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Finding Ways To Meet Challenges Is Important for Business Owners The National Defense Industrial Association cites "transforming training and logistics" as one of the top half-dozen defense issues facing the United States in 2003. Similarly, a report by senior officers on the Air and Space Force (ASF) of the future predicts that the advanced weapons of 2025 will require "brilliant soldiers, sailors, marines and airmen," along with an "integrated adaptive learning environment" to produce them. So you might think that a retired Air Force officer with "brilliant" credentials of his own who came up with a creative solution to meet some of those training and education needs-and in a way that would provide significant savings to boot-could write his own ticket into the defense industry. But you would think wrong, as Robert Strini, founder and president of Emerging Business Solutions (EBS), knows all too well. A retired Air Force lieutenant colonel, former instructor pilot and a multi-degreed engineer, Strini has had to marshal all his creative forces to transform an innovative approach to designing customized training and operational environments from concept to reality. Strini was in the Air Force in 1996, doing work related to the Defense Advanced REsearch Projects Agency. DARPA exists "to maintain the technological superiority of the U.S. military and prevent technological surprise from harming our national security," according to its mission statement. He came up with an idea that DARPA didn't want but that he thought could have a huge impact on both military and civilian life. The essence of his idea is to leverage research that has already been paid for by U.S. taxpayers but abandoned by the military for various reasons and transition it to military or civilian purposes. "Defense research generates a lot of good ideas that just need creativity to turn them into real-world applications, and they are not just military in nature," Strini says.
He envisioned EBS as a lean, flexible, fast-responding company of experts that could creatively harness technologies to solve customer needs in a cost-effective manner. It would use both commercial and government off-the-shelf software to the greatest extent possible and apply the savings toward additional product capabilities. The result would be "more bang for the buck for both EBS customers and U.S. taxpayers," he says. Strini's model is built on partner collaboration, with a small group providing the development core and resources added as needed to support project demands. It relies on best-in-class partners to supply skill and services outside EBS's core expertise, strengthening its position as a cost-effective, best-value business model. The concept runs counter to the way business traditionally has been done in the defense industry, where large companies typically seek to serve as a single source for all a project's requirements. A drawback of that approach is that it eliminates the option of tapping outside resources that might be better suited to producing the best product at the best cost-to-value ratio. MAJOR HURDLE Educating customers and other defense contractors about the advantages of the EBS approach has been a major hurdle, Strini admits. "I don't mind being a sub-contractor on a project," he says, "but not if it's just to receive a minor development role when EBS' intellectual property is responsible for winning the contract." Speed and flexibility-the capability to strike an enemy with vast amounts of ordinance accurately and quickly-is the defining characteristic of U.S. military forces in the 21st century, as was demonstrated so impressively by the armed services in Iraq. A central component of that strategy requires a tremendous number of aircraft to be in the sky and preforming a variety of different operations simultaneously. When a "friendly fire" incident occurs, often it is related to a break-down in the system controlling the military's airborne fleet. Some breakdowns are system-related, but others result from human error. Minimizing those errors is an important goal of combat training. The program Strini and EBS have developed uses artificial intelligence and other advanced technology to replicate the training environment of a battlefield where elements of the Ground Theater Air Control System must rehearse their duties. The Air Operations Center (AOC) is responsible for coordinating all military air power during combat in four separate venues: air operations, air support operations, ground-based control reporting and tactical control. Except for the tactical control people, very few of the personnel involved in AOC operations ever see the light of day. They rely exclusively on video and computer monitors to dispatch their duties.
"What they see in the training system looks similar to what they will see on their operational systems," Strini explains. "Personnel in all four areas can rehearse with or against each other or against the enemy. They can listen to pilots' voices, observe bombing missions, coordinate midair refueling and do anything else they would do in a real-life combat situation. "You save a lot of resources, though, because you are not using real ammunition and fuel to fly air-craft," he adds. "It also allows the training to take place at home stations, saving the time and money that would otherwise be spent on travel." The Air Force bought a limited EBS prototype AOC training system and first used it during the peace-monitoring phase in the Balkans. It contained pre-deployment and arrival information for Joint and Coalition service members assigned to the Balkans Combined Aerospace Operations Center (BCAOC) in Europe. Scenario-based mission rehearsals for local and distributed training were to be installed in the follow-on phase, but that has been stymied by acquisition bureaucracy and politics, Strini says.EBS's current projects supports Air Combat Command Control Reporting Center (CRC) formal training at Luke Air Force Base in Arizona. It is building and deploying a mockup of the CRC's operational weapons system-the technology responsible for tracking airborne planes and missiles, determining if they are friend or foe and shooting them down if they are the latter. The environment it creates is identical to what service members will face in real-world situations. VALID MODEL The success of EBS's first CRC production system-which was delivered in half the time and at a fraction of the next-lowest bidder's cost-proves the business model is valid, despite its lack of layered management, Strini contends. "Nearly 85% of the budgeted resources went to those involved in the actual production of the system," he says. "Just 30% to 40% of resources are applied at that level in traditional defense contractor models." However, it is the networks connections created by the layered management Strini's model eliminates that often lead to contract awards. The legendary "military-industrial complex" may be the ultimate old boys network, and Strini knows he is trying to break a paradigm with EBS, but he keeps at it. "We rely on creativity and depth of expertise in everything we do, starting with our initial contact," he says. "Credibility must be demonstrated before creativity can be applied-in fact, it tailors the use of creative thinking."Generally, customers recognize EBS' expertise and understand the creative solutions it proposes, Strini says. What prevents more contracts from being executed is a factor unrelated to the problem being addressed-the desire of a more-established contractor to win the project.
Strini expects to have more doors closed in his face, but he is determined to stick with it-and that's a good thing. The Air Force may not be the ASF yet, but if it is to reach its goal of transforming itself into a true Air and Space Force in the 21st century, it will have to rely heavily on creative and innovative uses of technology-and on the quiet but determined efforts of unsung heroes such as Strini. |
