4
Science and Technology Planning for Naval Aviation
To evaluate the S&T planning processes that support technology development at ONR, the committee received briefings from ONR as well as from the Army and the Air Force. Two very different planning approaches were evident. ONR takes a heuristic approach and organizes its projects by portfolio—an approach that makes it difficult to link to a process for meeting identified requirements or to project deliverables and that also presents a management challenge to execute in an integrated format responsive to identified capability needs and gaps. In contrast, the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) takes a systems engineering approach and organizes its efforts using the Integrated Product and Process Development (IPPD) method. The systems engineering approach is much easier than the heuristics approach to manage and to integrate with other S&T efforts.
ONR—THE PORTFOLIO APPROACH
Although Naval Studies Board committees in 2001 and 2002 recommended that ONR adopt a systems engineering approach to technology development,1 ONR continues with a portfolio of technically oriented projects. ONR’s S&T activities related to a systems-level area are not concentrated in a single organiza-
tion but rather are conducted within several departments. ONR is not organizationally structured along war-fighting functional areas, such as naval aviation, surface ship warfare, or weapons systems, but according to technical discipline such as electronics, materials, or human systems. Although such a structure is not uncommon in S&T organizations, it is often complemented by a program office structure representing war-fighting discipline areas and led by individuals who are responsible for the funding and management of technology development across many organizational and technical disciplines. Without such a matrix approach, it is difficult to achieve an integrated and efficient technical program. And that is true for ONR today.
ONR’s portfolio of naval aviation S&T appears to be both diffuse and eclectic. Because no single individual or organization was responsible for the ensemble, ONR could not provide the committee with a coherent naval aviation S&T program plan across the entire organization. ONR staff did give briefings on a few selective thrusts that seemed well balanced and well supported and would definitely benefit many naval aviation elements.
AIR FORCE—THE INTEGRATED PRODUCT AND PROCESS DEVELOPMENT APPROACH
The Department of Defense (DOD) accepted IPPD as a preferred systems engineering process in 1996. IPPD activities focus on the customer and meeting the customer’s needs. In selecting a new technology for development, trade-offs between competing approaches are analyzed, with consideration given to operational, design, performance, production, support, and cost factors to optimize the ultimate application or system (product or service) over its life cycle.
The Air Force has embraced IPPD, and AFRL uses it as the preferred process for its S&T development. The AFRL approach (Figure 4.1) is a six-step process involving (1) determining requirements, (2) establishing S&T exit criteria (for a program to leave S&T as successful or unsuccessful), (3) developing technology alternatives, (4) performing value analyses, (5) developing and demonstrating new technologies, and (6) analyzing and delivering results.2
The objective of the IPPD approach is to better quantify the costs and risks associated with new technologies during the later stages of S&T development and to reduce the costs and risks of transitioning new technologies to weapons systems. The aviation S&T program at AFRL is well structured, vetted across all stakeholders, linked to capabilities, and geared to deliverables.
2 |
The AFRL approach is described at <http://www.jgai.com/stprocess50/pm60draft/index.htm>. Last accessed on March 15, 2005. |
USING CONTEXT IN MANAGING S&T PLANNING
Although the Navy has identified IPPD as a preferred process for program managers,3 ONR has not yet embraced it for S&T planning. In fact, as noted above, the committee found no system at ONR for assessing the overall needs for and balance in the naval aviation S&T portfolio.
Managing S&T through a portfolio is difficult, but it can be made easier by keeping in mind the larger context in which S&T initiatives are proposed. Judging which initiatives should be fostered in a portfolio depends on their contributions to the larger goals identified for naval aviation. Absent a systems engineering approach, the challenge for ONR is to discern the goals that naval aviation is intended to fulfill, identify which S&T initiatives would further their achievement, and then manage those S&T activities accordingly. This calls for a host of skills, including judging scientific merit, identifying likely impacts, estimating costs and risks, and evaluating new S&T opportunities vis-à-vis trends in naval aviation. Trends that impinge on naval aviation can be useful as benchmarks against which to evaluate proposed characteristics and new performance levels. The committee lists nine trends evident in the larger context that can be used by ONR as guidelines in its S&T planning for naval aviation:
3 |
See <http://www.abm.rda.hq.navy.mil/navyaos>. Last accessed on March 15, 2005. |
-
Substitution of technology manpower. Technology is replacing man-power—to reduce risks to and the exposure of personnel and to minimize the costs that accompany the use of people. This trend will accelerate. A recent manifestation is the rapid introduction of unmanned aircraft, which has raised important operational problems of integrating manned and unmanned aircraft into the congested space of shipboard flight operations—both on deck and in the nearby airspace. Problems related to safety and efficiency are evident, but solutions that maintain the operational tempo achieved by manned aircraft are not.
-
Vertical launch and recovery. Fixed-wing aircraft capable of vertical launch and recovery are now used at naval bases and aboard ships. Providing vertical launch capability means sacrificing some at-target capabilities in the aircraft, a trade-off that not only calls for a complex balancing of design characteristics and performance but also requires changes in the bases and ships that operate the aircraft.
-
Constrained operating space. Aircraft operations from ships at sea have always been difficult due to the severely constrained operating space on ships, an issue that will become more acute with the potential integration of unmanned aircraft with manned aircraft on the same ships.
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Information management. The growing demand for information generation and management by U.S. forces sent to a trouble spot calls for dwell time, sophisticated use of sensors, and on-scene interpretation of disparate and sometimes conflicting data. Networked information is now a mandatory system capability.
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More precise strike. Very precise strike minimizes collateral damage and provides deft application of force; very accurate weaponry can thereby shorten campaigns or otherwise enable their effective management.
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Greater capability/greater cost. The ever greater capability built into each platform renders it more costly. When overall spending for Navy platforms is held constant, a result is fewer platforms in inventory. Spreading development and support costs by broadening the number of participants can reduce research and development costs as a fraction of total lifetime costs, freeing marginal dollars for procurement of extra aircraft.
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Technologies giving rise to countertechnologies. The development of counter-stealth capabilities in radars and missiles, and of counter-countermeasures in electronic warfare, makes clear that S&T management must account for possible disruptions or even a reversal of a trend.
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Fewer types, models, and series. The number of different naval aviation aircraft types has been declining, with consequent streamlining of maintenance, logistics, and training. This growing commonality provides opportunities for high-payoff S&T if it is focused correctly on the fewer aircraft types. Similarly, aviation weaponry and information management are increasingly standardized in the Navy and the Marine Corps and even across DOD.
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Operational integration. One key warfare mission area that benefits from the embarkation of Marine Corps squadrons on carriers as part of Navy carrier air wings is amphibious warfare, in which at-sea forces support Marines landing ashore. Sea basing for landed Marines presents new opportunities for S&T to enable successful implementation of this concept.
MANAGING S&T USING THE PORTFOLIO APPROACH
While the committee recognizes that managing S&T within a portfolio enviroment is difficult, it can be done. However, the S&T communities must be active participants in identifying the key technology areas, and S&T performers and users must be organized into integrated product develoment teams representing capability areas and encouraged to explore the range of technology options available to achieve the particular capability. Naval aviation war fighters and systems planners should be charged with giving technologists “I wish I could …” information. Technology experts and visionaries should be asking users: “If you had the following technology to solve your capability gap, would you use it?” Effective planning can be achieved by bringing these two communities together, aided by system studies, contributions from industry, input from the scientific community via program managers at ONR and scientific experts from the Service laboratories, and outreach to other agencies and private-sector expertise. The list of needed technologies must be strongly coupled to the users’ list of desired capabilities.
Technology options to address capabilities may shift in time, but they do form the basis for S&T planning. A difficult part of this process is to group technologies according to near-term, mid-term, and long-term needs. A second and perhaps more difficult part is to ensure that adequate funding and a management structure are present to achieve cross-technology, integrated solutions. A third difficult, but doable, problem relates to the truly revolutionary breakthrough technology solutions that cannot be planned. These will arise from the inventiveness of scientists and engineers, some of whom may be funded by ONR and others not. S&T planning should have the flexibility to ensure ONR’s participation in supporting these creative endeavors, and ONR’s execution plan should provide for incorporation of these game-changing options into future-year versions of the evolving S&T plan.
When the resource base is finite, prioritization of technology options requires system studies; sensitivity to the need for cross-Service, cross-agency cooperation; and recognition of the DOD reliance process.4 Each of the time
frames demands different prioritization processes. For example, the process for developing Future Naval Capabilities (FNCs) properly links the 6.3 agenda to analysis scenarios and war-fighter priorities. The Discovery and Invention (D&I) agenda, however, must be guided strongly by science opportunities and the perceived relevance to key technology needs.
Reducing the tendency toward stovepipe solutions is the most complex aspect of any S&T organization. In the context of this discussion, ONR has significant advantages in managing the entire portfolio of 6.1 to 6.3 naval aviation S&T efforts. But to properly exploit that advantage, ONR must balance its efforts across disciplines, ensure that resources are moved when technology transitions, and ensure that the naval laboratories remain strong participants in the overall effort.
MANAGING PROGRAMS IN AN S&T PORTFOLIO
For most or all of the near-term naval aviation technology needs, 6.3 programs are already in place with road maps, and the primary issues to be resolved are their technology readiness, funding gaps, and technology transition paths. In the Navy it appears that most of these programs fall in the FNC categories, and the planning and process for prioritization have been developed. Milestones linked to technology readiness levels and a carefully monitored process of review and transition agreements are critical management tools.
For the Navy, as for most S&T organizations, mid-term technologies will be the most difficult to plan for. The funding divisions of Discovery and Invention (6.1 and early 6.2) and Exploitation and Development (late 6.2 and 6.3) make it unclear how mid-term needs can be addressed.
Long-term requirements should be addressed by primarily 6.1 efforts, which should reflect the need for both capability-linked programs and novel concepts or breakthrough technologies. These programs do not lend themselves to rigid milestones, and allocation of resources has to be based on opportunity, scientific judgment, and a vision of potential applicability to naval aviation. Especially for 6.1 efforts, the scientific community must be brought to the table and organized to identify the critical areas for funding. For example, when the Air Force Office of Scientific Research examined the capabilities required for joint, network-centric collaboration with coalition partners, the involved 6.1 scientific community helped to identify team training as an area requiring radical new methodology.
At every stage of planning and execution, cognizance of jointness within DOD is imperative. ONR S&T planning teams must draw from the experience of the other Services, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, using their planning expertise as input for prioritization of the portfolio and distribution of the resources
within the Navy S&T program. In the execution of programs, collaboration with others can and does take all forms.
PROGRAM EXECUTION IN AN S&T PORTFOLIO
The goal in program execution should be to obtain the most creative solutions possible from the best performers, which implies open competition. The committee believes that ONR funding is awarded competitively, with the exception of the block funding for the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) and the congressionally mandated programs that ONR typically executes. Integration of open-competition funding into the naval aviation S&T plan would be a natural by-product of developing the systems engineering approach described above and recommended in earlier reports.5
ONR should build in periodic internal and external review of its entire S&T plan, organized as a comprehensive review across all ONR codes and including the core NRL programs. Criteria for these reviews should include the rationale for program planning, funding levels for road-mapped programs, technology readiness matched to program plan, quality of research work measured against world-class standards, technology transition plans, and execution.
Providing support for discovery of novel concepts, breakthrough technologies, and improvements in the technology base is a 6.1 activity. Success requires program managers who are current in technology research and development (including the visionary scientists at laboratories such as NRL, AFRL, the Army Research Laboratory, at NASA, in industry, and so on) and at the same time cognizant of the naval aviation S&T plan. ONR must maintain currency in nanotechnology, biology, spintronics, and other areas to be ready for solutions as yet undiscovered. The determination of how much funding and what criteria to use for allotting support must be a part of the naval aviation strategic S&T plan.
A NAVAL AVIATION STRATEGIC S&T PLAN
In discussions with the committee, ONR and the Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR) readily agreed that they did not have a strategic S&T planning process to support naval aviation. They agreed that one was needed and that they would work together to produce it. Without a plan to assess, the committee offers
the following thoughts, which may be helpful to ONR and NAVAIR as they put together the first naval aviation strategic S&T plan.
A naval aviation strategic S&T plan will encompass an overall picture of naval aviation, from operations to S&T, and of the trends that impinge on naval aviation, such as those listed above by the committee. It will include identification of specific goals and development of implementation plans to reach those goals. The Office of the Chief of Naval Operations (OPNAV) has the primary responsibility for creating a naval aviation strategic plan. OPNAV will work with the Commander of Naval Air Forces (CNAF), NAVAIR, and ONR. The methodology currently being used at OPNAV to develop a strategic approach to near-term naval war fighting is the Naval Capabilities Development Process (NCDP): A range of likely future war-fighting campaigns, including joint campaigns with other U.S. military and allied forces, is analyzed to derive a measure of the current state of naval capabilities. Gaps in desired capabilities are identified, and plans to correct or fill those gaps are created. New technology insertion is one way to correct the gaps, and indeed the outputs of the FNCs are being focused on that objective.
It is essential that the Navy and the Marine Corps use processes like the NCDP and apply them to the new war-fighting operations envisioned in Naval Power 21. The Strategic Studies Group XXIII, which reports directly to the Chief of Naval Operations and has responsibility for generating revolutionary concepts for future naval war fighting, has recognized this process need and (in its report entitled Global Maritime Fight … 2030 and Beyond) is recommending a future concept development group separate from that for current fleet operations.6 The Naval Aviation Enterprise (CNAF, OPNAV, and NAVAIR) has just created the document Naval Aviation Vision 2020, which can provide an initial basis for identifying future needs.7 ONR, working together with OPNAVand NAVAIR, should be able to identify strategic goals that relate to desired operational capabilities. Once these strategic goals are established, ONR, working with NAVAIR, can create a strategic S&T plan to satisfy the technical requirements of the desired capabilities. The goals and approach of the naval aviation strategic S&T plan should be agreed to by all of the principal stakeholders in naval aviation. Following approval of the plan, ONR should be held accountable, through periodic reviews, for progress toward accomplishing the goals.
6 |
ADM James R. Hogg, USN (Ret.), Director, CNO Strategic Studies Group, personal communication, August 10, 2005. |
7 |
See VADM James M. Zoortman, USN, Commander, Naval Air Forces; VADM Walter B. Massenburg, USN, Commander, Naval Air Systems Command; and RDML Thomas J. Kilcline, Jr., USN, Director, Air Warfare Division, 2005, Naval Aviation Vision 2020, Naval Aviation Enterprise, Department of the Navy, Washington, D.C. Available online at <http://www.nae.cnaf.navy.mil/demo/main.asp?ItemID=12>. Last accessed on September 30, 2005. |
The Chief of Naval Research must drive the strategic planning at ONR. He controls the senior staff, who understand the ONR mission, the challenges and obstacles that ONR faces, and the resources available to ONR to accomplish the mission. Supporting the senior staff should be a strategic planning process manager (traffic cop) to keep the activities moving toward completion of the strategic plan. These activities will incorporate both near-term and far-term elements. Near-term needs are addressed by FNC activities and far-term needs by D&I activities.
An effective strategic plan is developed by those who will implement it and coordinated by those who will use it.8 In the case of naval aviation S&T, this means that close coordination among ONR, NAVAIR, and OPNAV will be required to create the naval aviation strategic S&T plan. Building the plan should simultaneously incorporate opportunities that can be matured (“technology push”) and crosscutting initiatives that are new (“requirements pull”). The plan must have metrics by which to measure success (e.g., technology transitions) and regular milestones that can be updated, and it should be keyed to the annual fiscal cycle.
Since developing a naval aviation strategic S&T plan will be a new endeavor for ONR, the committee offers this outline as a guide:
-
Start with an enterprise view.
-
What are the “alternative futures” to which the vision of the future is directed?
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What is the naval aviation vision—what does the future hold?
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What is new this year versus what was said last year?
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What naval aviation capabilities and gaps exist within the Future Years Defense Plan (FYDP)?
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What new capabilities are needed in the future (outside the FYDP)?
-
-
Highlight and track S&T gaps and opportunities in naval aviation.
-
Understand that ONR must become involved with the gap assessment process (get S&T gaps annually from N70, Warfare Integration).
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Prepare an S&T gap plan and associated deliverables.
-
Prepare an S&T opportunities plan and associated deliverables.
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Coordinate gap and opportunities plans with the Air Force, Army, and NASA.
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Coordinate the gap and opportunities plans with NAVAIR and other system commands.
-
-
Identify the technology areas of interest to naval aviation.
-
Do a portfolio analysis that shows investment in each technology area.
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Establish metrics for each: projects transitioned, stopped/divested, ongoing.
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Look at last year’s strategic plan and metrics for success.
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Identify what was projected/said and what was actually achieved.
-
-
Track investment levels (year after year) to support strategic plan analysis.
-
Enter investments into a database.
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Tag program elements and projects so that database sorting can support analysis.
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Tag by warfare area, mission capability, platform category, and user.
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Provide ONR codes with the ability to do searches and sorts.
-
-
Perform an annual portfolio investment analysis and include it in the annual strategic plan.
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Analyze short term (FNC plus Innovative Naval Prototypes) versus far term (D&I).
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Track S&T investment trends for naval aviation.
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Analyze S&T investment for surface, subsurface, and space, and the coordination of each with naval aviation.
-
-
Complete a technology analysis for each area of interest to naval aviation.
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Evaluate current state.
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Determine what sharing is going on, and with whom, and what joint investments are being made.
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Analyze last year’s, this year’s, and next year’s proposed investments.
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Categorize expectations: transitions, spin-offs, terminations.
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CONGRESSIONAL ADD-ONS
The development of a naval aviation strategic S&T plan will help ONR considerably with steering congressionally directed add-ons toward projects that are recognizably beneficial to naval aviation. Congressional projects supplant the core program of naval aviation S&T, an unfortunate circumstance that has been ongoing for a number of years and needs to be stopped. An examination of the President’s FY 2005 budget highlights the problem.
The President’s budget proposed lower amounts in Navy 6.2/6.3 S&T program elements compared with the amounts for 2004. Table 4.1 shows that funding for the 6.2 category was reduced by 22 percent and for the 6.3 category was reduced by 33 percent when compared with FY 2004 appropriations. The 6.1 category, Basic Research, remained virtually the same as for the previous year. The reductions in the 6.2 and 6.3 categories were spread across multiple program elements, as shown in Table 4.2.
TABLE 4.1 President’s FY 2005 Budget for Navy S&T Compared with FY 2004 Appropriations (millions $)
|
|
FY 2004 |
FY 2005 |
Percentage Change |
6.1 |
Basic Research |
484 |
477 |
−1 |
6.2 |
Applied Research |
723 |
564 |
−22 |
6.3 |
Advanced Technology Development |
1,009 |
677 |
−33 |
6.4 |
Prototypes |
2,807 |
2,804 |
0 |
6.5 |
System Development and Demonstration |
6,360 |
8,009 |
26 |
6.6 |
Management Support |
687 |
654 |
−5 |
6.7 |
Operational System Development |
2,898 |
3,162 |
9 |
|
TOTAL |
14,968 |
16,347 |
9 |
SOURCE: Office of Naval Research. |
When Congress appropriated the FY 2005 budget, it added $589 million to ONR’s account for specific S&T projects (in constituent districts). Usually 1- to 2-year efforts, these projects are widely diverse in scope and technology. These congressional add-ons disrupt Navy S&T efforts because they are short-term, unexpected projects that have no obvious connection with Navy S&T planning. They are also a burden on ONR in terms of support (contracts, finance, legal, and program management). The committee observed that these congressional addons have become a way of life at ONR and that the Navy anticipates them by reducing its annual requests to Congress in the ONR area so as to increase funding in other areas. Table 4.2 indicates that congressional add-ons were expected in 13 different PEs. Table 4.3 shows the effects of congressional adds-ons to just one PE at ONR (PE0602114N, Power Projection). In FY 2003, 14 projects were added; in FY 2004, 19 projects were added; and in FY 2005, 17 projects were added—on top of the ONR base S&T programs.
Congressional add-ons are not a measure of success for ONR, but rather are a net loss of discretionary S&T budget and create a significant distraction from the main Navy mission focus with programs that rarely make their way into the fleet. If ONR develops a naval aviation strategic S&T plan, congressional staffs could better funnel constituent desires into support for this plan.
TABLE 4.2 Proposed Reductions in the President’s FY 2005 Budget for Navy S&T by Program Element (millions $)
TABLE 4.3 Congressional Add-ons in Just One Program Element (thousands $)
PE0602114N |
FY 2003 |
FY 2004 |
FY 2005 |
Aircraft Carrier Surveillance System |
|
|
2,800 |
High Energy Thermobaric Warhead |
|
|
1,000 |
Hybrid Stored Energy for Weapons |
|
|
1,500 |
Hypersonics |
|
|
1,000 |
Integrated Personal Protection System |
|
|
1,200 |
Millimeter/Terahertz Imaging Arrays |
|
|
2,100 |
Mobiles on Scene Sensor A/C C4I Center |
|
|
1,000 |
Silver Fox UAV |
|
|
2,500 |
Smart Optical Sensor Payload |
|
|
1,000 |
Unattended Imaging Sensor Network |
|
|
1,000 |
Kill Assist All-Weather Targeting System |
|
3,115 |
1,700 |
Combustion Light Gas Gun |
|
4,203 |
4,200 |
Fireladar |
|
1,483 |
1,700 |
Nanocomposite Warheads |
|
2,521 |
2,600 |
WBG Semiconductors |
|
1,384 |
1,700 |
Thermal Management of Ground Stations |
|
5,191 |
6,000 |
GAN Microelectronics and Materials |
|
2,967 |
− |
Intelligence Control System for SWARM UAVs |
|
4,203 |
− |
Multi-INT Exploitation Systems |
|
2,769 |
− |
Electric Actuator Technology |
|
1,187 |
− |
Free Electron Laser |
|
6,923 |
− |
Nonlinear Dynamics—Controlled Chaos |
|
3,362 |
− |
Radar Infrared Imaging |
|
2,076 |
− |
Rocket Propulsion (IHPRPT) |
|
989 |
− |
Chemical Weapons Detection for UAV |
|
1,384 |
− |
Hybrid Lidar-Radar |
|
1,684 |
− |
Ultra Short Pulse Laser Micromachining |
1,214 |
1,384 |
− |
High-Efficiency Piezoelectric Crystals |
1,668 |
2,076 |
− |
Mini High-Definition Digital Camera |
952 |
− |
− |
Panoramic Night-Imaging System |
3,240 |
− |
− |
Pulse Detonation Engine |
1,003 |
− |
− |
Advanced Multifunction Receiver System |
1,625 |
− |
− |
Low-Cost Fused Remote Sensors |
954 |
− |
− |
Zlost Cost SWARM UAV |
2,380 |
− |
− |
Millimeter Wave Infrared Imaging |
1,907 |
− |
− |
SAR for All-Weather Targeting |
6,712 |
− |
− |
Real-World Immersive Imaging |
1,907 |
− |
− |
Hybrid Fiber Optic Wireless System |
952 |
− |
− |
Integrated Biological Warfare Technology Platform |
3,813 |
5,092 |
3,500 |
Interrogator High-Speed Retro Reflector Communications |
1,627 |
1,978 |
2,000 |
PE0602114N |
FY 2003 |
FY 2004 |
FY 2005 |
ONR S&T Program |
|||
Strategic Sustainment |
9,988 |
23,149 |
31,160 |
High-Speed Propulsion/Advanced Weaponry |
31,919 |
16,884 |
30,034 |
Unmanned Vehicles |
15,280 |
14,548 |
11,354 |
Naval, EOIR, and Sensor Technology |
10,298 |
13,259 |
12,283 |
Electric Weapons |
5,780 |
13,400 |
10,000 |
Strike Technology |
7,300 |
5,417 |
4,000 |
TOTAL |
110,519 |
142,628 |
137,331 |
Congressional add-ons |
29,667 |
55,969 |
38,500 |
Percentage of total |
27% |
39% |
28% |
SOURCE: Office of Naval Research. |
FINDINGS
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There is no strategic planning process at ONR for naval aviation S&T. Current naval aviation S&T is “opportunity” driven, rather than “requirements gap” driven. There is no process to create a vision or strategies and no apparent connection between S&T investments and future naval aviation goals. S&T plans are developed from the bottom up, and funding allocations are based on current technical needs instead of broader and longer-term Navy goals and gaps in capabilities.
-
ONR does not use a systems engineering approach in the planning and execution of its technology development. As a result, projects are developed ad hoc and appear to be “opportunity” driven rather than “requirements” driven. Technology gaps are not systematically identified and thus are not well defined. Systems analysis is not used to determine technology priorities or investment strategies.
-
ONR’s organization according to technical discipline makes it difficult for ONR to support cross-disciplinary areas, such as naval aviation. ONR currently lacks a formal process for managing naval aviation S&T, which involves multiple disciplines and programs located in six different ONR organizations. There is currently no single program manager with authority to approve a budget and long-term planning/direction setting for naval aviation S&T across ONR.
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The committee believes that the large number of congressionally directed aviation projects at ONR is counterproductive to ONR’s naval aviation S&T efforts. These projects supplant the budget for core S&T efforts, add to the workload of administrators and managers, and distort planning with the introduc-
-
tion of short-term, unexpected projects that rarely transition into future naval capabilities. The committee views current congressional add-ons not as a measure of success for ONR, but rather as a burden and a distortion of good S&T practice.
-
The committee observed poor communication among organizations—particularly between ONR and NAVAIR. Some personal relationships were good, but in general the organizational relationships were weak. Naval aviation visionaries were difficult to identify. Technologists were not interacting with war fighters or Pentagon Planning, Programming, Budgeting, and Execution System (PPBES) planners, and there was insufficient interaction and coordination with Army and Air Force aviation strategies.
RECOMMENDATIONS
-
ONR should support OPNAV in its efforts to develop a naval aviation strategic S&T plan that defines the future of naval aviation and the role of naval aviation in Naval Power 21. The plan should clearly identify future technology needs, and ONR should respond to these needs by creating a naval aviation strategic S&T plan. The Chief of Naval Research (CNR) should lead development of the plan, which should be structured by technology. NAVAIR and the program executive offices should be partners in its creation. It should be updated annually in synchronization with the PPBES process.
-
The naval aviation strategic S&T plan should highlight and track naval aviation capability gaps. While information on many of these gaps will come from OPNAV (N70, Warfare Integration, analysis), the Navy Warfare Development Command (NWDC), and the Naval Aviation Strategic Plan, identification of others will be based on external studies and analysis. It is critical that the naval aviation strategic S&T plan be coordinated with the S&T plans of the Air Force, the Army, and NASA. The Joint Aeronautical Commanders Group (JACG) has been a key player in accomplishing this coordination. The Commander, Naval Air Systems Command, is the current chair of the JACG, and the committee understands that he will be reactivating the JACG’s coordination of aviation S&T plans among its members.
-
The committee recommends that ONR use a systems approach in the planning and development of future naval aviation S&T. The IPPD method used by the Air Force in its S&T planning and implementation is a requirements-driven approach worthy of consideration by ONR.
-
The Chief of Naval Research should strengthen ONR’s analytic capabilities. A cadre of systems analysis personnel who can interface between the mission capability analysis personnel at OPNAV and NWDC and the scientists and technologists at ONR is needed to support strategic planning for naval aviation S&T.
-
With the establishment of a naval aviation strategic S&T plan and the identification of critical gaps in capabilities for naval aviation, ONR should inform and educate congressional staffers about technologies and capabilities that would significantly advance the closure of such gaps, thus turning a currently burdensome relationship into a strategic supportive force.
-
The naval aviation strategic S&T plan should track technology progress and investment levels annually for each major and minor technology category. It should track each gap and the investment being made to fill that gap. PEs and associated projects should be tagged for annual analysis in terms of portfolio investment, mission capability gaps, platform categories, and so on.
-
The Chief of Naval Research should establish a single point of responsibility for the development of a naval aviation strategic S&T plan at ONR. This responsibility must include both budget and direction-setting authority, even though the technology development will occur in several different organizations. This would enable development of a prioritized, balanced, and well-integrated program that has a high probability of transitioning technology into the operational naval forces.