The capability to conduct expeditionary operations is the most important role of the Marine Corps, said Thomas P. Dee, Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Navy (Expeditionary Programs and Logistics Management), Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Navy (Research, Development & Acquisition).
Speaking at the 20th Naval Expeditionary Warfare Conference in Norfolk, Virginia, in late October, Dee said Congressional support for amphibious ships is strong but in the current security environment, balance, agility and innovation are key to maritime success.
The need for these platforms is great but there is a high degree of budget uncertainty, Dee explained. “Since WWII it’s been normal to have downward budget adjustments — ‘peace dividends’— following periods of war, but unlike earlier periods of budget decline we’re not at peace,” he said. “The challenge for the Department, and for Congress, is how to balance the development of new capabilities with the required capacity and readiness levels,” Dee explained.
“We have to find a way to balance in a world that’s becoming more and more risky,” he said.
Dee pointed to the “Cooperative Strategy for 21st Century Seapower” and to the 2014 Quadrennial Defense Review which highlight the importance of affordability in our acquisition efforts. Affordability becomes an absolute mandate,” Dee said.
“We need to find innovative ways to reduce the costs of maintaining and sustaining our systems.”
Hand-in-hand with affordability is the Department’s emphasis on agility and innovation as enablers to achieve affordability goals. According to Dee, this includes implementing an open systems architecture (OSA) approach. OSA encourages modular designs that allow for independent acquisition of system components which ultimately may result in increased competition and lower modernization costs. For example, the Advanced EOD Robotic System is being built with a modular design which will allow rapid insertion of product improvements, or even new capabilities, as the technology becomes mature. The clearly defined standards and interfaces will allow a wider spectrum of industry to compete for product improvements. This will incentivize innovation among small businesses and minimize our dependence on the large systems integrators for new concepts and designs.
“We want to be able to pull in the latest technology from small business. This can be a model for how to go forward and innovate the force,” Dee said.
In order to maintain technological superiority, the department is looking at ways to increase rapid prototyping and to work with all stakeholders earlier in the development of a system.
“The big lesson is the importance of early and continued collaboration between all stakeholders,” Dee said, “the more the fleet can get involved early, the better it will work out.”
For example, with the amphibious combat vehicle ACV 1.1, early collaboration among the operational, technical, acquisition, budget and requirements communities made it easier to understand the trade-offs between technical maturity, schedule risk, cost, and capabilities and to inform leadership decisions on the way forward, Dee said.
For some, this collaboration may seem like a culture change but Dee contends that it is a natural progression to fostering the innovation and agility required to support forward deployed forces.
“Our potential adversaries have access to the same commercially available technology that we do and can generally turn more quickly than we can,” he said. In the words of Wayne Gretzky, Dee said, “We need to be where the puck is going to be.”