Chem-Bio Defense Office Reorganizes To Take on New Threats.

• Author: Tadjdeh, Yasmin

WILMINGTON, Del. -- The Pentagon's joint program executive office for chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear defense--which is tasked with protecting the military from some of the world's most dangerous pathogens and nerve agents --is emerging from a major reorganization that officials believe will better position it to meet new threats.

The office, as it worked to streamline its operations across the board, mulled over how it could get technology into the hands of warfighters faster and do business better, said Doug Bryce, the head of the JPEO. That required a rejiggering of its programs.

"Our mission and vision have not changed but we did reorganize," he said during remarks at the National Defense Industrial Association's annual CBRN Conference and Exhibition in Wilmington, Delaware.

The office facilitates a number of projects across multiple lines of effort, but officials were finding that some programs were not always working together seamlessly, Bryce said.

To better establish a holistic enterprise that ensured the highest priority items were put into the hands of warfighters quickly, the organization sorted itself into three joint project manager offices--protection, sensors and medical. The JPEO also stood up what it calls joint project leaders for the areas of special operations forces; information management and information technology; enabling biotechnologies; and portfolio resources, Bryce said.

"We bundled so that we can become more effective and cheaper," he said. "What you'll find is that we have consolidated everything that is a sensor or a platform that works with a sensor ... [into] the same place. All of protection is in the same place and all of medical" is in the same location.

Moving to portfolio management has made the JPEO "leaner and meaner," Bryce noted. Since the reorganization, the office has found a number of efficiencies and new ways to buy gear in a smarter way, including by embracing big data, he added.

"We will be doing an awful lot of analytics," Bryce said. "We've created ... an analytical framework and that was designed to basically tell us if I had a dollar, where could I best spend that dollar in the chem-bio ... world?"

The framework is based on modeling and simulation taken from warfighting scenarios that can determine the best gear to invest in, he added.

"You will start to see more and more of that," he told members of industry. "It will help us, and it will help you."

The office is looking...