Next-Gen Munitions

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Brig. Gen. Robert Lyons: 

Good morning, everyone we are in at the AFA in Aurora, Colorado, and we’re about ready to start the next generation munitions panel. Thanks for being here. So you know, we have an audience that’s being live streamed, events being recorded, and we’re going to have a fantastic panel as we discuss munitions. My name is Bob Lyons. I’m the Program Executive Officer for weapons. I’ve been to the job since August of this past summer. I’ve been around the country to see the production lines in this country where we make bombs and missiles. I’ve talked to many of the suppliers that make Mission Systems, been over to Europe. Have had some insight about from the US forces, US Air Forces Europe, about what’s happening in Europe, same with the Middle East, a lot of feedback from them, and also the Asia Pacific. In this role, I have had several meetings with CEOs POS at round tables, and out of that, there are three primary mission things that I pulled out of that experience, and I set that as context for this conversation. The first one is the production lines in this country that make weapons or national assets, and we’ve got to make them healthy. We’ve got to make them continue to produce the product that our war fighters need around the world. The second are the development programs, and there are three things in that area that matter. One is to deliver exquisite weapons that would be things like hypersonic missiles, other advanced weapons capabilities. The second is to look at the weapons that we do make, and identify parts in those weapons that we can make cheaper and differently so we get more lethal and more effective outcomes on the battlefield. And the third is to get to the new ways of building bombs and missiles as fast as we can, leveraging the newest technologies, open systems architecture and such. So that’s support operations, production lines and development programs. That’s what we do in the munitions enterprise. It’s a joint endeavor with the Navy and the Army and the Air Force. So it’s a great privilege to be here today to explore next generation munitions. We have a fantastic panel on it. If each of you could raise your hands, we have retired Major General John Norman. He’s a vice president, Air and Space Defense Systems requirements and capabilities at Raytheon. He’s got a fighter pilot background. He’s been at a combatant command, he’s been in the acquisition business, and he’s now a vice president at Raytheon. We have Mr. Frank DeMauro. Frank is the Vice President, General Manager weapons systems at Northrop Grumman. He leads their team responsible for designing and delivering advanced weapons solutions. His team addresses evolving global threats with industry leading missiles, solid rocket motors, armaments and components, while continuously innovating future weapons capabilities, they’ve had a chance to be at the some of his sites, and it’s phenomenal what what industry is doing. We also have here another retired general officer, fighter pilot, Mr. Steve Sargent. Steve is the Chief Executive Officer of Marvin test solutions. With over 30 years of Senior Executive Service, general Sargent is leading MTS growth as a global leader serving military airspace and manufacturing organizations. Also has a background inside the military, both as a fighter pilot and a commander, and it’s great to have you sir here on this panel. Finally, we’ve got Mr. Jon Piatt, executive vice president ISR aviation and security, senior Sierra Nevada Corporation. Mr. Piatt oversees the Department of Defense projects for specialized aircraft modifications. With more than 20 years in business leadership and a 35 year career, he excels in growth, innovation and customer relations, delivering integrated solutions for domestic and foreign military clients. These four represent military experience industry. Experience, and they’ve seen a lot. We’re looking forward to the conversation we’re going to have with them today. I want to thank all of you for coming. There’s a lot going on inside the AFA. This morning, we’ve got an air superiority panel in a different room, also addressing some of the things that we’re going to talk about in here today. So again, thank you for being here, both the live stream audience and the folks in this room, okay. To lead this discussion off, I’d like to see what few of you have to say about what exactly is, in your mind, a next generation munition and where we’re headed, development, production, sustainment. Can take that conversation wherever you want to go. So General Norman, your thoughts.

Jon Piatt:

Borrow your mic there, John, so I want to play a little bit off of what John said, and starting off with it’s the focus on the target. But if you look at the entire ecosystem of next generation of weapons systems development, we’ve got to take into consideration the change in the manufacturing techniques, the standards, the availability of new manufacturing processes. We hear a lot about additive manufacturing. We hear a lot about digital design, but it’s not just looking at the end state and end use of the weapon, because then we could be very singularly focused on how we design that particular weapon, we’ve got to be thinking about what is not only the application of that weapon, but how are we going to produce it, sustain it, make it modular enough that we are looking at the ability to reuse that weapon and other means in which it was originally intended, and limit, not limit ourselves by what we think we fought in the past, or the armed or the wars that we fought in the past, and how we’ve used those weapons playing off the we both have a very active engagements in the Ukraine is taking existing weapon systems and then putting them into alternate uses, and we’re learning a lot from how we can adapt those systems. How are we bringing that back into the design itself, to make sure that we are thinking about modularity, upgradability, alternate uses, the adaptability to other launchers or other platforms. We spend a lot of time talking about air to air missiles and air to ground missiles, but those same missiles or those same weapons can be adapted to. Ground to air, or ground to ground, in order to provide the ability to expand that production base to meet the full demand of the threat, and what we have to do to develop the infrastructure and the capacity in the stores that allow us to evolve as that threat evolves, and the volume of the of what the threat is going to be throwing at us is going to require scalability. So it part of it is absolutely what is the threat based requirements? But what is it that we’re doing to bring that all the way back into the design and development phase, to understand how we need to think differently about these weapon systems? And then the modularity aspect of it gives us the ability to adapt the payloads themselves in order to change at least a part of the system to be able to address the evolving threat. So I think there’s, you know, there’s, there’s certainly a lot of the design tools, techniques and manufacturing abilities that are changing rapidly, we need to be able to adapt to that. And I think that’s that’s a good place for us to start.

Maj. Gen. Steve Sergeant:

Well, I’ll just follow suit and build on the first two. So let me pick up on the modularity piece. So if you look back into the 70s, some of the weapons that were built were built modular, from the rocket motor, from the warhead from the guidance section, and all of those were mated initially to, let’s make this weapon against the target that we’re going after in the environment we’re going after. But I’ve got to believe that those that got together early on got together with both the Operational Test and the development test, and the war fighter, who is going to be the ultimate user with the acquisition community early on to say, what can we do to build these exquisite weapons that can adapt to the changing threat environment? And if you look at a missile like Raytheon that initially originated from Hughes, the rocket motors lasted much longer than anyone ever suspected. But what’s changed over time? When we needed either larger warheads or smaller warheads, more collateral or less collateral damage, those warheads have been able to be changed out. And then who would have thought we would go from an a model Maverick with just electrical optical only to laser guided in some of the wars that were taking place in the Middle East, and going against moving targets that were never envisioned that a maverick would be able to go after and do it effectively. To the other point, looking at the suspension and release equipment that it’s going to be carried on. And so in the last few years alone, we’ve seen how you can take an air to air weapon and use it from surface to air and vice versa. Well, if you take a look at what is existing today in that armament and ask the question, can it be modified? And the good news is there are modifications, and certainly Marvin engineering is doing that, taking existing la 129, 128 type launchers and coming up with a new ground based launcher variant without having to reinvent the wheel, which is modernizing that, but then enabling it to be supporting those type of environment, those weapons in those environments, but also having the test equipment. So there’s certain test equipment that’s used for Amram missiles, for when they’re loaded on airplanes, when you put them on the ground system, initially, a lot of those ground systems, people thought, Oh, they’re just going to be fire and forget and don’t worry about it. But they’re finding that you need to continue to test because the launcher systems and the interfaces can be worn out very rapidly in a different environment than what you’ll find employing it from the air.

Frank DeMauro:

Yeah. Great to be with you, General. Great to be on the panel with my distinguished colleagues. Here. I’ll just add and build off of what was already been said just slightly differently. So when we think about the next gen weapons and what they are, one of the things that immediately pops in my mind is how we develop next gen weapons. I think we’d all agree that the threat is changing pretty rapidly, and so how we adapt to that threat is really critical. In a case in point we were to one of the things General Norman was talking about, we’re building a tactical missile now for the Air Force, developing that missile right now. And a lot of the the heritage of that missile comes from a missile that we developed for the Navy, but with specific upgrades. Well, that missile has been developed in a digital environment, and so that has enabled us to do a lot of modeling and simulation and development in an environment that not only is accessible by Northrop Grumman, but also by the Air Force, so we can jointly collaborate on design iterations, design changes and design optimizations, and eventually take that through the process of getting that you. Missile into tests and qualification, then eventually through into production, and then carrying that digital environment through the production phase. We’re talking about advanced manufacturing. That’s a that’s a critical piece of that, and I think the digital environment enables that. And so as we think about the quickly changing, rapidly changing threats. We also think about that modularity piece where the missile we’re developing for the Air Force is open system architecture. So as we think about how we we change the design, how we modify that as the threats evolve or as the requirements change, first, we can do those rapid iterations with our customer in that digital environment, and we can do that rather quickly, but because it’s modular and open system architecture, we can implement those changes more quickly. Those are the things that I think about when I think of next gen weapons really aligning with the next gen environment that we all have to work in. And I think that digital approach that we can do jointly and not just, not just partner with the customer, but across the industry, I think is going to really be beneficial over the long run.

Brig. Gen. Robert Lyons: 

Thank you panelists for that question. On your thought, your thoughts about the next gen weapon, there are some themes in there that we’ve heard focused on capacity, integrated digital environment modularity, which is you take the missile and be able to swap out parts in that design more quickly. And there’s this idea of scalability. These are all it’s about the way we build the missiles and the ability of those missiles to react to changes in threat in order to build them quick, more quickly. Well, there’s another part of this enterprise that has to do with the US government’s role in building up the capacity and this new way of building things. And I was want to ask you the question about what what what you need, or what do you recommend to the US government to do the business better and get the product faster and to get more of it. So I want to start with Mr. DeMauro. Get your thoughts.

Frank DeMauro:

Sure, yeah, the great question general, the thing that pops into my mind when I think about what we need from the government is really about the partnership. So we have a great relationship with our Navy customer on our Argan missile. We have a great relationship with the Air Force on the stand in attack weapon missile. To me, it’s about the partnership through the entire process. How do we get through the acquisition process a little faster? How do we work collaboratively through the design process to make sure that we can move through that process quickly but thoroughly, making sure we’re responding to the requirements and then partnering together on what that product is going to look like. How do we partner on streamlining the test requirements so we can actually get the missile produced and then delivered faster? And then, as we talk about capacity and scale. How do we partner on investing in facilities that we’re going to need to build the these missiles at at rate, or these munitions at rate? How are we going to partner on investing in the supply chain, which is so critical for what we have to do? We can, we can build factories for all up rounds, but if we don’t have the parts to build the missiles, it’s a lot more challenging to make those deliveries. And then how do we partner on on shortening lead times of critical parts and critical materials, investing in advanced procurements and and working together to figure out, okay, where are the pain points, and how do we expand the capacity within the supply base. So it’s just a few examples of where the partnership between the industry, the supply chain, the government really can can have a flywheel effect on our ability to deliver those munitions more quickly and in shorter cycles.

Brig. Gen. Robert Lyons: 

So those are great examples. One of the things that we had talked about earlier was this idea of a longer term commitment on procurement. So I wanted to get some thoughts about that. So Mr. Mr. Piatt.

Maj. Gen. Steve Sergeant:

Yeah. So if you’re going to take a look at what government can do and across industry, perhaps it’s a good time right now, since the theme is, let’s step back and be more efficient to talk across industry and Canvas industry for what laws are on the books that have been on the books they’ve worked around for years that have been would impede the scalability that many think is going to be required to have the weapons that we need on the shelf, ready to go from the start that they are starting today and keeping safe, reliable and sustainable. In in top of mind here for those weapons, what in what helps that, and what’s unnecessary in that? And then where’s the PEOs flexibility across funding? Because if the PEO is managing billions of dollars with a portfolio, is there enough flexibility, agility built in today as a question that needs to be posed, maybe back to the larger government, the legislative branch, to allow the PEO have the flexibility to move funds as required, to keep the sustainment the supply chains working for the primes, so that they can actually build and deliver those weapons when it’s also often the supply chain that is is seen as the inhibitor

Jon Norman:

I’ll build on that one. So the way the budgeting process works, and we’re seeing it play out in live action today, the PEO is challenged because you have requirements that are developed after they go through the requirements process in the Pentagon that are based upon a threat two to three years ago, that threats evolved. It’s changed technology. You look at Moore’s law, technology changes month by month, and the PEO needs the flexibility to adapt to that change. We were seeing changes in propulsion using highly loaded grain. We have rotating detonating engines. I think you saw press release from Pratt and Whitney today on that we have changes in the Data Link Technology. We have changes in the way that we manufacture through added manufacturing, and the PEO is constrained and handcuffed because those requirements and that funding line is based upon technology that’s that’s archaic. It’s three years old. That’s decades in tech development, and we need that flexibility, certainly at at the Air Force PEO level, where that point of attack the tip of the spear, so that we can, we can take advantage of what industry has to offer. I would say the other element that we need to focus on is that requirements, process and general lines. I think you’ve done a great job on that. You’ve helped, helped us streamline some of the some of the acquisition barriers that we’ve seen in the past by bringing in industry and saying, Give me a one page, here’s a here’s a objective requirement I’m looking for. But give me a one page, here’s the best that we have to offer, and then we can go from there, and we can build on that, that that gives industry the flexibility to being bring our best and brightest ideas forward. You pick and choose what, what are the best elements of that, and then building on that composability theme, let me take the best seeker. Let me take the best data link so we can close the kill chain. Let me take the best propulsion that we’re going to use for that, and let me, let me take the best design for interface so that we can rapidly feel this on the different platforms. So I’m encouraged by the direction I’m seeing. But to the rest of panel’s point, I think getting the rest the whole of government support to the effort that you’re trying to do is going to be beneficial.

Brig. Gen. Robert Lyons:

Thank you. Thank you for those insights. So in the in the travels and the immersion inside the weapons enterprise that I’ve had, I had been thinking about, what is the one big thing that if I was to recommend to the services executive branch, the Congress, what is the. One big thing to go bigger faster inside the weapons enterprise. And I often think about, what is that one big thing? And I want to ask you, each of you, what is that one big thing? One that one big recommendation to really move this so I want to start with general Sargent.

Maj. Gen. Steve Sergeant:

Well, thanks for that question. I think the My experience has shown that if you build on what the Joint Strike Fighter did that program where they had an integrated dt and OT team from the very beginning at Edwards, instead of separate squadrons across base from each other, not talking, and the DTS are running through to the requirement. They’re running through the requirement that was written in paper. But the O tiers are seeing things evolve, and they know what the user has better connection to the user down range of what they’re going to want. And when they put them up front, they get that dialog going, which helps the PEO, I believe, as well, because it’s across the entire enterprise here. And if you couple that with this integrated digital environment where industry can collaborate with the government, and the war fighter gets brought into that as well, and you have the DT and OT teams working on behalf of the PEO and the war fighter, you have a much better chance of when that weapon goes through production and gets packaged to go out into the field, that you have everything that you need, from the training, the testing and the sustainability built in, and you don’t wait for the O tears to say, Oh, wait, stop, Stop. You didn’t think about A, B or C early on. So having them early together, integrated, I think can save a lot of time, and we don’t have a lot of time, and we certainly don’t have excess money to get to where we need to be here in a very short time.

Brig. Gen. Robert Lyons:

Thank you, Mr. Piatt, yeah,

Jon Piatt:

I’m going to hit on that in a second. I think the rhetorical statement is acquisition reform. Everybody wants to say it. Everybody wants to say it. Everybody wants to think it. We’re going to hear it 100 more times before we actually see acquisition reform. So let’s throw that one aside. Right? Think we all had that conversation earlier. There’s for me to understand how we’re going to be able to build next generation weapons platforms that are going to have to be supported by a scalable industrial base, we’ve got to have a commitment to next generation production techniques and capabilities that are dual use in nature, because every time we invest in a singular production capacity or supply chain that’s meant for a military product or capability, we see the obsolescence of that of that system within a few years, And it requires a lot more investment cycle investment. So if we can look at how we bring more dual use capability and capacity of some of the manufacturing techniques I mentioned, additive manufacturing earlier, the micro electronics, packaging, things like that, can be utilized, but that allows us to to let the commercial market demands for the same capacity in a variable way. Invest in that infrastructure that will support future weapons production. Helps us also drive the cost of those systems down. Quit putting the burden back on the production programs themselves to lobby Congress for the funding that we need to be able to get our volume up so our unit prices down. Let’s leverage the full value of what we can do with commercial design development, bringing in the IDD environment, the whole of the system ecosystem itself and SNC, we have the survival airborne operations center. We awarded that program last year. That’s a weapon system. We treat that just like what we’re talking about right now, bringing in the test community, bringing in the requirements community, bringing in the program office, everybody early on, including the certification offices, so they are there side by side with us each and every day, adjudicating the requirements and making sure that we’re on track for a production program and a path towards the development to production, all the way into the life cycle, sustainment and absolutely echo. We’ve got to pull more of the of those resources in earlier while we look for ways to reduce, I’d say, some of the impact on the laws that are on the books right now that keep us from moving faster, because as much as the program offices want to move fast, as much as industry wants to move fast, as much as we want to leverage these techniques, we’re still stuck sometimes by the interpretation of law and the contracts offices that actually overrule the desire of all the parties and The money that’s set aside to support those programs, so we need to be able to change that, and to have those changes flowing down into into our requirements process.

Jon Norman:

I would say, the thing that would help all of us as industry would be in the acquisition process to bring. Out the long lead material and forward fund that so that we can, we can have that we can shorten the whole production cycle. Additionally, also tied to supply chain, is taking advantage of Big Data Data Analysis, so that we can predict where we have across industry, a demand for a common part, and we can see how that’s going to be a constraint across multiple programs, recognizing that as a government and breaking that out and saying, government, let’s go out and let’s buy a lifetime supply of these so that that it’s available across industry. And no, no one program is constrained. We’ve been working with with the office of Secretary of Defense and with the Air Force on that. I know other industry partners have as well, and I hope we can see that progress.

Frank DeMauro:

And I won’t. These are great examples, I think, from my colleagues on the chair, and I so I won’t, I won’t repeat those. The one, the one thing I’ll add, maybe, is ensuring that we are aligned on the road maps for what you’re going to be looking for in the future, so that we can align our investment strategies and the products that we want to deliver. We’re continuing to innovate. We’re continuing to invest in new technologies so that we can, in the case of missiles make them go farther and faster, we continue to invest on how to make them more lethal, and so making sure that we’re aligned on where we think that threat is headed and what you’re looking for in terms of the roadmap for those products, I think will enable us to, as we do, our internal debates of where to spend our investment dollars, focus them in the right places. As I think about the partnerships we have in the industry, we work closely with Raytheon on several products. We work closely with with Lockheed Martin, and as we think about where to invest on those particular programs, we have a lot of dialog between the companies best those dollars. And so making sure that dialog is open and clear. I think we’ll go a long way in making sure we’re putting our dollars in the right place.

Brig. Gen. Robert Lyons:

Fantastic, great answers on the one big thing, some themes or some ideas that they came out of that the idea of a dual use factory, dual use capability. So one of the new ways of building things has to do with additive manufacturing. You know, another idea in here was the early involvement of test and training. Early, early on, there’s some pretty, pretty awesome capabilities we have our organizations down at Eglin, where we’ve got a wing that has fighters and bombers and has access to working with the joint force. We have a lab down there, if R L, we’ve got electronic warfare, we got like a and we have the PEO weapons down there, and we’re able to try out a lot of those things with test and training. Great, great examples of innovation down there. Excellent idea, the idea of the partnering, you know, design, integrated, digital environment, that collaboration. We didn’t talk too much about the supply chain. Came up earlier, when we were we were preparing, and I wanted to get your thoughts about reducing the number of parts inside the designs. We also talked about the cash flow up front to buy lot of parts, the idea of the multi year procurement, the long lead. I just want to get a couple of thoughts from you about supply chain. So start with Mr. DeMauro.

Frank DeMauro:

Yeah, no great question general, and I alluded to it a little bit before, but as we, as we think about our investment in capacity that has to be across the entire ecosystem, as I said, if we, if we build a nice, big, all up, round facility, but I don’t have the parts to build the missiles there, that’s, that’s, that’s not a good, a good way to make sure we get those munitions to the war fighter. So as we think about the supply chain, we think a lot in terms of their own specific capacity. We think in terms of qualifying second and third and fourth sources for hardware, depending on the rate at which we’re talking about we talk about their own investment in new technologies so that they can make their systems more efficient, more producible, more reliable. And so the supply chain is really key to everything we’re doing. We’re part of the supply chain. We are both a prime and also a merchant supplier of parts. And so we we understand that in a very critical way, as I’m sure my colleagues do. And so the investment in helping the supply chain see where things are going in terms of quantities. Is what the demand signal is like when we think about making sure they have clear understanding of what it’s what the next five and seven years are going to look like in terms of demand. That’s really critical. I believe that the supply chain that we’re a part of wants to invest, wants to make sure they have the capacity it’s it’s in their interest, it’s in our interest, and so helping them through that process by making sure the demand signal is clear, but also investing in them as well, I think, is really critical when we think about the technology piece of reducing parts that all stems from investing and looking at different ways to get the same type of product out with fewer parts, maybe more highly reliable parts make it more producible, and not only producible from reliability standpoint, but from a standpoint of speed. And then there’s the fundamental aspects of our supply chain, which is raw materials. We’ve seen significant increase in lead times for basic raw materials that a lot of us share across the industry, and so investing in those things from an advanced procurement point of view, but also having a industry partnerships and how we invest in those common materials, I think, is going to be critical. So we should be thinking of them maybe front and center, because they’re at the tip of the spear.

Brig. Gen. Robert Lyons: 

It’s fantastic. General Sargent.

Maj. Gen. Steve Sergeant:

Just two points on that one long range investment. So programs that are multi year, and not just multi year, one year at a time, but if you can get to the point where it’s a five year program with options for one and two years after that, now that supply chain, because those are a lot of mom and pop operations in many, many cases, it’s not all the prime building their own things inside, for sure, even though they do some of that, but for the mom and pops to step up and do that and ensure that they’re not going to lose their business when that procurement falls off. Now they can make that investment with confidence. And the other thing for encouraging fewer parts, better ways of producing, et cetera, the meno protege program that the Air Force has, expanding that out might be a way to help encourage, incentivize. Because when I think back to accelerate change or lose, the one piece that might have been missing was the incentivization the incentive across the entire enterprise, for people to actually change. You need to do the incentive. And protege program helps that, because it reduces the investment by that by that company with an offset from the Air Force.

Brig. Gen. Robert Lyons: 

That’s excellent. We’ve got two minutes with one minute to spare for closing marks. Okay, you have to, let’s get in it. I’ll

Jon Norman:

I’ll go real quick. So I love what I’ve seen since we did this big merger with with Collins and Pratt, because now we can take those three companies together our supply chain demands, and we can negotiate better deals. We can, we can secure products that would otherwise go to commercial because we have a higher volume. I think that’s an opportunity for government, writ large, across all the weapons programs, do that big data analysis, look at those common parts and then negotiate with the power of the government for those parts to to secure those to allow all those small businesses to invest in that production capacity and then deliver that to to all the primes and to all the small businesses that are developing the weapons systems our war fighters need.

Jon Piatt:

Yeah, I want to go back to the origin of the question on the supply chain, using more modern design techniques using the IDE environment. We’ve talked about all the right things up here, but it’s actually changing our dependency on the supply chain by allowing the new techniques for design to reduce the number of parts that are in the systems. And by the way, we used to not like the word vertical integration of supply chain because we felt like those are single points of failure, redefining what vertical integration supply chain means, taking the design aspects to reduce the number of parts, and coupled with the additive manufacturing techniques, one weapon system that we’re building now is about 63% additive manufacturing. Typical cruise missile has 1000s of parts in it, going from 1000s and hundreds of parts. So it really redefines what vertical integration supply chain is. And the second part of that, and I’ll close with this, is really, it’s a commitment across industry and the government to what real open architecture standards are, not open architecture, from how industry defines it for each one of the systems that we build that says, oh, it’s open that has our proprietary data. Open Architecture standards is a commitment to the government reference architecture that allows us to moderately upgrade, manage, sustain and support that even if the original equipment manufacturer is no longer able to support it, and then it’ll. Allows us, at a time of crisis to look at how we can duplicate that production capability or capacity in order to meet the need.

Brig. Gen. Robert Lyons: 
Thank you very much. Want to thank the Air and Space Forces association for hosting. Want to thank all of you, both online and here for your attendance and participation. This is about ideas, and it was an exchange of ideas here, and I’m just asking for a round of applause for our panelists. And thank you very much.