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Suggested Citation:"2 Development Planning Today." National Research Council. 2014. Development Planning: A Strategic Approach to Future Air Force Capabilities. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/18971.
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2

Development Planning Today

INTRODUCTION

The need to reinvigorate early development planning was recognized as part of the Weapon Systems Acquisition Reform Act of 2009 (WSARA). The policy was initially documented in Directive-Type Memorandum 10-017, “Development Planning (DP) to Inform Materiel Development Decision (MDD) Reviews and Support Analyses of Alternatives (AoA)” and later incorporated in the Department of Defense (DoD) Instruction 5000.02 update. This chapter describes and examines development planning as it is implemented today by the Air Force, including the overall development planning process and implementation, key development planning interfaces and linkages, development planning assessment measures, and development planning for Air Force workforce development.

OVERALL PROCESS AND IMPLEMENTATION

Process Description and Organizational Responsibilities

The process flow provided by the Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations, Plans, and Requirements (HAF A3/5), shown in Figure 2-1, indicates where the current development planning process in the Air Force occurs. The key element of the development planning process is the targeted Core Function Support Plans (CFSPs), which start with the 12 Core Function Leads (CFLs) identifying and

Suggested Citation:"2 Development Planning Today." National Research Council. 2014. Development Planning: A Strategic Approach to Future Air Force Capabilities. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/18971.
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FIGURE 2-1 Air Force Strategy, Planning, and Programming Process (SP3). SOURCE: Harry Disbrow, Senior Executive Service, Associate Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations, Plans and Requirements, Headquarters U.S. Air Force.

prioritizing capability gaps.1 The CFL-led capability collaboration teams perform early systems engineering to inform requirements, develop concepts, and identify technology risks and science and technology (S&T) needs, hence bridging the S&T and System Program Office worlds.

Although the framework above allows for planning at all levels, in its current implementation, most of the planning effort is focused at the individual

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1 In 2010, the Secretary of the Air Force and Chief of Staff of the Air Force decided that each of the Air Force’s 12 Service Core Functions would have an annual Core Function Master Plan (CFMP) developed under the guidance of an Air Force MAJCOM commander acting as a Core Function Lead Integrator (CFLI).,In this work, the CFLIs align strategy, operating concepts, and capability development with requirements and programmatic decisions about the Service Core Function over a 20-year period (National Research Council, Capability Planning and Analysis to Optimize Air Force Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance Investments, The National Academies Press, Washington, D.C., 2012). NOTE: Under the new Strategy, Planning, and Programming Process (SP3), the Air Force dropped “Integrator” from CFLI because the integration across core functions will take place at Headquarters, Air Force (Stephen Munday, Office of the Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Science, Technology, and Engineering, personal communication to National Research Council staff member Carter Ford, September 29, 2014).

Suggested Citation:"2 Development Planning Today." National Research Council. 2014. Development Planning: A Strategic Approach to Future Air Force Capabilities. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/18971.
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FIGURE 2-2 Key players and coordination in the development planning process.

CFL level, with little evidence of consistent cross-CFL planning effort occurring. Furthermore, the detailed implementation of the development planning process as defined above has significant variability across the Air Force, depending on the organizational leadership and specific CFL’s needs and focus. Implementation of development planning appears to work best in cases where close linkages exist between the major commands (MAJCOMs) and the development centers. Examples include Air Force Space Command and Space and Missile Systems Center, Global Strike Command and Nuclear Weapon Center, and Air Force Materiel Command and Air Force Life Cycle Management Center. Figure 2-2 depicts all the key players and their interactions in the development planning process. Good collaboration is noted across the key players from combatant commands (COCOMs) to MAJCOMs to the acquisition and S&T communities, as needed.

It is not clear how coordination and collaboration occurs vertically during implementation to balance needs across the CFSPs. Significant inconsistencies exist in leveraging development planning to support needed program trade-offs. The planning horizon also appears to vary across CFLs. The longest planning span

Suggested Citation:"2 Development Planning Today." National Research Council. 2014. Development Planning: A Strategic Approach to Future Air Force Capabilities. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/18971.
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identified during the study is related to the Technology Horizons2 and the Global Horizons3 studies led by the Air Force Chief Scientist, covering 10 to 20 years in the future.

Budget Trends

In 1986, the General Accounting Office (GAO; now the General Accountability Office) report discussed in Chapter 1 ended the Air Force’s system of taxing programs of record to support unrelated development planning efforts.4 At the same time, Congress restored funding for development planning in Program Element (PE) 65808, thereby allowing development planning spending to return and remain relatively stable through the remainder of the 1980s (see Figure 2-3).

Despite Air Force Systems Command leadership support of development planning, PE 65808 experienced reductions in the early 1990s and was eliminated as a program element by the year 2000 due to a number of factors described in Chapter 1.

With the reinvigoration of development planning as part of WSARA, the program element has been reinstated, but once again appears to be experiencing reductions and variability. However, there appears to be several other means of funding development planning-type efforts when it is deemed necessary. Although in some cases, the appropriate funding may be ultimately made available for development planning, there are no consistent and traceable means of estimating the total funding applied to development planning across the Air Force today. Nor was the committee able to identify an entity or source of information for the total amount of funding that may be going to various development planning efforts or ascertain the adequacy and efficiency of the funding amount and mechanisms. Moreover, it seems clear that the level of funding in the program element today would not be sufficient to support all needed cross-cutting development planning efforts.

Finding 2-1. Lack of focused responsibility, capability, and funding for cross-core function analysis and trade-offs has limited the effectiveness of Air Force development planning.

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2 Office of the U.S. Air Force Chief Scientist, Technology Horizons: A Vision for Air Force Science and Technology 2010-2030, Washington, D.C., May 15, 2010, available at http://www.defenseinnovationmarketplace.mil/resources/AF_TechnologyHorizons2010-2030.pdf.

3 Office of the U.S. Air Force Chief Scientist, Global Horizons Final Report: United States Air Force Global Science and Technology Vision, June 21, 2013, available at http://www.defenseinnovationmarketplace.mil/resources/GlobalHorizonsFINALREPORT6-26-13.pdf.

4 General Accounting Office, Appropriated Funds: Air Force Needs to Change Process For Funding Some Activities, GAO 86-24, Washington, D.C., January 1986.

Suggested Citation:"2 Development Planning Today." National Research Council. 2014. Development Planning: A Strategic Approach to Future Air Force Capabilities. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/18971.
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FIGURE 2-3 Funding trends for development planning (in $1,000s and “then-year dollars” versus constant or inflation-adjusted dollars). NOTE: WSARA (Weapons System Acquisition Reform Act) was established in 2009.

Finding 2-2. The amount of program element funding for development planning is insufficient to perform effective development planning. The current allocation process of the funding is ineffectual.

KEY INTERFACES AND LINKAGES

Defense Strategic Guidance and Air Force 2023 Strategic Planning

Guidance for determining the development and sustainment of the Air Force’s required capabilities comes from a series of documents that start with the National Security Strategy5 issued by the White House and required by the Goldwater-Nichols Act of 1986. DoD uses the National Security Strategy as a basis for draft-

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5 White House, National Security Strategy, Washington, D.C., May 2010, http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/rss_viewer/national_security_strategy.pdf.

Suggested Citation:"2 Development Planning Today." National Research Council. 2014. Development Planning: A Strategic Approach to Future Air Force Capabilities. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/18971.
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ing and issuing the Defense Strategic Guidance (DSG),6 which adds content and sets a strategic direction for the department and services as a whole. The National Defense Strategic Guidance further defines the environment and threats that need to be addressed on behalf of the nation. The Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) uses the Defense Strategic Guidance as a basis for drafting the National Military Strategy,7 which provides “strategic direction for the Armed Forces” and is prepared by the chairman of the JCS, who is responsible under the Goldwater-Nichols Act for “assisting the President and Secretary of Defense” in providing strategic direction.

These and other supporting documents provide the input to the Air Force to determine the capabilities that need to be sustained, those that can be phased out or retired, and new capabilities that are needed for the future. The current fiscal environment creates an imperative to perform this assessment correctly. WSARA identified development planning and early-phase systems engineering as critical needs that need to be strengthened. At the current time, implementation of the National Military Strategy appears to be done at the Air Force Service Core Function level via the CFSPs.8Figure 2-4 shows the Air Combat Command (ACC) approach for developing its CFSP.

Development planning activities, as implemented, are focused along supporting each CFSP independently. The committee did not see evidence of development planning utilizing the national planning documents or providing data and information for Air Force-wide consideration that looked at either the integration across Service core functions to achieve the desired objectives or potential reallocation across core function boundaries. These cross-functional trades and reallocation across core functions (or even across service elements) should be an outcome of the national planning documents. In the current Air Force construct, each core function area would be expected to advocate for the mission and capability represented within its area. Development of the analytic capability and supporting data for cross-core-function trade-offs would need to be done with strong senior leadership direction and guidance. There appear to be only a few isolated areas where senior leadership support resulted in high-quality development planning products for that area.9

The committee was briefed on the development planning approach by multiple organizations across the Air Force. In most cases, the development planning efforts

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6 DoD, Sustaining U.S. Global Leadership: Priorities for 21st Century Defense, January 2012, http://www.defense.gov/news/defense_strategic_guidance.pdf.

7 DoD, The National Military Strategy of the United States of America 2011: Redefining America’s Military Leadership, February 8, 2011, http://www.army.mil/info/references/docs/NMS%20FEB%202011.pdf.

8 Robert “Blaze” Burgess, Chief, Planning, Programming and Requirements Division (A8X), HQ Air Combat Command, “ACC Viewpoint on DP,” presentation to the committee on April 29, 2014.

9 SMC and AFNWC both demonstrated a much broader and integrated development planning approach.

Suggested Citation:"2 Development Planning Today." National Research Council. 2014. Development Planning: A Strategic Approach to Future Air Force Capabilities. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/18971.
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FIGURE 2-4 Air Combat Command methodology for developing Core Function Support Plans. SOURCE: Robert “Blaze” Burgess, Chief, Planning, Programming and Requirements Division (A8X), HQ Air Combat Command, “ACC Viewpoint on DP,” presentation to the committee on April 29, 2014.

were aligned with supporting specific acquisition or pre-acquisition activities. As a general rule, the organizational responsibility and reporting was quite low in the organization, with significant variability in the products and engagement of the development planning organization. In limited cases (i.e., Space and Missile Systems Center [SMC] and Air Force Nuclear Weapons Center [AFNWC]), there was evidence of strong executive insight and overview within these organizations that lead to a better development planning process and products.

The senior leadership and guidance for development planning that the committee observed at SMC resulted in an exemplar integrated space portfolio. One measure of the quality or effectiveness of this work is the recent success in the defense of budget submissions. While SMC was and is excellent in working with Air Force Space Command to develop an integrated space portfolio, it is necessary to extend this to cross-portfolio, cross-core function analysis and trade-offs—for example, airborne communication nodes versus space versus non-Air Force space programs. Because this analysis could potentially impact force structure, the need for a higher-level Air Force-wide organizational structure with broad capability and strong endorsement and engagement from Air Force senior leadership, with independence from the core function organizations, is required to an even greater

Suggested Citation:"2 Development Planning Today." National Research Council. 2014. Development Planning: A Strategic Approach to Future Air Force Capabilities. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/18971.
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degree. As an example, the leadership-driven, centralized organization with responsibility, capability, and funding for the space portfolio demonstrates the value that an Air Force-wide development planning function could provide.

Finding 2-3. The implementation of development planning as currently practiced is local, fragmented, and inconsistent and lacks Air Force senior leadership demand for the required analysis to address cross-core function trade-offs.

Finding 2-4. The flow down from the Defense Planning Guidance and Air Force Strategic Planning processes and products to development planning is not evident.

Science and Technology Community, Including Alignment with Industry

The Air Force has a robust S&T effort, primarily executed in the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL). Continuation of this S&T base is required to assure that the Air Force has capability and insight into emerging technologies that can be evaluated for applicability to known Air Force needs and to also identify game-changing technologies that offer potential for new capabilities not previously under consideration. The maturation of these technologies to a technology readiness level (TRL) acceptable for an advanced technology demonstration provides the path for acceptance by a systems program. The S&T base addressable by the Air Force includes Air Force and DoD-wide S&T efforts as well as the significant independent research and development (IR&D) efforts in industry and research ideas and products from academia. A mature, well-performing development planning process would effectively tap into and influence these investments and assure that the portfolio has maximum impact for future Air Force capability needs. This section examines the current processes and identifies best practices and deficiencies. The Air Force S&T planning process, shown in Figure 2-5, is initiated from many of the strategic drivers that are inputs to the overall development planning process but is augmented by the CFSPs, Technology Horizons,10 and wargaming.11

The planning process and governance structure provides oversight and review by the MAJCOM structure and the Air Force Requirements Oversight Council. The inclusion of MAJCOM input to the Air Force S&T plan is a major advance over

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10 Office of the U.S. Air Force Chief Scientist, Technology Horizons, 2010.

11 Col Ralph Sandfry, Chief, Science and Technology Division, SAF/AQRT, U.S. Air Force, “Aligning Science and Technology (S&T) and Development Planning (DP) to Support Air Force Capability Development Priorities,” presentation at the NDIA DPWG Workshop on S&T/IR&D, June 21, 2012, http://www.ndia.org/Divisions/Divisions/SystemsEngineering/Pages/Past_Projects.aspx#2010.

Suggested Citation:"2 Development Planning Today." National Research Council. 2014. Development Planning: A Strategic Approach to Future Air Force Capabilities. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/18971.
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FIGURE 2-5 Air Force science and technology planning process—identifying the highest-priority capability needs. NOTE: It may be appropriate to increase COCOM insight and impact on the S&T planning process, but that is beyond the scope of this report. SOURCE: Colonel Ralph Sandfry, Chief, Science and Technology Division, SAF/AQRT, U.S. Air Force, “Aligning Science and Technology (S&T) and Development Planning (DP) to Support Air Force Capability Development Priorities,” presentation at the NDIA DPWG Workshop on S&T/IR&D, June 21, 2012, http://www.ndia.org/Divisions/Divisions/SystemsEngineering/Pages/Past_Projects.aspx#2010.

prior efforts, and AFRL is to be commended for ensuring MAJCOM involvement in the process. Outputs of the S&T process include the following:

Innovation push—Leveraging existing technologies (“tech push”) to create new and better capabilities for tomorrow’s warfighter.

More advanced technology demos, higher TRL levels, “tech push”—Not all demos need to come from a defined demand signal or requirement.

Affordability—“Baked in” to what the Air Force does across its entire S&T portfolio.

Engagement and partnership—Focusing the nation’s economic engine on Air Force S&T problems.

The development planning briefings received by the committee were largely focused on specific systems, and the ties to the Air Force and industry S&T developments were extremely limited. In addition, insight and understanding of both

Suggested Citation:"2 Development Planning Today." National Research Council. 2014. Development Planning: A Strategic Approach to Future Air Force Capabilities. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/18971.
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evolutionary and revolutionary technology advances were not evident. A robust, mature development planning effort would understand the art of the possible relative to system extensions and provide justification for increasing the maturity of specific high-pay-off technology and performing significant demonstrations, such as was done in the development of stealth technologies. Recognition of the role of advanced technology demonstrations has not been evident in the development planning presentations the committee has seen.

Finding 2-5. Development planning, as currently implemented, is not effective at leveraging promising low-TRL laboratory-developed technology—including manufacturing readiness level and integration readiness level. In addition, recognition of and inclusion of the outputs of Advanced Technology Demonstrations has been limited.

One of the inputs to the current Air Force S&T planning process, as shown in Figure 2-5, is Technology Horizons, which was a study requested by the Chief of Staff of the Air Force (CSAF) and was led by the Air Force Chief Scientist. Technology Horizons was followed in 2013 by Global Horizons, also led by the Air Force Chief Scientist.12, 13 Both of these studies provide valuable insights and useful ways of considering the impact of technology. Technology Horizons looked 10 years into the future to anticipate S&T advances and then another 10 years to anticipate both U.S. and adversary capabilities.14 The process (see Figure 2-6) then marches back in time to look at the needed S&T investments to allow realization of the future options. The S&T planning process is strongly aligned with the CFSP construct. This is both a strength of the process and a limitation. As Finding 2-3 indicates, the lack of Air Force-wide development planning in the CFSP process is a current development planning weakness. An S&T plan aligned with the CFSP will have this same weakness embedded within it.

Technology Horizons represents a less constrained look at the future, allowing insight into what might be possible capabilities, in a way that addresses defined needs without suppressing technological innovation. While AFRL conducts a planning process to define its S&T portfolio, it does not appear to be connected to an Air Force-wide evaluation, selection, and nurturing of these future capabilities. As part of the development planning presentations, there were occasional technology roadmaps presented demonstrating the alignment of portions of the AFRL portfolio with that specific presentation. There was no overall indication of the S&T portfolio alignment with Air Force needs or acceptance of that alignment by the

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12 Office of the U.S. Air Force Chief Scientist, Technology Horizons, 2010.

13 Office of the U.S. Air Force Chief Scientist, Global Horizons, 2013.

14 Office of the U.S. Air Force Chief Scientist, Technology Horizons, 2010.

Suggested Citation:"2 Development Planning Today." National Research Council. 2014. Development Planning: A Strategic Approach to Future Air Force Capabilities. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/18971.
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FIGURE 2-6 Schematic of the 10+10 Technology-to-Capability process used in Technology Horizons. SOURCE: Office of the U.S. Air Force Chief Scientist, Technology Horizons: A Vision for Air Force Science and Technology 2010-2030, Washington, D.C., May 15, 2010, available at http://www.defenseinnovationmarketplace.mil/resources/AF_TechnologyHorizons2010-2030.pdf.

development planning and system programs. In the early Vanguard activity, this was characterized as the “hooks and strings” that assured two-way acknowledgment of the investments and potential insertion or upgrade opportunities.15, 16

Finding 2-6. While the newly established Air Force S&T planning process is promising, it is insufficiently mature to demonstrate how S&T investments should best be linked to prioritized Air Force needs.

Industry serves as another significant source of S&T funding via IR&D. In the past, communications of and influence on the industry portfolio occurred via the annual IR&D review process. During this process, each corporation’s IR&D portfolio was reviewed, and each project was graded by the government. This provided communication that was necessary in the pre-information technology

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15 General Alton Slay, Sr. (USAF, Ret.), “Historical Perspectives,” presentation to the committee on January 30, 2014.

16 A core issue within the Air Force is that the Air Force capability analysis teams do not report to a sufficiently high Service level to properly motivate Air Force actions directed toward 6.3/6.4 capability developments in analogy with Navy. This realization resulted in Recommendation 2.

Suggested Citation:"2 Development Planning Today." National Research Council. 2014. Development Planning: A Strategic Approach to Future Air Force Capabilities. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/18971.
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era, and the grading served to align the investments with service limitations on allowable expenditures. These processes degraded over time as constraints were removed. A limited set of these elements have begun to be reinstituted, as will be described below.

The Defense Innovation Marketplace currently serves as the information portal supporting service and DoD-wide engagement with industry on IR&D.17 It serves as a repository of service information for industry-wide access and provides many links to acquisition activities. Air Force planning documents are available on the website for industry to study future Air Force needs and investment trends. It also serves as a secure portal for companies to submit proprietary IR&D reports. Mandatory report submission for reimbursable IR&D programs was reinstated in 2012. This controlled database can be accessed by Air Force personnel to determine corporate investments and technology maturation activities being pursued by industry. This leads to exchange meetings where the Air Force identifies IR&D programs it would like to receive briefings regarding the content and output. While this process provides some information to the Air Force on selected IR&D activities, it provides no insight on the total investment of a company. While the Defense Innovation Marketplace serves as a source of information, its effectiveness at influencing either industrial IR&D investments or AFRL investments is not clear. At best, the influence may be indirect and occur because of improved knowledge and communication. However, in areas that are isolated and not widely implemented, the Air Force has demonstrated an ability to strongly influence both the content and the quality of industrial IR&D projects.

As an example, participation in the Versatile Affordable Advanced Turbine Engines program (see Figure 2-7) requires industry to identify and report on IR&D activities as part of the Advanced Turbo-Propulsion Program. The Air Force reviews the IR&D programs at each participant company on a regular basis and provides a report card to that company on both the topics being pursued by that company and their standing relative to the industry as a whole (leading, ahead of, at, or behind the state of the art). These reports strongly influence both the IR&D topics and drive quality into the work. This approach represents a best-in-class practice. The Air Force (and DoD as a whole) could benefit from expanding this practice.

Finding 2-7. Development planning, as currently implemented, is not effective at leveraging industry IR&D investments.

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17 For additional information, see the Defense Innovation Marketplace website at http://www.defenseinnovationmarketplace.mil/, accessed July 8, 2014.

Suggested Citation:"2 Development Planning Today." National Research Council. 2014. Development Planning: A Strategic Approach to Future Air Force Capabilities. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/18971.
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FIGURE 2-7 Aligning science and technology and development planning to support Air Force capability development priorities. SOURCE: Col Ralph Sandfry, Chief, Science and Technology Division, SAF/AQRT, U.S. Air Force, “Aligning Science and Technology (S&T) and Development Planning (DP) to Support Air Force Capability Development Priorities,” presentation at the NDIA DPWG Workshop on S&T/IR&D, June 21, 2012, http://www.ndia.org/Divisions/Divisions/SystemsEngineering/Pages/Past_Projects.aspx#2010.

Transition to Programming

The Air Force Strategy, Planning, and Programming Process (SP3) (see Figure 2-1) provides a context for understanding the potential value of development planning and where the outputs of development planning could provide information to allow the Air Force to make better-informed decisions. Development planning should support via analysis and trade-offs, indicated by the major portions of the top and middle lines of Figure 2-1. The senior leadership of SMC and their guidance for development planning resulted in an integrated space portfolio that was implemented in programming. One measure of the quality or effectiveness of this work is the recent success in maintaining the requested budget. The leadership-driven centralized organization with responsibility, capability, and funding for the space portfolio programming was key in maintaining the requested budget.

As the Air Force aggressively pursues cyberspace as a warfighting domain alongside all others, it needs to just as aggressively pursue the changes necessary to comprehensively address software and cybersecurity issues in its weapon systems

Suggested Citation:"2 Development Planning Today." National Research Council. 2014. Development Planning: A Strategic Approach to Future Air Force Capabilities. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/18971.
×

acquisition and development practices. The ability of the Air Force to produce and evolve software is central to its ability to achieve integration and maintain mission agility. For example, studies by Defense Science Board (DSB)18 and the National Research Council19 over the past 30 years have established and confirmed the critical importance of software to fulfilling DoD mission objectives.

The DSB report Resilient Military Systems and the Advanced Cyber Threat adds another element for consideration in the Air Force software environment: cyber resiliency. The report states,

Based in part on the complexity of modern software and microelectronic systems, very small and difficult to detect defects or subversive modifications introduced at some point in the life cycle of the systems can create debilitating effects. As a result of the great and growing complexity of DoD systems, cyber resiliency is an extremely broad and difficult attribute to guarantee.20

Today, the original pillars of “hooks and strings” require a shared understanding of the cyber threats in the expected mission environment. Software and cyber considerations are at the heart of the needed cross-core function analysis and tradeoffs and the resulting gains in efficiencies, cost effectiveness, and mission agility. However, the concerns outlined in Findings 2-1 and 2-3 are further exacerbated by a lack of knowledge and awareness of cyber threats and risks among senior Air Force leadership, combatant commands, S&T entities, and the acquisition community; a lack of cybersecurity expertise available to support development planning; and a lack of clear prioritization of cyber risk management as both an element of development planning and as a technical requirement in acquisitions.

Finding 2-8. The Air Force operates in a networked and integrated fashion, yet there is little or no evidence that development planning today addresses networked, integrated, and cyberspace operations.

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18 See, for example, the Defense Science Board reports Report of the Defense Science Board Task Force on Acquiring Defense Software Commercially (1994), Defense Software (2000), Mission Impact of Foreign Influence on DoD Software (2007), and Resilient Military Systems and the Advanced Cyber Threat (2012), published by the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics in Washington, D.C.

19 See, for example, the National Research Council reports Innovations in Software Engineering for Defense Systems (2003), Summary of a Workshop for Software-Intensive Systems and Uncertainty at Scale (2007), Preliminary Observations on DoD Software Research Needs and Priorities: A Letter Report (2008), Achieving Effective Acquisition of Information Technology in the Department of Defense (2010), Critical Code: Software Producibility for Defense (2010), and Proceedings of a Workshop on Deterring Cyberattacks: Informing Strategies and Developing Options for U.S. Policy (2010), published by the National Academies Press in Washington, D.C.

20 Defense Science Board, Resilient Military Systems and the Advanced Cyber Threat, 2012.

Suggested Citation:"2 Development Planning Today." National Research Council. 2014. Development Planning: A Strategic Approach to Future Air Force Capabilities. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/18971.
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Development planning is intended to support the guidance embedded in the Strategic Master Plan and Strategic Planning Guidance, but current development planning capabilities appear inadequate. Tools available to the development planning community for cross-core function trade-offs and integrated force planning—with the capability to analyze, assess, simulate, and trade performance of the Air Force against a range of realistic and stressing scenarios utilizing a set of validated common models across the Air Force-wide portfolio—were not apparent. This analytical effort requires modern tools and knowledgeable analysts to perform the multivariate analysis needed to enable definition of the required force that meets Air Force needs, assures robustness, and maintains flexibility while operating in the fiscal constraints facing the nation and the Air Force today. The Air Force appears to lack these tools and the analyst cadre to use them. As the process moves forward from program planning guidance to a balanced program objective memorandum (POM), it will be crucial to identify issues and validate the performance of the Air Force in successfully executing the missions required and allow optimization across Service core functions—collecting critical data as the Secretary of the Air Force and CSAF approve future budget submissions.

The need for an independent analysis of the core function is enhanced by the integrated, networked, and cyber-enabled way the Air Force will fight in the future. As the Air Force transitions from the “alone and unafraid” doctrine, which is best encapsulated in the B-2 bomber, to the integrated systems-of-systems constructs of the future, the need for fidelity in the analysis at the Air Force-wide-level increases. Decisions can no longer be left to a core function but need to be evaluated for their impact on other elements of the Air Force and on the performance of the Air Force as a whole. The emergence of not just cyber-enabled but also cyber-threatened systems further enhances the need for this analysis.

Test and Operations Influence

The test and evaluation (T&E) community is currently embedded in the development planning process, as documented in AFMC’s Development Planning (DP) Guide.21 The T&E community is included as part of the governance structure and also provides members for the capability material teams (CMTs) that address the detailed material implementations for a capability gap. The CMT is defined in the planning guide and is a multi-disciplinary team tasked to execute a development planning effort. In addition, “the CMT works directly with the operational MAJCOM representatives to ensure a thorough understanding of

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21 Air Force Materiel Command, Development Planning (DP) Guide, Directorate of Intelligence and Requirements (AFMC A2/5), Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, 2010, http://www.defenseinnovationmarketplace.mil/resources/DevelopmentPlanningGuide-Jun2010.pdf.

Suggested Citation:"2 Development Planning Today." National Research Council. 2014. Development Planning: A Strategic Approach to Future Air Force Capabilities. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/18971.
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operational requirements and concepts of operations (CONOPS).”22 Inclusion of the T&E community is essential for at least two reasons. First, as members of the development planning activity, they will have an improved understanding of the integrated warfighting capability desired, resulting in improved perceptiveness of the testing. Second, as new capability emerges and enters the force structure, testing will be a key element in assuring that adequate understanding of this capability is developed. Of particular note here are cyber- and directed-energy weapons. Neither of these has established a validated effects manual, but both offer potential game-changing capabilities that will likely cut across multiple Service core functions, which may require changes to experiments-based testing. Significant systems testing of under-realistic conditions will be needed to allow validation of models and the confidence to include non-kinetic weapons to be used and trusted.

Cyberspace is essential to all Air Force missions. All future Air Force weapon systems will be software reliant. This dependency on software is increasing systems’ functionality and performance tremendously, but the associated connectivity and complexity is also expanding systems’ vulnerability to attack. Disruptive cyber-attacks on software-reliant systems are well known, adaptable, and increasing in intensity. Cybersecurity risks could potentially interfere with the Air Force’s ability to successfully plan, prepare, and execute assigned missions.23

Finding 2-9. Air Force development planners recognize the increasing importance of the cyber domain, but lack the priority, policies, flexibility, and procedures in the development planning and end-to-end acquisition processes to address the cyber security topic effectively. The cyber domain includes cybersecurity, cyber warfare and cyber impact on knowledge confidence. Further effort is required to address capability assessment; gap identification; early system engineering; design, test, and evaluation; fielding; and sustainment to avoid degrading systems’ advanced functionality and performance.

ASSESSMENT MEASURES

The committee received briefings on current metrics used from the Air Force Life Cycle Management Center (AFLCMC) and from the Air Force Nuclear Weapons Center (AFNWC). These briefings included a description of the metrics used as well as the purpose of those metrics. Additional information was also obtained from

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22 Ibid.

23 The breadth of the cyber questions can best be answered in a study that is focused on the topic and conducted at the appropriate classification level.

Suggested Citation:"2 Development Planning Today." National Research Council. 2014. Development Planning: A Strategic Approach to Future Air Force Capabilities. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/18971.
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AFLCMC’s Standard Process for Development Planning.24 This section will describe the metrics which the Air Force is currently using. AFLCMC has categorized the metrics they use to assess the development planning process as “process metrics” and “health metrics.” Process metrics are primarily intended to provide data on the efficiency of operations and to facilitate lessons learned in order to further streamline the process. AFLCMC’s current process metrics are as follows:

• The number of development planning requests processed on time,

• The number of development planning proposals developed on time,

• The number of Concept Characterization and Technical Descriptions (CCTDs) completed on time and approved within 6 calendar weeks, and

• The total time from development planning request to a signed development planning proposal.

In addition, AFLCMC has three health metrics intended to assess the effectiveness of the development planning process. In one metric, the quality of the delivered development planning project to the customer (MAJCOM, Headquarters Air Force, or program manager) is assessed by that customer. In a second metric, the adequacy of the development planning effort to support a Materiel Development Decision (MDD) is assessed by recording the percentage of development planning projects that successfully pass MDD without significant rework. In the third health metric, AFLCMC quantitatively estimates a return on investment (ROI) for their development planning efforts. This ROI is computed by dividing the estimated cost avoidance due to the development planning effort by the cost of the development planning effort. The cost of the development planning effort is known. The cost-avoidance computation attempts to quantify the role of development planning in avoiding a false start and in reducing acquisition cost growth. Historical data is used to estimate the average cost of cancelled programs and the average amount of cost overrun. It is then assumed that development planning reduces the historical cancellation rate by 50 percent and the average overrun by 20 percent. A further qualitative multiplicative adjustment factor is based on a qualitative assessment of the scope and quality of the development planning effort, which ranges from 0 to 1. Figure 2-8 provides a sample calculation.

Overall, development planning needs to be evaluated on its ability to motivate organizational interventions that improve the probability of program success. While not explicitly discussed this way, the framework proposed by AFNWC is compatible with this evaluation. The framework also permits a phased plan for the continued

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24 Air Force Life Cycle Management Center, Standard Process for Development Planning, September 20, 2013, http://www.defenseinnovationmarketplace.mil/resources/20131122_AFLCMC-DPStandProcess.pdf.

Suggested Citation:"2 Development Planning Today." National Research Council. 2014. Development Planning: A Strategic Approach to Future Air Force Capabilities. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/18971.
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FIGURE 2-8 Air Force Life Cycle Management Center metrics. SOURCE: Captain Erica Anderson, “Development Planning (DP) Metrics Overview,” presentation to the committee on February 25, 2014.

assessment of progress as the technological capabilities mature, threats evolve, and organizational constructs are developed. An additional advantage of AFNWC’s approach is that it permits the tailoring of specific metrics to assess the overall desired outcome of launching high-confidence programs. A major reason that such tailoring would be required is that the metrics for game-changing capabilities typically differ substantially from those for sustaining capabilities. Game-changing capabilities usually have large explicit or implicit framing assumptions that are critical to assess early in the development process. Development planning can provide a critical role in identifying those assumptions and the corresponding metrics.

AFNWC reviewed AFLCMC’s development planning metrics and delayed their concurrence on the development planning ROI, pending a yet-to-be-scheduled verification and validation of the metric’s underlying equation. Additionally, they have proposed a development planning metric approach to assess the degree to which AFNWC is postured for success in launching high-confidence programs.

Both AFLCMC and AFNWC focus their metrics on development planning projects that are funded under the Air Force’s program element for development planning. In the examples of development planning activity that were briefed to the committee, a minority appeared to be funded under the development plan-

Suggested Citation:"2 Development Planning Today." National Research Council. 2014. Development Planning: A Strategic Approach to Future Air Force Capabilities. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/18971.
×

ning line. Additionally, what is funded by a program and what is funded by the development planning program element seemed to be partly determined by what type of funding the program could spend. An assessment of development planning value, where the development planning activities not funded by the development planning program element are not included, will significantly understate that value.

The Air Force’s effort to use metrics to assess value of development planning is laudable but, as yet, less effective than it could be. In particular, the return in the ROI approach depends primarily on estimated value of the program. The other factors, such as the historical cost growth, are invariant; that is, these inputs are the same for all computations of ROI. As a result, the computed ROI effort has no direct linkage to the impact that the development planning effort actually had on the program, instead leading to the contradictory outcome that the most effective way to improve the ROI for a development planning effort is to reduce the denominator of the ROI—that is, the amount of money spent on the development planning program itself. This puts the entire usefulness of this metric into question, in part because it cannot be used to improve the development planning process.

AFNWC’s approach to characterizing value is significantly different and offers significant promise, although they have not yet defined specific metrics. As mentioned above, AFNWC defines an outcome for development planning as the degree to which AFNWC is postured for success in launching high-confidence programs. This overall assessment is then divided into three key categories: external factors, center factors, and end-user factors. AFNWC highlights the need to define responsibility so that accountability for results can be tracked. This division assists with the identification of that accountability. AFNWC then divides each of these factor categories into several supporting factors, as shown in Figure 2-9.

While AFNWC has not yet completed the development of the metrics, it is in the process of developing templates for each of the supporting factors. These consist of evaluation areas or questions that will be used to assess the given supporting factor. The templates are planned to contain line items phrased as statements of fact. The intent is for each line item to elicit a brief summary of effort status rather than a “yes” or “no” response and for there to be an emphasis on “what needs to be done” versus “how to do it.” Significantly, a single lead office of primary responsibility will be identified for each line item to increase accountability for results.

AFLCMC’s process metrics focus entirely on the time taken to complete various development planning activities. Additionally, two of the health metrics address product quality. While these are process characteristics that should be assessed, they are not the only process characteristics worth measuring. Examples of characteristics not addressed include the funding and personnel consumed, the adequacy of the tools available for analysis, the adequacy of the training of personnel, and the adequacy of funding. The AFNWC approach appears better in this regard because it has identified funding and resources as important factors that metrics can help

Suggested Citation:"2 Development Planning Today." National Research Council. 2014. Development Planning: A Strategic Approach to Future Air Force Capabilities. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/18971.
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FIGURE 2-9 Metric key factors. SOURCE: Air Force Nuclear Weapons Center, AFNWC/XZ, “AFNWC DP Posture Metric,” June 19, 2014.

assess, although they have not yet defined specific metrics that would assess these factors.

Finding 2-10. Development planning metrics do not currently provide an objective and actionable assessment of the effectiveness and efficiency of development planning.

AFLCMC has three health metrics intended to assess the effectiveness of the development planning process. Two of these characterize quality (one as a qualitative customer assessment and the other as a percentage of development planning projects that successfully pass MDD without significant rework). Neither of these metrics address the impact of the development planning effort on the program, which is the crucial assessment for effectiveness. On the surface, AFLCMC’s ROI metric appears more promising. But the only quantitative factor that varies between applications of development planning to various programs is the estimated value of the program. This is not the same as, or even necessarily related to, the value of the development planning effort to the program. There is also a multiplicative adjustment factor that varies between programs. But this is based on a qualitative assessment of the scope and quality of the development planning effort and is, therefore, not objective because judgment is used. It is also not actionable because

Suggested Citation:"2 Development Planning Today." National Research Council. 2014. Development Planning: A Strategic Approach to Future Air Force Capabilities. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/18971.
×

the cause of a given assessment is not apparent. Moreover, an ROI computation is susceptible to manipulation if the metric can be “improved” by simply reducing the cost of the development planning effort. AFNWC’s approach is conceptually sound because it emphasizes metrics to support an assessment of how well AFNWC is postured for success in launching high-confidence programs. But, its development of metrics was incomplete at the time of the writing of this report.

AFLCMC also had “process” metrics intended to provide data on the efficiency of development planning. These metrics included whether various processes (e.g., development planning processes/proposals and CCTDs) were completed on time and the total time from development planning request to a signed development planning proposal. There were no metrics that illuminated efficiency with respect to consumption of resources (people or money) and no way of assessing whether the time allocated was efficient, even if schedules were met.

None of the current metrics assessed whether the development planning processes are enduring—that is, whether adequate and stable resources are being supplied or whether the processes themselves are properly designed to integrate all the functional skills (e.g., manufacturing, test, contracting, etc.) required for successful acquisition.

IMPLEMENTATION OF DEVELOPMENT PLANNING ON RECENT AIR FORCE PROGRAMS

The purpose of this section is to briefly discuss the perceived role of development planning in recent Air Force program acquisitions. Three examples are considered: Next-Generation Radar (a.k.a., JSTARS [Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System] Recap), a currently planned program to replace the E-8 JSTARS platform; Distributed Common Ground Station (DCGS), which focuses on a weapon system with significant history; and AFRL’s Layered Sensing Program, a recent laboratory program involving the networking of a plethora of sensor assets distributed in space and time to provide intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) across a broad range of threats.

JSTARS Recapitalization

Broadly identifying technical solutions to meet Air Force needs in ground threat surveillance and targeting served as the objective of the Ground Moving Target Indication (GMTI) Analysis of Alternatives (AoA) conducted several years ago.25 The

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25 Much of the consideration was limited to overcoming the constraints of reducing costs associated with the Boeing 707 airframe by going to a business class jet. Operations in future conflicts will likely benefit from a more comprehensive perspective, to include the use of drones.

Suggested Citation:"2 Development Planning Today." National Research Council. 2014. Development Planning: A Strategic Approach to Future Air Force Capabilities. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/18971.
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E-8 JSTARS and Global Hawk platforms presently perform this mission. Both employ X-band radar systems to detect, locate, and track ground moving targets day or night and under all weather conditions. Two prototype JSTARS were deployed in January 1991 to the Gulf War as part of an advanced capabilities technology demonstration, with famous results: JSTARS detected the Iraqi Army’s movements in the “mother of all retreats.”26 The system had proven its ability as a ground surveillance system supporting target engagement. The prototype systems evolved from two programs conducted in the 1970s: Stand Off Target Acquisition System and Pave Mover.27

A primary motivation for JSTARS development was driven by the evident threat posed by the former Soviet Union. JSTARS was focused on Soviet troop movements in the Fulda Gap, a critical requirement at the time to ensure adequate response by North Atlantic Treaty Organization forces. The original threat was replaced by the post-1990 challenge of finding Iraqi troop movements, especially in the vicinity of Scud missile launchers. Further deployments enhanced the admiration for GMTI capability, leading to additional developments, such as the Multi-Platform Radar Technology Improvement Program GMTI capability deployed on Global Hawk.

The need for better and more comprehensive GMTI emerged during the Global War on Terror (GWOT). But the threats in the GWOT were no longer columns of mechanized infantry. Rather, a premium was placed on detecting time-critical targets, such as single vehicle events and dismounted combatants. Electronic warfare threats, such as coherent jammers leveraging digital radio-frequency memory, became another key concern. The deployed JSTARS design did not include, or anticipate, the changing threat landscape.

To address perceived JSTARS deficiencies, including not only sensor capability but also the high maintenance costs associated with the Boeing 707 airframe, the Air Force conducted an AoA, in essence a development planning activity. The original intent of the AoA was to develop an advanced GMTI capability.28 In this scenario, a cost-effective, technically superior approach to the warfighter’s GMTI requirements was to serve as the objective.

While GMTI has a number of technical challenges, deploying a JSTARS capability on a business-class jet became a centerpiece of the study, rather than broadly focusing on the technical requirements to enable assured Air Force domination of ground targets. This AoA focus subsequently drew the conclusion that integrating existing capability on a business-class jet in the form of a “JSTARS recapitalization” is the Air Force’s next-step in GMTI. The high costs of maintaining the Boeing 707 platform comprising the JSTARS fleet appear to have made this a foregone con-

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26 J.N. Entzminger, C.A. Fowler, and W.J. Kenneally, JointSTARS and GMTI: Past, present and future, IEEE Trans. AES 35(2):748-761, 1999.

27 Ibid.

28 Personal communication with Lt Gen (R) David Deptula, April 2014.

Suggested Citation:"2 Development Planning Today." National Research Council. 2014. Development Planning: A Strategic Approach to Future Air Force Capabilities. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/18971.
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clusion. However, as previously noted, the threat has changed substantially from the Fulda Gap scenarios of the Cold War that led to the creation of JSTARS to a more sophisticated threat set complicated by advanced jamming and surface-to-air missile systems. Some aspects of development planning, in the form of the GMTI AoA, provided an opportunity to consider the broad class of solutions to detect and engage dismounts and time-critical targets in increasingly challenging settings, provide anti-jam capability against digital radio frequency memory, and develop multiplatform solutions to address anti-access/area-denial (A2/AD) scenarios.29

Congressional House Report 112-705 recommended limiting funds to the Air Force to proceed to a Milestone A decision as a result of the inadequacy of the findings from the AoA.30 The conferees noted the conflict between addressing the maintenance costs of the Boeing 707 and the need for a detailed sensor and communications architecture leveraging rapidly changing technology and addressing emerging threats in a flexible manner.

Nevertheless, the Air Force needs to develop a plan to provide an updated GMTI capability meeting joint warfighting requirements. The capability must include the flexibility to incorporate current and future sensor and communications architectures that can be integrated as they evolve in the future. The conferees are concerned that, absent such a modernization plan, the Air Force may lose its ability to provide this capability to the joint force in the future.31

The lack of rigorous development planning in advanced GMTI is evident in 2012 statements by former Air Force Chief General Norton Schwartz, where statements indicated available resources as the factor driving the AoA outcome toward a business-class jet solution.32 Concern over the technical depth of GMTI development planning was recently expressed by the Assistant Secretary of the Air Force (Acquisition).33 The AoA might have been better informed by a more complete development planning process that assessed GMTI requirements and sensor performance issues.

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29 Major C.J. McCarthy, Anti-access/area denial: The evolution of modern warfare, China Anti-Access/Area Denial, /Luce.nt/—A Journal of National Security Studies, 2010. https://www.usnwc.edu/Lucent/OpenPdf.aspx?id=95&Title=The%20Global%20System%20in%20Transition.

30 112th Congress (2011-2012), House Report 112-705, National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2013, http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/cpquery/?&sid=cp1120zsNS&r_n=hr705.112&dbname=cp112&&sel=TOC_3112329&.

31 Ibid.

32 Marcus Weisgerber, JSTARS to remain primary USAF ground tracker for now, Defense News, March 27, 2012, http://www.defensenews.com/article/20120327/DEFREG02/303270008/JSTARS-Remain-Primary-USAF-Ground-Tracker-Now.

33 Hon. William LaPlante, Senior Executive Service, Assistant Secretary of the Air Force (Acquisition), presentation to the committee, January 30, 2014.

Suggested Citation:"2 Development Planning Today." National Research Council. 2014. Development Planning: A Strategic Approach to Future Air Force Capabilities. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/18971.
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In this particular case, the findings suggest that critical issues around the Air Force’s desired capability were more or less replaced by a less rigorous approach to address operations and maintenance (O&M) challenges with the aging Boeing 707 platform; yet, the threat continues to evolve, and further GMTI development needs to consider performance potential in non-permissive airspace. Development planning’s role should be a more comprehensive evaluation of all elements of the system design, leading to much more focused recommendations approaching a pre-Milestone A plan. Involvement of the breadth of acquisition community resources during the GMTI AoA is questionable and likely limited the technical detail of the effort.

Distributed Common Ground Station

DCGS originally started as a ground station for the U2 platform. It has since grown to accept data from a number of sensors, including GMTI and synthetic aperture radar data from the E-8 and RQ-4, as well as data from the U2, MQ-9, and MQ-1. All told, DCGS is projected to receive data from more than 40 sources. A small fraction of the data received by DCGS is used by the warfighter to assess the threat environment, analysts sift through data manually, and there has been a strong dependence on the use of full-motion video to the exclusion of other critical sensor modes.34 DCGS has struggled to evolve from its original role as the U2 ground station to a pivotal element in the Air Force ISR enterprise. A strategic plan to migrate DCGS from its current state to a preferred state as a comprehensive, open architected system able to automatically exploit reams of sensor data and provide tasking to the broader enterprise is lacking. As a result, DCGS is among the Air Force’s most costly systems to maintain, and incorporating new and desired technology is proving challenging, because development planning applied to this existing weapons system, to lay out a more effective future, is sorely lacking.

DCGS is an operational weapons system. So, a fundamental question arises: Why is development planning needed? Because DCGS is largely viewed as an information technology (IT) capability, its transformation to a new, improved, and increasingly relevant weapon system suffers from cultural bias. Rather than invest in a new DCGS architecture with increased performance and lower cost, the current acquisition approach is predominantly focused on incremental modifications under the guise of O&M (Air Force 3400 funding); research, development, test, and evaluation funds (Air Force 3600 funding) are scarce for DCGS.

Meeting Air Force ISR requirements in a ground station capability is presently (and unfortunately) tantamount to ingesting and storing data. A significant burden

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34 David A. Deptula and James R. Marrs, “Global distributed ISR operations: the changing face of warfare,” JFQ, issue 54, 3rd quarter, 2009.

Suggested Citation:"2 Development Planning Today." National Research Council. 2014. Development Planning: A Strategic Approach to Future Air Force Capabilities. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/18971.
×

is then placed on the intelligence analyst to understand the sensor data product. Because this is the ISR community’s equivalent to big data analysis, a manual approach is doomed to failure. Development planning is needed to develop a new capability that maximally exploits all sensor data using advanced algorithms, computing technology, and networking and to field this new capability to DCGS users.35 Moreover, DCGS should incorporate sensor tasking authority to collect the right data needed to answer critical questions. In addition to the pervasive view that DCGS is merely an IT capability, the system also suffers from the myopia of an Air Force view centered on a single platform; an enterprise-wide ISR vision is presently absent, but it is precisely such a view that is needed to tackle challenges in near-peer, A2/AD environments.

Under Project Liberty, the DCGS acquisition team developed and deployed a limited-scope, multi-intelligence capability. Having the flexibility to work outside of current DCGS constraints, the team was able to deploy a working system at 20 percent of the proposed cost and in a short time period. This was possible because the government stepped in to the lead system-integration role, working with diverse contractor teams and organic, government software development teams. The Project Liberty success provides a better path. While not a paradigm example of development planning, the actions of the government team—assessing available technology, evaluating alternatives, and effectively developing a pre-Milestone A solution—led to a rapidly fielded, cost-effective, technically superior solution. Although this approach is unlikely to scale to DCGS, it is a promising example and demonstrates that the in-house capabilities of the government to perform the required systems engineering and technology integration, working alongside a small, agile contractor team, can lead to highly beneficial systems-integration outcomes. Extending the Project Liberty success to address a rapidly evolving threat environment will require the use of open standard architectures combined with an increasingly agile, innovative, and responsive team of government and contractor personnel.36

Air Force Research Laboratory Layered Sensing

The premise of AFRL’s Layered Sensing Program is that data can be holistically exploited as a result of concurrent or recent collections from ISR assets, such as radar, signals intelligence, and optical sensors. The resulting product is an improved ISR perspective corresponding to the spatially and temporally distributed

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35 Jeff McKaughan, “Q&A: Lieutenant General Larry D. James,” Tactical ISR Technology, Volume 2, Issue 4 (July/August), KMI Media Group, 2012.

36 Jennifer Ricklin, “Air Force C4ISR S&T vision,” presentation to NDIA C4ISR breakfast, Air Force Research Laboratory, December 2011.

Suggested Citation:"2 Development Planning Today." National Research Council. 2014. Development Planning: A Strategic Approach to Future Air Force Capabilities. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/18971.
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collection and exploitation of multi-waveband data. Layered sensing addresses an important issue: With the vast number of DoD sensors collecting data, can additional and important threat information be derived at the cost of additional computing power? Effectively, AFRL sought to develop an enterprise-wide vision for ISR.

Layered sensing, although not a specific program, served as a framework for sensor systems research at AFRL. From the broader Air Force perspective, the framework is vastly appealing.37 Achieving the complete, layered sensing vision has been elusive, as the concept is complicated to analyze and requires the emerging discipline of systems engineering. There are many considerations in such an approach, such as the cost of data links, the exploitation approach, control of the sensors, and the framework architecture to ingest and then exploit massive quantities of data. Inherently, layered sensing provides robustness and potential utility in an A2/AD environment. Yet, AFRL has moved away from the layered sensing concept that was a critical element of its focused long-term challenges just a few years ago as other priorities emerged.

The layered sensing example raises questions about how the Air Force supports and integrates development planning across the acquisition and S&T communities. A robust development planning capability would provide a forum for evaluation of new concepts based on integration of systems, such as that envisioned by the layered sensing concept. A technology push from AFRL will prove less successful without the pull from the operational users that should be manifest in a strong development planning approach. The Air Force and DoD-wide highly skilled scientific and engineering workforce can play a valuable role in the early stages of development planning and help fill technology gaps required for effective prototypes. The roles and responsibilities of in-house organizations like AFRL in the development planning process require clarification.

Recently, AFRL stood up the Engineering and Technical Management Office (AFRL/EN). AFRL has taken the initiative to close the gap between its research projects and transition to programs of record through the use of systems engineering to better guide their research portfolio. The explicit goal of systems engineering is to ensure that research projects are defined within the bounds of acceptable system integration concepts. Delineating how AFRL activities can be leveraged to support wider Air Force development planning will continue to be important.

The prior three examples highlight a need for enhanced, rigorous, and coordinated development planning to better serve the warfighter. Development planning needs to look broadly at available technology, specific objectives, and realistic

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37 Lt Gen David Deptula (USAF, Ret.), Combat cloud is new face of long range strike, Armed Forces Journal, September 18, 2013, http://www.armedforcesjournal.com/deptula-combat-cloud-is-newface-of-long-range-strike/.

Suggested Citation:"2 Development Planning Today." National Research Council. 2014. Development Planning: A Strategic Approach to Future Air Force Capabilities. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/18971.
×

constraints. The JSTARS recapitalization example indicates a lack of broad, multidisciplinary involvement during development planning activities, leading to a narrowly focused solution. Similarly, the DCGS example underscores the need for a comprehensive perspective that effective development planning provides. The layered sensing example exposes a need for increased coordination among all stakeholders in the acquisition community to make the most effective use of limited resources and emerging technology.

Finding 2-11. Development planning implementation today does not always help improve near-term acquisition decisions.

In the JSTARS recapitalization effort, development planning activities appeared focused on solving near-term O&M issues with the Boeing 707, rather than taking a comprehensive look at the warfighter’s needs for advanced GMTI. Even the resulting name of the activity, “JSTARS recapitalization,” provides a limiting perspective. DCGS is viewed as a current weapons system; research and development in multi-intelligence and information technology is not adequately leveraged into development planning activities to transform this critical Air Force asset.

Finding 2-12. Development planning implementation today does not always help mature pre-acquisition concepts by identifying specific needs for more engineering analyses, prototyping, and technology development, among other factors.

Layered sensing is a brilliant, enterprise-wide concept for ISR, but this vision does not appear to be adequately connected to, or leveraged by, a broader development planning construct. The role of the laboratories in supporting development planning should be strengthened. AFRL/EN is a positive step in this direction.

DEVELOPMENT PLANNING FOR AIR FORCE WORKFORCE DEVELOPMENT

Hard metrics on human factors are difficult to quantify. Having said this, however, there does not appear to be clear or consistent evidence that development of the Air Force’s enduring deterrent, its cadre of world-leading scientists and engineers, is a specific objective or even a consideration in making assignments to the development planning function. At times, it also seems unclear to Air Force personnel themselves as to why they were assigned to the development planning function. To ensure a healthy and successful Air Force today and into the future, strategic thinkers are needed in key leadership positions. These leaders are called on to make challenging trade-offs to ensure solutions that will support the diverse

Suggested Citation:"2 Development Planning Today." National Research Council. 2014. Development Planning: A Strategic Approach to Future Air Force Capabilities. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/18971.
×

needs of the community and to make difficult choices regarding future scenarios and needs. It appears that the potential for development planning to act as a training ground for future leaders of Air Force S&T, operations, and acquisition is not currently leveraged.

Finding 2-13. Development planning in its current implementation is not adequately influencing S&T, acquisition, and operational workforce development.

Suggested Citation:"2 Development Planning Today." National Research Council. 2014. Development Planning: A Strategic Approach to Future Air Force Capabilities. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/18971.
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The development and application of technology has been an essential part of U.S. airpower, leading to a century of air supremacy. But that developmental path has rarely been straight, and it has never been smooth. Only the extraordinary efforts of exceptional leadership - in the Air Forces and the wider Department of Defense, in science and in industry - have made the triumphs of military airpower possible.

Development Planning provides recommendations to improve development planning for near-term acquisition projects, concepts not quite ready for acquisition, corporate strategic plans, and training of acquisition personnel. This report reviews past uses of development planning by the Air Force, and offers an organizational construct that will help the Air Force across its core functions. Developmental planning, used properly by experienced practitioners, can provide the Air Force leadership with a tool to answer the critical question, Over the next 20 years in 5-year increments, what capability gaps will the Air Force have that must be filled? Development planning will also provide for development of the workforce skills needed to think strategically and to defectively define and close the capability gap. This report describes what development planning could be and should be for the Air Force.

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