Re: Silicon Valley techies suit up Army with sleeker gear

[Jim Rogers <jimmaureenrogers@worldnet.att.net>]

Ken Garlington wrote:

> 
> You may want to read the full article:
> 
> http://www.usatoday.com/life/cyber/tech/2002/02/07/tech-military.htm

I did. I find some of the conclusions of the article a bit shaky.
It is clear that the systems built by Raytheon met the contract
specifications and failed the needs of the soldiers. This appears
to be a failure of the Army Project Office in charge of the
Raytheon contract.

The soldiers using the equipment do not write the contracts and
requirements. They specify their needs to the Procject Office,
which then produces requirements documents and awards / manages
the contracts. It appears that the system broke down in the middle.
Raytheon performed according to its contract. To do otherwise would
have been illegal. The Silicon Valley teams were allowed to interact
directly with the end users of the products and produce a
prototype based upon those interactions. They were not burdened
with a previous set of requirements stated by the Project Office.

In classical Army development arrangements the Project Office becomes
the purchasing agent. It acts as an intermediary between the end
user and the contractor. This is supposed to provide improved
communication and contract control for the Army. In this case it
appears that the Project Office did not accurately communicate the
customer requirements to the contractor. The project office then
developed and managed a contract based upon its faulty requirements.

It will be interesting to see how well the COTS approach works in
severe environments. I remember one project using a COTS liquid
crystal display that completely froze up during a Bosnian Winter.
The Army did not test for that problem before deploying the
system. The solution was the addition of a heater system for the
liquid crystal display. This small addition had a major impact on
system electrical requirements, system start up time, and overall
weight.

It could be that the Project Office had designed requirements with
such problems in mind. The resulting system was very heavy and
consumed too much power. Anyone can build a system that works well
through California Summers and Winters. How well will the same
system work at 14000 foot (4000 meter) altitudes at -40 degrees?

Jim Rogers