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Focus on platforms and programs By Gail Kaufman, Defense News Media Group
Leading off Defense News Media Group’s ISR Integration Conference: “Shrinking the Sensor-to-Shooter Cycle,” Jumper acknowledged that it will be difficult for the military services to move away from their heavy focus on programs and platforms. But he warned that if the military is to buy and build the right systems, it must first know how missions will be conducted. “If we don’t start talking about how we fight, before we start talking about what we’re going to fight and what we fight with, we’re not going to achieve what the secretary of defense wants us to achieve,” Jumper told a room crowded with military and industry representatives. The Air Force, Jumper said, has to break away from a program-based mentality and instead set up a new planning regimen for near-term and future planning: Step one must be developing concepts of operations, followed by figuring out what effects the military wants to make and what capabilities are needed to cause those effects. Only then should requirements be defined and the focus turn to specific programs. One result of such an approach, he argued, could be faster program development. Enhancing ground mapping, for example, does not necessarily require a spaced-based solution in the near-term, he said. If the Air Force focused on commanders’ current needs, he said, they would be enhancing the capabilities of an existing platform — the Joint Target Attack Radar System — rather than robbing that program to fund a high-priced satellite program that won’t come on line until next decade. “If you start taking away money from JSTARS right now and start putting it into a space solution you start losing capability in the interim,” Jumper said. The Pentagon isn’t organized to meet the commanders’ pressing needs, Jumper said. Despite his service’s efforts to radically change the way it funds programs, Jumper acknowledged that there is no single organization responsible for some of the service’s most pressing problems: integrating its myriad intelligence, reconnaissance and surveillance assets — manned and unmanned, on the ground, in the air and in space. . “Who is the one person in charge of all this? The answer is nobody, just like in the [defense] companies,” Jumper said. “Those of you who are out there making integration centers and working hard on integration are ahead of the game, because you’re finding the answers to questions I’m asking today. Do I have the answers? No. If I did this would be easy. We need industry out there to help us find those answers.” Back |
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coverage Capt. (S) Daniel Clark Duquette Brig. Gen. (S) Frank A. Panter, Jr. |
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