Other than money, what are the most important factors in supporting R&D and the nation’s technology base?

It’s the collaboration between academia, industry, and government, working together to leverage the competencies that exist to go after our own specific requirements. That becomes very powerful. When you have academics identifying new principles or properties of materials that then migrate into our arena, industry then looks at what we develop and what they can create to develop new capabilities for our soldiers.

Close collaboration and sharing, as appropriate, of intellectual property enables more people to focus on the problem, coming at it from different angles, from their own specific requirements. That leveraging of the collective intelligence is incredibly powerful in developing and pushing out the edge of technology.

Given both anticipated and as-yet unknown future requirements, overall military downsizing, austere budgets, and continued rapid technological change, what do you see for RDECOM in the next couple of decades?

And because my scientists and engineers are not looking to make a profit, they are motivated by knowing they are helping some guy or gal out on point in the middle of nowhere execute their mission and come home safe.

Part of RDECOM is S&T, but close to two-thirds of what we do is provide the vast majority of engineers and scientists to programs-of-record and life cycle management commands, providing matrix support engineering. The collaboration between those two groups inside each of our centers is a good thing.

Part of the argument to continue to invest in S&T is because they take new ideas to the engineers, who then look at how to incorporate those into our programs, do technology insertions to make that technology more robust to help our soldiers. At the same time, the engineers will take a problem they don’t have the technology to resolve back to S&T for possible solutions.

This collaboration back and forth makes our engineering support for the Army stronger and more robust and keeps their technology closer to the edge. It helps us write better requirements, give more input to the acquisition community on a technical perspective – so they know what to go buy and understand what they are getting – and help the PMs understand what is coming from the technology base that changes the nature of the fight.

For example, GPS-guided munitions came out of the technology base, and at first were questioned by the users. But 20 years later, if I’m having a firefight in a downtown area and put a precision-guided munition on target, I reduce collateral damage and civilian casualties on the battlefield and help soldiers who need fire support. That technology has changed the dynamic of the fight in an urban environment we didn’t even see we were going to be in 20 years ago.

That collaboration within this command, where we leverage both the engineering and the S&T, makes us stronger and provides tremendous support for our soldiers. And because my scientists and engineers are not looking to make a profit, they are motivated by knowing they are helping some guy or gal out on point in the middle of nowhere execute their mission and come home safe.

We’re all about putting new capability in the hands of our soldiers to help do that. That is our prime directive in this command, about what we are doing and why our scientists and engineers are so dedicated to the work they do.

This article was first published in Defense: Fall 2013 Edition.