Tools at Hand to Avoid Valley of Death.

• Author: Chamberlain, Robert M.

National Defense Industrial Association President and CEO retired Gen. Hawk Carlisle in his June NDIA Perspectives column, "It's Time for a Fresh Look at Resourcing Defense," mentions the Small Business Innovation Research program and suggests a "bridge fund" to get past the valley of death on its contracts.

This program already exists--it is called the Rapid Innovation Fund. The program was permanently authorized by Congress in 2012, but it must be funded annually. For the past two years Congress has not funded the RIF program because the Defense Department did not request funding for it. So much for the department's "ardent support" for small business.

My company, Monterey Technologies Inc., which has earned over 40 SBIR awards, has been the recipient of RIF funding two or three times, and the net result has been that our mission planning systems, conceived as SBIR projects, using RIF funds, have been fielded with the Navy on multiple platforms. This never would have happened without this funding. It the Defense Department wants to get serious about supporting innovation and small business, the tools exist, it just needs to actually use them (i.e., request that Congress fund the Rapid Innovation Fund in the next National Defense Authorization Act).

Carlisle comments that a bridge fund must have an end point, and that is the Program Objective Memorandum. The real "end point" for SBIR-developed technology is to be inserted into a program of record and be fielded with war-fighters. The POM is a means to this end. Interestingly, if the department actually used the SBIR/RIF program the way it was designed, the valley of death problem and the difficulties of funding SBIR technology through the POM process could be avoided.

Here is the way SBIR is supposed to work. A Phase I award is made to Company X, who runs a successful program and is awarded a Phase 2 contract. Completing Phase 2, Company X has produced a Technology Readiness Level 6 prototype that looks promising. The associated program office and SBIR technical point of contact now propose a Phase 2 enhancement --essentially another block of SBIR Phase 2 money--to the SBIR office to get the TRL 6 prototype technology to TRL 8/9.

The Phase 2 enhancement is supposed to be a 50/50 cost share between the program office and the SBIR office--but it does not have to be. A key Phase 2 enhancement requirement is a technology transition plan written by the program office, describing technology...