By Geoff Fein
Although much of the Navy’s work in open architecture (OA) has been on the acquisition side of the service, efforts are underway on the requirements side to “better align its processes to take advantage of an advanced capability build (ACB) world,” according to a service official.
One example of this is the Surface Warfare Tactical Requirements Group, Capt. Terry Mosher, combat systems integration branch head, told Defense Daily recently.
The group is “bringing all of the requirements officers for the various weapons, sensors, combat system components, missiles, and guns together in a room and looking at the ACB fielding cycle and looking at integration opportunities for where they want to bring these requirements,” he said.
The Surface Warfare Tactical Requirements Group includes a little bit of the peer review process, Mosher added, “because they have a brief in front of the rest of the ROs (requirements officers) and there is a little bit of discovery that happens when those briefs happen.”
“The group will do a better job of aligning our requirements to deliver a consistent message to the program offices and give them a better demand signal on what the requirements are,” he said. “With a better set of requirements and a tighter set of requirements, the acquisition community has a better chance of hitting the mark.”
The Surface Warfare Tactical Requirements Group is looking at three things: Aligning the existing programs of record, taking science and technology initiatives that are coming out of places like the Office of Naval Research (ONR), and following the lead of the submarine program, Mosher noted.
“One of the challenges ONR has, they will develop a new technology that the transition to the fleet…to a fielded system…that last mile…is the most difficult part of it,” he said. “So, we are trying to look at these things early and give them a signal that we have an ACB for this technology, and once it’s matured, an ACB for that to integrate in to.”
The third thing the Surface Warfare Tactical Requirements Group is looking at is to begin to do what the submarine program has been doing with the rapid capability insertion process (RCIP).
That is, to take an idea that comes out of the fleet, put it out to industry as a broad area announcement (BAA), ask for any solutions that are out there that could potentially address that fleet need, and to quickly field that new capability, Mosher said. “Those are the things that tend to be smaller in scope and more easily to field rapidly.”
From a fleet perspective, he added, what the surface side is driving to is where the submarines are now. The ability to take an idea out of the fleet and field it relatively quickly, in about two to three years, he said.
“We are not there yet. We are just getting started on the ACB approach, but that’s the goal,” Mosher said. “Especially, as the size of the ACBs shrink, we think that our turnaround time, especially for those relatively modest changes in the combat systems, can be fielded [quicker].”
The submarine program has achieved incorporating new technologies, affordably, and in a rapid pace, through the acoustic rapid commercial-off-the-shelf insertion (ARCI) program.
“We see they are delivering more capability at a lower cost,” Mosher said. “So, for people who are skeptical of the benefits of OA, we offer the submarine example as a model.”
But the parallels break down pretty quickly, he added, because of the complexity of the surface combat systems is pretty immense. “We have to take a measured approach on how we open up and how fast we do it.”
Mosher pointed out that the surface Navy has its own past to draw on. “We got to a point fielding Aegis baselines where we realized it got unaffordable to add new combat capability.”
“So every new baseline we added, we told ourselves we would retire a previous baseline,” he said. “But we never did. We ended up sustaining a multiple baseline…and when we wanted to add new combat capability, the SM-6, for example, or CEC, we realized there is going to be a big bill for every one of the baselines to get on board. We quickly realized it is an unaffordable strategy.”
Something had to give, Mosher added. “I think leadership is convinced the only way forward is through an OA type of path, with ACB as the foundation of our OA strategy.”