By Geoff Fein
While the Office of Naval Research (ONR) is largely focused on advancing science and technology efforts, the organization’s Quick Reaction Technology Solutions area looks to quickly assist sailors and Marines in need of a solution to a pressing problem.
All year long requests and ideas come into the Quick Reaction Technology Solutions program office, currently run by a three-man team led by Command Master Chief Stephen French.
Those ideas come from the field and deck plate, via e-mail and phone calls, and not from an admiral’s staff, French told Defense Daily in a recent interview.
“That’s not to say we won’t pay attention to admirals, we do, if they are solving a problem that in our judgment has a larger effect on sailors and Marines,” he said.
Generally, French’s team is looking at things a sailor or Marine will come across and wonder why the Navy can’t do it. French said they try to answer that question and see if a solution is really possible.
“We will take that initial request and fine tune it and try to find out what the problem really is,” he said.
For example, an issue came in from a lieutenant out in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, stating he had a connectivity issue with the weapons analysis facility at the Naval Undersea Warfare Center (NUWC) Newport, R.I. The problem had to do with a training simulator for prospective commanding officers.
French said his office doesn’t really look at connectivity issues, but they offered to review the problem.
“We did some digging and found out there might be some other issues. We took a trip to Groton (Conn.) and they had the same set-up there. We watched one training session at the schoolhouse in Groton and then went up to NUWC and watched it there, and come to find out they are using weapons testing equipment to run a training simulation,” French said. “Maybe there were some improvements we could make there.
“We had the circuit board redesigned for very little money and now even the Australians are using it,” he said.
The goal, French added, is to define what the problem is, just don’t take the request on its surface. “Figure out what the real problem is and then find the right solution for the right price for those problems.”
When a request comes in, it generally takes French’s team a couple of weeks to determine if anyone else is doing anything similar.
“Once we have determined that nobody is working on the problem, or somebody is working on it but on a longer-term solution, I am OK with filling the gap as long as it is not a lot of money to fill the gap,” he said. “Once we figure out there is no one doing anything and all the communication is done, we cut a check to a government principle investigator.”
The entire process generally takes no more than 12 months, he added.
“Our goal is no more than 14 months. Sometimes we are better at it than others, not every project takes a year. Some close within just a couple of months,” French said.
Additionally, French tries not to produce a one-of-a-kind solution for a sailor or Marine, but he’s not opposed to doing so, if that’s what is needed.
“If that’s what ends up happening that might be OK, too, because that one-of-one is going to go to that sailor or Marine’s unit and they are going to use it and eventually somebody is going to get the idea that ‘hey this is a really good idea,'” he said.
Nominally, French’s advertising pitch to sailors and Marines is that their request can’t cost more than $1 million. “I try to keep the average down to between $500,000 and $700,000 because I get more projects that way.
“I have projects that cost me $30,000 and I have projects that cost me over $1 million…into the $1.5 million range,” he added. “I have yet to be shown a problem that I can solve based on my parameters that cost more than $1.5 million.”
But if such a problem requiring his entire budget ever did surface, and he thought it was achievable in the required time line, French would have no problem going into the director of ONR’s office and telling the admiral in charge, “Sir, I think this is worth spending all of my money on.”
“And I am sure if I made a compelling case, he’d agree, and I would do nothing else that year,” French added. “But I haven’t run across that yet.”
And there are also the efforts that not only show unintended benefits, but also actually save the government money in the long run, French pointed out.
One example is the Talon robot battery adapter.
“That came to use from a gunnery sergeant who said these batteries have no health monitoring on them,” French said.
The batteries, supplied by QinetQ, cost $10,000 for the robots used primarily for explosive ordnance disposal (EOD), he added.
The question was whether there was any way ONR could make the batteries so operators could determine the reliability of these batteries, what their condition is…the state of their charge, French said.
“We did some digging. There is no health monitoring, it’s a $10,000 battery and oh, by the way, the Marine Corps has devised this policy out there to lighten the load,” he said. “I’ve got a heavy load because I have a custom battery, I have a custom battery charger, not to mention the fact that each costs $10,000, so $20,000 total, and they go into this robot that we use to diffuse bombs or blow bombs up…and you are telling me this battery…I can’t even tell the condition of it when I am looking at it?”
Additionally, the batteries didn’t even last very long, French added.
French took the problem to the Naval Research Enterprise and asked if there was a better solution.
“We got things back that ran the gambit of…’we’ll give you the latest greatest new battery.’ Yeah it’s a new battery and a new charger, and I’m thinking, okay that doesn’t lighten the load,” he said.
French also got a couple of ideas back that looked at building an adapter for the batteries.
“We explored that, and we came up with an adapter that uses their existing radio batteries, their existing charger…it charges and conditions the battery and gives them health monitoring and oh, by the way, it improves the performance,” French said. “They got a 30 percent battery life improvement out of it and they reduced the cost by 60 percent. So we are saving the government $2 million a year, which saves them $8.5 million this year in acquisition cost, and we lighten the load for Marines because they no longer have to carry this EOD Talon robot battery and charger. They can use their normal vehicle mounted chargers and their normal radio batteries and, as a side benefit, they can look at the health of their radio batteries when they put them in the adapter.”
One of the other projects that French thinks is an absolutely incredible project, providing it gets through all of its testing, is condition-based maintenance for Howitzers. The effort has been in development for eight to nine months, he added.
“Everybody wants to implement condition-based maintenance. If you talk to the Navy leaders, they would love to find a way to implement condition-based maintenance. It’s a hard shipboard problem to solve, but when you take something like a M777 Howitzer it becomes a little easier,” French said.
ONR figured out how to instrument the Howitzer to measure shock as it’s traveling or firing rounds, French explained. Those measurements are converted into electronic data that is stored. An operator can then go in and retrieve the data and upload it to a central repository, he added.
“That let’s the people who control maintenance for the Marine Corps look at all of the guns across the board, all of the data, and say ‘okay, here’s the guns that need maintenance, here are the ones that don’t, we can delay this…this gun is going to fail so let’s bring it in now.'” French said.
Estimates show a savings of $500 million over the life of the program because of the new maintenance solution, French noted.
Right now it’s in limited production run on 12 guns, he added. Marine Corps System Command is handing it off to Picatinny Arsenal because they are the program manager for it.
“It was only about a $400,000 investment from us and $250,000 investment from Marine Corps System Command. So for about $500,000 to $600,000 the government is going to get a $500 million return, which is pretty impressive,” French said. “And it’s condition based maintenance. So you start talking total ownership cost. That’s a big reduction in total ownership cost, and it’s a smart way to do it.”