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What you’ll hear in this episode:

• What the Air Force has been doing to adapt to the COVID-19 pandemic
• How DIU contributed to the tanker planning tool
• Why Steve Wert is so intent on making everyday tasks easier for America’s servicemen and women

One thing that the typical Department of Defense acquisition process ignores, Steve Wert says, is the cost of delay. 

“Our approach to software had been clearly defined, hundreds of requirements, make sure we have a plan from start to finish and do all those things,” he explains. “In the meantime, you could’ve implemented a software change that saved money or that provided warfighting capability very quickly. So, that cost of delay is something that the traditional approach does not acknowledge.”

Wert is the Program Executive Officer for the Air Force Life Cycle Management Center. He leads more than 3,500 Airmen, government civilians and support contractors in the acquisition of software and weapons systems. That’s where his work with the Defense Innovation Unit comes in. With its untraditional approach to defense acquisition and private/ public partnerships, the Unit and their teams are able to come in and build systems that make everyday, normally tedious work easier for the United States’ servicemen and women. One example of this is the tanker planning tool DIU developed. The tool has and will continue to save the Air Force hundreds of millions of dollars in fuel by automating the processes by which the coordinates aerial refueling tanker operations. 

Listen to the fourth installment of From Tanks to Teleportation to hear more from Wert! If you like what you hear, be sure to share this episode with a friend or colleague! And, if you haven’t already, check our previous episodes! 

 

From Tanks to Teleportation is a founding_media podcast created in partnership with the Department of Defense and the Defense Innovation Unit. 

 

Hosts: Dan Dillard, founding_media

Zach Walker, Defense Innovation Unit

Guest: Steve Wert, Air Force Life Cycle Management Center

 

Transcript:

this is a founding media podcast 

welcome back to defense innovation from tanks to teleportation I’m your host Dan Dillard in this series we explore the intersection of technology business and national security leaders of the defense innovation part of the US department of defense as always I’m joined by my co host Zach walked in today we have a guest with a particularly impressive resume Steve Wert Steve is a program executive officer for the Air Force life cycle management center where she leads more than thirty five hundred airman government civilians and support contractors in the acquisition of software and weapon systems and works closely with the DIU used to create new innovation for the Air Force let’s just jump right into the exciting conversation with Zach and Steve

Mr. Wert  first I just want to say it’s an honor to have you on our podcast today we really appreciate it and also thank you for about thirty years of service to our nation both as a uniformed Air Force officer right now is that for senior civilian it’s it’s very impressive to see your background and I would like to it’s possible talk a bit more about what it means to be program executive officer for digital it’s a huge deal in the United States airforce and if you could for the audience just explain a bit what’s the PO what does that mean what do they do your comments are too kind it’s a a portfolio of programs and there are probably fourteen or fifteen program executive officers in the Air Force and the lifecycle management of our systems is the responsibility of those PO’s they are all all the peers know each other we’ve all done time together in the past and the portfolios differ though so there’s a portfolio focused on for example mobility aircraft another focused on fighter bombers our portfolio in digital is really diverse it’s it’s geographically diverse islands sizeable teams in about ten different states and it’s content is diverse it it it spans from command control to air air traffic systems to whether we don’t control the weather but we have a lot of systems that measure and predict 

Steve when doing research for the show I was just looking for a long list of accomplishments one of the things that always piques my interest when interviewing the cast is just kind of taking this to the the motivation that I noticed you started your once a student in Austin the university of Texas even taking this from what it was I’m in the mindset of a student and they take you down the path that you are now yes so my my undergraduate degree was in engineering from the university of Florida and I I said I spent about six years in the laboratory which is very hands on work and then the airforce sponsored me for my master’s degree at UT Austin which I love to Austin’s a great city D. the degree itself was in the mechanical engineering department that really it was in operations research and industrial engineering and what that did for me was it gave me problem solving skills I last UT Austin with a master’s degrees feeling like I could model and simulate are optimized or figure out an answer with uncertainty balance to any problem and that that has served me incredibly well in dealing with problems in in our programs our portfolio well I’m as I’m wrapping my head around some of the other things I’ve read the significance and importance of the work that you do it with the I. you and also is always a PO digital I read that you Li like thirty five hundred airmen government civilians support contractors and your it is explained in the acquisition software weapons systems and sensitization and dissemination of agile software throughout the airforce for civilian like myself it really sounds like it’s come straight up Hollywood so it’s really instant 

Do you mind walking us through what’s your typical day looks like a typical day a lot of meetings that’s for sure and in this unique environment right now it’s it’s really been interesting to see how quickly we are able to adapt and still be productive so obviously the aircraft’s DePaolo work has to be in person work and to some degree test center work has to be a person work but what we do really lends itself to continue to operate virtually and so are were estimating our productivity is between ninety and a hundred percent even though we’re maxed telework and even then there are some examples like Kessel run where their productivity actually went up as a web backs telework because there are fewer distractions and less less commuting time so they’re actually some advantages in some areas especially where their software intensive and I think the whole software topic is is interesting it what let it’s what led to our portfolio being re renamed it it was battle management it’s now P. O. digital of course it’s it’s in part the airforce realization that over time everything is becoming suffer controlled everything 

you mentioned Kessel run and I hope we can talk a bit more about that in a few minutes because that’s really where this incineration unit was involved in transitioning a prototype to a to a program record yeah I like to talk a bit first about some of the other programs you were involved in because I think it’s important to get that perspective on really what you have to deal with and some of these massive programs so looking at your bio some of the programs you were involved in that sure it’s much more than this advanced medium range air to air missile AMRAAM program manager for the missile integration with the NATO your fighter the piece on it says sixteen and others you later directed the airborne warning and control system readers on the team you let the a cat one US NATO radar system improvement program your later the director for surveillance and control programs including the E. three E. four M. P. Shiel so many so many different platforms across the United States airforce many of them very old very just very typical as you would imagine a program to be like could you explain a bit more about what it was like working in those programs and some of the challenges you faced particularly when it comes to modernization and like you said with everything being run on software yes Sir here we get into our traditional program management approaches have been very structured very risk averse and tend to not take into account the cost of delay and for some some very complicated very hardware intensive programs that’s maybe still appropriate although we can argue about the level of oversight and bureaucracy but yet many of those programs were crazy quite traditional on Amorim you mentioned that was quite awhile ago but we spent three years getting a milestone C. decision a decision to actually go into production that’s on an air air weapon that is proved to be the most effective there to wet than ever so so yeah it is sort of a very structured gated process where the big deal is a milestone review typically at a very high level of of rank and decisions tend to be quite risk averse yeah I mean it is a common expression to say anybody can say no for but only one person can say yes it sounds like to have three years to get to a decision to them before there’s a lot of people that the statement along that along the way so if I think that’s a wonderful segue we can talk about more about how we work together with the defense innovation unit in your office we had two projects together one is custom rom as we very briefly alluded to earlier and the other one is more hardware focused discover game radar effort could you please tell the audience about more just hundred thousand foot level what are those programs what is so special about them and in terms of how we work together maybe not taking three years for decisions right what what was so special about the process that we used yes 

the big the big deal from D. I. U. is agile software development I had not been exposed to it and within the department we were still doing we’re still developing software as if we were designing a new airplane or a new complicated airplane and and so ms Costello who is the civilian deputy to this service acquisition authority general Bender now retired and myself we went out to delta dental and San Francisco and I saw that you had a software development or what’s sometimes called DevOps for the first time and the instantly god how wrong we were developing software in the airforce the end came back in and you know within my portfolio was pretty easy to to begin changing things and that started with their operations centers Kessel run us you know was launched in a very innovative way it was kind of a shock to many people that are teams were able to stand up this organic mostly organic suffer development capability in downtown Boston not on that not on an Air Force base and and move out so this is the single biggest thing that D. I. U. gave us is the the whole idea of agile software development the other program you mentioned cobra name cover dance interesting it’s a very old a very large early warning radar that is still quite capable of largely it’s a sustainment challenge to to keep it running and it needs to run twenty four seven with very little maintenance periods but the the it’s it’s still running today on a VAX sixty five hundred which may be older than Zach I’m not sure it was good with yes yeah that’s a problem so one of the things that we wanted to do is re has software that’s running on that very old dachshund and a spark we host at when I when I consider the traditional defense you know major crimes it led me to wonder whether they were the best people at best companies to involved in a project like re hosting very old software on a modern compute platform and that’s 

that’s why my team sought L. D. I. U. and now put other transaction authorities in place and that projects still ongoing in fact they recently awarded the production space well and that’s that’s where we work with organizations like Mister word so that it it lives long beyond just our initial work together that’s a huge deal I have no idea Kessel run again and that was more just the use of agile software would discuss run doing particular yes so Kim has a rather merged out of a large traditional program that we had been trying to execute for ten years we spent five years just trying to get to a milestone B. decision that is the decision to actually ensure development it took us five years to to get that decision and then five years later we still hadn’t delivered anything so when D. I. U. east D. R. U. M. Boston office was standing up we actually wanna DO you to be very successful we have a unique ecosystem in the Boston technology Corder here and D. I. U. is a way for us to better access to expand our access and we partner with is a number of amazing different organizations here in the Boston area whether it’s the northeastern Kostas research center the mass challenges here just just to name a couple because I don’t I don’t wanna go way down in the rabbit hole but but but we we looked at D. I. U. S. A. as they stood up an office here as being a partner that we wanted to work with and so when you ask us for project ideas we identified the the idea of a tanker planning tool it was actually an unfunded requirement in air combat command’s priority list it fell below their funding line and it looks like you know a possible quick win and it definitely was because he got a lot of attention can you speak a bit more about what that means for those that aren’t familiar when we say unfunded requirement I think there’s a perception that well the DOT we have seven hundred plus billion dollars we can just do whatever we want and you mentioned earlier D. A.’s effort allowed you to walk in a pivotal in Seattle soccer development I think people would also symbol why would you just be able to do that without us if you could just describe why it’s not as simple as it sounds or someone in your position one of only fourteen PO’s to be able to do these things quickly right the department may have seven hundred billion dollars but I don’t we have we have the program funding that we have and so we work closely with users and enter using batch comes to prioritize what their capability needs are and and an unfunded requirement is simply of a requirement that in those of reconcile priorities falls below the funny line and so that that was just a case there 

how DO you help us with Kessel run I have I believe colonel in Ricky OD who has who has recently retired he had a vision while he was D. R. E. is to bring agile DevOps to the Air Force and so he he really he was a key player in in the standing up of castle run so much so that we actually hired him away from the I. U. and made him the commander of the detachment now operates test run really a renaissance guy and another part of the innovation of castle run because in Riccione didn’t have acquisition experience he was not a program manager he was a cyber rations guy so you know a lot of innovation in one place there 

you also mention the tanker planning tool and it was one of the things you brought to the I. you as far as you know trying to get a quick win there what was what was the tank complaint too and what was that important yeah that so the the our air forces replete with these examples where we require our airmen to do repetitive tedious work that could be readily automated and in the case of tanker planning tool you can picture markers and white boards trying to optimize  refueling operations depended on what is going on in any given day that’s clearly an integer optimization problem that a computer can solve very quickly so that that’s just one example but there’s there are work flow operations you know all over the air force where an airman has to write something down on a sticky note walk across the room and input it into a different data database it’s just a in part many of our systems were developed you know before us so many things could be software controlled so there weren’t a box for example or are some of the things that we take for granted now on behalf of our airman we need to accelerate that kind of technology adoption because we ask Ehrman who at home have access to any different tools and are used to using them and we bring a man and required to do things very tedious that are very courteous and very manual 

right so to get the system but they were talking to each other and and it was required in that manual input and distinct financial made things much more efficient and I’m sure a lot of people really love that yeah in fact the tanker planning tool immediately started saving fuel N. required deploying fewer tankers that’s something that I think we also have a sometimes struggle to deal with is figuring out how much something is worth what an effort is worth in terms of time and savings and and take a plunge pool was really the first project for us where it was clear okay this is definitely giving us a huge return on investments we calculated the number of these numbers are changed about a hundred thirty million dollars a year just not flying tankers we don’t need I mean it’s just free money essentially I’m curious if if that those numbers have changed over time but it was very easy to to qualify when we were at we are transitioning the program yeah and and that’s and that’s part of what I saw immediately when I was out in San Francisco are the media recognition that our traditional way of doing things nor is the cost of the way net debt our approach to software had been you know clearly defined hundreds of requirements make sure we have a plan from start to finish and do all those things in the meantime you could’ve implemented a software change that save money that are that provided warfighting capability very quickly so that that cost of delay is something that the traditional approach does not acknowledge 

speaking of the traditional approach you mentioned and we can of course I don’t think I’ve had a conversation where I haven’t mentioned he hasn’t come up in some way he is the one thing that unifies the entire defense innovation ecosystem but he like myself we had no idea anything about acquisitions he’s a cyber officer resident officer building projects in in some ways look at it both ways one reading the sisters to taking a fresh approach to acquisition and I know that for some folks that doesn’t always feel right or sometimes rubs people the wrong way and no the tanker planes will on the whole effort it certainly wasn’t a foregone conclusion could you speak a bit about your first impressions of the project of the I. you us this radical approach to acquisition as well as any other actions that you saw across your your community and it changed yes Sir a I was absolutely not opposed to devalue in fact I was very excited that the Boston office was standing up as we as we were both executing the traditional program and tanker planning tool was was being rolled out my only objection was there were some claims made that clearly were over the top right so I know I remember a delete for D. I. you at the time said well what DO you could do the program that the Air Force is doing it could do it for ten one tenth of the cost and in probably less than a year on the one hand sure he knew a lot of things on the other hand he didn’t have a clue what the AOC weapon system actually is and how complicated it is and and what it would actually take and so despite the amazing things that castle run has been able to do one could argue a few years later you know we’re still not everywhere we want to be so so there were some pretty wild claims made associated with a tanker planning tool which which actually wasn’t necessary because it was patently obvious that there was a better approach to developing software great in a partnership it sounds like we came up with something that works so not met in the middle for something that provides good capability but it’s also feasible yes so I’ve I’ve I’ve been critical additional acquisition approaches for a long time but in in many ways we have to live with the system that we have I’ve been interested for a long time with this idea of we’ve got this traditional program book what if I had a small team over here and tell them to do everything you can and beat the traditional program that would be great except for I don’t have enough people to do that so I would say that the Air Force did have a choice it could have stuck with a traditional approach continued to try and make the failing contractor deliver something in an attempt to crush you know the small team that was working taker planning but there are some really strong you know key leaders like general Iranian the interior with we’re supporting that effort and and I think the airforce made a very good decision to to double down on that kind of tanker planning tool approach and what came out of that was was Kessel run which today is a pretty impressive thing to see RBC you’re going back to the speed at which we develop things is really important seem more more that 

it makes me think of this New World since coronaviruses come out in this kind of change the entire world and crippled in a lot of ways so what important work do you think needs to be done here by both commercial companies but public private partnerships that need to be thinking that on defense how do we defend against these kind of problems so what we’ve been doing since this onset if you will has been for the first time recognizing that what we’re doing is actually what we do every day is actually mission essential that hasn’t ever happened before so in the past with a government shutdown we were all furloughed so I was I was even in my current position I was furloughed a few years ago so this became a sudden realization that the acquisition what we do either a fax near term readiness are definitely affects long term readiness are it has a huge impact on the defense industrial base and so suddenly word trying to keep everything going in the midst of this endemic that were in and trying to do everything we can virtually so we saw some program impacts almost immediately and then reversed our mindset our job is not just to capture program impacts it’s indicate them and so we’ve accumulated over time now a set of ways to try and mitigate it delays in programs one of those years we’ve learned to do amazing things remotely right now this week there’s an ongoing operational test of mission planning software and it’s it’s being done completely virtually never been done before that requires a really close partnership with the the match com or supporting to be able to do that and it we’re we’re still installing windows ten patches in the long range radars at the Onalaska but we’re doing it remotely with reach back support so this is the state or on the site is actually installing the patch in accordance with a set of instructions that we send and someone’s on the phone you know walking up through that much like this podcast 

I’m surprised to hear it’s not windows three point one so that some progress yes Sir so that’s the the number one thing we’ll be doing is those kinds of virtual things number two is elevating up the level of mission essential elevating that so instead of just my program manager reaching across to trying get support they elevate that up and I might engage or my boss might engage or somebody else until it’s it’s recognized so we had an asset L. data a radar range at point Mugu there just shut down for a corona virus so we we push the level up to the elevator until someone out there recognize yeah what what you’re asking for his mission essential and we’ll go get it done so so that’s so that’s what we’ve been doing this environment I don’t know if their license in there for commercial companies I will say bright behind those two are simply a set of things that industry on its own has done in order to keep things moving like you know going to multiple chefs to still be able to operate with a social distancing so that’s what we’ve been doing but I think we’re all learning a lot in this experience 

do you think this opens up opportunities for groups like us and yeah you have to do more projects that bring and current commercial technology that generally is filled with remote operations and and and current operations in mind yes so right now there’s an expression in a new acronym being use within the Air Force it’s called return to full capacity R. T. F. C. my response to that right now as we are operating at full capacity and that’s that’s the difference in the kind of work that we do not everyone can do that but we are operating today at full capacity so it’s kind of a shock last week I was invited to speak at an event and Oklahoma City for twenty minutes it was a shock because my mind said is you know travel is a problem and why would I go all the way to Oklahoma City in order to speak for twenty minutes but I did it last year so yes it’s there’s a whole lot of lessons learned at all this one it’s not unusual for a senior industry vice president for example to fly in and have a thirty minute courtesy this it would need to discuss something and then fly home and that and we did that now we’re doing it with phone calls and I’m I’m thinking why would we go back to to doing it to him personally it’s much more efficient much friendlier on the environment for sure as we wrap up on him 

I want to first thank you so much for the time you spent with us but I do want to ask one question because we just want to highlight the importance of working with the community and private partnerships so what’s the one piece of advice you’d offer leadership in both of the do you want to explore working with private sector solutions and also media companies were willing to work with the DOT it’s all about it’s all about how reaching new partnerships because there are a lot of great communities out there D. I. U. is one I mentioned bass challenge as well and into I don’t know what the acronym stands for instead but but there are there are groups you can partner with as you actually are a very experienced at developing start ups and small businesses and what the Air Force is trying to do is get in at the ground floor so we want to create more companies that want to work with the department of defense not fewer and the trend we’ve been on for a long time you know is not positive with respect to how many a major defense interested partners went up within fact if we if we don’t act on this fewer and fewer companies will want to do work with the department of defense and that’s where did they deny you admission section and it’s where a lot of other organizations can help 

we couldn’t agree more so Mr work as an airforce officer I’m a bit biased I think our service is pretty good about working with commercial companies but not all services are and certainly not all of the air force’s you’ve really been a champion for working with commercial companies through organizations like the I. U. do you have any advice for your fellow PO’s or the rest of the deity on how to work with these companies what the benefits would be for their programs absolutely although I’m always hesitant to advise another PO there are very experienced part of it is the nature of my portfolio it’s it’s a lot a lot of software a lot of her legacy programs that could benefit from technology and that’s that’s the key recognition is if you look at agile DevOps we didn’t learn that from inside the department we didn’t learn it from our traditional defense prides we actually had to learn it from outside and he immediately have to wonder what else do we not know about and so when we do work with the I. you are mass challenger any of these outside groups we get exposed to what the commercial world still and they are ahead of this technology that’s a problem so that’s why we’re interested in working with different kinds of companies so we we have we have projects that benefit from both so we we have large defense crimes who are who have the domain knowledge you know working in command control or working again defense radars but mixing those with a set of us maybe smaller fairly recent start ups who had Nish capabilities like configuration management of a software tool pipeline that’s probably not something you want to major defense fraud given so that’s our big interest it’s it’s the realization number wind we’ve been on a small business push for quite a while but the realization that the commercial world is ahead of us and a lot of these technologies we need to catch up 

Mr word thank you so much for joining us today I know I learned quite a bit I’m sure audiences as well yes thank you for connecting the dots eight thank you Jack thanks Dan good conversation we appreciate you taking the time to once again thank you so much for joining us today insurance and credible incidents your work you are truly an expert it’s really cool to see the are you in action and green solutions for our Air Force if you enjoyed this episode please subscribe and share with friends we’ll be back soon with more about the impressive work the defense innovation unit is doing it’s innovation from tanks to teleportation is created in partnership between the US department of defense and founding media to learn more about the defense innovation unit please visit the links in the show notes thank you as always for listening