Todd Harrison

BATTLE NETWORK COMPETITION Battle networks, and more specifically DoD’s vision for JADC2, should ultimately be about enabling better options for commanders, speeding the tempo of decisionmaking, and optimizing effects in the battlespace. Connecting platforms and units across domains and with allies and partners by seamlessly passing surveillance, targeting, damage assessment, and other information from one platform to another improves the accuracy, range, persistence, and speed of effects. These improvements increase in a nonlinear manner as more platforms, sensors, communication paths, and other nodes are added to a battle network, transforming what was traditionally thought of as a force multiplier effect into a force exponent effect. The ultimate objective is to see farther with greater clarity and to act faster with more precision than one’s adversary. Battle Networks and the Future Force Part 2: Operational Challenges and Acquisition Opportunities

As defense acquisition costs have soared over the past decade, efforts at reforming the acquisition system have focused intensely on creating more opportunities for competition as a means to reduce costs and incentivize better contractor performance. While competition can, in some cases, reduce costs and improve contractor performance, it is not a cure-all for the problems that plague defense acquisitions. This paper presents a quantitative approach, using game theory to model the effects of competition on contractor pricing. It demonstrates that the way in which a competition is structured can be a determining factor in whether competitive pressure is sufficient to balance the additional development costs of multiple contractors and higher unit costs from splitting the award. Specifically, the way contractors are incentivized to bid (or not bid) depends on the number of rounds of competition, the number of units awarded in each round, and the split in award between the winner and l...

With a federal budget deficit that exceeded $1.3 trillion in FY 2010 and a rapidly mounting national debt, the findings of the Fiscal Commission established to identify ways to balance the budget have been much anticipated. Tackling the deficit is important to restoring the government’s fiscal health and the nation’s economic prosperity. It is also important to national security. History has demonstrated that in times of major conflict, the fiscal might of the United States and the ability to mobilize resources on a massive level have been a source of enduring strategic advantage. But with the deficit near record levels, the debt load rising, and interest payments on the debt consuming a greater share of the budget each year, this advantage is rapidly eroding. Unlike like many national security challenges, which can be ill-defined and intractable, the fiscal challenge the nation faces is relatively straightforward to solve in a technical sense. Indeed, a virtually infinite array of ...

Earth imaging has traditionally been the domain of large governments and expensive satellites. Progress in earth imaging satellite technology has focused on driving down image resolutions, decreasing re-visit times, and expanding spectral coverage. While imaging capability has increased, costs have grown exponentially, pricing many would-be science applications out of the market. Many scientific groups, especially those in countries with emerging economies, have a compelling need for earth imaging to monitor the use of natural resources, measure changes in climate, quantify and track pollution, and assist in natural disaster warning and recovery—without the high cost of a dedicated system or the restrictions imposed by sharing data from another country’s system. NanoObservatory, shown in Figure 1, is a low-cost solution for users wanting basic earth imaging for science applications. It provides multi-spectral imaging (red, green, blue) with a ground sampling distance (GSD) of 10m, a...

: Since the enactment of the Budget Control Act (BCA) of 2011, much attention has been paid to the near-term effects of budgetary constraints on national defense. What has received less attention are the looming budgetary challenges that defense faces beyond the BCA budget caps and the Defense Departments five-year budget planning horizon. Many weapons programs will be at or near their peak years of funding requirements at roughly the same time in the 2020s, creating a modernization bow wave. Just as a large bow wave slows a ship by diverting its energy, carrying a large modernization bow wave is a drag on defense because it leads to program instability and inefficient procurement practices that weaken the buying power of defense dollars. Current plans for major acquisition programs appear to follow the typical pattern of a modernization bow wave, with funding projected to increase by 23 from FY 2015 to the peak in FY 2022. However, this modernization bow wave is not evenly distribu...

As defense acquisition costs have soared over the past decade, efforts at reforming the acquisition system have focused intensely on creating more opportunities for competition as a means to reduce costs and incentivize better contractor performance. While competition can, in some cases, reduce costs and improve contractor performance, it is not a cure-all for the problems that plague defense acquisitions. This paper presents a quantitative approach, using game theory to model the effects of competition on contractor pricing. It demonstrates that the way in which a competition is structured can be a determining factor in whether competitive pressure is sufficient to balance the additional development costs of multiple contractors and higher unit costs from splitting the award. Specifically, the way contractors are incentivized to bid (or not bid) depends on the number of rounds of competition, the number of units awarded in each round, and the split in award between the winner and l...

As defense acquisition costs have soared over the past decade, efforts at reforming the acquisition system have focused intensely on creating more opportunities for competition as a means to reduce costs and incentivize better contractor performance. While competition can, in some cases, reduce costs and improve contractor performance, it is not a cure-all for the problems that plague defense acquisitions. This paper presents a quantitative approach, using game theory to model the effects of competition on contractor pricing. It demonstrates that the way in which a competition is structured can be a determining factor in whether competitive pressure is sufficient to balance the additional development costs of multiple contractors and higher unit costs from splitting the award. Specifically, the way contractors are incentivized to bid (or not bid) depends on the number of rounds of competition, the number of units awarded in each round, and the split in award between the winner and l...

Earth imaging has traditionally been the domain of large governments and expensive satellites. Progress in earth imaging satellite technology has focused on driving down image resolutions, decreasing re-visit times, and expanding spectral coverage. While imaging capability has increased, costs have grown exponentially, pricing many would-be science applications out of the market. Many scientific groups, especially those in countries with emerging economies, have a compelling need for earth imaging to monitor the use of natural resources, measure changes in climate, quantify and track pollution, and assist in natural disaster warning and recovery—without the high cost of a dedicated system or the restrictions imposed by sharing data from another country’s system. NanoObservatory, shown in Figure 1, is a low-cost solution for users wanting basic earth imaging for science applications. It provides multi-spectral imaging (red, green, blue) with a ground sampling distance (GSD) of 10m, and can be customized to image in other spectral ranges as necessary. The satellite resides in a 600km circular orbit between 0o and 38o inclination. From this vantage point, the satellite images a 50km x 50km area and can store consecutive images to create a seamless view. The satellite uses innovative designs for attitude determination and control (ADCS) and communications to deliver the best performance for the lowest cost. A single, off-the-shelf ground station transmits commands to the satellite and downloads images while it is overhead. The real breakthrough with NanoObservatory is not in capabilities but in cost. Weighing only 25kg, NanoObservatory can ride as a secondary payload on other missions, lowering the cost of launch. NanoObservatory takes advantage of the low radiation environment in LEO by using commercial offthe-shelf parts in novel ways, which lowers nonrecurring engineering costs. In addition, the satellite’s simple command and control system requires only a basic ground station and PC for operation, making its on-going costs a fraction of competing earth imaging systems. Many science applications do not require highresolution imaging, but could benefit from a low-cost, dedicated Earth imaging platform. NanoObservatory fills this gap and delivers the benefits of space-based remote sensing to a new segment of underserved customers. NanoObservatory is a breakthrough technology that makes earth imaging for everyone.

ABSTRACTHigh power density micro-systems offer the potential to revolutionize technologies for portable electrical power generation, propulsion and flow control. Devices are being designed and fabricated which include micro-gas turbine engines, micro-rocket engines, micro-motor- compressors, micro-pumps and micro-hydraulic transducers. Common to all of this family of devices is the need to create packages that service the devices, and interface them with the macro-scale environment. Fluid interconnections are a particularly demanding packaging element for this class of devices. In order to achieve high power densities, these devices are required to operate at high pressures and, in some cases, high temperatures. This paper describes the design, analysis, fabrication and testing of high-pressure, high temperature fluid connections for the micro-engine and micro-rocket applications. A glass bonding technology has been developed to allow the creation of multiple fluidic connections con...

A high pressure bipropellant rocket engine has been successfully micromanufactured by fusion bonding a stack of six individually etched single crystal silicon wafers. In order to test the device, an innovative packaging technique was developed to deliver liquid coolant and gaseous propellants to the rocket chip at pressures in excess of 200atm at temperatures above 300°C. Testing continues on the

Instead of relying on a single acquisition program to design and build their constituent parts, complex systems increasingly rely on multiple development programs operating in parallel. This can create challenges for program managers attempting to ensure that the development and delivery schedules of their programs are properly aligned with other interdependent programs-an issue commonly referred to as program synchronization. A