Industry leaders say the Pentagon needs to do more to ensure the smaller businesses that have won Advanced Battle Management System contracts are able to scale developments to solve the military’s problems while still meeting their own economic needs.
About 200 businesses have ABMS indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity research and development contracts, Air Force Chief Data and Artificial Intelligence Officer Brig. Gen. John Olson said at a National Defense Industrial Association symposium held Monday in McLean, VA. But at the same symposium, speakers questioned whether it is even worthwhile for small businesses to take part in the contracts.
DOD needs to provide “adequate incentives and some confidence that there’s going to be a reasonable return on that investment,” said Daniel Ragsdale, Two Six Technologies’ vice president of DOD strategy.
Meanwhile, Anduril Chief Strategy Officer Chris Brose said the department needs to recognize its contracts must make economic sense for the participating businesses.
“What value is actually being returned to these companies in terms of being able to compete, to outperform other systems that are out there and to be able to actually see revenue in the relevant amount of time for them?” he said.
Because of past failed efforts to attract nontraditional defense businesses, Brose said, companies, investors and other stakeholders are less likely to believe they can secure financially meaningful contracts.
Rebellion Defense CEO Chris Lynch struck a similar chord.
“You can’t say, ‘Come hear what we’re going to do,’ and then get everybody excited, and start posting, ‘Hey, we’re going after this . . . we’re into this mission of defense,’ and then put very little actually behind it,” he said.
“Individuals that I knew who ran start-ups who got super excited to be on that contract vehicle saw nothing come from it,” Lynch continued. “I actually think that is worse than never announcing them.”
The Air Force earlier this month announced a slate of more than two-dozen contract awardees for the maturation, demonstration and proliferation across platforms and domains using open systems designs to enable JADC2.
“These contracts provide awardees the opportunity to compete for efforts that support the development and operation of systems as a unified force across all domains (air, land, sea, space, cyber and electromagnetic spectrum) in an open architecture family of systems that enables capabilities via multiple integrated platforms,” the contract announcement stated.