A cinco a\u00f1os de su fundaci\u00f3n como parte del entonces naciente Comando de Futuros del Ej\u00e9rcito, y tres a\u00f1os desde que obtuvo su propio presupuesto, el Laboratorio de Aplicaciones del Ej\u00e9rcito emiti\u00f3 el lunes su primer informe de progreso formal. Se puede ver que ha trabajado con \u00e9xito con peque\u00f1as empresas, muchas de ellas fuera de la base industrial y de defensa tradicional, para hacer llegar a los soldados tecnolog\u00edas innovadoras para que puedan realizar pruebas pr\u00e1cticas, desde una nueva aplicaci\u00f3n de seguimiento de la salud de los soldados, realidad aumentada, tutoriales de mantenimiento, y hasta un brazo rob\u00f3tico para ayudar a manejar proyectiles de artiller\u00eda de 100 libras .<\/p>\n
WASHINGTON \u2014 Five years since its founding as part of then-nascent Army Futures Command, and three years since it got its own budget, the\u00a0Army Applications Laboratory\u00a0<\/a>on Monday issued its first formal progress report [PDF<\/a>].<\/p>\n The\u00a0good news<\/a>: AAL has successfully worked with small companies, many outside the traditional defense-industrial base, to get innovative technologies to soldiers for hands-on testing, from a new health-tracking app for soldiers [PDF<\/a>], to\u00a0augmented-reality maintenance tutorials<\/a>, to a\u00a0robotic arm<\/a>\u00a0to help\u00a0handle 100-lb artillery shells<\/a>.<\/p>\n The bad news: More than half of finished projects fizzled in the prototype phase for lack of long-term funding. That includes the robot arm \u2014 which worked great, cutting loading time by more than half and reducing the risk of injuries to human loaders \u2014 \u201cdue to a funding tradeoff caused by changing priorities.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cProgram Objective Memorandum (POM) funds may not be available when the technology is ready to transition,\u201d the report acknowledged. \u201cTechnologies can end up in the\u00a0valley of death<\/a>\u00a0due to factors external to the project, even if the project meets all milestones and the technology solves the military problem.\u201d<\/p>\n AAL was never intended to reequip the entire Army, just to bring together serving soldiers and innovative civilians \u2014 outside the sclerotic federal procurement process \u2014 to jumpstart progress on new tech. All told, it\u2019s build a network of\u00a0over 5,000 companies<\/a>\u00a0and awarded contracts to 158 (across 31 states), of which 83 percent are small firms with under 100 employees. Many had only a handful of prior Pentagon contracts, and 16 percent had never even done business with DoD before.<\/p>\n Besides getting private industry engaged, AAL also got support from established Army institutions and even other DoD organizations like the\u00a0Naval Health Research Center<\/a>. In fact, of the $183 million awarded on AAL contracts, only $105 million (57 percent) came from AAL\u2019s own budget. The other $78 million (43 percent) came from interested partners across the Defense Department and even in the private sector.<\/p>\n But the big test is getting across that \u201cvalley of death,\u201d from prototypes and demonstrations to mass production and operational deployment. Of the AAL\u2019s 48 projects to date, almost two-thirds (28) are still in \u201cactive\u201d and in progress, so it\u2019s too early to pass judgment. But of the 20 deemed \u201ccomplete,\u201d with $60 million in funding, nine have \u201ctransitioned\u201d to sustained programs, with $44 million in follow-on contracts to date.<\/p>\n Is that 45 percent transition rate a passing grade? Arguably, yes. For Silicon Valley venture capital, if nearly half the companies you invest in survive, that\u2019s actually pretty good \u2014 although of course the ROI of a few \u201cunicorns\u201d more than makes up for losses elsewhere. For Pentagon weapons programs, that\u2019s not bad either, especially considering the US Army\u2019s long-running\u00a0track record<\/a>\u00a0of cancelled programs, from\u00a0FCS<\/a>\u00a0in 2009 to\u00a0FARA<\/a>\u00a0just this February.<\/p>\n AAL has some interesting ideas on how to do better, particularly by seeking multiple funding sources, governed by different legal strictures, so some money is always available even if other cash flows dry up. \u201cBy combining SBIR [Small Business Innovation Research<\/a>\u00a0grants], flexible RDT&E [Research Development Test and Experiment] (for which the precise project doesn\u2019t need to be defined until the year of execution), and private investment, AAL can mitigate or respond to this uncertainty, helping to bridge the valley of death,\u201d the report argued. \u201cFor example, flexible RDT&E can be deployed to transition a SBIR project for which POM funding was delayed a year due to challenges elsewhere.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI was admittedly apprehensive about what our metrics would reveal,\u201d AAL director\u00a0Casey Perley<\/a>\u00a0wrote in her foreword to the report. \u00a0\u201cNevertheless, as a scientist I was fully prepared to disclose the numbers regardless of what they reveal under the belief that the utility of experiments also comes from the discovery of what doesn\u2019t work. And AAL certainly has done that.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n