Team Infidel
Forum Spin Doctor
DefenseNews.com
October 29, 2007 By William H. McMichael
A two-day meeting to talk with industry and academics about better ways to locate and defeat the roadside bombs plaguing U.S. troops illustrates the difficulty of keeping up with the insurgents: While decentralized terror cells make their speedy and deadly plans on the back of napkins, U.S. officials are trying to defeat them with high technology that is funded and fielded far more slowly.
Officials of the Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization say the process is becoming more streamlined, but obstacles remain — and the enemy is nimble.
“The threats are many, many groups,” said Robin Keesee, JIEDDO’s deputy director, who met with reporters during an outreach conference being held Oct. 28-30 in College Park, Md. “They observe what was successful and what wasn’t. They build or modify things in informal ways. While we have taken great strides to reduce our bureaucracy, we still need to field to a force, not to an individual person in an individual neighborhood.
“So they’re watching what works and what doesn’t work in a neighborhood, and they’re adapting on that basis,” Keesee said. “Our soldiers and Marines and others are adapting their tactics and techniques at that level. The challenge for us is, how do we adapt the technology as well to support the Marines and soldiers?”
Keesee said JIEDDO can make decisions on whether to fund investment three weeks after an initial proposal is made — a period during which the idea is reviewed by panels of scientists and engineers, by warfighters and, finally, by administrators.
“That’s really unheard of in the rest of the Department of Defense,” he said. “That’s usually a process that takes years.”
Nearly all of the group’s work is highly classified, making public discussion of specifics difficult; after covering a keynote speech and speaking with Keesee Monday, reporters had to leave. But Keesee said past conferences have been useful and noted that over the past year, he is seeing more focused and higher-quality proposals for counter-IED technologies.
Often, he said, JIEDDO might determine that a given technology comes with some risk that it may not work as anticipated. “And rather than test and test and over-test it, we will fund multiple approaches to solve that problem — something that mainstream acquisition really can’t afford to do,” Keesee said.
But JIEDDO is not an acquisition agency and has no program managers, which means that the contracting process to fund the best ideas must be done by the services. The Defense Department has asked Congress to provide $4 billion to fund JIEDDO’s work in the new fiscal year, most of which will go for hardware and other “defeat” initiatives. But the agency relies on the individual service acquisition processes to route the money.
That’s the big roadblock, Keesee said.
“How do we change the direction of technology programs from the services that are funded on an annual basis, planned years in advance, to threats in the field that are changing over weeks and months?” Keesee said. “That’s the challenge. And I think we’re getting better at it.”
IEDs are the No. 1 killer of U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. More than 3,270 troops have been killed in action in the two wars and through mid-August, IEDs were responsible for nearly 2,100 of those deaths, according to the Pentagon.
October 29, 2007 By William H. McMichael
A two-day meeting to talk with industry and academics about better ways to locate and defeat the roadside bombs plaguing U.S. troops illustrates the difficulty of keeping up with the insurgents: While decentralized terror cells make their speedy and deadly plans on the back of napkins, U.S. officials are trying to defeat them with high technology that is funded and fielded far more slowly.
Officials of the Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization say the process is becoming more streamlined, but obstacles remain — and the enemy is nimble.
“The threats are many, many groups,” said Robin Keesee, JIEDDO’s deputy director, who met with reporters during an outreach conference being held Oct. 28-30 in College Park, Md. “They observe what was successful and what wasn’t. They build or modify things in informal ways. While we have taken great strides to reduce our bureaucracy, we still need to field to a force, not to an individual person in an individual neighborhood.
“So they’re watching what works and what doesn’t work in a neighborhood, and they’re adapting on that basis,” Keesee said. “Our soldiers and Marines and others are adapting their tactics and techniques at that level. The challenge for us is, how do we adapt the technology as well to support the Marines and soldiers?”
Keesee said JIEDDO can make decisions on whether to fund investment three weeks after an initial proposal is made — a period during which the idea is reviewed by panels of scientists and engineers, by warfighters and, finally, by administrators.
“That’s really unheard of in the rest of the Department of Defense,” he said. “That’s usually a process that takes years.”
Nearly all of the group’s work is highly classified, making public discussion of specifics difficult; after covering a keynote speech and speaking with Keesee Monday, reporters had to leave. But Keesee said past conferences have been useful and noted that over the past year, he is seeing more focused and higher-quality proposals for counter-IED technologies.
Often, he said, JIEDDO might determine that a given technology comes with some risk that it may not work as anticipated. “And rather than test and test and over-test it, we will fund multiple approaches to solve that problem — something that mainstream acquisition really can’t afford to do,” Keesee said.
But JIEDDO is not an acquisition agency and has no program managers, which means that the contracting process to fund the best ideas must be done by the services. The Defense Department has asked Congress to provide $4 billion to fund JIEDDO’s work in the new fiscal year, most of which will go for hardware and other “defeat” initiatives. But the agency relies on the individual service acquisition processes to route the money.
That’s the big roadblock, Keesee said.
“How do we change the direction of technology programs from the services that are funded on an annual basis, planned years in advance, to threats in the field that are changing over weeks and months?” Keesee said. “That’s the challenge. And I think we’re getting better at it.”
IEDs are the No. 1 killer of U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. More than 3,270 troops have been killed in action in the two wars and through mid-August, IEDs were responsible for nearly 2,100 of those deaths, according to the Pentagon.