The Pentagon is promoting the benefits of prototyping in its newest acquisition excellence concept, Better Buying Power 3.0. In tight budget times, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics Frank Kendall said, prototyping helps move technology forward for less money while keeping industry healthy and creative.
The Marine Corps Warfighting Lab (MCWL) already knows this.
In its most recent experiment, MCWL brought three prototypes into the field for two different purposes–one was a half-scale model of a ship-to-shore connector that will inform requirements for future surface connectors, and the others were unmanned ground systems meant to help shed light on how Marines may interact with robots in the field and where researchers need to continue improving autonomous capabilities.
All three proved why prototyping and experimenting will be so important to acquisition moving forward with BBP 3.0.
Pros and Cons
When Kendall unveiled the draft of his latest acquisition plan, he told reporters that it would be hard to find money for prototyping in this budget environment, but it was important to do so.
“It allows us to do a number of things simultaneously,” he said. “It moves technology forward. It reduces technological risk to future products. It allows our design teams to continue to do productive work and supports that part of the industrial base. And it allows us to experiment with operational concepts that we might not be able to experiment with otherwise if we didn’t have the hardware. And I don’t know how successful we’ll be in the budget process this year, because things are so tight, but we’re going to do as much as we can in moving this direction.”
MCWL was already doing exactly that, working with industry and government organizations like the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and Office of Naval Research (ONR) to build full- and half-scale prototypes to bring to its Advanced Warfighting Experiment in Hawaii over the summer.
MCWL Commanding General Brig. Gen. Kevin Killea told Defense Daily that justifying these aspects of the budget can be tough when the Marine Corps also needs to worry about current readiness. But the key is to look at the long-term return on investment–it might cost a lot of money or take a lot of time, but if it revolutionizes how the Marine Corps operates, it will be worth it.
“Stuff is expensive when you’re experimenting with it because it’s all a one-of,” Killea said. “There is no economy of scale when you’re talking the Legged Squad Support System (LS3)–two of them exist that work. So it’s a lot of money to go in and to pull at what you think is a technology that may crack a jackpot for you in the future.”
But with the lab’s key focus areas being autonomy, lightening the load for Marines, and survivability, Killea said he’s certain the lab’s work would prove to be sound investments.
GUSS and LS3
Two of the systems featured in the AWE in Hawaii were ground robotics systems–one a modified Internally Transportable Vehicle, the other a four-legged robot.
“GUSS (the Ground Unmanned Support Surrogate) is a good example of something we experimented with prior and had a lot of success with, and then we put it in a completely different environment in Hawaii and we showed a lot of the weaknesses of how the system works,” Killea said. “But that’s good, now we can flush those out. It remains a priority for us for fiscal year ’15 to get that technology to the point where it’s mature enough I can hand it to the requirements folks and say, here.”
The Legged Squad Support System (LS3), however, will not become a program of record, regardless of it being well received by Marines in the field. Killea said he wasn’t testing the LS3, per se, but rather the autonomous capability it represents and how well it could fit in with Marine Corps operations and training. LS3 is meant to carry gear for Marines on foot patrol, and if the autonomous capability can be perfected, the sensors and command and control set-up could be put onto whatever autonomous robot body makes the most sense for the expected operational environment.
Jeff Tomczak, director of MCWL’s science and technology division, said MCWL would not renew its recently-expired LS3 contract with Boston Dynamics, though it could come back to this robotic system down the road if it makes sense.
“There is no intent to renew the contract to do more with the LS3. There is to do more with autonomy, which was a large piece with LS3” testing, he said, but the autonomy experiments would continue via contracts to use other companies’ systems, as well as a few government-owned robots to serve as test beds.
Killea and Tomczak said the LS3 experiments showed a lot about where improvements need to be made in sensors and autonomy, and now as industry works out that part the Marines will continue looking at new aspects of incorporating autonomous systems into operational concepts.
Tomczak said the next big question is, now that the Marines understand what it takes to have one Marine manage one unmanned vehicle, what needs to happen to allow him to manage multiple vehicles? How many can he control without the system being overwhelmed and without the Marine being burdened?
Tomczak said the Marine Corps was also trying to understand where robotics might be useful in the future to help guide current investments and experiments. He likened MCWL to the Wright brothers trying to develop the first airplane–“when they were trying to fly, nobody had a clue that one day you’d have F-18s up overhead dropping bombs or doing close air support. They just wanted to get up in the air and fly. And that’s kind of where we’re at with the autonomy piece, we’re trying to figure out where is it the best fit as we understand things today.”
After AWE in Hawaii, Tomczak said MCWL will see a bit of a lull in activity with the squad support concept. The greater part of FY ’15 will be spent doing contracting for the follow-ons to LS3, and “it’ll be ’16 and ’17 when these capabilities are matured to the point where we can start deploying with them.”
UHAC
The Marines also experimented with the half-size Ultra Heavy-lift Amphibious Connector (UHAC), which moves with tracked wheels made of captive air cells–the key technology Killea said he was interested in pursuing.
The current UHAC design can carry more weight than the Landing Craft Air Cushion and move faster than the Landing Craft Utility, as well as navigate over obstacles and mudflats, but there is a concern about its survivability in a contested environment.
“If we can get [the captive air cells] right, now you can make that thing look like whatever you want it to look like,” Killea said.
Tomczak said the beauty of UHAC is that, even though it will never become a program of record, it is helping the Marines better understand the art of the possible with surface connectors to inform future requirements.
There are plans to continue working with the captive air cells, even if a decision to build a full-scale UHAC has not been made yet, he added, with industry already investigating “what the full-scale [captive air cell] would have to look like, how it would be developed and how it would be built.”
Prototyping will prove invaluable for the Marine Corps, as Kendall suggested, in that the Marines cannot afford to pursue the high water-speed Amphibious Combat Vehicle they wanted–similar to the canceled Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle–because there isn’t enough money in the budget right now to achieve that level of performance. They can, however, invest in prototypes that get them incrementally closer to achieving the ability to build the ideal amphibious fighting vehicle.
“The ultimate goal is to create a vehicle that has the high water speed that we want, can cross the obstacles that we want and has the protective capabilities to ensure it can survive in a high-threat environment. The problem is trying to roll all those into one vehicle and be able to do those types of things with it,” Tomczak said. “The high water speed is still a goal for the Marine Corps to shoot after, but that doesn’t mean that we don’t look at other things like the UHAC and other capabilities to include light-weight armor, maybe even buoyant armor, that can help us in this effort.”
“I think what we’re going to find it it’s a tougher nut to crack than everybody thought, and I know it’s still important to the Marine Corps and the Marine Corps is still going to pursue going down that lane. The UHAC is not intended to be a distraction, but it’s intended to add to the discussion,” he added.