Facilitating Air Force Early Systems Engineering, Technology Development, and Transition via a Technology Transition Office

Abstract

According to numerous sources, the long-term evolutionary development and transition of technologies to meet warfighter capability gaps within the United States Air Force (USAF) has suffered from a lack of robust early sy stems engineering and acquisition planning activities. Furthermore, the pre-program-of-record activities that have occurred have often been funded at the expense of existing programs; prioritization has suffered accordingly. Similarly, the transition of newly-available revolutionary technologies to meet short-term warfighter needs often forces programs of record into cost and/or schedule overruns. These two paths of technology development and transition to acquisition – evolutionary and revolutionary – need not be exclusive or predatory. The USAF has recently reinvigorated early systems engineering processes, technology development planning, and comprehensive transition coordination across the Service th rough the Technology Transition Office (TTO) within SAF/AQR, the office of the Deputy Assistant Secretary (DAS) of the Air Force for Science, Technology, and Engineering (ST&E). This paper describes SAF/AQR's comprehensive strategy to provide a flexible framework to meet both evolutionary and revolutionary development by integrating concept development, early systems engineering, prototyping, and transition policies and proce sses across the USAF. Goals include ensuring robust development planning execution to structure future acquisition programs for success and managing access to a portfolio of Department of Defense (DoD) transition resources as a single program under clear authority and accountability to flexibly meet warfighting needs.