“There’s no greater time in the world than it is today to advocate for missile defense. This is our 66th virtual congressional roundtable. This is on accelerating missile defense and joint lethality with R&D. 

And we can just start right off on how great it was yesterday on the Aegis shot, the MDA shot, the shot from Guam that we proved and demonstrated to the world to defend that island. I want to give a lot of credit, a lot of credit to John Bier of MDA, to Heath Collins of MDA, Lieutenant General Heath Collins and John, the architect of this, as well as Paul Mann, Lieutenant General Rob Rasch, to be able to accelerate that first block of our architecture for the defense of Guam. Just magnificent. 

So, I’m very excited about that as we discuss this today. So, we’re in a world where new technologies and advancements are happening so fast. And our ability to move back quickly is important in our ability on missile defense, on joint lethality, on everything. 

We’re going through a cost curve revolution. And the research and engineering of the Pentagon, of the Department of Defense, is really the bread and butter of taking new capabilities from wherever they come from, from contractors, from ideas, from small companies, all over and take that through the valley, as they call it the valley of death, but they take that through to test it, to prove it, to make sure it’s safe and sound, to work with our military on it. 

And that is a critical component before they can pass it off to be actually acquired and sustained and put forward to the warfighter. So, where the challenges have been, especially in today’s world, is our combatant commanders around the world are demanding for these new systems, whatever they are. And they could be high-end, what we just saw yesterday with Guam and what they did there, or it could be low-end, what you’re seeing with the drones that are in our country and elsewhere. 

So, that mixture has to be balanced. And we have to be able to put these capabilities in our warfighters’ hands to be able to compete and outdo our threat or our enemy in those AORs.” 

– Mr. Riki Ellison, MDAA Founder and Chairman 

“So the acquisition community is responsible for procuring, testing, evaluating, and deploying this capability. Well, more times than not, that capability still requires about 5% more effort to have it adapt and tailored to that combatant command’s operating environment. We see it often at INDOPACOM because we’re the only combatant command that’s maritime focused. 

So a lot of the resources coming from the services, we have to be able to flex that capability for operations into our maritime environment. There’s no money for that. So organizations like R&E, DARPA, SCO, now coming up with DIU and CDO, they have two-year money that has been able to kind of bridge that gap for us. 

What Shotgun has done with the acquisition community, specifically with Dave Tremper and his competitive acquisition program, they took an evaluation, a technical evaluation of the JFN first week of December 2023, and it became a program of record 41 days later. So that program of record is being handed off to Air Force’s C3BM for sustainment beyond. So Shotgun has found ways to use the acquisition community against itself to be able to deliver that. 

I would offer that it hasn’t happened very much, but it has been done. And this type of leadership and understanding how the system works to deliver capability to the warfighter is critical. And the other part is there’s really no money to bring in Army, Navy, Air Force systems under the same umbrella to work.” 

– Mr. JD Gainey, MDAA Board of Directors Member 

“And it’s, you know, you’ve heard the term, the valley of death, we exist to take on that valley of death, which is that challenge of getting a successful technology into something that men and women are able to, you know, to prevail in conflict because they’re using it. And it is my very strong opinion that most people call that a money problem, that gosh, you know, we just didn’t have enough money to do that. And my very strong opinion is that it’s really an information problem, meaning we didn’t collect the right information. 

And it’s funny, back to that idea of throwing things over the fence, I call them Christmas presents. You know, we ask the warfighter what they want for Christmas five years from now, and we try to translate that and build it and give it back to them instead of working hand in hand every step of the way as we go forward. So I’ve got three offices, and I’ll go through this pretty quick, but I’ve got an office called Multi-Domain Joint Operations that is meant to be the eyes and ears that is that what I call the magnifying glass between the warfighter and the technologist, where they’re taking those warfighter needs and focusing them on the technological community and taking those technological capabilities and then focusing those back on the warfighter. The second office is an office called Mission Integration, and I heard J.D. talking about this a little bit, but I am a deep, deep, deep believer that we are not leveraging technology enough in the area of modeling and simulation to help provide us the information to make very rapid, good decisions. And the Mission Integration office is chartered with helping better describe and execute kill webs or kill chains. I think you guys have probably heard that term, this idea that I may need an Army missile with a Navy command and control system with an Air Force sensor, and that I need to be able to do that seamlessly. In order to do so, you need to be very methodical about engineering that architecture.” 

– Mr. Thomas “Shotgun” Browning, Performing the Duties of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Mission Capabilities 

“We are at a point where we’ve really got to accept risk, and risk in the sense of trying new ideas and new concepts and doing that very quickly. And the cool part about DevSecOps is you buy down that risk iteratively very rapidly and bit by bit, and it gives you the opportunity to pivot. 

So this idea of leaning into really addressing joint challenges through rapid prototyping and rapid iteration, I think is the key to the future, and we need obviously support to get there.” 

– Mr. Thomas “Shotgun” Browning, Performing the Duties of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Mission Capabilities 

“You’re making it happen. It was great. It was great to be able to open up and clearly articulate a very complex situation and a complex environment and how you guys are doing something about it, how you’ve thought through it, and you’re producing and you’re putting capability through that Death Valley, great capability to make our country better and make this world safer.” 

– Mr. Riki Ellison, MDAA Founder and Chairman 

Click here to watch the virtual event

Click here to read the transcript

Speakers:

Mr. Thomas Browning, Performing the Duties of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Mission Capabilities

Mr. JD Gainey, MDAA Board of Directors, Former Senior Analyst USINDOPACOM

Mr. Riki Ellison, MDAA Founder and Chairman