At a gathering of unmanned systems professionals, I heard a lot of
griping about product development. Trying to deliver a system that the government wants was impossible, because of the time lag. Who knows what the Department of Defense would want or need 2 or 5 years from now? All participants in the meeting agreed that it was the governments’ fault. The Feds simply weren’t telling us what they wanted. Well, it’s not for the lack of trying. It seems every week there’s a new roadmap, report, vision, or long-term plan. I recently reviewed my personal collection of downloaded documents and came up with:
- Fiscal Year 2012 Budget request The big daddy of all “documents,” the official request for the Defense Budget.
- Aircraft Procurement Plan Fiscal Years (FY) 2012-2041 Just this part of the Defense Budget cost $440,056 to write.
- UAS Roadmap 2005-2030 This applies all the way to 2030, but it was done in 2005. Does it still apply? After all, the future isn’t what it used to be.
- 2010 Army Modernization Strategy (AMS) Neither a plan nor a roadmap; it’s a strategy.
- 2030 vision-Air Force strategy study looks to long-term critical capabilities A researcher gives his 2 cents in the Armed Forces Journal. This constitutes a special category of guidance, since it’s technically not official.
- Equipping Joint Warfighters Through Modernization of Unmanned Ground Systems (UGS) Robotic Systems Joint Project Office’s (RS JPO) details their “modernization strategy” for UGS in this Army AL&T article.
- Report to Congress: Development and Utilization of Robotics and Unmanned Ground Vehicles Congressmen are notorious for not reading the bills they vote on. Do you think that they read this report?
One of my favorites is the CBO Policy Options for Unmanned Aircraft Systems. It is highly detailed about current & future unmanned systems, compares unmanned strategies across services, and attempts to estimate the financial effectiveness of different policy options.
How about you, dear reader? Do you have any favorite roadmap or plan? Is there a particular document that you think is especially useful? Let us know in the comments section.
UAS future acquisition documents due the UAS community a great disservice by not telling the whole story about the actual acquisition of UAS capabilities. For example, the actual acquisition does not follow either the Defense Guidance or the annual DOD Acquisition Documentation sent to Congress. UAS capability is extemely time sensitive and many times year-old, and even month-old documents don’t capture the time critical nature of the UAS need. This time sensitivity is particularly important in the 2012/2013 UAS Acquisition since November 2012 is the next national election. No Congressperson or Administration Official wants to be blamed for not providing the best protection to his local voters who are serving in risky areas overseas. Specificaly, these documents need to track the history Service Requested funding and actual funding during a given Fical Year. Also, the documents need to discuss what factors could change UAS funding in future Fiscal Years.
Procurement history continues to repeat itself!