The Department of Defense concluded an Industry Engagement Day on July 26 for the Rapid Defense Experimentation Reserve (RDER) at Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (JHU-APL). More than 470 attendees and over 190 private sector companies participated in the full-day event. These companies represented small technology companies to major defense partners.
Industry learned about opportunities to achieve the RDER vision, proposal cycle, technical priorities, capability, and challenges. The private sector learned first-hand how RDER is enabling capabilities development for the joint warfighter. These efforts will culminate with multi-component experiments that combine multiple prototypes and capabilities, expeditiously exploring joint concepts and speeding evaluation and funding of new capabilities.
"The Industry Engagement Day was a tremendous success in support of the Deputy Secretary of Defense's initiative to instill a multi-component campaign of learning through rapid experimentation of mission relevant capabilities," said Bruce Juselis, Division Chief for RDER Technical Accession and Proposal Development. "RDER is part of a Defense-wide effort to engage our innovative industry partners to rapidly develop and field capabilities needed to build an enduring advantage, and support campaigning as well as the Joint fight."
RDER facilitates the Department's efforts to introduce capabilities matched to joint warfighting concepts, transitioning these systems and approaches more quickly. The Industry Engagement Day included several classified briefings, key joint concepts, proposal criteria, and technology capability requirements. The breakout sessions facilitated discussion on potential industry proposals with RDER program specialists. The Department recognizes industry's ability to produce transformative technology, and is using the RDER initiative to leverage that innovation to advance joint concepts and associated capabilities.
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