Pat Fallon Asks DoD Official About Ensuring AI Is 'Streamlined' In Military Acquisitions Process

5 months ago

During a House Armed Services Committee hearing prior to the congressional recess, Rep. Pat Fallon (R-TX) questioned Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition & Sustainment, Michael Duffey, about integrating artificial intelligence into the acquisitions system.

Transcript

00:00The gentleman from Texas, Mr. Fallon.

00:02Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

00:03Mr. Duffy, we all know that, you know,

00:06DOD facilities like Red River,

00:08some of them are underutilized,

00:09and we added language in the NDAA

00:11to explore how we can best use them

00:13moving forward, and so what I wanted to ask you was

00:16if you have any

00:17plans or what you all are

00:19working on to repurpose the sites, and another concern

00:22that I have is you've got a

00:23highly skilled labor force

00:25you know, at Red River

00:28at that depot and others,

00:30and if we, once those

00:31folks, if we happen to lay them off, I mean,

00:34they're gone, and we're not going to get them back,

00:36and it's very difficult to replace that kind of

00:38labor. I mean, that's a huge

00:39resource for the military,

00:42so I wanted to hear your thoughts on that.

00:45Well, thank you for your question.

00:46Generally speaking, you know, I

00:48come at the problem recognizing that

00:50we have constraints in our industrial base

00:52across the board, whether it's

00:54workforce, skill sets,

00:56supply chain, facilitization,

00:58and so

00:59anytime we have excess capacity,

01:03you know, I think we don't take a hard look at

01:05how can we leverage that or repurpose it

01:07for purposes of whether it's

01:09sustainment or increased

01:10expansion capability

01:13for our munitions industrial base.

01:15I don't here today have for you an answer

01:19on the Red River. I don't know if my colleague

01:21from the Army's got another perspective on it.

01:24Yeah, I can chime in here for a second, sir,

01:26and thanks for the question.

01:29And the comments about the workforce,

01:31we fully acknowledge that,

01:33and we would be concerned about that.

01:35So what we're doing is,

01:36in concert with General Mohan

01:38at the Army Material Command,

01:40we are lockstep in this as far as trying to figure out ways and better courses of action,

01:44how to sustain those types of facilities and depots.

01:48So for Red River,

01:49it's looking at

01:50how can we streamline

01:52the public-private partnership aspect,

01:54but also how can we leverage private capital

01:56to go in there and just invest there?

01:59So things like Sky Foundry,

02:00looking at broadening the emission sets

02:02at those depots

02:04to potentially produce things like UAS components.

02:08You know, for small UAS,

02:09creating a new industry there,

02:11or just having that organic capability

02:13that we could always fall back on to surge,

02:17that would be huge for us.

02:19And that, as we do that,

02:22the intent would be then

02:23is that you get more venture capital

02:25to come in and start to invest around that area

02:27and then just potentially create a market space.

02:29Well, I think we know that,

02:30I mean, the demand for drones

02:32and unmanned vehicles,

02:33whether they be in the air, ground, sea,

02:35are greatly enhanced.

02:37I think Ukraine taught us that.

02:38And that was one of the thoughts that we had,

02:39and not just me on this committee.

02:41Ironically, other members came to me

02:43and talked about maybe switching over

02:45because JLTVs and Humvees aren't,

02:47you know, working on those isn't going to have,

02:51there's just not that need,

02:52but there is that, you know,

02:54conversely, this incredible need.

02:56And where are we going to produce those?

02:58You know, and making them with just American parts

03:01and maybe not our greatest geopolitical adversaries' parts.

03:04Right.

03:04It could be, and touching on that,

03:06I just wanted to ask as well,

03:08Secretary Duffy, about AI

03:10and how, you know, your vision for it.

03:13Clearly, we want to make sure it's streamlined

03:15and seamless for military application.

03:19And I think that's an invaluable thing

03:21to discuss for a minute.

03:23Absolutely.

03:24It's a key enabler,

03:25and our adversaries, unfortunately, are embracing it.

03:28And so we have to move quickly to find out

03:30how we can apply it operationally.

03:32But I also think there's opportunity.

03:34I mentioned earlier,

03:35I've been in the Pentagon for 15 years,

03:37and one of my biggest frustrations

03:38is the lack of modern business process management.

03:43I mean, you can look across the acquisition system

03:46in all the disciplines,

03:47whether it's financial management,

03:50testing, requirements.

03:51There's all kinds of opportunities to bring

03:54how we do business into the 21st century,

03:56which I think is a key foundation

03:58to then finding ways to apply artificial intelligence

04:02internally to how the Pentagon operates,

04:05whether it's AI-enabled design,

04:07where we could do better optimize the systems we're developing

04:11or optimizing how we're expending our resources.

04:14So what I think about in terms of how to accelerate

04:19and improve the way we do our work,

04:21I think there's tremendous opportunity for AI.

04:23And then certainly with respect to enabling operations

04:28and finding ways to apply it responsibly

04:32in the deployment of our systems and in our operations

04:35is an area where I have less visibility and expertise,

04:38but I know we're actively pursuing opportunities

04:42to enable the warfighter

04:44who can help us identify ways to apply it

04:46to improve how we win and fight wars.

04:49Yeah, I kind of didn't think of it that way.

04:51AI can help us use AI more efficiently for the DoD.

04:54So thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

04:55I'll yield back.

04:56Gentlemen, you...

Pat Fallon Asks DoD Official About Ensuring AI Is 'Streamlined' In Military Acquisitions Process

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