Getting All the Medication in Line

(Spring 2022)

CHALLENGE

Find a better way to encourage enrollment in the Deployment Prescription Program (DPP) to reduce the time and money wasted in accessing medication on remote bases during deployment.

BACKGROUND

If a service member registers in the DPP system before their deployment, they get a  180-day supply of medication to travel with and receive a notification by email to confirm their APO address and date of delivery for the next supply.  

Currently, there is less than 10% participation in the DPP from service members due to the volume of readiness tasks that a service member needs to conduct before their deployment. Unfortunately, medical readiness can often fall as a lower priority for service members.  

If a service member does not have access to a pharmacy on base, which might be the case for smaller Forward Operational Bases (FOBs), they may need to take 1-4 days off to travel by plane or helicopter to their nearest pharmacy to get a refill. With deployments as short as nine months, service members must spend as many days conducting their regular operations as possible.  

The Army Pharmacy Line has previously given soldiers their entire 1- year supply of their medication. This has not been a practical solution as the medication is heavy and suffers damage in the varying temperatures and varied terrain, leading to the medication expiring more quickly or being lost as the SM moves into theater.

If the registration rate for the DPP increases from less than 10%, service members may save up to 4 days out of each month of a 9-month deployment. In addition, the Army would be utilizing the millions of dollars invested in the DPP to improve the quality of life of deployed service members.

PROBLEM SPONSOR

United States Army, Army Pharmacy Service Line

Cyber Risk Management and Prioritization

(Spring 2022)

CHALLENGE

The NSA Defense Industrial Base (DIB) cybersecurity team needs a standardized evaluation of the cybersecurity risk posed by defense companies working with the government in order to prioritize mitigation methods to prevent cybersecurity incidents.

BACKGROUND

Currently, DOD is looking to evaluate over 100,000 DIB companies as part of their cybersecurity risk strategy. Due to the large workload, NSA’s DIB cybersecurity team who has been tasked to oversee the evaluation needs to first identify partners who present the greatest cybersecurity threat.  

The NSA is already conducting small-scale cyber security-as-a-service pilots for DIB  companies and is looking to scale these services.  

While there is public research about the cyber risk posed by individuals, less is known about the business risk posed by companies, not in the insurance industry. There is currently no standardized evaluation of business cybersecurity risk.  

A solution to this problem will allow the DOD and the NSA to prioritize developing mitigation tactics for companies posing the highest cybersecurity risk. This will also ensure that small business government contractors can better understand NSA and DoD cybersecurity practices.

PROBLEM SPONSOR

National Security Agency (NSA)

3D Printing a Solution

(Spring 2022)

CHALLENGE

Decision Knowledge Programming for Logistics Analysis and Technical Evaluation (deck plate) sailors need field operable additive manufacturing (AM) testing capabilities in order to replace parts while on deployment.

BACKGROUND

AM, or 3D printing, is increasingly necessary for the Navy as some machinery and vital tools degrade over time. However, the engineers who test AM capabilities are not always on a  ship when sailors need to replace a part.  

For chief engineers and commanding officers, the risk of creating AM parts without performing a performance test can be too high to allow their use, so AM equipment is used rarely. 

If sailors can reliably produce and test parts themselves, they may avoid supply shortages,  long lead times, equipment downtime/failure, and safety issues while deployed. 

A modular, field-expedient solution that can perform mechanical testing in the shipboard or maintenance environment would enable the fleet to conduct performance testing closer to the time of need. Some examples of relevant testing include tensile loading, compressive loading, torque loading, and other mechanical loadings.  

If sailors can find a way to conduct performance tests on their AM parts, they can conduct self reliant, forward-deployed operations without risking parts degradation.

PROBLEM SPONSOR

Office of Research and Technology Application (ORTA), United States Navy 

Securing Weapons Systems Faster

(Spring 2021)

CHALLENGE

 Munitions safety personnel need a way to collect and organize large amounts of ordinance and munitions documentation in order to quickly identify a list of critical compliance tasks and achieve the safest level of compliance for fielding munitions. 

BACKGROUND

Munitions safety personnel review large amounts of Department of Defense documents and guidance in order to comply with regulations and ensure ordinance is safely employed. These documents pertain to unique requirements in designing and testing Department of Defense ammunitions, tactical missiles, and other explosives. Within a single ordnance program, a munitions safety personnel team must review and compile a vast amount of safety related pieces of evidence against the associated reference materials. 

At any given time, there are three munitions safety personnel working this review full-time. This activity is very time-consuming and tedious because it requires safety personnel to review each document manually. Beyond this manual analysis, safety personnel have no way of identifying relationships, inconsistencies, and dependencies between different compliance tasks and guidance. 

Having an efficient solution for reviewing weapons documentation would save time to process more information and better partner with industry. Currently, setting expectations with industry suppliers is very difficult given the volume of data that is required to walk this process. Having a tool would help set expectations, improve product outcomes with fewer defects, and field and deliver new systems quicker. 

PROBLEM SPONSOR

Naval Sea Systems Command, United States Navy 

Vendor System Risks

(Spring 2021)

CHALLENGE

DLA Cybersecurity needs best practice measures to prevent vendor system ransomware from impacting the Department of Defense (DoD).

BACKGROUND

The Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) and the greater DoD has significant technological capabilities in the way of cybersecurity and defending their networks. However, DLA is the size of a Fortune 100 company and has contracts in place with a very high number of vendors with their own networks. DLA often hosts its own software and sets up its own firewalls, but many vendors will have both a commercial instance and a government instance. While the government instances are secure, if the commercial side is hacked any emails sent and or files attached that are infected can help hackers penetrate the DoD federal system.

For example, one vendor that had three contracts with DLA recently had a ransomware attack. The government was unaware of this attack, as the vendor didn’t disclose this vulnerability due to the fact that it was on their commercial server. Luckily, DLA personnel had not sent emails or file shared during the couple of days before they found out, but if they had, this could have potentially allowed hackers to gain access to DLA’s staging server where the vendor was configuring their software.

Every time a person reaches out for a quote or data outside the intranet to the internet, they may be opening up some vulnerabilities. Therefore, DLA needs some preventative best practices to ensure they are reducing vulnerabilities associated with vendor ransomware.

PROBLEM SPONSOR

J62 Information Operations, Defense Logistics Agency

Electro- magnetic Spectrum Capabilities for Training (Spring 2020)

CHALLENGE

Infantry units and radio operators need a way to practice identifying and responding to electromagnetic spectrum jamming in order to remain effective in communication compromised environments.

BACKGROUND

In the past several years, near peer-competitors Russia and China have heavily prioritized electronic warfare (EW). They have invested in EW assets, primarily software-defined radios, that allows them the ability to use the electromagnetic spectrum (EMS) – signals such as radio, infrared, or radar – to sense and communicate. Furthermore, they have distributed these capabilities down to the tactical level, meaning even small units have EW capabilities. For example, Russia has used EW to target Ukrainian troops in Crimea when the troops attempt to communicate on their radios. The U.S. has not recently trained to counter this kind of warfare. The Army has invested in high-quality equipment, including adversary jamming systems, which represent older enemy systems. However, this equipment is available only at the Combat Training Centers (National Training Center and Joint Readiness Training Center in the Continental U.S.), making it practically inaccessible to units for training and day-to-day use.

As a result, Infantry units train for EW by using standard-issue radios. They put such radios on the same communications security (COMSEC) to simulate EMS jamming. However, these training scenarios do not allow the unit to fully use the targeting process to locate and engage an adversary’s jamming or to identify and respond to intentional and unintentional interference within and through the EMS. It also does not allow a unit to practice all of the actions they can take to mitigate an adversary’s control of the EMS. As such, infantry units and radio operators need a way to improve their ability to recognize EMS jamming, locate it, and respond appropriately.

OPERATIONAL CONSTRAINTS

• Cost is a consideration

• EMS capacity developed by the student team does not need to be as precise as it would be in a live environment since it will be for training purposes

PROBLEM SPONSOR

Electrical Magnetic Spectrum Operations Cross Functional Team, Office of the Secretary of Defense