Rapid progress in RPDE

A new initiative designed to speed up the development and acquisition of emerging capabilities, the Rapid Prototyping, Development and Evaluation program has started operations and is now working on its first three tasks.
The Rapid Prototyping, Development and Evaluation Program, announced by the Defence Minister, Senator Robert Hill, in August 2004 commenced operating in December last year with the signing of contracts by Defence and the five initial industry participants - BAE Systems Australia, Saab Systems Australia, Tenix Defence, Raytheon Australia and ADI.

In February this year, Defence issued an Invitation to Participate (ITP) to other companies wising to be part of this new construct. Responses were due by 5 April and ADM understands that not a single Australian company with some sort of presence in the NCW marketplace missed the chance to explore membership of the RPDE - now universally pronounced RAPID, of course.

RPDE is focused on Network Centric Warfare (NCW) and was inspired by Defence's NCW roadmap. It is designed to rapidly address shortfalls in the Force-in-Being through integration of new capabilities, helping change existing processes and procedures, and evaluating the potential and the risks associated with emerging technologies and process change.

Crucially, RPDE recognises that no one company has all the answers, and rather than deal laboriously with separate companies on an individual basis the organisation seeks shared tools and insights and the synergies that emerge from cooperation.

The concept is to create a collaborative, non-competitive environment where Defence and industry can develop rapid capability enhancements for ADF customers, principally (in the early days, at least) by incremental enhancement of existing capabilities.

RPDE addresses all aspects of capability including doctrine, training, support and organisational aspects, as well as technology and systems. It sits within LTGEN David Hurley's Capability Development Group and Air Vice-Marshal Kerry Clarke, the Head of Capability Systems, is responsible for coordinating ADF sponsorship for RPDE tasks. Equally importantly, he's responsible for ensuring that the sponsors take those outcomes back into the organisation and implement the capability enhancements they are designed to deliver - without an end user to exploit the RPDE outcomes there's very little point in having such an organisation, nor justification for industry to remain involved, Clarke acknowledges.

At present RPDE is temporarily located at Fern Hill Park in Canberra but general manager Mike Kalms told ADM last month the organisation's 20 permanent staff will move soon to a new base at Canberra Airport's Brindabella Business Park.

Kalms said that RPDE is on trial - the business case for such an organisation is hard to prove (or disprove), however attractive the idea looks on paper. His focus is on proving the business case by delivering results from the early tasks the organisation has been given. RPDE is currently funded until December 2006 to the tune of some $20 million a year and it is the results it delivers which will determine whether or not it survives beyond this point

At present RPDE is working on three tasks, Clarke told ADM:
An enhanced Rapid Environment Assessment (REA) capability to support ADF task and combat groups going into new and unfamiliar littoral environments;
Developing information exchange mechanisms, including the on-board processing and rapid dissemination of AP-3C Orion sensor data to other assets in theatre, including land force assets, and;
Communications bandwidth management approaches to help deployed forces use available bandwidth more efficiently.

The REA task is due for completion by November this year. The deliverable is a set of recommendations and pan-capability change proposals that will enable ADF headquarters and planners to fuse rapidly both secure and open-source terrain, environmental and meteorological data into a coherent, useable
The task also includes a survey of similar projects in NATO, the US and the UK to identify lessons and approaches which can save the Australian team time, money and the pain of learning some things the hard way.

The Orion ISR task is due for completion at around the same time and draws heavily on the experience of the RAAF's AP-3C Orion detachment in the Gulf, where the aircraft spend much of their time supporting coalition land forces. The bandwidth efficiency task is due for completion in early 2006.

The important point, emphasises Clarke, is that RPDE isn't just a study house - it doesn't take on a task unless there's a sponsor committed to implementing the outcome in ADF service.

However, it's no surprise that these first tasks focus more on processes than products. One of the key challenges for RPDE is to generate trust between all the participants, and especially the industry players; undertaking a product-based task so early in its life had the potential to stimulate competitive behaviours between companies which could undermine the cooperation and trust between the industry players that have started to emerge.

Clarke candidly admits that the industry players were sus
Once the players have learned these good habits, and demonstrated the mutual as well as individual benefits of applying them, an expanded set of tasks is expected to emerge gradually. The ITP process, incidentally, is designed to broaden the RPDE membership to deliver the best possible outcome across a very diverse range of user requirements and expected tasks.

The model for executing RPDE development tasks is collegiate. There is no "lead contractor" as such, says Kalms. He appoints the task manager, who may be from any of the members; other task staff are seconded by the members for the duration of the task, they are paid by RPDE and then return to their employers, hopefully enriched by the experience, once the task is completed. The 20-strong RPDE permanent staff provide the essential organisational "ballast" which supports the tasks and maintains consistency of approach.

Tasks are presented to the RPDE by ADF sponsors and must pass a series of maturity "gates" before being considered suitable for RPDE - that is, the task must be able to address specific questions and capability shortfalls, and be of genuine importance. The task itself won't be funded and approved, however, until an agreed scope and task plan have been presented at Maturity Gate two.

At this point the RPDE team seeks nominations from its members for people and facilities best suited to the work.

In all a RPDE task has six maturity gates, three of them external - Gate 1 is the initial task development. Gate 2 sees funding approval once the scope and task plan are agreed; Gate 3 is the task completion. Internal gates cover task mobilisation and, crucially, identification of the lessons from the task, an implementation plan and then dissemination of the task outcome to the sponsors and end users after the event.

An early concern for the RPDE's industry members was Intellectual Property (IP) - all of the potential members were initially very protective of their own IP and reluctant to share it in such an open, cooperative environment. As AVM Clarke notes, these behaviours changed once they recognised the potential benefits of the RPDE concept and there is now a genuine sense of trust between the industry members, he told ADM.

The companies choose how much of their own background IP they share with the other task group members. They all share the foreground IP developed under the task and can exploit it however they wish, subject to the usual constraints on defence exports and Defence IP ownership arrangements.

The RPDE concept draws on obvious lessons (some of them learned the hard way) from the UK's NITEworks concept, Singapore's Defence Experimentation Organisation and bodies such as DARPA in the USA. But it is a construct designed for Australia's unique circumstances - the size of its defence force and industry, and its unique geographic and strategic environment.

According to AVM Clarke the commercial model for RPDE is right for Australia, as well. RPDE and the existing (and recently expanded) Capability and Technology Demonstrator (CTD) program are complementary. Clarke and Kalms agree that some CTDs could provide useful raw material for RPDE tasks and could in turn help strengthen the outcomes of the CTD program.

The bottom line is simple - strengthening industry and defence by harnessing them to deliver enhanced capability quicker and smarter. It's another key outcome from the Kinnaird Review and its stakeholders intend it to be part of a quiet revolution in defence capability development and acquisition.

For further information on RPDE check out its web site: www.rpde.org.au

By Gregor Ferguson, Adelaide