The transition to a smaller, leaner Army and constricted defense budget means the service is keeping a close eye on the health of the defense industrial base and working to find the key areas that need shoring up or where the service can help, the senior civil acquisition official said.
Defense industrial base health also is a concern to the Defense Department , the defense industry itself, its associations and Congress.
The Pentagon’s FY ’13 budget overview says DoD “will make every effort to maintain an adequate industrial base and our investment in science and technology” (Defense Daily, Feb. 12).
DoD is looking “sector by sector, tier by tier” at industrial base issues, Heidi Shyu, Acting Assistant Secretary of the Army for Acquisition, Logistics & Technology / U.S. Army Acquisition Executive, said during a roundtable yesterday from the AUSA Winter Symposium in Fla.
“We’re identifying where the critical industrial base is located…especially Tier 2 and Tier 3” suppliers, and looking at the health of their portfolios, she said.
Suppliers can be roughly identified as Tier 1–the prime contractor, subcontractors are Tier 2, and commodity suppliers are Tier 3, which supply the piece parts to the Tier 2 supplier.
Additionally, the Army Program Executive Officers who meet with Shyu on a monthly basis are asked to identify industrial base issues. The information collected is used by the Army as well as fed into an extensive Office of the Secretary of Defense database to ensure consistency of data and help the Army figure out what areas need to be focused on.
The next step is to look to ”create opportunities” to help the industrial base, she said.
While Shyu would not discuss specific programs, she did say industry representatives have singled out areas where the Army should help.
Using a generic example, she said if a country comes in on a particular program, the producer might come to the Army and say it would help them smooth out production if the program moves to a Foreign Military Sales (FMS) program.
Additionally, Shyu is looking at what the service can do to work on technologies that are essential for the Army that no one else is going to work on that expand current capabilities.
The idea is to look at what should be done in the science and technology world, find what is in the realm of the possible that can be worked on, demonstrated, and inform the requirements community as it moves toward newer capabilities.
That means when there are funds, and the needs come in from operational commands, then most of the requirements and technology are secure for new programs. This entails the acquisition and Training and Doctrine Command communities working together, she said.
“What I’m looking at in particular is changing the process,” Shyu said. Today at the inception of the program issues are discussed and requirements are challenged, the number of critical requirements are reduced and traded off, and the aspects of cost are understood. This compares to the previous process of taking requirements and expecting industry to meet them, developing immature technology increasing risk and cost.
The new process was used for the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle, she said, doing a rigorous vetting up front, setting the correct program parameters to find “the art of the feasible.” The Army is trying to minimize risk as much as possible.
“We’re doing all of that upfront now, which to me is success,” Shyu said.