Q&A with Bob Newberry, Director Of the Pentagon's Irregular Warfare Technical Support Directorate.

* Bob Newberry oversees the Pentagon's Irregular Warfare Technical Support Directorate. He reports to the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict, or SO/LIC, and is responsible for providing a forum for interagency and international partners to discuss mission requirements to combat terrorism, prioritize requirements, fund and manage solutions, and deliver capabilities. Newberry spoke with National Defense Staff Writer Mandy Mayfield about the directorate's priorities and working with industry. The following Q&A has been edited for length and clarity.

What are some of your top priorities as director of the Irregular Warfare Technical Support Directorate?

The first one is greater affordability at the speed of relevance. That was in the National Defense Strategy. The second: increasing lethal capabilities for small teams and individuals. The strategy talks about an increase in lethality but we really wanted to focus on small teams and individuals.

Next, enhancing survivability for personnel and facilities. Then use of artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms-based analytical tools for big data analysis. We've really expanded that this year on a recent broad agency announcement--we asked the vendors to look at how they could use artificial intelligence or machine learning on all of the requirements in an effort to reduce the workload on individual operators.

Then No. 5 is strengthening and increasing alliances--we have 50/50 cost sharing R&D memorandums with the U.K., Canada, Australia, Singapore and Israel. We are hoping to expand that to include France--diat's in the final stages of coordination.

Next is optimizing human performance and learning.

And last: we still want to address chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear and explosive threats within the department and domestically.

The key one that 1 would expand on would be the greater affordability at the speed of relevance. We move fast. ... We want to get to contracts in less than a year, so that is really tightening up a schedule from requirements to signing a contract, and we want to deliver whatever capability we're trying to develop in one to two years.

The directorate recently underwent a reorganization and name change from the Combating Terrorism Technical Support Office. What does it mean and how has it changed the office?

The name change was a result of a year's worth of the defense-wide review of looking at organizations...