mil-itary exercises in the United States where they showed off their ability to carry gear for troops.

The R-Gator has several modes. One is full autonomy, where it can either choose waypoints and make its way to a pre-determined destination, or follow a map. Those require the ability to do obstacle avoidance. It can do leader-follower operations, where it keeps up with soldiers. It can also be tele-operated, and if needed, a soldier can jump on and operate it manually.

The non-robotic M-Gators were already being used to carry gear in the field, Bodwell said.

“Every time you had a Gator, all the fight-ers would throw their gear in it before they took off. It automatically became a lighten-the-load design, whether we thought about it or not,” he said.

In exercises, the R-Gator showed that it could carry smaller explosive ordnance dis-posal robots, which weigh more than 100 pounds, into the field. The Gator would drop off the smaller machine, then depart to do perimeter security for its operators while the EOD robot was used to dis-mantle bombs.

“We’ve got a robot carrying robots because the war fighters can’t carry them,” he said.

Lockheed Martin’s SMSS robot began its life as a military vehicle. It had its roots in the now-defunct Future Combat Systems program. The Army had plans to field a larger autonomous robot to carry gear and weapons.

“It was a fairly large and capable machine, but the Army still saw the need for a small-er, less capable, less expensive machine to go specifically with the dismounts to carry their gear and other equipment,” said Mills.

While the larger robot went the way of

the other canceled FCS vehicles, plans to field a smaller version remain.

The SMSS has actually made it into a battle zone. Four of them were deployed to Afghanistan from January to May 2013 for operational evaluations.

“They used the systems to carry about everything you could imagine,” Mills said. Fencing, construction for outposts, sand-bags, water, meals ready to eat, demolition materials, ammunition and heavy weapons were among those items carried, he said. He didn’t know of any cases where it was used for casualty evacuation, although it does have a litter-carrying kit.

Like the R-Gator, it has autonomous, leader-follower, tele-operated and manual modes. For the latter, operators can get on the machine and use a joystick to steer.

Those real-world tests were meant to help the Army inform its requirements for a squad multipurpose equipment transport program, which the company hopes will kick off in the fiscal year 2016 timeframe.

“Things are slow right now,” so Lock-heed Martin is also casting its eye to non-military markets.

“It is fairly straightforward to cross over to border patrol activities where you can offer long-range persistent surveillance in extremely remote, rugged areas,” Mills said.

The base platform could be used in agri-culture, mining and construction, he added. “We also see an easy crossover to fixed-site security where you can use a system like this to patrol a high-value, fixed site,” he said. Energy or water plants might be some

examples.There could also be applica-

tions in law enforcement dur-ing hostage situations, or serving warrants to dangerous criminals, he added.

Mills said Lockheed Martin is keeping a close eye on the driv-erless car movement.

“Sometimes it is very hard to figure out exactly where those guys are going and what it looks like, but it is certainly interest-ing. … I think we are going to see, one of these years down the road, an explosion in capability moving into the consumer seg-ment,” he said.

Driver parking assistance, collision avoidance and other technologies are already widely available.

“How we play in that segment in the future kind of remains to be seen,” he added.

Meanwhile, Lockheed Martin is still working on mission equipment packages and demonstrating the versatility and flexibility of the system for the Army.

Like unmanned aerial vehicles operated from bases halfway around the world, it mounted a communications-on-the-move system on one of the SMSS robots and had someone tele-operate it from hundreds of miles away.

“We are trying to address as many needs as we can see that the Army is going to have going forward, so when it is time to compete for a system like this, we will be able to offer the Army the best value,” he said.

Bodwell said the underlying technology for the R-Gator can be transferred to other platforms. Warehouse inventory, or any situation where someone needs to move objects from one place to another, or do resupply, are potential civilian applications.

Fire suppression, humanitarian supply, or disaster response are other applications, he added.

“You can take a vehicle of that size and send it into an area where either some of the smaller robots are too slow or they can’t carry the type of equipment that needs to go into a specific area,” Bodwell said.

Boston Dynamics’ Raibert said, “Fighting fires, both forest fires and in buildings, is a good target for ground robots. There are other forestry and agricultural applications where ground robots could make signifi-cant contributions.” ND

John Deere’s R-Gator JOHN DEERE

Email your comments to SMagnuson@ndia.org

In celebration of Women’s History Month in March, National Defense

Industrial Association affiliate Women In Defense presented its Service to the Flag Award to Carolyn H. Becraft.

The award recognizes members who have served in national defense and security positions, supported military service mem-bers and/or facilitated partnerships between industry and the military. The recipient should have a distinguished career and should have supported the advancement of women working in national defense and national security.

Becraft was an Army officer, a civilian government employee and a leader at WID. A presidential appointee as the assistant secretary of the Navy for manpower and reserve affairs from 1998 through 2001, she revitalized recruitment, initiated work-force planning and developed training for military and civilian personnel — including senior executive service members. Becraft was a champion for women in the Depart-ment of the Navy and for military families.

“Despite the glass ceiling, Ms. Becraft

rose to the top, thus inspiring other women to serve their country. For her service to the flag and her singularly distinguished accom-plishments, we chose her to receive this award,” said WID President Tricia Ward, presenting the award at a brunch held at the Women in Military Service for America Memorial in Arlington National Cemetery.

Event sponsors were Bloomberg Govern-ment, NDIA and Battelle.

Meanwhile, the Women In Defense HORIZONS Scholarship Program received a donation of $10,000 from EADS North America.

“The faith and support of the EADS leadership, evident in this contribution, is tremendously appreciated,” said Ward. “EADS has invested in the future of prom-ising young women who will make a differ-ence in our nation’s defense.”

Brenda McKinney, HORIZONS scholar-ship director, said this year’s 25th anniver-sary inspired the ambitious goal of raising $50,000.

Since it began in 1988, the HORIZONS program has awarded 116 scholarships

worth more than $180,000 to students enrolled in either undergraduate or gradu-ate programs. Donations come from corpo-rations, individuals and WID chapters.

The goal of the program is to help as many students as possible, while awarding scholarships in amounts that have a real impact, McKinney said.

To learn more about the HORIZONS Scholarship Program or to donate, visit http://wid.ndia.org.

J U L Y 2 0 1 3 • N A T I O N A L D E F E N S E 39

NDIA NewsWomen In Defense Presents Service to the Flag Award

Women In Defense President Tricia Ward (right) presents the Service to the Flag Award to Carolyn H. Becraft. WID

Barbecue for the Troops is your opportunity to organize a BBQ between Memorial Day and Labor Day and raise money to support

our servicemen and women and their families.

Every dollar you raise will help the USO provide services and support for troops and their families.

For more information, email lferrari@uso.org or mail this coupon.www.bbqforthetroops.org

Do Your Part to Support the

Troops this SummerBy throwing a barbecue to raise

money in your community.

For more information, please mail:

Name:_________________________________________________________Contact name: _________________________________________________Address: _______________________________________________________City, State, Zip: _________________________________________________Phone: ________________________________________________________Email: _________________________________________________________

USO, 2111 Wilson Blvd, Suite 1200, Arlington, VA 22201

NDIA0313

40 N AT I O N A L D E F E N S E • J U LY 2 0 1 3

For more information and online registration, visit our website: www.ndia.org. Or contact our Operations Department at (703) 247-9464.

NDIA CalendarJuly10LID Breakfast Series:Representative Martha RobyWashington, DCwww.ndia.org/meetings/3LX7

114th Annual Integrated Air and Missile Defense Symposium Laurel, MDwww.ndia.org/meetings/3100

23Agile in Defense Symposium & Summer Workshop

Crystal City, VA“BBP 2.0 and AGILE: Some Assembly Required”• ADAPT is facilitating this work-shop to provide industry-government interaction on how Better Buying Power and IT acquisition transformation is supported by Agile methods, and to examine in workshop format specifi c actions to improve use of agile in DoD acquisition.www.afei.org/events/3A02

31LID Breakfast Series:Representative John FlemingWashington, DCwww.ndia.org/meetings/3LX6

August1C4ISR BreakfastArlington, VAwww.ndia.org/meetings/392F

19-23NDIA Michigan Chapter Annual Ground Vehicle Systems Engineering & Technology Symposium (GVSETS)Troy, MIwww.ndia-mich.org

September4-5NDIA Mastering Business Development WorkshopLeesburg, VAwww.ndia.org/meetings/307D

10-11Cloud: SOA, Semantics & Data Science SymposiumSpringfield, VAwww.afei.org/events/3A03

122013 MOAA/NDIA Warrior-Family SymposiumWashington, DCwww.warriorfamilysymposium.comSee our ad on p. 41

16-20Defense Systems Acquisition Management CourseKansas City, MOwww.ndia.org/meetings/302E

17-182013 Joint Undersea Warfare Technology Fall ConferenceU.S. Naval Submarine Base New London, Groton, CTww.ndia.org/meetings/3240See our ad on p. 42

2510th National Small Business ConferenceSpringfield, VAwww.ndia.org/meetings/3140

25Embassy/Defense Attaché Luncheon Series - Canada

Washington, DC• Defense Attaché Maj. Gen. Matern will present an overview of the Canadian Department of National Defense’s world view, including political and fi scal challenges implicit in reconciling its vision with its resource realities.www.ndia.org/meetings/347G

26TRIADSpringfield, VAwww.ndia.org/meetings/314S

October7-10Insensitive Munitions & Energetic Materials Technology SymposiumSan Diego, CAwww.ndia.org/meetings/4550See our ad on p. 43

15LID Breakfast Series: Gen. Mark A. Welsh, IIIWashington, DCwww.ndia.org/meetings/4LD0

J U L Y 2 0 1 3 • N A T I O N A L D E F E N S E 41

22-23World Manufacturing ForumWashington, DCwww.worldmanufacturingforum.org See our ad on p. 42

22-24PSA Precision Strike Technology Symposium (PSTS-13)

Laurel, MD• PSTS-13 brings together senior DoD leadership and precision strike community stakeholders for a program that will concentrate on classifi ed aspects of global presence in the Asia-Pacifi c Region and evolving threats to strike warfare in the Middle East.www.ndia.org/meetings/4PST

28-3116th Annual Systems Engineering Conference

Arlington, VA• A forum focusing on improving acquisition and performance of programs, including net-centric operations and data/information interoperability, system-of-systems engineering and all aspects of system sustainment.www.ndia.org/meetings/4870

29Embassy/Defense Attaché Luncheon Series - NetherlandsWashington, DCwww.ndia.org/meetings/447B

29-3118th Annual Expeditionary Warfare ConferencePortsmouth, VAwww.ndia.org/meetings/4700See our ad on p. 43

November5-7Aircraft Survivability Symposium 2013 - Classified, SECRET/U.S. ONLYNaval Postgraduate SchoolMonterey, CAwww.ndia.org/meetings/4940

7-82013 Homeland Security SymposiumWashington, DCwww.ndia.org/meetings/4490

18-2025th Annual International Program Management (IPM) ConferenceBethesda, MDwww.ndia.org/meetings/4IPM

For more information and online registration, visit our website: www.ndia.org. Or contact our Operations Department at (703) 247-9464.

Washington, DC • September 12, 2013 • www.warriorfamilysymposium.com

“Mental Health — Linking Warriors and Their Families, Government & Society”

Providing the forum for government and non-government organizations to improve the physical, psychological and overall well-being of those wounded, ill and injured, and their families.

Delving into engaging discussions and topic areas surrounding mental health, such as:

• What is the scope of mental health among our military members, veterans and their families?

• What are the mental health implications to individuals, government, and society?• What are some of the innovative solutions taking place in the mental health field? — A

call-to-action on ways that individuals and organizations can affect change outside of today’s forum to help warriors-families today and tomorrow.

2013 MOAA/NDIA WARRIOR-FAMILY SYMPOSIUM

Washington, DC • October 22-23, 2013 • www.worldmanufacturingforum.org

“The Way Forward to Global Prosperity through Intelligent Manufacturing Collaboration”

This premier international event will bring together high-level industrialists, policy makers and key societal stakeholders from across the globe for a cross-exchange of ideas on major macroeconomic trends and manufacturing innovation.The forum is sponsored by the Intelligent Manufacturing Systems (IMS) program through its member countries and is open to international sponsorship from government, industry and institutions.

world manufacturing forum

Groton, CT • September 17-18 2013 • www.ndia.org/meetings/3240

At this conference, you will get ‘off the record’ insights and information from key decision makers on:

• The execution of Undersea Warfare at all levels of command - unit, squadron, group, theater, area and force.

• The evolving mission challenges faced by our naval fleet, with a concentration on the Navy’s key core competency mission of countering submarine and mine threats to the free and open flow of sea borne commerce and to the conduct of power projection from the sea.

2013 joint undersea warfare technology fall conference

42 N at i o N a l D e f e N s e • J u ly 2 0 1 3

N D I A F E A T U R E D E V E N T S

Portsmouth, VA • October 29-31, 2013 • www.ndia.org/meetings/4700

“Expeditionary Warfare in an Era of Uncertainty”

• Gain insights into current joint expeditionary warfare operations in areas such as training, TTPs and MIW threats

• Acquire enhanced knowledge on emerging technologies covering autonomous systems, C4ISR, network architecture and cyber as they relate to Expeditionary Warfare

• Discuss future/emerging issues related to MIW, air-sea battle and sea basing

• Hear N95 Director discuss their latest programs and challenges

18TH ANNUAL EXPEDITIONARY WARFARE CONFERENCE

J U L Y 2 0 1 3 • N A T I O N A L D E F E N S E 43

N D I A F E A T U R E D E V E N T S

San Diego, CA • October 7-10, 2013 • www.ndia.org/meetings/4550

“Delivering Mission Critical, Innovative Insensitive Munitions and Energetic Materials Solutions to the Warfighter in a Challenging Budget Environment.”This symposium will feature presentations of technical papers on such topics as:

• National and International experience with fielded IM technologies• Dual-use commercial energetic materials• Advanced oxidizer chemistry synthesis, scale-up and

purification• Nano materials, reactive materials and enhanced blast

explosives • Applied IM modeling, verification and validation• Initiation technologies for IM applications

INSENSITIVE MUNITIONS & ENERGETIC MATERIALS TECHNOLOGY SYMPOSIUM

David Clark Company . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . www.davidclark.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .13

DSEi 2013. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . www.DSEI.co.uk/early1ay. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .17

EADS North America Inc.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . www.ArmedScout.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Cover 3

Esterline Power Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . www.esterline.com/powersystems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29

FLIR Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . www.flir.com/Quark/ND . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

Fuel-Safe ARM-USA. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . www.arm-usa.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23

Government Liquidators . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . www.sellyoursurplus.net . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

The Harmon Society. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . www.usafa.org/AreasOfGiving/Corporate_Giving . . . . . 26

iRobot . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . www.irobot.com/natdef . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

Microsoft . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . www.microsoft.com/Dod . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .3

Mississippi Development Authority . . . . . . . . . . . . . . www.aerospacemississippi.org . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33

Pelican Products . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . www.pelican.com/nd . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Cover 4

RUAG AMMOTEC Ltd. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . www.ruag.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25

Sheppard Mullin Richter & Hampton . . . . . . . . . . . . . www.sheppardmullin.com. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

SKB Corporation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . www.skbcases.com/military. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

Systron Donner Inertial . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . www.systron.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Cover 2

Trucept Inc. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37

USO . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . www.bbqforthetroops.org . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39

UTC Aerospace . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . www.utcaerospacesystems.com . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .7

44 N AT I O N A L D E F E N S E • J U LY 2 0 1 3

For information on advertising in National Defense, contact the International Advertising Headquarters or your regional advertising office.

VICE PRESIDENT, ADVERTISING Dino K. Pignotti(703) 247–2541Fax: (703) 522-4602dpignotti@ndia.org

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Lievsay Associates25433 Queensbury Dr., Athens, AL 35613

• Southeastern United States and Metro DC Area (AL, FL, GA, KY, MD, MS, NC, SC, TN, VA, WV & DC)

Jim Barros (805) 584-2130Fax: (805) 584-3796jim@barrossales.com

6480 Katherine Road # 72 Simi Valley, CA 93063

• South Central United States(AR, KS, LA, MO, OK, TX)

Bill Powell(281) 251–0565Fax: (281) 251–8555citadel62@aol.com

J/J/H/S Inc.18103 Mahogany Forest Drive Spring (Houston), TX 77379

• Western and North Central United States(AK, AZ, CA, CO, HI, IA, ID, IL, IN, MI, MN, MT, ND, NE, NM, NV, OH, OR, SD, UT, WA, WI, WY)

Jim Barros (805) 584-2130Fax: (805) 584-3796jim@barrossales.com

6480 Katherine Road # 72 Simi Valley, CA 93063

International Advertising Headquarters

The Nuclear Triad� It has long been a matter of debate whether the U.S. military needs or can afford all three legs of its nuclear triad — long-range bombers, submarines and intercontinental ballistic missiles. Poor inspection ratings at some of the Air Force’s nuclear bases and an ongoing fiscal crisis have brought that debate to the fore-front. National Defense investigates the future of the nuclear triad, whether any of the legs are more important than the oth-ers and looks at the biggest hurdles to the strategy’s survival.

Small Arms� A years-long effort to find a suitable replacement for the Army’s M4 carbine is on its way to being canceled after firearms manufacturers and the government spent millions on two phases of tests. Industry officials have panned the program as a poorly run competition with little commu-nication from the Pentagon. Army officials are weighing the need for a new weapon and questioning whether the rifles under consideration improve upon the M4.

Weather Satellites� The United States faces a gap in weather data. Attempts to replace aging weather satellite systems have hit several roadblocks from cost overruns to program mismanagement, according to a recently released Government Accountability Office report. If the government can’t find a solution, it could severely affect the safety and health of the U.S. population, the report said.

Mobile Devices� The Defense Department has never been known for its ability to quickly adopt cutting edge mobile technologies, but that may be changing. The Defense Information Systems Agency is rolling out a commercial mobile device implemen-tation plan that will expand the variety of smartphones and tablets available to Pentagon personnel, as well as provide a Defense Department-specific store to download applications. National Defense takes a look at the challenges of imple-menting this new strategy and the oppor-tunities for industry.

JULY 2013 Index of AdvertisersInteract with the companies whose products and services are advertised in National Defense.

Advertiser Interact Page No.

Next Month2013 MEGADIRECTORY

Exclusive guide to defense corporations and military procurement agencies; defense industry directory, with index of corporate capabilities.

Some promised. We delivered. The AAS-72X+ is the only Armed Aerial Scout offering with fl ight-

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EADS_alamosa_nationaldefense.indd 1 6/17/13 10:05 AM

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