WASHINGTON\u00a0\u2014\u00a0When US Secretary of Defense Ash Carter unveiled his 2017 budget plan in a February speech,\u00a0he also pulled the curtain back on a secretive, only-whispered-about office located in the same building as the Pentagon’s mad-science office DARPA, or the\u00a0Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.
Although they share some DNA, the SCO\u2019s mission is different from that of DARPA. Whereas the latter is focused on finding and prototyping the game-changing technologies for the future fight, the SCO is trying to understand current, existent needs and address them in new ways.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The most public example of an SCO project is the Standard Missile 6, which Roper\u2019s office helped turn from a defensive weapon into a ship-killing one. It\u2019s about taking current capabilities that exist and finding new ways to utilize them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ben FitzGerald, an analyst with the Center for a New American Security, said that while the SCO is technology-focused, it is better to think of Roper\u2019s team as a strategy office instead of an acquisition hub.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“It\u2019s interesting to me the role that SCO is playing conceptually in the Pentagon now, which to me has all the hallmarks of the Office of Net Assessment in prior eras,” FitzGerald said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“You have a small team with a highly empowered guy-with-the-answers in charge of it. We don\u2019t know exactly what they\u2019re doing, but it gives us hope, and, to the extent our adversaries know about it, gives them pause. I think that is the role the SCO is playing more than any other organization in the Department of Defense right now.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Roper himself acknowledged that role, saying: “For us to really help industry, we have to be very good strategists and analysts here.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“It\u2019s too much to ask a great engineer to also be a good strategist,” Roper added. “The resident expertise is always going to be with the person who made it. We\u2019re going to be working with great engineers, and what we can give to them is the context for which it will be used.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n
That concept ties into how the SCO is working with industry and developing ideas forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When Roper first sat down with reporters in May, he said he was looking forward to hearing more from industry now that his office was more public. That included a Broad Area Announcement on a government contracting website actively soliciting information on new programs and ideas from both the defense industry and non-traditional suppliers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The office has seen a lot of ideas as a result, Roper said, but noted that companies initially were coming to him with traditional pitches geared toward hitting a requirement\u00a0\u2014\u00a0a piece of technology that would fit a specific\u00a0mission set.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Roper said that\u2019s not what he wants to see. Instead, he wants to know about a piece of technology, learn what it can and can\u2019t do, and then guide industry toward a mission set or need that the SCO, and its partners in the military services, feel they need to fill.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“We have been sorting through the submissions and will be ready to make some decisions on them soon, but they are decisions that will be made in the SCO context\u00a0\u2014\u00a0a piece of technology applied to the mission we think\u00a0it\u2019s most useful for,” Roper said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Roper added that the office does the same internally with the Pentagon, operating a “Match.mil” to create cross-service connections among people who are working on similar technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
New Administration<\/b><\/p>\n\n\n\n
It is widely expected that Carter will be replaced by the next president when they take office in January. Even if Carter is asked to stay on for the near-term, however, there is no guarantee a new administration will look at the SCO\u2019s budget and not decide it could be better spent elsewhere.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Asked whether he was concerned about the future of his office, Roper expressed cautious optimism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“It\u2019ll be interesting to see. I would like to think, and I do think it\u2019s true, that we have now become a strategic partner for the services,” he said. “I would think if an administration came in and they were thinking about whether something was valuable or not, the first thing [they] would want to know is: If it wasn\u2019t here, who would be upset? And if no one is upset then you have a good case to say: \u2018Why is it here?\u2019 “<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Which is why the fact the SCO has managed to get programs up and running in conjunction with the services is important\u00a0\u2014\u00a0not just because of the technology itself but because it creates what Roper hopes is support among\u00a0the services for his office. That SCO is willing to use its budget to get programs up to the point of operational testing, which means services do not have to spend their own research and development funds on these programs at the riskiest stage of their development.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n
FitzGerald compares the SCO to the Pentagon\u2019s Defense Innovation Unit Experimental (DIUx) office, which got off to a slow start in its first year and was turned into a direct report to Carter in order to jump-start its programs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“The SCO has benefited from a longer ramp-up period than the DIUx has had, so it has successes it can make its case off of,” FitzGerald said. But, he noted, the mission sets are different for the two organizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“DIUx isn\u2019t there to build things. They are there to connect interesting tech companies with important defense problems, whereas SCO is trying to fuse operational concept, war fighting need, new technologies, and get that into the services,” FitzGerald said. “They are very different organizations with different missions and different factors for success.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Out of the shadows, the SCO now needs to justify its long-term existence to a new president.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":54999,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex":"","_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-nofollow":"","_yoast_wpseo_canonical":"","_acf":"","_yoast_wpseo_primary_category":19,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_smg_distribution_targets":[]},"categories":[11,12,49,19,48],"tags":[],"coauthors":[3378],"class_list":["post-60662","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-global","category-industry","category-techwatch","category-pentagon","category-the-americas"],"acf":{"subheadline":"","legacy_arc_id":"67B22BR2TFBLNDTDLNK6R5LWCI","arc_canonical_url":"\/pentagon\/2016\/09\/09\/strategic-capabilities-office-preparing-for-new-programs-next-administration\/","remove_feature_photo":false,"is_sponsored":false,"subtype":"","redirect_url":"","disable_inline_ads":false,"native_logo_pretext":"Presented By:"},"yoast_head":"\n