U.S. Special Operations Command, or SOCOM, is focused on moving quickly to get technology into the hands of special operators, a senior acquisitions official with the command said on Monday.
“We are not building aircraft carriers here,” said David Breede, SOCOM’s deputy director for acquisition. “We are not launching million-dollar satellites here. What we are doing is integrating the latest technology into systems that can be fielded quickly for our quick turn prototyping, quick turn testing, validation — get them to the field.
Breede spoke during this year’s SOF Week exhibition in Tampa, Florida, which showcases special operations forces and their capabilities.
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He stressed that speed is one part of SOCOM’s strategy for fielding new technology. The command also has to be focused on ensuring it is giving special operators what they need. That can involve taking a more deliberate approach and spending months to years to develop the right capability when time has permitted.
“A lot of people want to say ‘I can iterate fast’ just for the sake of saying ‘I can iterate fast,’” Breede said during his speech. “That’s not it. Iterating fast needs to be done with a purpose, and if you have the time and space to do it deliberately and do it right, take the time and space to do it deliberately and do it right.”
When asked what piece of technology SOCOM needs most right now, Breede underscored the need for autonomous technologies — which can operate independently with a human in or on the loop — to be able to share information with each other.
It “is not helpful” when different autonomous systems are unable to work together because they can’t share their data, he said.
“I think it’s we’re still moving very slowly in that area to be able to just pick up something like automated target recognition and drop it into whether I want it on a Group 1 unmanned aircraft or a medium-sized unmanned surface vessel, so that they can both use that same algorithm, and then talk to each other and share that information,” Breede said.
