Give $100M to DOD for innovation fund, high GOP appropriator says

Written by

Jackson Barnett
Dec 6, 2021 | FEDSCOOP

The highest Republican on the Home Protection Appropriations Subcommittee mentioned he desires to offer the Division of Protection $100 million in open funding cash to assist maintain the division’s ongoing work with revolutionary corporations.

Rep. Ken Calvert, R-Calif., mentioned the proposed funds can be meant to assist transition rising applied sciences from seed investments into bigger procurements, bridging the so-called “valley of dying” the place corporations typically battle to obtain main, follow-on funding from the DOD after receiving analysis or pilot grants.

Calvert mentioned the fund would choose corporations with concepts that would fill functionality gaps and supply funding to maintain them afloat till they earn a manufacturing contract, which may take years.

“We are able to choose quite a few folks we need to succeed and get them by that valley of dying to allow them to really get to procurement,” Calvert mentioned throughout the Reagan Nationwide Protection Discussion board Saturday.

The valley of dying is a problem DOD innovation and acquisition leaders have been grappling with for years. Many startups that need to work with DOD sometimes begin with small analysis grants price up to a couple million {dollars}. However after that, they battle to win bigger, significant manufacturing contracts.

Calvert mentioned {that a} pool of funding that DOD can spend freely may assist ease the hole between these two phases of acquisition.

“It’s irritating as hell,” he mentioned. “I’m hoping we are able to try this as quickly as attainable.”

The concept is included within the fiscal 2022 Nationwide Protection Authorization Act, which nonetheless awaits congressional passage however has handed within the Home.

Calvert’s thought does have help from a vital chief within the DOD: Heidi Shyu, the division’s chief know-how officer. Shyu has been pushing for the same innovation funding mechanism known as the Speedy Protection Experimentation Reserve (RDER) that goals to realize the identical objective.

The reserve funds concepts submitted by the companies and combatant instructions for applied sciences which are prepared for testing to fill joint functionality gaps. It’s overseen by a brand new innovation steering group chaired by Shyu and has requested funding within the DOD’s fiscal 2023 finances request.

“That’s precisely the trail now we have to be on,” she mentioned of innovation funds that navigate across the conventional finances course of.

The standard Planning, Programming, Budgeting, and Execution (PPBE) course of has been the bane of innovators and acquisition reformers for years. However to date little structural change has been made. The DOD was given instruments to navigate round that slow-moving course of in Different Transaction Agreements, however most contracts stay planted within the laws that require years of planning earlier than cash will be despatched to a contractor.

“We don’t have an absence of innovation; now we have an absence of innovation that’s really within the palms of the warfighter,” Gen. Charles Brown, chief of workers of the Air Drive, mentioned throughout the discussion board.