“My kids say it’s too long, and nobody has ever heard of it.”

Carter will likely be trading his title for a shorter, more renowned one:  Deputy Secretary of Defense.  Before he does, Carter would spend the day in Orlando meeting with small businesses in defense contracting.

The economic climate is grave, and those representing small businesses were feeling considerable anxiety.  It is telling that Senator Bill Nelson, who opened the summit with remarks of his own, highlighted the achievements of once-upon-a-time small firms such as Lockheed Martin and Harris.  Successes, yes; small businesses, no.  Senator Nelson also pointed out the not-quite-dead-yet space program’s ongoing contributions to the development of vaccines for salmonella and MERSA.

Carter highlighted the efforts at being ‘smarter’ about defense spending.

“We have stopped doing things that either were not performing well or whose time had passed or we had enough of them,” he said.  “We’ve done a lot of that over the last two years, and now we’re getting to the point where the things we have left are things we do want and do need, and we need to get them for the amount of money the country has to provide and for that we need something the economists call ‘productivity growth.’”

He continued, “You go to Best Buy, you buy a new computer, and it’s a better computer than last year and it costs less.  Then, here I am coming up to Senator Nelson and his colleagues on the Hill with the same airplane, same ship, and same vehicle as last year and asking for more and they’re not very happy with the situation—and they shouldn’t be.”

Has Defense cut programs that need to be cut?  The case remains open on that.  Moreover, there is something that gets lost in this ‘productivity growth’ conversation:  capabilities creep.  Frankly, defense acquisitions personnel have long griped about ever-burgeoning price tags for high-tech weapons systems (longer than those two years Carter mentions), but those same acquisitions folks have had a tendency to demand ever-increasing features to defeat enemies real and imagined.  This gets lost in the narrative of big, bad defense contractors.  America must not only be smarter about buying but also in assessing the capabilities it needs.

Also lost in this conversation is the hemorrhaging of classified and/or confidential data from defense contractors that is pushing up prices not only in terms of reducing the cost of developing competing weapon systems but also enabling potential adversaries to produce better countermeasures to American weapons systems.  America must also be better about protecting its secrets.  Contractors deserve a fair share of the blame in this regard.

For all the talk of austerity, DoD is still spending quite a bit in Florida–$12 billion according to Carter. Florida is the fifth largest in terms of contracts spent among the states; $3.3 billion of those contracts are awarded to small businesses.

Carter also pointed to three key contributions of small businesses:  innovation, competition, and services provided at great value.  The two of these that warrant some expansion are “innovation” and “competition.”

“First, small businesses are a constant source of renewal and innovation for the defense industry,” Carter spoke. “We need to make ourselves attractive to young people, to new blood, to new ideas, if we’re going to continue to have the defense industry of the future that is as strong and as vibrant as it is today.  Small business is one of the ways that we get those new faces and new ideas.  In fact, it is the principal way.  Sometimes, those companies get bought up by our larger defense companies and that’s a good thing.  It’s a conveyor belt of new ideas and new faces in defense.”

“Second, small businesses add another source of competition, and competition is one of the principal ways we deliver value to the taxpayer and the warfighter,” he said.

Does it benefit the small contractor to team up or sell out to big firms?  Surely.  Do these monolithic firms purchasing smaller firms guarantee innovation and competition?  Absolutely not.  In this context, it is worth revisiting Senator Nelson’s remark I mentioned earlier.

Carter went on to explain that DoD was making efforts to make project managers more aware of small businesses’ capabilities as well as reduce barriers of entry for small business.  That all sounds good, certainly.

However, I remain skeptical having written about DoD’s risk aversion (as with the USMC’s IAR) and its tendency to reinvent the wheel when it comes to small firm’s contributions (as with MagPul’s PMAG).  In both cases, smaller firms were ignored in favor of larger ones.  (In the case of the USMC’s IAR, the Pentagon ignored multiple weapon systems designed and manufactured in America in favor of foreign companies.)

I asked Secretary Carter about the PEO’s “improved magazine” program.

“You mentioned that the Pentagon does not ‘make things,’ but PEO Soldier has recently developed an improved magazine for the M16/M4 system when a small business developed such a system in 2006 with the cooperation of the DoD, is in the supply chain, and has been combat-tested.  What message does this send to small businesses?”

Carter replied, “I am not familiar with this individual program, but it is certainly not playing to our strengths.  I don’t want to make a habit of it, because small business does it better.”

Is it too much to expect the soon-to-be Deputy Secretary of Defense to know about this one program in the million-dollar as opposed to billion-dollar range?  Perhaps.  Is the “Improved Magazine” representative given the more than $3 billion investment in Florida small businesses?  That remains to be seen, but the big firm focus for the small business summit does concern me.

What the PEO program and Carter’s unawareness of it does tell me is that the Pentagon is not examining its small business practices closely enough.

Marine infantry squads will replace their M249 light machine gun with a highly accurate, auto rifle geared for fast-moving assaults. In late May, Gen. James Amos, commandant of the Marine Corps, approved a plan to field the M27 Infantry Automatic Rifle to all Marine infantry battalions.

The lightweight auto rifle, made by Heckler & Koch, is a variant of the 5.56mm H&K 416. It weighs just under eight pounds unloaded — almost 10 pounds less than the M249 Squad Automatic Weapon.

The decision comes after the Corps fielded 458 M27s to five battalions as they prepared for upcoming deployments to Afghanistan.

“We wanted to get through the limited fielding and get the feedback before we moved ahead with the full fielding,” said Charles Clark III, who oversees infantry weapons requirements at the Corps’ Combat Development and Integration office in Quantico, Va.

“The decision is made. It’s happening,” Clark said.

Program officials plan to spend about $13 million to field all 4,476 M27s by late summer 2013, Clark said. In addition to the guns, that money also pays for spare parts, tools and gauges, he said.

As I have written, the long procurement process has not been without controversy.  However, the anecdotal reports I have heard indicate that H&K’s rifle has performed well in its limited fielding so far.  What remains to be seen is how the entire system–including optic, magazines, and other accessories–will perform.  Trijicon’s TA11SDO, which had been employed on the M249 SAW, will be transfered to IARs; questions remain if its reticle will be well-suited to the IAR and its very different tactical philosophy.  Moreover, there is the issue of existing 30-round magazines.  Due different mag well dimensions, the M27 is also incompatible with MagPul’s PMAG.

The first, and perhaps best, candidate is a 40-round version of Magpul’s well-respected PMag.  There are photos and some preliminary thoughts on the Military Times’ Gear Scout page.  When you check out the new magazine, be sure to take notice of the hilarious “Hello, Kitty”-like rollmark on the rifle.

Image Courtesy of Stickman

The next potential candidate I saw in this month’s issue of American Rifleman, which features an article on various magazines for the AR15/M16 system. Lancer Systems has announced a 48-round L5 Competition magazine.

Image Courtesy of Lancer Systems

Image Courtesy of Lancer Systems

The L5 Competition is being pitched to 3-Gun competitors, but it may be useful for the IAR or similar type weapons.

For those unfamiliar with the IAR concept, advocates of the weapon system have called for a re-thinking of “suppressive fire” laid down by M249 SAW gunners. The argument is that unaimed fire does little to deter the enemy and that the only true “suppressed” enemy is a dead one, so a Marine armed with the IAR ought to focus on aimed, lower rate fire. Given this, one might argue that high capacity box or drum magazines are unneeded in the first place. At least to me, “aimed suppressive” firing seems like an issue of training rather than new technology, but the concept holds promise.

Marine acquisition officials are considering a high-capacity magazine that could hold 50 or 100 rounds and fit numerous 5.56mm weapons, raising questions about the Corps’ plans to move forward with development of the controversial infantry automatic rifle.

Marine Corps Systems Command, based at Quantico, Va., is “seeking potential commercial sources for a high capacity magazine for use in a semi or fully automatic rifle,” with responses that were due by Nov. 17, according to a new advertisement to industry. The magazine would need to fit “the M16/M4/HK 416 family of weapons,” which includes the new 5.56mm auto-rifle SysCom is considering as a replacement for the M249 Squad Automatic Weapon in most fire teams.

Marine officials did not respond to requests for comment, but adopting a high-capacity magazine for the IAR would address concerns posed by some grunts worried that replacing the SAW with the IAR would cut firepower in situations where a sustained rate of fire is needed.

The SAW typically holds a 200-round drum of 5.56mm ammunition, while the IAR is designed for use with 30-round magazines.

Maj. John Smith, the weapon’s project officer, said in September that the Corps was “close to having a decision” on the IAR contract competition, which pits one rifle from FN Herstal, two variants from Colt Defense and one from Heckler & Koch against each other. At the time, Smith acknowledged that Commandant Gen. James Conway had questioned how the IAR will fit into fire teams, but said that his concern was “answered in short order.” Smith declined to elaborate, and Maj. David Nevers, a spokesman for Conway, said the commandant was unavailable for comment.

At the Modern Day Marine exposition held at Quantico in October, FN Herstal displayed a high-capacity magazine for its IAR variant that can hold 100 to 150 rounds. Another contractor, Armatac Industries, has approached the Corps about a 150-round magazine it makes and says is compatible with each of the finalists’ weapons.

Early in the evaluation process for the IAR, the Corps’ requirement called for the weapon to use 100-round magazines. That was eventually eliminated in favor of using the same 30-round magazines, as Marine officials sought to cut weight from the SAW’s replacement.

According to Darren Mellors, LWRC had been developing a high-capacity magazine like this for its candidate as well. I am not sure what this bodes for the IAR or the SAW, but I would be curious to see how well they perform in the field. To say the least, the BETA C-Mag has not gotten very flattering reviews. In theory, I like the idea of a system like the RPK that can alternate between drum and box magazines. However, drum magazines are much more complex and getting them ‘right’ is no easy task. It might be worth looking into 40- and 50-round box magazines akin to the RPK and Galil as another option. (For more information on Kalashnikov drum magazines, see this thorough article in Small Arms Review.)

With all this talk of high-speed low-drag mags, it is worth noting that soldiers could always use more regular vanilla 30-round magazines. These things are intended to be disposable items, and their springs wear out from repeated compression and decompression. Bad magazines are a top culprit of M16/M4 malfunctions, and they are a lot cheaper than a brand-new weapon system–particularly when the new system uses the same mags a la the SCAR. I have heard too many stories about warfighters not having enough, good-quality mags, and it is a pretty sorry commentary. I do not have an exact figure for what the DoD pays for a plain Jane STANAG magazine, but I have to imagine its less than $10. That’s $10 for truly life-or-death equipment.

He was speaking of the Marine Corp’s ongoing Infantry Automatic Rifle (IAR) solicitation, which intends to replace the infantry’s M249 squad automatic weapon (SAW) with a lighter, more maneuverable machine gun better suited to close quarters urban combat that will continue to be the predominant battle space of the twenty-first century.  The first round of the selection process has been completed, and candidates from FN Herstal and Colt Defense have advanced.  Both are well-established players in the defense industry, but the choice was not without controversy.

In recent months, there has been no shortage of aspersions cast towards the Pentagon’s weapons procurement process.  A common complaint is that high-tech, big-ticket weapons systems like the F-22 and the FCS are inappropriate for combating low-tech global insurgencies.  Other analysts have critiqued the Department of Defense’s freewheeling spending and lack of accountability.  In one notable example, journalist David Axe, author of War Bots, has pointed to the private sector and the use of lead systems integrators (LSI) as a source of the most egregious oversights in Defense Department procurement.  There is some indication that reform is on the horizon.  Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has put contractors on notice that “the spigot of defense funding opened by 9/11 is closing.”

However, there has been little said about how institutional culture of the Pentagon affects weapons buying.  Culture—particularly mapping “the human terrain”—has become an important lens to examine our enemies, but rarely do we turn that lens on ourselves.  Most famously, John Nagl examined the institutional cultures of the British military and the American military in order to understand why one succeeded and the other failed to defeat insurgencies in Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife.  As we will see, the IAR solicitation demonstrates a latent cultural phenomenon within the military that might be keeping the best weapons systems from reaching American warfighters.

As I have written before in “Technology, Risk Aversion, and Counterinsurgency,” risk aversion can make a serious impact on the choices the military makes not only about strategy and tactics but also equipment.  This institutional culture within the US military has, at times, left soldiers overburdened for effective counterinsurgency praxis.  The IAR solicitation gives some clue as to how this same mindset impacts procurement.

The most controversial element of the solicitation has been its exclusion of smaller, innovative companies from the latter stages of competition.  It is not an uncommon consideration to select companies based on their capacity to manufacture and deliver weapon systems in the quantities and time frame that the DoD requires, but the IAR solicitation goes a step further.  According to the criteria laid out in Marine Corps de-briefs, candidates must have “[m]inimal experience in large government weapons contracts of IAR size and scope.”  However, this factor alone eliminates all small companies, leaving a cadre of defense contractors only one of which is an American-based company, Colt.

One company that was eliminated was Knight’s Armament Company in Titusville, Florida.  A leader in innovation, KAC developed a rail interface for the M4A1 and M16A4.  Previously, operators had used duct tape to affix flashlights and other mission-critical tools to their weapons.  Today, militaries all over the world use this system to attach everything from vertical foregrips to infrared illuminators to their weapons.  Knight’s also manufactures the US Army’s M110 semi-automatic sniper rifle.

According to founder and CEO of Knight’s Armament, C. Reed Knight, Jr., the IAR solicitation has proven to be another red flag for contractors in already uncertain times.

“I spent somewhere close to $200,000 in responding to the RFP,” he said. “If they are going to disqualify me because they thought I was too small of a company or that I was not up to speed, then they should have put those qualifications up front so that we could have looked at that up front qualification and we could have made a judgment whether we wanted to respond to that or not.”

“I will guarantee you that the people that made the decision on that IAR not one of them have ever stepped foot in my factory. More importantly, we have more CNC table space [within the United States] than Saco Defense, Colt, and FN all added together,” said Mr. Knight.  “I just feel like if they told me that they didn’t like my gun because it was the wrong color or if was too little, too light, too heavy or whatever, that is one thing, but they disqualified—partially disqualified—it because of us as a manufacturer.”

“Of the companies that they accepted to the second level, H&K does not have to my knowledge an M- gun,” Knight continued.  “I do have one.  I have an M110.  I have a US Army type-classified rifle, yet H&K does not, but H&K moved to the next level.  Now, I could cry over spilt milk, but all those things being said, it has just cautioned me on how I bid on my next RFP, and basically that’s what it all boils down to.”

LWRC International was another small company excluded from the second round.  Their candidate utilized the same ergonomics of the M4 while employing new features such as a cleaner and cooler short-stroke piston as well as the ability to fire from a closed or open bolt.  LWRC has also deployed a surface conversion process that exceeds traditional anodizing and chrome lining.  This rifle was featured on the third season premier of Discovery’s Future Weapons:

According to Darren Mellors, LWRC’s Vice President of Business Development, there is another factor that makes the Marines reluctant to choose small companies and innovative, new weapon systems:  risk aversion.

“Often times, junior officers—say, a major—are in charge of the selection, and they don’t want to hang their hat on anything but a sure thing,” he said.  “If the design fails or the company can’t deliver, their career is over, so they choose the system that involves the least risk.”

Initiatives like the Marine Enhancement Program (MEP) and Rapid Fielding Initiative (RFI) have taken a chance on smaller companies who have provided innovative solutions to meet the needs of soldiers on the ground. However, procurement still involves a process better suited for the industrial age rather than the information age at a time when product development may only take a few months.  Complex procurement systems may be suited to complex weapons, but current processes have failed to balance government oversight and fast-paced innovation.  More importantly, the current system fails to reward small companies that operate at this pace.

To offset this disadvantage, some companies have allied themselves with larger companies.  Recently, MagPul Industries partnered with Bushmaster Firearms, itself a recent acquisition of private equity giant Cerebrus Capital Management.

“We’re more of a fast-paced entity,” said Eric Burt, product designer for Magpul.  “We’re going in knowing it’s an uphill battle [for smaller companies].  They don’t know us, our capacity, or our quality control.”

Even if the Pentagon does realize the value of “betting” on smaller companies, small companies themselves may no longer be willing to take the risk in the current climate.

“I have been very fortunate in that I have put a lot of effort, a lot of guestimation, a lot of capital into what I saw as the future and the numbers that I bet on—whether it be red or blacks—I’ve been more right than I’ve been wrong,” said Mr. Knight. “That’s not what I see in the future.  I am totally confused.  I don’t have any idea where it’s going from here, and I don’t know which color to bet on.  It could come up double-aughts or single-aughts green just as easily as red or black.”

According to Mr. Knight, there are a variety of forces contributing to this atmosphere of uncertainty among defense contractors.

“Mixed signals.  Lack of adult supervision.  The Marine Corps IAR is a perfect example,” Mr. Knight continued.  “The economy is in disarray.  The military climate is in disarray.  We’ve already seen an incredible shift from Republican to Democrat, and that political shift has got an entrepreneur, a capitalist, like myself looking at a very socialist-looking economy and saying I don’t want to give up, I don’t want to take a chance at giving up anything I have.  I’m just going to sit tight.  I don’t need to take the risk.  I have no need to continue betting.  I have what I have and what I have is safe if I don’t bet it on the next game.  I’m not going to double down, because it looks too uncertain.”

“I’m sure I’m not the only one thinking like this,” he said.