The fight is now. Right now. Not a few years from now. And there’s a huge opportunity bubbling up for the defense industry to vastly accelerate delivery to customers.
SNAIL’S PACE
Investments in research and development (R&D) that will assure dominance in likely scenarios five, 10, 15, or even 20 years from now are, of course, tremendously important. But the enemies we are facing today are holding us off with commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) technology, like drones, and drone swarms. Meanwhile, Defense One’s Marcus Weisgerber’s exciting headline—“US Air Force to Send F-35 to Fight ISIS”—ended with a tease: “. . . In a Few Years.” As Weisgerber reports, for the F-35 there are a host of stops between CONUS and ISIS, according to the U.S. Air Force’s Gen. Herbert Carlisle. Carlisle heads the Air Combat Command.
Last week, however, Air Force Chief Gen. David L. Goldfein explained to a Center for Strategic and International Studies audience how to bridge the capability gap. Defense News’ Valerie Insinna reports, “The Air Force is considering buying a number of light attack planes to help conduct low-end missions in the Middle East, which would ease pressure on more advanced combat jets and help ameliorate aircraft shortages caused by continued readiness problems.”
“’I’m not interested in something that requires a lot of research and development here . . . . I’m looking for something that I can get at right now, commercial, off the shelf, low-cost, that can operate in an uncontested environment, that can deliver the capabilities that we need, that can also be something that perhaps our allies and partners that are in this fight with use,’” Goldfein said, according to Washington Post’s Dan Lamothe.
EVOLUTIONARY LEAP
Goldfein’s proposal isn’t new. The Air Force and the Navy have been playing with these ideas for a long while. The Army, however, was actively delivering capabilities to soldiers quickly a decade ago. In response to demands of the two-front war in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Army’s answer was the Rapid Fielding Initiative (RFI), a demand and supply model that leveraged commercial-off-the-shelf technology to answer immediate national security demands.
What Goldfein proposes is simply an expansion, and adaptation of the RFI model to larger end items that few outside special operations would seriously consider. But since ISIS is, for example, already using drones, and now reportedly moving into drone swarm tactics, industry’s response could very well be more robust COTS end item proposal that quickly and effectively bridge security between now and 20 years from now.
DIVIDENDS ALL ‘ROUND
The payoff could be tremendous for both the military and the industry. Flying an airplane isn’t rocket science. While experienced aviators are qualified (and current) in several big aircraft, there’s no reason why 21st century combat pilots shouldn’t be qualified and current on an array of airframes at the military’s disposal to respond to immediate shortfalls and challenges immediately. Likewise, a defense industry that designs a menu of COTS aircraft models that can be rapidly adapted to changing requirements exercises the supply line, increases private-sector competition with a real market.
The evolutionary leap in defense procurement may not be forward. It may be back to an augmented RFI model.
