Issues and challenges facing the T&E community with rapid weapon system technology changes: OTA support for advanced concept technology demonstrations - Test and Evaluation - Test and Evaluation, Operational Test Agency, United States

Program Manager, Nov-Dec, 2001 by Patrick J. Dulin

Are streamlined acquisition policies really able to "rapidly transition advanced technology into the hands of the unified commanders?" Or, are they just a "Rush to Failure," forcing the test community to deflate giddy warfighter anticipation with Operational Test (OT) failure reports? Clearly, both triumphs and failures have emerged from acquisition streamlining efforts. The Test and Evaluation (T&E) community is struggling to develop innovative techniques to support streamlining efforts.

In that vein, this article proposes employing the Joint Interoperability Test Command-developed technique of a multi-Service Operational Test Agency (OTA) team in support of the Advanced Concept Technology Demonstration (ACTD) streamlining technique for rapid technology insertion.

To evaluate the usefulness of this proposal, we need to answer two primary questions. First of all, why do this, and secondly how would you accomplish this?

Why?

In responding to the first question, "Why employ a multi-Service OTA team in support of an ACTD," a precise definition and description of an ACTD and its associated dynamics are in order, followed, by an explanation of the advantages and disadvantages of OTA support for ACTDs.

Advanced Concept Technology Demonstrations

Currently posted to the DoD ACTD Web site at http://wwwacq.osd.mil/actd/intro.htm is the official definition of an ACTD:

"Advanced Concept Technology Demonstrations exploit mature and maturing technologies to solve important military problems. ACTDs are designed to allow users to gain an understanding of proposed new capabilities for which there is no user experience base. Specifically they provide warfighters an opportunity: to develop and refine their concept of operations to fully exploit the capability under evaluation; to evolve their operational requirements as they gain experience and understanding of the capability; as well as to operate militarily useful quantities of prototype systems in realistic military demonstrations; and on that basis, make an assessment of the military utility of the proposed capability."

Now the dynamics of executing an ACTD are not quite as straightforward as the definition. In brief DoD approves the ACTD and tasks the geographic Commander-in-Chief (CINC) of a Unified Command to execute the ACTD. Normally, a government lab or office such as the Marine Corps Warfighting Lab or Office of Naval Research is also responsible for providing the hardware/software to be demonstrated during the ACTD, and that lab or office is in direct support of the CINC conducting the ACTD.

The CINC, in turn, identifies an appropriate exercise that one or more of his or her Major Subordinate Commands (MSC) will be conducting and tasks the MSC to integrate the ACTD into the exercise. Of course the MSC is, in all likelihood, already over-tasked with a high tempo of operations. The MSC's primary concern will not be the ACTD, but rather using the exercise under design to train the MSC's subordinate forces. As such, the MSC will optimize the exercise scenario being built to meet MSC unique training needs, and not necessarily to create a scenario that demonstrates the ACTD in a system-of-systems operationally relevant scenario.

Unfortunately, the government lab personnel in support of the CINC to provide the equipment to be demonstrated are not normally warfighters with operational backgrounds, but rather skilled technicians. They do not normally have the experience to help the MSC craft an exercise scenario that meets both the training audience needs and the ACTD's needs, nor do these technicians normally have a complete portrait of what will constitute the system-of-systems with which the ACTD technology must interoperate when fielded in the near future. The result is normally friction where the MSC, without discretionary time, struggles with the government lab personal who are demanding more exercise time for the ACTD.

OTA Involvement

To turn this situation around, an OTA team could assist a harried MSC with help in crafting an exercise scenario that meets MSC forces' training needs, while also replicating a scenario in which the ACTD could be successfully demonstrated. Simply, the OTA team includes operators who would speak the same professional language as the MSC warfighter. Additionally, an OTA team would understand the evolving, joint system-of-systems requirements far better than the MSC, by virtue of the OTA team's day-to-day activities with multiple maturing acquisition programs. The OTA team could more realistically translate the impact of these maturing programs into the developing exercise scenario.

So far, all the advantages we have discussed have been one-sided in favor of the CINC conducting the ACTD, but the OTA itself would reap benefits from this relationship. OTA involvement would provide an opportunity to reduce current friction resulting from a common misperception among OTAs that ACTDs have "complicated the test process." It would also provide OTA teams with current updates on the specifics of operational issues facing the warfighter, such as limited range availability. Additionally, it would allow the OTA team to influence incorporation of testable requirements/capabilities in development efforts subsequent to the ACTD.