The USAF is also very active in bottom up innovation.
Another program is Hacking 4 Defense founded by Steve Blank, Pete Newell, and Joe Felter(leave of absence now performing role of US Assistant Undersecretary of Defence for South & Southeast Asia).
Pete Newell(retired Army Colonel) stood up the Rapid Equipping Force a numbe of years ago to rapidly accelerate the development and deployment of tools to mitigate IED related casualties.
Hacking 4 Defense(H4D) is running across a growing number of University campus to solve complex Defense problems using the Lean Start Up methodology using a modified lean canvas called the Mission Model Canvas.
I am working to expand the use of H4D/MMC down here in Australasia.
Happy to share more if anyone is interested.
It’s great to see Marines given the latitude to experiment.
It’s also great to see the often inaccurate stereotypes of Marines being rigidly disciplined and inflexible in thinking give way to the reality that Marines have very often conducted comprehensive tactical experimentation and innovation.
Except that bottom-up development doesnt always work in the context of complicated systems. OK, the button works but does it work in all conditions the aircraft is designed for? Maybe a button here or there isnt much, but there are potentially hundreds of such instances on an aircraft. Small defects add up. Eventually something gives. It may sound cool to reduce costs and scream independance, marines like such things, but aircraft remain safe due to a religious dedication to parts managment. Start chipping away at that and you are asking for trouble.
What in particular would you say is driving the USMC to this approach to innovation, compared to the other branches? Are they simply more exposed to unconventional warfare? Is it something about the type of person selected to be a Marine vs another branch? Something unique to their command staff? Etc.
All things equal, I (US Citizen) prefer that our military be effective and efficient. It troubles me though that there is virtually no public discussion on the unprecedented geographic scope , and time length, of today’s employments. This whole thread is interesting, and I think it is worth considering: to what end is all this innovation being applied?
I have come to the conclusion that the professionalization of the services, coupled with the parasitic business model of the “defense industry,” has turned the US armed forces into a standing mercenary force.
Ultimately, the blame for this lies with the corrupt electoral system in the US, and the unwillingness of our political leadership to exert a modicum of common sense, and reduce the scale of US military involvements.
We can’t rely on institutions that many entities rely on for their livelihood/existence to put themselves out of business.
It would be nice to see the military engage in disruptive innovation that would discourage open ended military conflict. (And the endless meddling in other countries ghastly civil wars.)
An army officer once gave me an amazing rundown of the ways deployed units have to recreate so many layers of infrastructure we take for granted. Military units really have to carry a whole version of their civilization with them, and how long they can maintain it determines their effectiveness (which is why most of military history is about logistics improvements creating newly dominant forces).
The challenges have a lot in common with space travel - not surprising that 3D printing has spurred so much imagination on both sides.
Side note: there's a quote in the article where Gen. Walters is envying what young engineers can do with this stuff. That's one of my favorite signals for tech that's not hype -- when it makes successful pros wish they were born a little later.
There was fascinating BBC documentary covering the Napoleonic wars and how the British had organic logistics where as the French had to split up to forage.
And to this day British vehicles have a variant of a Crimean war piece of kit to heat water / food - which is/was an object of envy of US forces
The only hitch? The parts weren’t approved for installation on an aircraft. “I said, put the button on,” Neller told the National Defense Industrial Association last week. “Print a bag of them and hang them there.”
This is a great story about disruption. The Marines seem to be on top of trying to continue thinking outside the box. That turns out to be very difficult to do in any large, old organization. I heard an interview with the Commandant last week. They asked him what kind of tech he wanted most.
"Better batteries"
Bingo. Better batteries would change everything, not just the Marine Corps. There are few technologies like batteries. Cost-to-orbit tech is one of them. If we change those technologies, we change the entire rest of the economy. I believe the service used to call things like that "force multipliers". It's neat to see 3D printing _perhaps_ becoming a force multiplier in many areas.
Putting on my cynic hat, expect to see a lot of pushback form the establishment where this technology disrupts the most. Those folks with button standards aren't going to go down peacefully.
Semi-related. Navy F/A-18 pilots were issued Garmin watches which have a built-in barometer/altimeter because the cabin altimeter gauge of their aircraft was difficult to read due to its size and location, and "its audible warnings are ineffective through the flight envelope." The watches, once issued to pilots, will alert them when cabin altitude reaches a preset threshold.
Intercom buttons are one thing... I was less enthused to read about the impeller fan. It's all fun and games until it shatters under load and blows up a turbine.
Marines think outside of the box because we rarely have enough boxes and the ones we do get don't have lids. That's why we have the unofficial motto of "Improvise, Adapt, and Overcome".
> asked him what kind of tech he wanted most. "Better batteries"
Yes, but. As I recall the story, when a fuel-cell consumer powerbrick startup, with a working production prototype, and the broader impact of expanding the envelope of consumer-scale parts supply in several areas (eg air pumps), went looking for $10M to start their supply chain, and avoid dying, ARPA responded "we can do $1M, but our budget is tight just now, and we can't do 10." What people say they want, and what they're willing to pay for, are often poorly correlated.
> Better batteries would change everything [...] Cost-to-orbit
Yes. Also small durable high-torque electric motors.
The more each marine knows and the more tools each has at his/her disposable, the more flexible each individual and unit will be. Flexibility can be important in fighting.
A Marine unit with multiple materials and multiheaded 3D printers could print more than replacement parts for downed war fighting machinery. Specific weapons or other gear could be adapted to fit the situation.
For example, a particular part isn't working (like the altimeter in the previous comment) due to poor design in bad testing. Marines with access to the raw CAD files of the part could modify the cowling/housing shape to make it more visible. The finished model could be stress tested in a physics modeling program. When it passes, a metal part could be printed and installed. A thermistor could even be added to provide heat to stop frosting. If it works in one plane, it could be duplicated to the whole squadron. And this quick adaptability in changing design method could be applied to anything: backpacks that are the incorrect shape and cause backpain, bump stocks that cause damage on the recoil, or a new water checkvalve screen could be designed to better force water out of soaked boots and stop foot rot. The design work could even happen remotely back on the mainland with more design resources.
This could happen within 24hrs from a supply unit stationed just off the front lines doing most of the work. At the end of a 6month engagement, the vehicles, equipment and gear could all be substantially different than how they started.
This extreme adaptability could end up being a huge advantage.
I love the Commandant's attitude. He seems to get it.
I've come across many Marines in my personal history as a diplomat brat (Marines protect all US Embassies abroad) and worker (the best boss I've ever had is a Marine). I've only met one I don't respect and/or admire, and he was drunk and belligerent on the Metro (not towards anyone in particular, just being a loud ass).
From contracting with the Air Force, I can tell you that they have a love affair with spending money. Most of the projects I seen revolved around making sure everyone spent as much as possible, so that they could get more.
This comment gives me the opportunity to tell a joke I learned while working on an Air Force base.
One of the things most civilians don't understand about the U.S. military is that the various branches all speak different languages. The same words can mean very different things, depending on the branch of service of the person you are saying them to.
Take, for example, the simple order "secure the building."
If you ask a Marine to "secure the building," they will hand-pick a team of a dozen Marines, who will chopper onto the roof of the building at midnight with knives clenched in their teeth. They will then work their way down floor to floor, slitting the throats of everyone they meet along the way, including the cleaning staff, because why not. When they reach the lobby, they will form up in neat ranks and scream at the top of their lungs that the building has been secured.
If you ask someone from the Army to "secure the building," they will put in a request for an artillery strike, which will pummel the building as well as most of the surrounding block into a pile of rubble. When the artillery fire stops, the highest-ranking officer available will run up to the top of the pile, plant an American flag, and tell anyone who happens to be standing around that the building has been secured.
If you ask someone from the Navy to "secure the building," they will send an encrypted message via satellite to a submarine 900 miles away. The submarine will then fire a Tomahawk cruise missile, which will fly at 500 miles per hour 100 feet off the ground into the building's HVAC exhaust. The explosion of the warhead will cause the building to collapse in on itself. The Navy will then issue a press release stating that the building has been secured.
If you ask someone from the Air Force to "secure the building," they will get you a seven-year lease with an option to buy.
Well, there's a huge difference in the mindset of deployed grunts vs stateside red-tape laden behemoths.
When you're deployed and something important breaks, you have a BIG problem. The impact is usually somewhere between you being absolutely miserable for weeks to costing you your life. When you're stateside and something important breaks, you have a reason to expand your empire at next year's budget meeting.
I've heard this is common in business world too. Due to management & bean counters not comprehending organizational needs and leading-without-understanding they just cut your budget to what you last used. Nevermind if something made the spending leaner last year because some expenditure happens on a greater cycle than the 10-K form can handle. This gives better quarterly numbers while crippling the flexibility of that department. So the lower ranks compensate for such an incompetence by spending all the budget they can if there's any left.
When you see it you immediately look to the top and question their actual leadership capability. In this instance, it is politicians arguing about budget, but we all knew they didn't know squat about the consequences of cutting a budget.
I'm imagining climbing into a helicopter and seeing the panel with buttons and switches that were printed in various bright colors - whatever they had on hand when each part was made - and thinking I'm flying with Fisher Price.
In an era where global overnight civilian shipping is taken for granted, that it takes the military so long to ship parts that 3D printing parts of questionable ability to meet spec is considered an "innovative" solution is just more evidence that the military's logistics are sad and ineffective.
Forget buttons for a second, the article references fans that took a week to 3D print.
Yes, the military has to special-order a wide variety of parts and products with no civilian market. This makes the argument that some products may be more expensive. If the cost of manufacturing can be dramatically decreased through 3D printing, then properly account for cost by front-loading R&D costs, open-sourcing the designs which were developed with public money, and buying from the cheapest contractor which meets spec. If that contractor uses 3D printing to offer the lowest cost, cool. If lowest cost doesn't require 3D printing, who cares? Buy more than the military needs, but not so much as to be inordinately wasteful, to keep the part constantly in stock across a variety of globally distributed warehouses close enough to people who would need that part to be able to deliver requested parts within a week. It's a hard problem to be sure but more or less solvable (for reasonable optimizations in the absence of a constantly renewing solution to an NP complete problem).
Yes, the military has to be able to supply forces in areas where no civilian infrastructure exists. And if you want to argue for 3D printers somewhere like Antarctica where supplies can only be delivered for a few months of summer out of the whole year then that would make sense. If you want to argue that setting up a full warehouse with all parts which may ultimately prove necessary in a brand-new FOB in a war zone is at the very least a very difficult problem because of the difficulty of keeping track of everything that goes into that FOB not to mention keeping sufficient stock levels then I may agree with you. Arguing that it's reasonable to wait for months or even more than a year for parts to be delivered from a warehouse in the continental US to large, major, permanent bases located within the continental US? No, hell no, no freaking way, no way to excuse that other than general incompetence.
Militaries are never going to be nearly as efficient or as quick as UPS / FedEx / DHL for all their usecases. And that's fine. But taxpayers should not allow that to serve as an excuse for perennially poor logistics performance relative to what should be expected in comparison to the private sector.
Having recently purchased ~400 dental surgical instruments from some dude in Pakistan for less than $2000 including shipping, and received them in less than a month even though they were manufactured after I ordered them, I can imagine no possible purpose of 3D printing surgical instruments. They are stainless steel and will last approximately forever.
Brilliant. In some cases you don't want someone tearing apart a $300k radio to figure out what's wrong with it, but on the other hand, a small fix to save $20k is awesome.
[+] [-] chriselles|8 years ago|reply
As a service, the USMC are approaching bottom up innovation very seriously. https://mobile.twitter.com/marinemakers
The USAF is also very active in bottom up innovation.
Another program is Hacking 4 Defense founded by Steve Blank, Pete Newell, and Joe Felter(leave of absence now performing role of US Assistant Undersecretary of Defence for South & Southeast Asia).
Pete Newell(retired Army Colonel) stood up the Rapid Equipping Force a numbe of years ago to rapidly accelerate the development and deployment of tools to mitigate IED related casualties.
Hacking 4 Defense(H4D) is running across a growing number of University campus to solve complex Defense problems using the Lean Start Up methodology using a modified lean canvas called the Mission Model Canvas.
https://www.h4di.org
I am working to expand the use of H4D/MMC down here in Australasia.
Happy to share more if anyone is interested.
It’s great to see Marines given the latitude to experiment.
It’s also great to see the often inaccurate stereotypes of Marines being rigidly disciplined and inflexible in thinking give way to the reality that Marines have very often conducted comprehensive tactical experimentation and innovation.
[+] [-] sandworm101|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gascan|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] b1daly|8 years ago|reply
I have come to the conclusion that the professionalization of the services, coupled with the parasitic business model of the “defense industry,” has turned the US armed forces into a standing mercenary force.
Ultimately, the blame for this lies with the corrupt electoral system in the US, and the unwillingness of our political leadership to exert a modicum of common sense, and reduce the scale of US military involvements.
We can’t rely on institutions that many entities rely on for their livelihood/existence to put themselves out of business.
It would be nice to see the military engage in disruptive innovation that would discourage open ended military conflict. (And the endless meddling in other countries ghastly civil wars.)
[+] [-] avinium|8 years ago|reply
In my experience, Defence/military here have been incredibly close-minded and resistant to change.
[+] [-] evrydayhustling|8 years ago|reply
The challenges have a lot in common with space travel - not surprising that 3D printing has spurred so much imagination on both sides.
Side note: there's a quote in the article where Gen. Walters is envying what young engineers can do with this stuff. That's one of my favorite signals for tech that's not hype -- when it makes successful pros wish they were born a little later.
[+] [-] seastonATccs|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] walshemj|8 years ago|reply
And to this day British vehicles have a variant of a Crimean war piece of kit to heat water / food - which is/was an object of envy of US forces
[+] [-] DanielBMarkham|8 years ago|reply
This is a great story about disruption. The Marines seem to be on top of trying to continue thinking outside the box. That turns out to be very difficult to do in any large, old organization. I heard an interview with the Commandant last week. They asked him what kind of tech he wanted most.
"Better batteries"
Bingo. Better batteries would change everything, not just the Marine Corps. There are few technologies like batteries. Cost-to-orbit tech is one of them. If we change those technologies, we change the entire rest of the economy. I believe the service used to call things like that "force multipliers". It's neat to see 3D printing _perhaps_ becoming a force multiplier in many areas.
Putting on my cynic hat, expect to see a lot of pushback form the establishment where this technology disrupts the most. Those folks with button standards aren't going to go down peacefully.
[+] [-] js2|8 years ago|reply
https://www.military.com/daily-news/2017/06/16/the-navy-is-i...
Then, allegedly a pilot crew was able to use the watch's compass to help navigate in an emergency after their cabin instruments frosted over:
https://www.defensenews.com/breaking-news/2018/02/23/flying-...
[+] [-] paulmd|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] meritt|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mncharity|8 years ago|reply
Yes, but. As I recall the story, when a fuel-cell consumer powerbrick startup, with a working production prototype, and the broader impact of expanding the envelope of consumer-scale parts supply in several areas (eg air pumps), went looking for $10M to start their supply chain, and avoid dying, ARPA responded "we can do $1M, but our budget is tight just now, and we can't do 10." What people say they want, and what they're willing to pay for, are often poorly correlated.
> Better batteries would change everything [...] Cost-to-orbit
Yes. Also small durable high-torque electric motors.
[+] [-] spacestuff387|8 years ago|reply
A Marine unit with multiple materials and multiheaded 3D printers could print more than replacement parts for downed war fighting machinery. Specific weapons or other gear could be adapted to fit the situation.
For example, a particular part isn't working (like the altimeter in the previous comment) due to poor design in bad testing. Marines with access to the raw CAD files of the part could modify the cowling/housing shape to make it more visible. The finished model could be stress tested in a physics modeling program. When it passes, a metal part could be printed and installed. A thermistor could even be added to provide heat to stop frosting. If it works in one plane, it could be duplicated to the whole squadron. And this quick adaptability in changing design method could be applied to anything: backpacks that are the incorrect shape and cause backpain, bump stocks that cause damage on the recoil, or a new water checkvalve screen could be designed to better force water out of soaked boots and stop foot rot. The design work could even happen remotely back on the mainland with more design resources.
This could happen within 24hrs from a supply unit stationed just off the front lines doing most of the work. At the end of a 6month engagement, the vehicles, equipment and gear could all be substantially different than how they started.
This extreme adaptability could end up being a huge advantage.
[+] [-] joncrane|8 years ago|reply
I've come across many Marines in my personal history as a diplomat brat (Marines protect all US Embassies abroad) and worker (the best boss I've ever had is a Marine). I've only met one I don't respect and/or admire, and he was drunk and belligerent on the Metro (not towards anyone in particular, just being a loud ass).
[+] [-] Pigo|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] smacktoward|8 years ago|reply
One of the things most civilians don't understand about the U.S. military is that the various branches all speak different languages. The same words can mean very different things, depending on the branch of service of the person you are saying them to.
Take, for example, the simple order "secure the building."
If you ask a Marine to "secure the building," they will hand-pick a team of a dozen Marines, who will chopper onto the roof of the building at midnight with knives clenched in their teeth. They will then work their way down floor to floor, slitting the throats of everyone they meet along the way, including the cleaning staff, because why not. When they reach the lobby, they will form up in neat ranks and scream at the top of their lungs that the building has been secured.
If you ask someone from the Army to "secure the building," they will put in a request for an artillery strike, which will pummel the building as well as most of the surrounding block into a pile of rubble. When the artillery fire stops, the highest-ranking officer available will run up to the top of the pile, plant an American flag, and tell anyone who happens to be standing around that the building has been secured.
If you ask someone from the Navy to "secure the building," they will send an encrypted message via satellite to a submarine 900 miles away. The submarine will then fire a Tomahawk cruise missile, which will fly at 500 miles per hour 100 feet off the ground into the building's HVAC exhaust. The explosion of the warhead will cause the building to collapse in on itself. The Navy will then issue a press release stating that the building has been secured.
If you ask someone from the Air Force to "secure the building," they will get you a seven-year lease with an option to buy.
[+] [-] unit91|8 years ago|reply
When you're deployed and something important breaks, you have a BIG problem. The impact is usually somewhere between you being absolutely miserable for weeks to costing you your life. When you're stateside and something important breaks, you have a reason to expand your empire at next year's budget meeting.
[+] [-] kevin_b_er|8 years ago|reply
When you see it you immediately look to the top and question their actual leadership capability. In this instance, it is politicians arguing about budget, but we all knew they didn't know squat about the consequences of cutting a budget.
[+] [-] unknown|8 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] mikerice|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] phkahler|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] solatic|8 years ago|reply
Forget buttons for a second, the article references fans that took a week to 3D print.
Yes, the military has to special-order a wide variety of parts and products with no civilian market. This makes the argument that some products may be more expensive. If the cost of manufacturing can be dramatically decreased through 3D printing, then properly account for cost by front-loading R&D costs, open-sourcing the designs which were developed with public money, and buying from the cheapest contractor which meets spec. If that contractor uses 3D printing to offer the lowest cost, cool. If lowest cost doesn't require 3D printing, who cares? Buy more than the military needs, but not so much as to be inordinately wasteful, to keep the part constantly in stock across a variety of globally distributed warehouses close enough to people who would need that part to be able to deliver requested parts within a week. It's a hard problem to be sure but more or less solvable (for reasonable optimizations in the absence of a constantly renewing solution to an NP complete problem).
Yes, the military has to be able to supply forces in areas where no civilian infrastructure exists. And if you want to argue for 3D printers somewhere like Antarctica where supplies can only be delivered for a few months of summer out of the whole year then that would make sense. If you want to argue that setting up a full warehouse with all parts which may ultimately prove necessary in a brand-new FOB in a war zone is at the very least a very difficult problem because of the difficulty of keeping track of everything that goes into that FOB not to mention keeping sufficient stock levels then I may agree with you. Arguing that it's reasonable to wait for months or even more than a year for parts to be delivered from a warehouse in the continental US to large, major, permanent bases located within the continental US? No, hell no, no freaking way, no way to excuse that other than general incompetence.
Militaries are never going to be nearly as efficient or as quick as UPS / FedEx / DHL for all their usecases. And that's fine. But taxpayers should not allow that to serve as an excuse for perennially poor logistics performance relative to what should be expected in comparison to the private sector.
[+] [-] surgeryres|8 years ago|reply
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27822724
[+] [-] jessaustin|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bb88|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chad_strategic|8 years ago|reply
Best job I have ever had.