By Ann Roosevelt
The Senate fiscal year 2011 defense-authorization bill would leverage funds from the Defense Department, federal agencies, industry and academia toward advanced technology ground vehicles, systems and components.
The Senate bill, yet to be voted on and which then must be reconciled with the comparable House measure, wants to see research, development and deployment of advanced technology ground vehicles, systems and components for DoD.
The program goal is to identify and support the technology advances necessary for the development of advanced technologies that DoD could use, then to buy and deploy significant quantifies of such vehicles for use.
The program’s enhanced research and development for advanced technology ground vehicles would look at such things as increased investments in research and development on batteries, advanced materials, power electronics, fuel cells and fuel cell systems, hybrid systems and advanced engines, the bill says.
The effort would include pilot projects demonstrating the advanced tech for DoD vehicles.
The program could create public-private partnerships, including research centers, manufacturing and prototyping facilities, and test beds, to speed the development, deployment, and transition to use of advanced technology ground vehicles, ground vehicle systems, and components.
Additionally, the measure would improve activities to buy and deploy the ground vehicles by doing such things as having preferences for buying the advanced technology vehicles and using the authorities of the Defense Production Act of 1950 to stimulate the development and production of advanced technology systems and ground vehicles through purchases, loan guarantees, and other mechanisms, the bill said.
There would also be pilot programs to demonstrate the vehicles and associated infrastructure at certain defense installations and the development of metrics to evaluate benefits in life cycle costs and in the environmental area.
Generally, the bill says, the defense secretary could use partnerships and other cooperative agreements with private sector entities, such as universities and academic institutions, automobile and truck manufacturing industry and the companies that supply them.
The cooperative effort must ensure that any agreement provides for private sector participants to contribute “in cash or kind,” not less than one-half the total cost of the activities under the agreement, the bill says.