Publications

Three AIRC universities contributed to this research task that developed a portfolio management tool for the DoD’s use of Integrated Acquisition Portfolio Review processes, strengthened support for IAPRs by organizing human and technical data, and explored integrating various levels of autonomy into Systems of Systems using a search and rescue (SAR) mission use case.

COMPLETED
July 2024

AUTHORS: Dr. Feng Liu¹, Dr. Xinyue Ye²
STEVENS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY ¹, TEXAS A&M UNIVERSITY ²

The research behind this report aims to develop a comprehensive decision-making framework that harnesses collective intelligence to effectively determine the optimal integration and collaboration mechanism for responsible agencies within the Department of Defense when tackling complex tasks that entail cross-domain and cross-organizational operations.

COMPLETED
July 2024

AUTHORS: Dr. Daniel Selva¹, Dr. Theodora Chaspari¹, Dr. Alejandro Salado²
TEXAS A&M UNIVERSITY ¹, UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA ²

AIRC researchers enhanced their cognitive assistant tool to support the training of cost estimators in the DoD. They added new instructional materials and validated the tool’s effectiveness by testing student subjects. Results showed that students who used the cognitive assistant scored six points higher than students without access to the assistant, suggesting this technology is promising to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of workforce training.

COMPLETED
July 2024

AUTHORS: Dr. Jitesh Panchal¹, Dr. Waterloo Tsutsui¹, Dr. Dr. Mikhail Atallah¹, Dr. Nathan Hartman¹, Dr. Daniel A. DeLaurentis¹, Dr. Richard Malak², Dr. Jonathan Weaver-Rosen²
PURDUE UNIVERSITY ¹, TEXAS A&M UNIVERSITY ²

In this report, AIRC researchers from Purdue and Texas A&M examined various aspects of the DoD’s digital transformation in defense acquisition and operational readiness, with recommendations to optimize efficiency, support decentralized manufacturing, enhance readiness, and reduce lifecycle costs.

COMPLETED
July 2024

AUTHORS: Dr. Daniel A. DeLaurentis, Dr. Stephan Biller, Dr. Jitesh H. Panchal, Ms. Qian (Alex) Shi, Ms. Dalia Bekdache, Mr. Prajwal Balasubramani, Dr. Waterloo Tsutsui
PURDUE UNIVERSITY

An AIRC research team from Purdue developed a decision framework tailored to navigate intellectual property complexities in additive manufacturing applications for defense acquisition. Their report also addresses complexities such as alignment with existing defense acquisition rules, portfolio-level decision-making, and quantifying uncertainty and risk using IP valuation based on real options theory, with suggested avenues for future research and refinement to enhance IP strategies for AM in defense acquisitions.

COMPLETED
April 2023

AUTHORS:  Mr. David Drabkin¹, Mr. Christopher Yukins, Esq.²
STEVENS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY ¹, THE GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY LAW SCHOOL ²

This webinar summary follows a pair of online discussions AIRC organized with Defense Acquisition University to examine the research by AIRC Fellows David Drabkin and Christopher Yukins in their report, Congressionally Mandated Study on Contractor Debarments for Violations of U.S. Labor Laws.

COMPLETED
September 2023

AUTHORS:  Dr. Laura Freeman, Mr. Geoff Kerr
VIRGINIA TECH

This report, a companion to the report Test and Evaluation Methods for Middle-Tier Acquisition, focuses on Pillar 4 of the Director, Operational Test and Evaluation (DOT&E) Implementation Plan: Pioneer T&E of Weapon Systems Built to Change Over Time. The research objective was to explore current industry practice in applying digital engineering methods to test and evaluation of DoD acquired systems and provide recommendations on how to promote further adoption in the T&E community.

COMPLETED
June 2023

AUTHORS:  Dr. Stoney Trent², Dr. Hoong Yan See Tao²
VIRGINIA TECH ¹, STEVENS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY ²

This final technical report summarizes Grand Prix 1 of the Defense Data Grand Prix (DDGP), an AIRC competition in which faculty-led teams collaborate with government stakeholders to solve real-world problems. In this first iteration of the DDGP, 15 teams from seven universities competed across three semester-long heats. The Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) was the primary operational sponsor. Grand Prix I concluded in January 2023, and Grand Prix II commenced in January 2024.

COMPLETED
September 2023

AUTHORS:  Dr. Michael McGrath¹ Dr. Donald Schlomer¹ Dr. Mo Mansouri¹
STEVENS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY ¹

AIRC researchers have been exploring ways to improve upon the Joint Capabilities Integration and Development System (JCIDS) is the Department of Defense’s (DoD) formal requirements approval process.

COMPLETED
September 2023

AUTHORS:  Dr. Laura Freeman¹, Mr. Geoff Kerr¹
VIRGINIA TECH ¹

The DoD 2022 National Defense Strategy has realized the need for advanced technology and more rapid development and fielding of that technology to sustain dominance against peer/near-peer threats. In support of these objectives, the Director, Operational Test and Evaluation engaged AIRC in a multi-year contract to advance test and evaluation methods within the DoD. The AIRC team focused research efforts over the past year in support of the DOT&E Implementation Plan, addressing numerous tasks that included providing policy reviews and recommendations, offering workforce planning concepts, developing exemplar IDSK, and delivering technical support to T&E meetings, workshops, and conferences.

COMPLETED
December 2023

AUTHORS:  Dr. Jose Ramirez-Marquez¹
STEVENS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY ¹

The following report is a response to the congressional mandate in Section (Sec.) 834(a)(1) of the 2023 National Defense Authorization Act to “make recommendations on one or more curricula for members of the acquisition workforce on financing and operations of [startup] businesses.” The proposed curriculum, Financing and Operations of Startup and Negotiating and Establishing Intellectual Property and Data Rights, is intended to serve as a comprehensive guide for AIRC to formulate recommendations and enhance the existing educational offerings for the defense acquisition workforce, contributing to the overarching goal of fostering innovation within the government procurement landscape.

COMPLETED
October 2023

AUTHORS:  Ms. Kara Pepe¹
STEVENS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY ¹

AIRC collaborated with the Defense Acquisition University to host quarterly research forums (QRFs) featuring presentations, discussions, and Q&A sessions on research and training opportunities. AIRC experts presented relevant research and received feedback from faculty and practitioners in the field, while also providing DAU with insightful views on its curricula initiatives and challenges in support of acquisition missions of the Department of Defense (DoD).

COMPLETED
September 2023

AUTHORS:  Mr. John D. Driessnack¹, Mr. John Johnson¹
UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND ¹

According to researchers from the University of Maryland, the Department of Defense needs more efficient data-driven approaches to improve analytic insights on performance and risk at program and portfolio levels. This report shows their efforts to expand the use of portfolio-level data, analysis, and visualization of the data across Program Executive Offices (PEOs), Capabilities, and Missions to inform Integrated Acquisitions Portfolio Review (IAPR) and other portfolio decisions.

COMPLETED
September 2023

AUTHORS:  Dr. Jitesh Panchal¹, Dr. Waterloo Tsutsui¹, Dr. Dr. Mikhail Atallah¹ Dr. Nathan Hartman¹ Dr. Daniel DeLaurentis¹ Dr. Richard Malak²
PURDUE UNIVERSITY ¹, TEXAS A&M UNIVERSITY ²

AIRC researchers from Purdue and Texas A&M completed this report that presents valuable insights drawn from in-depth conversations with Department of Defense stakeholders, focusing on critical aspects of digital modeling, data utilization, and data-driven decision-making for ground vehicles. The report addresses challenges and opportunities in these domains and offers strategic considerations for optimizing the DoD’s operational advantages.

COMPLETED
September 2023

AUTHORS: Dr. Daniel Selva¹, Dr. Theodora Chaspari¹, Dr. Alejandro Salado²
TEXAS A&M UNIVERSITY ¹, UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA ²

AIRC researchers from Purdue and Texas A&M completed this report that presents valuable insights drawn from in-depth conversations with Department of Defense stakeholders, focusing on critical aspects of digital modeling, data utilization, and data-driven decision-making for ground vehicles. The report addresses challenges and opportunities in these domains and offers strategic considerations for optimizing the DoD’s operational advantages.

COMPLETED
October 2023

AUTHORS:  Dr. Daniel J. Finkenstadt¹, Dr. Robert Handfield²
NAVAL POSTGRADUATE SCHOOL ¹, NORTH CAROLINA STATE UNIVERSITY ²

The research objective of this project was to improve acquisition workforce training, especially on new acquisition concepts and approaches by investigating if/how gamified training approaches could improve training. AIRC researchers from the Naval Postgraduate School and North Carolina State University produced a set of negotiation scenarios that were incorporated into an interactive player platform that allowed teams to take on various roles within a negotiation team on either the government or industry side. Players competed against each other and tried to reach the optimal solution for their team given their tasks, constraints, and goals.

COMPLETED
July 2023

AUTHORS:  Mr. Tom McDermott¹, Mr. Geoff Kerr²
STEVENS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY ¹, VIRGINIA TECH ²

Although the Department of Defense (DoD) Digital Engineering (DE) Strategy is guiding transformation across the DoD, this report finds that successful DE implementation in acquisition and sustainment must involve all acquisition functions—not just technical ones. In other words, acquisition with DE support, a.k.a. DE-enabled acquisition, cannot succeed as an engineering initiative pushed by engineers. It must be pulled into acquisition and sustainment by acquisition and sustainment functionals and fully integrated across all of their activities, including those that are not seen as technical.

COMPLETED
March 2023

AUTHORS: Dr. Maegen Nix, Ms. Christina Houfek
VIRGINIA TECH APPLIED RESEARCH CORPORATION

In response to Congressional tasking, AIRC partnered with the Defense Acquisition University to study the status of innovation and emerging technology adoption training programs available to DoD employees. AIRC researchers from the Virginia Tech Applied Research Corporation (VT-ARC) prepared a comprehensive review of the topic through literature reviews, interviews, and surveys. Drawing from the broader study, this report presents the status of DoD, academia, and industry innovation and emerging technology adoption training programs while specifically addressing enumerated items requested by Congress.

COMPLETED
September 2022

AUTHORS:  Mr. David Drabkin¹, Mr. Christopher Yukins, Esq.²
STEVENS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY ¹, THE GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY LAW SCHOOL ²

The conference report accompanying the National Defense Authorization Act for 2021 raised concerns regarding contractor violations of U.S. labor laws and whether statutory debarments should be introduced. The Defense Pricing and Contracting directorate of the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment asked AIRC to study the issue of labor law compliance among federal contractors and the use of statutory and discretionary debarment as tools to protect the government’s interests.

COMPLETED
October 2022

AUTHORS:  Mr. Christopher Yukins, Esq.¹, Mr. David Drabkin²
THE GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY LAW SCHOOL ¹, STEVENS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY ²

This report presents an analysis of information on bid protests stemming from Department of Defense (DoD) procurement activities. It is based in part on interviews and written survey responses with senior DoD program and procurement personnel, senior DoD procurement attorneys, representatives of industry, and members of the procurement bar. Its recommendations seek to improve the expediency, timeliness, transparency, and consistency of bid protests at the DoD.

COMPLETED
October 2022

AUTHORS:  Dr. Gregg Vesonder, Dr. Nicole Hutchison
STEVENS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY

Agile development along with DevSecOps can accelerate acquisition and improve relevance. While industry has successfully applied Agile and DevSecOps to software, hardware, and inter-reliant hardware/software systems, the DoD has lacked applying Agile and DevSecOps beyond software development. This report devises ways for the DoD to leverage the potential of Agile and DevSecOps for both hardware and software, including to integrate Agile and DevSecOps initiatives with digital transformation; pursue agility in contracting, requirements, and funding; and address cultural and risk barriers through leadership and incentives.

COMPLETED
December 2022

AUTHORS:  Dr. Hanumanthrao Kannan¹, Dr. William Rouse², Dr. Nirav Merchant³, Dr. Alejandro Salado³, Dr. Young-Jun Son⁴, Dr. Zoe Szajnfarber⁵
THE UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA IN HUNTSVILLE ¹, GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY ², THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA ³, PURDUE UNIVERSITY ⁴, THE GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY ⁵

This report presents the initial results of an AIRC Policy Test Laboratory (PTL) study and was performed by the research team over a period of two months. The goal of this project was to establish an initial reference architecture to support the development of the PTL, which is conceived as a service where a domain model developed in a project can be used and/or integrated with another model of a different domain developed in a different project.

COMPLETED
November 2022

AUTHOR: Dr. Roshi Rose Nilchiani
STEVENS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY

This report provides an overview on the current state of Joint-All Domain Command and Control (JADC2) and identifies opportunities for academic research in various domains (engineering, sciences, and social sciences) that can contribute to a state-of-the-art JADC2 system. This set of opportunities emphasizes the need for research and development and identifying gaps in knowledge, technologies, procedures, and capabilities that can empower JADC2 as a resilient, agile, adaptive, and strong shared command and control platform.

COMPLETED
October 2022

AUTHORS: Dr. Yeganeh M. Hayeri, Dr. Ian Taylor
STEVENS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY

This study aims to develop a blockchain data structure and a prototype to track budgeting as funds flow between DoD elements. The objective is to improve insights into transactions to enable acquisition funding flexibility and to better spend tracking information for DoD planning, management, and macro balancing. A prototype for organizing a blockchain data structure is proposed with the aid of graph analysis concepts. Upon developing a preliminary roadmap, and a graph network demonstrating DoD fund transfers, seven novel use cases have been proposed to show the applicability of this solution. Use cases cover several issues related to budget management, data manipulation, and security optimization, as well as issues related to cost and cost-effectiveness. For each use case, the researchers identified which problem has been targeted, how the proposed design can be applied, and how the suggested solution design can be beneficial.

COMPLETED
October 2022

AUTHOR: Dr. Philip S. Antón
STEVENS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY

The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) seeks sufficient funds from the U.S. Congress to meet critical national security missions. However, predicting, budgeting, authorizing, and appropriating the type and amount of needed funding can be challenging, especially when threats and technologies are changing faster than Planning, Programming, Budgeting, and Execution (PPBE) process timelines, which run over two years given that the DoD starts planning 19 months before the programming and budgeting stage begins. Threats and needs can even change after budgets are authorized and appropriated by Congress and reprogramming of those funds are limited. This paper hypothesizes different approaches related to budgeting and appropriating to improve defense acquisition given inherent DoD and Congressional equities.

COMPLETED
October 2022

AUTHORS: Dr. Daniel A. DeLaurentis, Dr. Jitesh H. Panchal
PURDUE UNIVERSITY

The overall objective of this research was to develop tools and knowledge to support the development of an additive manufacturing supply chain sustainment strategy and a digital engineering strategy. As we initiated the research effort at the beginning, we asked ourselves: Can the whole supply chain and sustainment strategy change given the additive manufacturing opportunities instead of traditional manufacturing? In what timeframe? What are the limits (e.g., materials science; systems engineering; cost; reliability; infrastructure)? To effectively perform mission engineering and ensure readiness for additive manufacturing, we set up a digital environment ready for sustainment and have the capabilities we need when we need them.

COMPLETED
October 2022

AUTHORS: Dr. Daniel A. DeLaurentis, Dr. Jitesh H. Panchal
PURDUE UNIVERSITY

AIRC research adapted a previously developed system-of-systems analytic workbench (SoS-AWB) of analytic tools to create a decision-support prototype effective for informing decisions in Integrated Acquisition Portfolio Reviews (IAPRs). Mission engineering analysis and portfolio optimization of an anti-surface warfare (ASuW) mission thread using personnel and munitions in the surface, aviation, and space domains was demonstrated via the prototype software. These advanced prototypes provide a broader range of insights (e.g., resource tradeoffs, cost-sensitivity analysis, and the most robust ASuW systems to be acquired in specific portfolios) for stakeholder decision making.

COMPLETED
September 2022

AUTHORS: Dr. Mo Mansouri, Dr. Michael McGrath, Dr. Donald Schlomer, Dr. Dinesh Verma, and Dr. Philip S. Antón
STEVENS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY

The Joint Capabilities Integration and Development System (JCIDS) in the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) has come under increasing scrutiny over the past decade, with a particular focus on its latencies. Since a validated requirement is needed before an acquisition program can begin, delays in the JCIDS process were perceived by Congress as adding months or even years to the acquisition cycle. In support of the DoD’s response to Congressional concerns, the Acquisition Innovation Research Center (AIRC) was asked to assess how it can improve the efficiency of developing and approving capability requirements and to develop a model to show the effects of proposed alternatives.

COMPLETED
July 2022

AUTHORS: Dr. Melissa Flagg, Ms. Molly Nadolski, Mr. Jose Sanchez, Mr. Tom McDermott, and Dr. Philip S. Antón
STEVENS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY

We identified the following recommendations and next steps that could begin moving the DoD more towards empowering, creating, identifying, assessing, and adopting operationally significant innovation (rather than attractive innovation that cannot be justified and pursued given limited resources).

COMPLETED
October 2021

AUTHORS: Dr. Claudia Stewart, Karrie Wessing, JD, Mr. Michael Ryan, Richard Beutel, JD, and Ms. Sonia Kaestner
GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY

This study develops lean and appropriately customizable Intellectual Property (IP) management modalities that can be fully integrated into acquisition and product support strategies; acquire only the necessary deliverables and license rights at the appropriate times to secure DoD’s interests throughout the product life cycle.

COMPLETED
October 2021

AUTHORS: Dr. Laura Freeman and Dr. Brian Mayer
VIRGINIA TECH

Tasked to develop a data and electronic information repository for models, samples, templates, and exemplars of Intellectual Property (IP), through the use of the “FAIR” principles (Findability, Accessibility, Interoperability, and Reusability), the team researched government data using a two-tiered approach that explored the requested data fields in the AIRC Performance Work Statement (PWS) and publicly available metadata to create a longitudinal topology of DoD contracting activity.