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| Colin Phan is director of business development for Northrop Grumman, which was awarded a $24 million contract to develop a system to foil roadside bombs. | Michael S. Domine |
Buying military hardware can be a long-term process.
An aircraft carrier takes years to build. A lot of thought and time goes into designing a fighter aircraft that can stand up to threats for decades.
The deliberate, studied approach doesn’t work well for everything, however.
Consider the soldier, sailor, airman or Marine who’s in Afghanistan, “and has an emerging problem they need to solve in the very near term,” says Dan Leaf. In that case, solutions need to be quick, and not necessarily perfect.
Leaf, a retired Air Force general who is now a vice president with Northrop Grumman Corp.’s Information Systems business unit, calls it “a new acquisition paradigm.”
He was in San Diego late last month to address a conference on irregular warfare. The Pentagon defines irregular warfare as “a violent struggle among state and non-state actors” for influence over a population.
Such “non-state actors” can adapt to circumstances very quickly. They wield influence in places such as Iraq and Afghanistan, or even places that suffer natural disasters. Natural disasters can give extremist groups an opportunity, Leaf says, adding that the delivery of humanitarian aid can counter such a push.
Northrop Grumman engineers are adapting two of the company’s technologies to fill short-term needs and counter an adaptable enemy.
Foiling IEDs
In early October, the Navy awarded Northrop a $24 million contract to develop a system to foil roadside bombs, known as improvised explosive devices, or IEDs. Northrop will do the bulk of the work in San Diego. The contract runs through March.
The electronics — known as JCREW version 3.3 — are basically signal jammers for the radios that set off IEDs. Such jammers, however, need to permit friendly communication and other networking capabilities.
Colin Phan is director of business development for Northrop Grumman. It’s his job to talk to military leaders about their needs.
The pace of the work is fast, Phan says, noting his project doesn’t fit nicely into the two- to four-year acquisition cycle.
