Chris Ward (Commander, U.S. Navy (Retired)) has over 30 years of experience helping the Department of Defense (DoD) solve difficult technology requirements. She has a proven track record of building, maintaining, securing, and certifying technology solutions for use within DoD. She works with Industry to identify key opportunities and provides strategic guidance and support. She is a strategic analyst and cybersecurity professional who has deep expertise in improving enterprise cybersecurity.
Chris is a Senior Advisor at OODA LLC and an OODA Network Member. In this series of OODA interviews, we talk about how she came to be a part of OODA. In subsequent conversations in this series, we will talk about Chris’ vast experience within the DoD, especially with procurement, operations, and specific programs like the Other Transaction Authority (OTA), amongst others.
“The spec that the company got was X: that’s what they said they would do. But eight years later, when they’re on the base trying to do X, it doesn’t make sense.”
Daniel Pereira: Let’s return to the project you described in our last conversation – the physical infrastructure project for multiple military bases in Asia…
Chris Ward: …Base-Level Level Infrastructure Improvement. BLII…
Pereira: The scale of that project is just fascinating. We can look at that in so many ways in our more current, data, AI, and digital transformation context. Because that project was such an extreme example of brick and mortar, a huge physical plant project, which provides a nice contrast for learnings. Let’s discuss what you learned from that project that can be applied to the speed and scale of what OODAcon panelist Sean Gurley and OODA Network Member Florian Wolf are doing with their companies?
Something like what you did for that physical infrastructure project in this climate of demand for speed and scale for American competitiveness – mission-critical, American industrial defense base transformation. For example, what are the considerations for an AI project at that speed and scale? What comes to mind?
Ward: Well, it made me think that was not a very innovative contract. The base-level improvement infrastructure improvement, BLII, was a big project with a big RFI, a huge full competition with a clear winner. And then they went out there to execute it. It was General Dynamics that won it. But, of course, they don’t have anybody in South Korea, and they don’t have anybody in Diego Garcia. So they’re subcontracting all over the place. And then a smaller Japanese company, a smaller South Korean company is going to go there on the base and dig up the conduits and put in new equipment. Everything took twice the amount of time it was supposed to take. It was a lot harder than anybody ever thought.
And it was working on the initial spec that we described in the initial proposal. So one of my jobs running the operations of it was constantly mitigating this frustration: The spec that the company got was X: that’s what they said they would do. But eight years later, when they’re on the base trying to do X, it doesn’t make sense. A better way to do it is this way – and trying to get it changed and trying to get the contractor to be flexible and trying to make the decisions.
For example, we had a lot of places where they were putting copper in. Now who wants copper? A lot of things, like trenching. Some were exceedingly difficult to trench, like hard old coral reefs. Why not have some microwave links? I mean, it was just where things made common sense. You could get a lot more fiber through a smaller conduit than you could copper. It’d be a lot easier to put in. Copper was on the initial spec. So that is what it is going to be. Or, trenching is on the specs, so no microwave links. Right? A lot of difficulty trying to work with flexibility. Now back to the other transaction authority (OTA) we discussed previously.
Pereira: Yes.
“…it’s not necessarily getting to that small innovative company that DoD is looking for to innovate. That gets a little bit frustrating. I don’t know how to fix that.”
Ward: One of the problems when you are doing an OTA, because I said all the good things about it last time we spoke, there are some disadvantages.
Pereira: Let’s hear them.
Ward: They’re not as visible. They’re not as visible. If Northrop Grumman wins a contract, I can go on and see what they won it for, unless it is the black program, and there is going to be some write-ups about it, there’s going to be a whole bunch of coverage of that contract award. It’s hard for the common person to follow what’s happening in these OTAs. So the accountability and visibility of all these things is a little bit more difficult. That is hard to overcome.
Pereira: Any other disadvantages to the OTA approach?
Ward: Well, okay, so the other disadvantage, I think, there are about four hundred companies – and I kind of joke about these things- I look at who’s winning these OTAs, right? So, you don’t have to be a small non-traditional defense small non-traditional company to be in the OTA Consortium. You will just pay the consortium to join, which is not a high mark. You know, like $500 a year. It’s not that much.
Pereira: When you say consortium, is there a consortium that manages all OTA approval?
Ward: No. So each OTA has a consortium manager.
Pereira: Okay.
Ward: So the government doesn’t know how to run a consortium. That’s too hard. It’s just not a government thing. <Laugh>. So there are companies – the one that runs the consortium for naval warfare command, ATI, it does an excellent job of running consortiums. They run a whole bunch of different consortiums. They run the consortium that Naval Warfare Command uses. They do a pretty good job of it. So when you put the requirement out, there is nothing to prevent Northrop Grumman and General Dynamics – one of the big guys – from going in and applying for it. And over 50% of the stuff that I see going through is going to the bigger guys. So it’s not necessarily getting to that small innovative company that DoD is looking for to innovate. That gets a little bit frustrating. I don’t know how to fix that.
OTA consortiums are where I first ran into it… Controlled unclassified information (CUI).
Pereira: So in this current innovation climate that is a definite pain point. The private sector and venture capital are going to be looking at transforming the entire innovation ecosystem to solve problems just like that one.
So you mentioned one of the downsides of the OTA is that people can’t find them. But let’s go with a counterfactual related to the emerging technology IT supply chain.
Ward: Yes.
Pereira: Let’s say not being able to find OTAs is a net positive. Because if the public sector can’t find them, then the Chinese cannot find them either. So component parts in the emerging technology supply chain, just like the semiconductor supply chain, will be weaponized – literally point to point for all the component parts. Everything sourced needs to be vetted and approved – confirming that it hasn’t been anywhere, which causes security concerns. Is there a point-to-point physical layer for the component part IT supply chain that has 100% security assurance before they go into a larger system? Does that exist?
Ward: Well, you know, a couple of years ago I hadn’t even heard of CUI, but it has existed forever. Controlled unclassified information (CUI). So it always was confidential, secret, top secret, special compartmented information – different classifications and CUI have been on the books for a long time. Controlled unclassified information.
So if you are not familiar with this, listen closely, because this is interesting relative to what you just said. I personally don’t have anything on my computer that says confidential top secret. I’m not a President or an Ex-president, so I don’t keep that stuff here. <Laugh>
But if I saw it, I would know instantly that this is a problem, and I would know what to do. Controlled unclassified information, CUI identification has never really been used in my experience. I never saw it in government. I never saw it in industry until about three years ago, right at the beginning of the pandemic – when everything went over to Zoom and everybody’s doing everything online – it was just too much information people could get their hands on. There was a golden six months there where I got briefs from DoD organizations that were previously hard for me to get those types of briefs. Before I would’ve had to have paid money, traveled to a conference, and been part of a small user group to be able to get them. Suddenly everything was available. Well, about six months into the pandemic, the use of that term, CUI came out, with some restrictions on it, which means it can only be used between US government defense industries that are participating in specific projects.
So I have a ton of CUI on my computer, but I must be incredibly careful about how I use it now if I present it to other people, and how I share it.
OTA consortiums are where I first ran into it. The Navy Warfare Command Consortium started marking everything CUI about six months into the pandemic. And now everything in there is CUI. It’s ludicrous. There’ll be a cover page that will say the name of the consortium and the consultation for that cover page is CUI. And then the next one will be the org chart that you can pull up on any website or any Google. And it is still CUI, so it’s very tempting to treat it disrespectfully, but everybody I know in the industry is keeping those things in special folders.
“…an honest-to-goodness system where you want every piece of the supply chain protected…nobody sees it except….the defense contractors, the innovative new companies are not going to get in there to see any of that. So that is another problem.”
Pereira: So, in OODA Loop fashion, let’s future-forward the question. Let’s take a component part of a photonics build for an emerging technology project. The cream has risen to the top and the project clearly on the list of top ten things that will provide American competitive advantage technologically. So we want to fast-track this thing.
It is built by a partner country, and because I don’t know, what would be point to point security for the provenance of that physical component and its subcomponents? Is that system in place? Because I am going on the strategic intuition that we need to provide insights into how to scale that process into the private sector. I think the market is going to be sorting this out very soon.
Ward: Okay – let’s take it a little differently. Project Overmatch. So the Joint All Domain Command and Control, which is the government – the Department of Defense’s – big initiative, JADC2. I’ve written a couple of articles on it and spoke about a couple of different things in it. JADC2 is directing the military services to do certain things. Basically, it is making sure that every sensor and every shooter in the arsenal – and that shooter or sensor could be Navy, Coast Guard, could be Army, could be a TSA person, whoever – that the sensors and shooters can connect to each other in a way that makes sense. So Project Overmatch is a challenge from the Department of Defense all the way down to the Navy: Do this.
Sounds good. Right? Yes. We looked at a couple of different things. We sat through a couple of different lectures on it, and then everything else in those industry days that are classified as secret or top secret. And all the RFIs and all the RFPs are classified. So I couldn’t give you a list of what they’re doing. The only way you can infer what’s going on is to look in those consortiums and see what kind of technologies they are looking at.
Well, they’re looking at and they want some 5G stuff, a lot of 5G stuff, they’re talking about communications swarms and those kinds of things. You can look at the types of technologies that are being discussed within the OTAs, but a real system like what you are describing- an honest-to-goodness system where you want every piece of the supply chain protected – that goes behind the door and then nobody sees it except the industries themselves. And that is going to be the big defense contractors. The innovative new companies are not going to get in there to see any of that. So that is another problem.
“OODA Loop and OODA can help these companies and the entire ecosystem innovate on these processes.”
Pereira: Our tracking is telling us that this provenance of physical component parts is going to have to open up further to the private sector or you are going to frustrate a lot of innovative companies.
Ward: Yes.
Pereira: If it is not as seamless as their AWS infrastructure account – and what they do in their usual private sector business practices, that is going to be a problem. If we were doing an emerging technology or advanced technology supply chain scenario planning exercise, this issue would bubble up very quickly, right?
Ward: Yes. And I think if you need an emerging technologies supply chain like that, you’re going to have to look not at the specific contracts coming out of the consortiums, but what are the topics coming out of them and just maybe canvas five or six different consortiums. Now the problem is you’re going to have to find a member for each one. So I belong to two and I’m sure Bob belongs to a couple. There are probably some Intel Community consortiums. You know, somebody will need to take a list of all the different OTA consortiums that the DoD is using and just see who has the proper information from each one of those. You will need to go back and forth on it.
Ward: The risk is that innovative companies are going to lose their focus on pursuing all these processes. They are going to get their focus off. I’m always nervous about these businesses spreading themselves too thin in too many different directions and then not being able to stay focused on what they do best.
Pereira: Right. And that is the reason I wanted to make sure we covered these topics in detail because OODA Loop and OODA can help these companies and the entire ecosystem innovate on these processes.
Ward: Absolutely.
OODA Senior Advisor and Network Member Chris Ward on Startups, SMBs, Innovation and the DoD Other Transaction Authority
An Introductory Q&A with OODA Senior Advisor and Network Member Chris Ward
The Air Force “Need for Speed”: The End of the Requirements Up Front Model, Software Factories and Digital Transformation
Speculative Design: U.S. Army Experimental CubeSats (Miniaturized Satellites)
Joint All-Domain Command and Control (JADC2): Perhaps the most important program in DoD today
The Army Role in Joint All-Domain Command and Control (JADC2)
The Navy Role in Joint All-Domain Command and Control (JADC2)
The Air Force Role in Joint All-Domain Command and Control (JADC2)
