Wednesday Morning Keynote Address

The Wednesday morning keynote address was delivered by Chris O'Donnell, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense, Platform and Weapon Portfolio Management, OUSD A&S, who provided an excellent overview of the way the DOD has gone about implementing acquisition reform across the Department.

O'Donnell began with a brief description of the strategic environment. "After years of focusing on operations conducted against violent extremist organizations," he said, "we now face a more complex security environment. With the people of Ukraine foremost in our minds, Russia poses an acute threat that is demonstrated by its unprovoked and brutal invasion. But at the same time, the People's Republic of China is our most consequential strategic competitor and DOD's pacing challenge."

"Our adversaries are not waiting for us," he continued. "Across all domains, they are constantly seeking to out compete and out innovate us. Considering our strategic competitors have advanced layered and integrated sensing and electromagnetic warfare capabilities, now more than ever, the US needs to maintain superiority across the spectrum."

In response to these threats, O'Donnell said, "I'm asking for your help in this effort. Acquisition is a team sport. And whether government, industry or international partner, everyone in this room plays an irreplaceable role. Companies across our defense industrial base have shown that they can quickly respond to any threat or challenge. I'm seeing this every day, as we deliver hundreds of thousands of weapons and equipment to Ukraine, using our presidential drawdown authorities and other Ukraine security assistance funds."

He urged the audience, "We have to work together to make sure we're enabling speed through the right incentives and learning innovative authorities to assess, as well as integrate, emerging technologies. Just look at continued Starlink operations in the Ukraine. They're directly demonstrating the significance of assured communications and access to reliable information for both the military and public during warfare. The EMS survivability attributes implemented by Starlink have highlighted the value of robust electronic protection features, open system design and the systems' ability to rapidly be upgraded and fielded through software."

O'Donnell said the National Defense Strategy advances the US's security goals in three primary ways: integrated deterrence, campaigning and building enduring advantages. "Building enduring advantages to enable integrated deterrence requires the right mix of capabilities and technologies woven together to defend against current and future threats," he explained. "To deliver that mix, our approach to acquisition must be flexible enough to adapt to today's evolving strategic landscape. And we must prioritize resources and efforts that achieve the strategic objectives set forth in the NDS, as well as in the Department's 2020 EMS Superiority Strategy."

"To expedite the fielding of the latest technology and achieve EMSO superiority, we must continue to evolve our policies, processes, and most importantly our culture," he said. "In many ways, we began this process in recent years with a comprehensive update of the Defense Acquisition System, and creation of the Adaptive Acquisition Framework." O'Donnell went on to describe how the Framework creates multiple new acquisition pathways. The Middle Tier Acquisition (MTA) pathway, which is focused on speed, has been extremely useful for many EMSO development programs.

"So, what has worked and what hasn't?" he asked. "What capabilities have we fielded at scale using the rapid pathways. We can move faster and get better results by taking calculated risks. But assuming all programs need to be acquired rapidly ignores lessons learned the hard way. And if we end up leaving too many capability areas with only demonstrations or potential solutions, we are actually not fielding faster. As we continue to drive the cultural shift to embrace the flexibility afforded by the Adaptive Acquisition Framework, we also recognize that the framework alone is not enough.

Later in his address, he said, "By better integrating the three distinctive independent processes – Requirements, Resourcing and Acquisition Management, we can more effectively transition emerging technology across the proverbial valley of death. And to truly identify and address interdependencies and critical risks, we must also broaden our assessments to include not just systems, but portfolios of systems." He explained that the DOD had created integrated acquisition portfolio reviews, or IPRs, "to strengthen the synchronization of warfighting concepts, requirements, technologies and program execution."

"At their core," he said, "IPRs and the mission engineering mindset foster collaboration across DOD to deliver integrated suites of capabilities that are collectively stronger than the sum of the parts. And about six months ago, we completed our Counter-C5ISRT IPR. We were able to show the Department what EW can do in order to address one of the most critical problems we currently face in a peer to peer competition. Mr. David Tremper…leads that effort, and it was really great to see how across the Department we can look at different EW capabilities and bring them to bear very quickly – once we identified that fact that there may be a Navy program that the Army can leverage or an Army program that the Air Force can leverage and move across quickly." He said these experiences had led the Department to create Competitive Advantage Pathfinders (CAPs) "to demonstrate challenges and solutions across our decision support systems."

Addressing EMSO more specifically, O'Donnell said, "EMS superiority is dependent on our ability to maneuver within the spectrum, which requires investments in electromagnetic battle management to increase situational awareness; interoperability improvements and message and data standardization across the joint force, as well as between US and our coalition and allied partners; advanced electromagnetic protection of EMS-dependent systems to ensure we can operate in a contested and congested environment; and adaptable and resilient infrastructures particularly in space based capabilities. This includes targeted investments and innovative and novel capabilities, such as cognitive EW to counter advanced and non-traditional threats to break an adversary's kill web, with an emphasis on C5-ISRT, or left of launch capabilities." He added, "A number of enabling technologies will allow us to keep pace with evolving threat to operate in a complex electromagnetic environment. These include open architecture standards and government reference frameworks; assured PNT and JADC2; and EMSO planning tools, decision aids and visualizations. Historically one of the biggest challenges in advocating for EMSO funding has been articulating the importance of these capabilities to overall mission success. This is especially true if a particular budget trade off will result in buying fewer weapon systems to deliver the desired kinetic effect. As such, we must make a compelling argument for the value of EMSO capability in the context of the mission. Portfolio Management and mission engineering allow us to do just that."

"Ultimately," he said, " the EMS is the connective tissue for all domains, and a linchpin for maintaining our competitive advantage in almost all missionaries. All it takes is turning on the news to remind us this isn't good enough. So, in the context of against a complex adversary like China, we need to ask more of ourselves. What can we do to provide them some capability more effectively and efficiently?"