 Okay. We'll go ahead and get started. Good morning and welcome. It is great to be here in person for the annual AUSA Small Business Seminar and Matchmaking Seminar. Virtually is fine, but I think that you'd agree that it's great to see folks in all their glory here today. So thank you for coming out. This is our 10th annual Small Business Seminar and Matchmaking sessions that we'll have today and tomorrow. So definitely I know some of you've been here before and thank you for continuing to support. Hopefully that we'll be able to provide you the information you need to do more business with the Army and other federal agencies. I am James Lloyd. I'll be your emcee for the day. Throughout the day we'll introduce our other members of the team if you got questions to assist you. I think today we have a real great agenda in store for you. We'll start off this morning with the Undersecretary Army Honorable Gabe Camarillo followed up by the Assistant Secretary Army for Acquisition Logistics and Technology Honorable Bush will come and speak with us. We might even have an opportunity for some Q&A with Mr. Bush and Mr. Camarillo if time permits. Then we'll be followed by, we have a representative here from SBA, Mr. Larry Stubblefield, Associate Administrator for the Office of Veteran Business Development from SBA. We'll be here to talk a little bit about the transition between the Veteran Administration and SBA followed by the Office of Small Business Directors for DOD panel with the DOD Small Business Director, Mr. Mita. This afternoon we'll again have a panel on Veteran Small Business Program and then we'll close it out with the Associate Director for Small Business at the Army Buying Commands. I think these are the folks that we like to say where the rubber meets the road to help you understand who to market your goods and services to. With that said I'll just just a couple of reminders. As always I ask that you silence or mute your phones or PDAs as not to disturb either the speakers or your neighbors, restrooms, some right down the hall here. If you go to this church you don't have to raise your hand to go. Just do what you need to do. We have as in the past we have the flow mics. Please, please if you have a question make your way to the mic and ask your question. I understand you to introduce yourself but we don't need your whole capability statement. Be mindful of your neighbors here in the room and ask your questions from the panel or our speakers. With that it is my pleasure to introduce Ms. Kimberly Bueller who is currently serving as the Army Director of Small Business Program where she provides executive leadership for all aspects of the Army Small Business Mission which includes a portfolio of over $24 billion of average annual contract awards of small business primes. In her role Ms. Bueller provides advocacy and outreach, develops and disseminates policies and procedures and conducts oversight of execution of a small business program. Ms. Bueller has over 22 years of services, service with the U.S. Army and a certified contract professional. Ladies and gentlemen please help me welcome Ms. Kimberly Bueller, Director of Army Office Small Business Program. All right good morning everybody. Hopefully you can hear me if at some point you can't just raise your hand let me know. I'd like to back out louder. So thank you James for for those introductions and those really important reminders as we get started here this morning. It's good to see everybody in person. Last year's AUSA was a bit of a hybrid so this year we're fully back in person. We're very excited to have the in person matchmaking as well tomorrow and as James said we have a very packed agenda today. Our schedule this morning is a little bit in flux so we ask you to bear with us. The Under Secretary of the Army has actually asked us to do a Q&A with all of you that wasn't originally on the agenda so I want you to start thinking about you know what the message of that sense right how important that is to have the Under Secretary of the Army not only come and speak with to you about some exciting initiatives that we have planned but also to give you the opportunity to engage directly with him. So hopefully you'll have good easy questions for him. You know I did want to mention if you have a specific issue on a contract or something like that you know please come up to myself or someone on the staff here I'm going to introduce them in just a second. You know he obviously is not going to be able to solve your problem for you but you know we certainly will do our best to help. I do want to thank the staff of the Small Business Programs Office for their work in helping with AUSA as well as everything else that they do on a day-to-day basis to support the Small Business Program so can I have everybody from the OSBP staff stand up please. All right so now you know who they are and what they look like and what color they're wearing so but please be respectful of somebody's running to the bathroom or to get a cup of coffee to allow them to do that. I also see some other folks here in the office from the Assistant Secretary of the Army for acquisition logistics and technology. So Mr. Singleton, Ms. Boatner thank you very much for for coming here today to hear the remarks we've been working very closely together on some initiatives that the Under Secretary is going to announce later and we have we already have the Air Force and DLA in the house as well as the SBA so everybody's very excited to be here and to engage with you today so thank you to Mr. Kaiser, Mr. Janiel and Mr. Stubblefield from the SBA to for coming so early this morning and I want to thank you for taking time out of your schedule to be here with us. I know that you have choices particularly at AUSA and where you can be so thank you very much for taking the time to to join us. I also want to recognize we have one of our CEOs from Gene Capture this CEO from Gene Capture that's one of our mentor protege agreements that we have so Peggy Salmon who's over there in a salmon colored jacket so this is one of our most successful mentor protege agreements that we have in place. I did have to cut some content out of my presentation this morning but we have information on the mentor protege program as well as Gene Capture that is has been scrolling this morning and we'll continue to scroll that information during our breaks and over the lunch period so I invite you to to look at those they're not just fillers they actually contain important information and I did want to point out Ms. Salmon in case anybody has questions about the mentor protege program from a contractor perspective she would be a great person to kind of pick her brain about how that program has been and we have a Ms. Gayne Malcolm-Packnett who is our mentor protege program manager who will be doing matchmaking tomorrow as well so I encourage you to learn more about that program okay I apparently have a clicker so we'll see how this goes okay I think it works okay so the theme of this year's AUSA meeting is building the Army of 2030 to quote the chief of staff of the Army the Army is in the middle of the most significant transformation in the past four decades as the service continues to advance initiatives to support personnel under the Army people strategy all while maintaining critical modernization priorities to bolster joint domain operations and if you were here with us yesterday you know exactly what the Army is doing in those domains whether it be the pacing threat of China the reality of Russian aggression or adapting to the perils of climate change the Army is evolving to meet today's challenges we're building upon our rich history of success and recognize the importance of today's army to achieve overmatch and guarantee decisive victory across all domains when the nation calls the Army delivers but we don't deliver alone we must have a strong resilient and responsive industrial base companies to deliver warfighting capability through contracts small business innovation is the cog that closes the gap between the current solutions and the solutions that the Army needs to build the Army of 2030 for those of you who seem to speak before you might recognize the slide but it is a little bit different it usually I'm talking about how small business professionals are those individuals that are going to help connect you as small businesses into the Army you know closing that gap but when we were sitting down and thinking about small businesses like you know this is really what small businesses do too it's the small businesses that are going to help close that gap between the Army of today and where we need to be and not just 2030 but 2040 and beyond the Army small business priorities align with both the national security priorities and the Army priorities and they're also aligned to the federal equity priorities in fact equity has always been part of the small business programs they recognize that small businesses face different challenges and barriers to entry than large businesses and as the small business programs expanded to include different equity groups such as women owned small businesses and businesses and economically underserved areas such as the HubZone program the Army expanded its contract opportunities simply put small business programs are in the Army DNA we're well prepared to meet the challenge that was set out in executive order 13985 which was the first executive order issued under the Biden administration in January of 2020 and it put equity and procurement and purchasing power of the federal government front and center and then OMB followed up with a memorandum M-2203 to implement the mandates and the called action in that executive order I bring these up because it's really important for you as small businesses to be following these federal level initiatives and issuances because they are setting the pace for what we in DOD as well as across the federal government it's setting our behavior in fact there's now been another OMB issuance M-2301 which was issued on October the 4th so right at the beginning of the new fiscal year that set a 12 percent small disadvantaged business goal for FY 2023 and if you're following the original OMB memorandum as well as the executive order you know that the call to action is to get to 15 percent by 2025 so we already have our 2023 calling card and we are we know that the Army is going to be well positioned to meet that that call to action so the Secretary of the Army issued the first small business memorandum since 2009 in April of 2022 so just this past year and this was really to implement what was set forth in OMB's original memo 22-03 so I think that really shows the commitment of the Army at the highest levels of the Army to the small business programs and to advancing the equity initiatives I do want to take a couple of minutes just to review the FY 22 preliminary accomplishments as you are probably aware there's a lot of actions that need to settle from the end of the fiscal year we don't get our official numbers until second quarter so there's a lot of cleanup for lack of a better word that goes on so anything I'm going to show you is subject to change but generally speaking the numbers don't fluctuate to any degree where I feel uncomfortable showing your preliminary numbers so as you can see these are the numbers that were pulled October the 3rd and you can see the Department of Army not only met but exceeded the expanded goal for small disadvantaged business that was set out in the executive order as well as the OMB memorandum we did not exceed all of our goals which is not typical of the Army for eight years in a row we met all of the small business goals even all of the socioeconomic categories and then something called COVID came along and the Army started doing a lot of support to the federal government particularly for vaccine procurements and what we've seen is that because those vaccine procurements go into our eligible small business spend but aren't really eligible for small business awards right Pfizer is not a small business that really does impact our overall goal percentages but I would encourage you not to focus on that because it's just part of the story so what we'd like to do is adjust for the COVID support which will be transitioning over to the Department of HHS so Health and Human Services as that spend moves over to HHS we should see more normalization of the Army's small business achievements because I think as you can see when we take COVID out not only did we meet our goals we far exceeded them across the board I mean 32% to small business of all Army prime contracts is just extraordinary and the fact that we exceeded the small disadvantage business goal even with the COVID numbers is really extraordinary so you know all of this is really the direct result of the hard work that's done at the field level from our small business professionals who are advocating for you on a daily basis one caveat the Army is also doing a lot of support for the the fight in Ukraine so we are getting replenishment funds but we're keeping an eye on how that potentially could impact our small business achievements in FY 23 because again we're going to see that those dollars reflected in the in the denominator but they're not really going to go to small business in the numerator so you know that might be a bit of a challenge but again we're the Army we accept challenge and we're gonna meet it so we are well positioned okay so as I start to wrap up I want to announce some of our upcoming small business engagements I especially want to highlight our virtual vendor engagement so we're going to maintain these bi-monthly teams live-based engagements with small business because we know that while it's great to come to a USA and to go to those National Industry Association meetings and engagements there is a cost for all of that and there's a lot that we can do virtually to continue to support and train small business and meet our training mission as well so we're really trying to bring you relevant topics as you can see there you know we're hoping to have a panel on the Army's climate strategy which I'm sure that you if again if you were here yesterday you would have heard a lot about and then intellectual property which is an area that we know a lot of small businesses need assistance with and and struggle with we're hoping to hear more about intellectual property and a little bit from the Under Secretary is definitely something forefront in his mind made in America there's a lot of energy around this right now and there's made in America office I'm up at the White House and we would like to have them come a brief you on what the changes are as well as how it impacts small business and then finally a folk I and trusted capital so this is an area where you know how you manage foreign investment right how you if you have foreign investors what you need to do in order to set up firewalls and different protocols in order to do with that to deal with that and when you're you know what considerations should you have if you have interest from from foreign investors right as you're you're looking to make your business decisions so you know that's a very important topic it actually if you were here with us today USA a few years ago I think it was 2019 that was a very popular topic and we thought it would be important to to bring that back and particularly as we're you trying to again address the challenges of our our pacing threat of China foreign investment is is very important to consider if you would like to learn more about our upcoming engagements and stay you know up to date on when they are how to register where we might be speaking other federal events that might be going on we do publish those up on our website which is osbp.army.mil we've got nice QR codes now out in the hallway that you can scan which will take you right to our website and then you just go to the events tab at the top of the page and that'll take you right to where you can register for these events or get more information and I would highly encourage you to follow us at army small biz on Facebook LinkedIn and Twitter you can follow me personally but I will tell you I am not a very good social media poster so you would probably have much better luck following us at army small biz but I'm happy to accept a request you know timeliness they're probably it's probably more timely when it's not me but I'm happy to happy to try and help as I can let's see and I see that the undersecretary is not here yet so what I would like to do is if there's any questions for me I can take them at this time and then we will when the undersecretary gets here we'll transition over to him like I said at the end of his presentation his remarks he is going to engage in a Q&A so we have two microphones that are set up so we are asking that if you have any questions to please utilize them James probably mentioned all this in the opening I wasn't paying attention so but if you could please line up at the mics that would be the the most efficient way to make sure that everybody has an opportunity so okay at this time if anybody has any questions you know I'm happy to happy to take them and if not I'm gonna have to do a song and dance so which you really don't want to see yes hi hi I'll help you out a little okay so thank you so much for your presentation with regard to trusted capital could you give the audience a little sense of where that initiative is it seems like there was a lot of heat noise around that space a couple years ago and there were some groups that seem to be leading that effort maybe I've lost a thread or maybe they've gone dark but I would love to know what the status of that is I think that's a great question and you're right there was a lot of focus on that we will be having the the DOD directors panel later and we will have Mr. Mita I learned early this morning will actually not be able to join us but there will be somebody from his office facilitating who should be able to provide a more full conversation of that but it is something that we have talked about as DOD directors so the initiative is alive and well it just you know taken a little bit of a different form right now so it's still an important topic for sure okay thank you yes ma'am hi Chelsea make it from collaborative compositions I'm just curious if you have a grip on what the increase in non-traditional spend was or non-far acquisitions yes yes so actually we track that on you know just like we track our traditional far-based contracts we have noticed for the past two fiscal years that are spent particularly on other transactions or OTAs has come down but the Army still remains the largest purchaser through those types of non-far-based agreements so that is something that we have we would like to have a better fidelity on how much of that is actually going to small business you know as opposed to non-traditional which is a little bit of a you know broad category and then when awards are made to consortiums we don't always have that level of granularity if a small business actually gets the awards but yes we do track the OTAs like I said the Army's still the most widely wide user of those we're also trying to get a better understanding of the government purchase card because a lot of purchases are made through too small business through that mechanism which you know is up to ten thousand dollars now so you know that as well is a good news story but it's sorry but it is it is a little bit more difficult because we don't have that great reporting process like we do with the far-based thank you thanks yes sir good morning ma'am Mike winners mission analytics and we are a SDV OSB and we're AV integrator so we survive generally under part 12 part 13 you know small business set aside and just make sure I understood the slide correctly it looked like the 2022 goal for SDV OSB was under right so the goal was 12.6% I think for small disadvantaged business and FY 22 and we achieved over 14% okay but specifically to service disabled veteran that looked oh I'm sorry for so for service disabled veteran yes we we did not meet the goal okay because of the COVID spend when we take the COVID spend out particularly the vaccine procurements and then there was five billion dollars to Pfizer in October so it was like what a way to start the fiscal year so we officially are not going to make the service disabled veteran on goal but when we adjust for like our normal regular army spend we are over it okay that wasn't my question I just want to clarify that before I jumped in so SDV OSB set-asides are a rarity in the Department of Veterans Affairs of course they're the majority but elsewhere and two years ago I won one from the Marine Corps and they said yeah we got a briefing on it we're like hey why don't we do this like well sure why not right what I do find is that like on unison or even on Sam the US Army I have never seen an SDV OSB set aside and I've you know won multiple contracts and you know compete for literally hundreds and they just don't exist now maybe they do in certain market areas but not in mine yet CBP FBI they seem to you know be there so the question if the goal is not met how come you know the opportunities there and I do the respond to source of sought I didn't find myself as SDV OSB comes out not an SDV OSB don't have a problem with that but I'm just surprised that that's happening in the goals not being met yeah so I think that's a fair point right and that is where we need to be using data to inform decision-making's and help that inform acquisition strategies I can't stress how important RFIs are into making those decisions and you know it's got to be it's got to be more than one vendor right who responds to the the RFIs and has done so in an appropriate manner that answers all the questions and you know shows how you can can do the full capability so we do you know utilize the full range of set aside opportunities within the Army like you said maybe not in your area but that's where I think data can help us understand not only how we buy within the Army but how the rest of the federal government or even within DOD is using those those flexibilities and authorities and I think it's a training issue I mean I think that definitely we need to constantly be on top of training our contracting workforce particularly as regulations and statutes change to make sure that they are aware of the latest and greatest and the the programs change over time and you know we even though we have requirements to take 40 hours of training every year that may not be in a specific area where there's been a change right so that's incumbent upon us as small business professionals to help make sure that the contracting workforce understands all the tools in the toolbox but thank you for your your question I appreciate it thank you and if the undersecretary shows up please come give me the hook excuse me ma'am good morning thank you for your brief my name is Mike Thompson and I'm the business development director for a service disabled veteran on small business to come just kind of a follow-up on that last question why is such a great push on these small disadvantaged businesses and we're gonna increase that to 15% and service disabled veteran on small business didn't hit the goal but I but in years past there's hubs own woman owned and service disabled always been in that 3% threshold are we going to increase service disabled opportunities to 5% to match woman owned where that has been historically or because we haven't hit it this year and I think last couple years I mean so what's going to be you know the the emphasis to increase opportunities for service disabled companies so that I'm glad you asked that because we actually have that's been part of our programming for today that we have we have a veterans panel later this morning we have mr. Stubblefield who's runs the veterans program at the small business administration so we don't like the direction that our small service disabled veteran owned dollars have been going so we are taking action and that including are the programming that we chose to provide today and it again it's something that James Lloyd is our service disabled veteran owned program manager and it's something that we've you know talked about you know how are we going to make sure that we are meeting all of our goals it has been hard with COVID I mean there's just you know when you're doing multiple five billion dollar you know vaccine procurements it's it's hard to overcome that so when we adjust we're like okay we are hitting our goal but how can we do better there has been some conversation at the federal level about what is the right time to increase all of the goals so you know please know that there are people very mindful about about the goals and you know trying to make sure that we're pushing across an expanding opportunity across all of the all of the programs not just focusing on one and the undersecretary of the army is here so thank you very much for joining us here sir I'm going to do a quick introduction and then turn the floor over to you so the Honorable Gabe Camarillo serves as the under secretary of the army he was confirmed by the US Senate on February the 2nd of 2022 and he is serving as the 35th undersecretary of the army as the undersecretary of the army he is the principal civilian assistant and principal advisor on matters related to the management and operation of the army and he's also the chief management officer of the army his prior career highlights include significant experience in law government national security and private industry Mr. Camarillo previously served as the assistant secretary of the Air Force for manpower and reserve affairs I always want to say army there and in that position he was responsible for military and civilian personnel and reserve component matters for the Air Force prior to that he served as the principal deputy assistant secretary of the army for acquisition logistics and technology helping to lead and supervise army modernization programs procurement logistics and R&D investment and incidentally we work together on small business programs when we were both over in the assault so it's kind of come full circle Mr. Camarillo's private sector experience includes legal practice at several law firms with emphasis in the areas of commercial litigation campaign finance law and government ethics Mr. Camarillo also taught campaign finance law as an adjunct professor at Georgetown University's McCourt School of Public Policy recently he served a senior vice president at SAIC where he led two business units for engineering and IT services company he received a bachelor of arts in government at Georgetown University and a law degree from Stanford University he has two children Nathan and Natalie in Virginia without any further ado Mr. Camarillo the floor is yours. Good morning everyone and Kim thank you so much for that kind introduction I think I remember doing one of these many years ago so same room same a USA but it's glad it's I'm really excited to see everyone back in person again I know it's been quite some time so Kim I do want to begin by thanking you and the army small business team for not only you know setting this event up together and getting everybody in the same room but also for all of your work to ensure that the army meets its small business participation goals I know it's been a tremendous effort with COVID and congratulations to all of you I'm gonna give you a big round of applause so I want to take a little bit of time today to talk about some new initiatives but I want to first begin by mentioning that the army's commitment to working with small businesses in general it shows up in in many ways first and foremost I mentioned earlier we do have a history of setting the trend across the Department of Defense in terms of meeting our government-wide goals for small business participation but also I'd like to say that our small business team has a history of also putting together the most innovative approaches to ensuring that we maintain that high level of participation and trying to find new approaches to attract small businesses to work with the army so just in this last year alone despite spending 28 billion dollars in FY 22 to fight the COVID pandemic we still reached in the army 95% of our overall small business participation goals and so we are in many ways the model for other federal agencies how the army does is largely how the Department of Defense does every single year but today's speech is not just about benchmarks as I know very well from my time in both the Pentagon to tours and in the industrial base small businesses are absolutely key and vital to the army's modernization goals and to our ability to meet the national defense strategy this year's AUSA theme is building the army of 2030 which requires all of us to equip our war fighters with cutting-edge technologies that will give soldiers the decisive edge in battlefields not only in 2030 but also beyond this is how we will build our enduring advantage central to the national defense strategy in many ways by out thinking out working and out producing our competitors in the areas that will define warfare for decades to come now we cannot meet these goals without contributions from America's small business innovation base small businesses in many ways are the sources of the innovation that fill the knowledge and capability gaps help us maintain readiness and they enable modernization in the future but as we all know small businesses often struggle as bear as they face barriers when trying to do business with the army the acquisition process is daunting and it can become a complex maze for even the most experienced of vendors the reality is that many of our processes are optimized for large-scale integrated weapon systems not as much is it optimized for software vendors systems engineering firms or small innovative suppliers the choice that small innovative companies face is to either compete for a very small slice of directly awarded contracts or grants or develop partnerships with large prime vendors but this path can also be challenging and success depends in many ways on key supplier relationships and frankly awareness of what innovative solutions are small businesses bring to the table similarly our integrators which are those larger primes their key to this ecosystem synthesizing the contributions of a diverse ecosystem of manufacturers suppliers and service providers to deliver capability into soldiers hands innovative small businesses help integrators with cutting-edge solutions as they build and produce the larger weapon systems that our war fighters rely on so there's a natural critical partnership that exists here and if we're going to improve our efforts to transition technology for the warfighter we must do more to ensure that integrators and small businesses can work together so today I'd like to share five initiatives that the army will be launching to help small businesses in FY 23 and beyond better collaborate with our integrators so that we get our soldiers the most innovative and decisive capabilities that we can these programs will encourage partnerships they will drive accelerated adoption of critical technologies cultivated through army and dody wide investments the first is the army's catalyst program through which we will establish a pilot program in which the secretary of the army will reserve a portion of our small business innovation innovative research grant program funding to invest in those critical technology areas that are essential to capabilities needed to modernize the army potential focus areas as we launch this first project will include for example everything ranging from smart sensors to improve decision sensitivity and detection sensitivity while maintaining a low signature it could include climate adaptive technologies that make soldiers resilient in the in the field AI machine learning capabilities for contested environments directing these investments at the secretary's level will prioritize innovation in critical areas while hopefully catalyzing private venture capital and integrator investment as well the companies that we invest in should have a higher chance of participating in those integrators programs and transitioning through that pathway though we also want to make sure that we utilize this investment to take risks and make sure that we innovate where we can this pilot catalyst program will begin in the second quarter of f y 23 enabling prototype awards 10 times larger than our typical cyber grants at around 15 to 25 million each second there is a new effort that we're starting called project vista which stands for valuing innovation with a source selection technical advantage this project will enable our integrators to receive a higher technical rating during source selection if they draw on small businesses innovative technologies the idea here is to encourage integrators to bring in small businesses help them transition and realize a return on army investments in research prototyping and testing we are currently working on identifying pilot programs for project vista based on the maturity and criticality of the designs the technology and the requirements and we hope to select one or more candidates in the coming months to try this effort so this is us trying to find a way to build those pathways to transition technologies that are outside the direct grant and direct contract award process third the army is going to build an intellectual property sell of expertise at army headquarters to provide advice assistance and resources to small businesses and the acquisition workforce on intellectual property matters small businesses as we all know in this room often hesitate to participate in army acquisition programs for fear of losing too much of their intellectual property the sell of experts that we are building in this initiative will work directly with small businesses the army's r&d community and program offices within the army to develop balanced approaches to intellectual properties that incentivize small business participation while safeguarding and addressing army sustainment needs helping the army to balance those critical needs and demands a little bit more effectively this cell will also broadly help our acquisition workforce to ask for the right amount of intellectual property instead of the typical all or nothing approach that we've seen in the past as you all know the army has traditionally cast its lot in this direction we have adopted a policy to take a more nuanced approach to intellectual property but we know that one of the areas where we are lacking is expertise in house to make it happen and to tailor those approaches specific to individual programs this sell of experts will definitely help us do that and it will help us or enable us to take a positive step in this direction fourth the army will relaunch an r&d marketplace that will connect small businesses and other technology developers with integrators and other larger primes along with rdt any funding sources and resourcing opportunities the marketplace I'm sorry the marketplace will break the model of traditional stove pipe databases and it will serve as a unique tool in the federal government by providing unprecedented transparency and connectivity across a wide range of stakeholders army and dod contracting officers small businesses that develop technology and integrators will be able to see army investments that technology maturity and assess program milestones to make informed decisions about how to navigate our processes AI and data fusion tools will ensure that programs and integrators can find and employ the right small business technology at the right time for the right programs the marketplace we hope to open later this fiscal year and finally we are adding a prime competition to our x-tech awards the army's flagship prize competition currently our innovative small businesses compete at x-tech to showcase their technologies and get the attention in the resources they need in order to transition into army contracting opportunities since 2018 we've held 20 competitions that have led to over 15 million dollars in cash prizes and 72 million dollars in follow-on r&d contracts now what we hope to do is flip the script by requiring an army integrator and one or two non-traditional small businesses team up and compete for the award the competition will drive down transition risk by incentivizing collaboration and prototyping up front winners will be eligible for a follow-on contract for prototype development and deployment and the competition kicks off in FY 23 we plan on announcing the winner of the first round of awards at next year's a USA so these are our five signature initiatives for small businesses and in my view I think they will change the game for our innovative innovative small business and industrial base and hopefully create more pathways and more opportunities to work with the army we're providing small businesses with new avenues to work with our integrators and to get their foot in the door this is a crucial investment that will ultimately help our soldiers to develop a decisive advantage over future adversaries so I'm happy now to take any questions you have in just a minute but I want to close before I do by giving an example of why these efforts are so critically important under our mentor protege program which has been around for many years we're trying now to supercharge some of the efforts that I just described there's a small business called gene capture that worked under the guidance of tech masters to develop a cost of that cost effective rapid pathogen detection technology they've built a highly portable miniaturized device to support warfighters in remote locations they've evolved their technology further in response to the COVID pandemic gene capture has been awarded multiple prime contracts including Sibbers to help them get through the prototype development phase and mature their technology and they're currently requesting FDA approval for their device this is just one of many examples of success that happens every single day and we cannot continue to meet the needs that we have to our warfighters without the contributions of our small businesses so I really want to thank you all for making some time for me this morning and open up the opportunity for some questions good morning Chelsea make it from collaborative compositions between the Sibber X tech OTS and now the catalyst do you have a transition rate or a fielding rate for any of these technologies over the past two to three years and are we seeing them being spread in terms of funding how's the R&D funding being spread yeah I wish I had some metrics that I could recite but I don't and we can certainly provide that what I will tell you is that we have made over the last three or four years in the army a more determined effort to bring in and attract those nontraditionals what the metrics do show that is in the last three years the army by far across the Department of Defense has been the largest user of OTA agreements specifically I think even accounting for COVID I think we are dwarfing what the other services are doing that is a positive step in the right direction but I think that we can do more and we'll continue to gather data on those efforts Good morning sir good to see you again Good to see you Met at the AI for summative and Jags Kandisamy CEO of Layton AI couple of questions one is how do we participate in the project with the early stages we create candidate in that second question is I've been walking around the halls of the convention center and I see a lot of army folks walking up to traditional companies asking about job openings and stuff with the mentor protege program why not extend that to transition some of those folks to work with folks like us small business so we get to experience some of their their experiences and help us integrate better with us supplying for the army so two great questions so on the first one with regard to project Vista again we're doing something a little bit novel here we're looking at our source selection evaluation criteria to find ways to provide extra credit if you will or incentives for integrators to work with you know designated small businesses and also in those critical technology areas that we think are going to be so important for the army how we do that is going to be a process where we work with the industrial base to get some feedback and we're going to definitely want to pilot this at first we're probably going to pilot it at first with some of the smaller programs in the army at the a cat to a cat 3 level for example and we're in the process right now of surveying the landscape to look at which programs have upcoming developmental milestones that will make themselves good candidates for this type of an effort we hope to have some feedback pretty soon about which programs will use we're working our way through that but certainly in terms of ideas about how to make the project successful ultimately how we hope to scale it out I encourage you to reach out to Kim Bueller who is here from our small business programs office and to of course to a salt who handles the acquisition process for all of our programs of record and although he was originally going to be here he couldn't be here is Doug Bush our current assault he is well aware of this he is working in partnership with Kim to make sure that we get this program off the ground now your second question was about talent and making sure that you know that talent can be widely accessed throughout the industrial base both large and small to be very clear I don't think we encourage in the army anybody to go look for jobs at a USA so I just want to be absolutely clear about that but but I do think the issue of permeability of talent is really important I'll tell you although it's not directly related I do believe that there is value in and we have lots of training with industry programs and I know in the last few years the Department of Defense had opportunities to have even talent exchanges where folks from the industrial base worked in the Department of Defense in various offices whether it was contracting organization a PEO or in some cases here at the headquarters we'd like to find ways to expand those talent exchange programs because I think it really benefits everybody I think the value to our small business innovation base is that it gives you better awareness of what opportunities exist how to navigate the process and it gives you that institutional know-how so I'd be very eager to work with the community to find better ways to refine our current programs or if needed to start some new ones yeah I've got a quick question about the army budgets my name is Paul Melrose and I own Compo Tech we've done majority of defense work with the army and looking at the 22 budgets it looked like the R&D and procurement budget was down let's say between six and seven percent whereas Air Force and Navy were up 15 percent you see a lot less overall dollars going out with army versus other programs yeah so you want me to comment on that first yeah yeah so I get this question a lot right around budget rollout I'll say a couple of different things that there is first of all no expectation that all three of the services get one third one third one third in the federal budget you know we are basing our budget in FY 23 and in future budgets based on our national defense strategy there are needs for investment across the department that had been prioritized in recent years I'll give you the biggest example which is our nuclear triad recapitalization that is largely an area of investment that the army doesn't own it is Air Force and it is Navy and that accounts for a lot of what that disproportionate investment looks like and I think we're doing the right things as a Department of Defense and we're doing it in order to make sure that as a as a Department of Defense we're ready to meet whatever challenges we have I will say though that unlike the other services though most of the army's R&D budget although some of it does a lot of it does not all of it goes disproportionately to a handful of huge developmental programs like you'll see in the Navy building aircraft carriers or submarines or Air Force developing next generation fighters the army spreads its investment a little bit differently and certainly it creates in my view a lot more opportunities for small business participation so relatively speaking I think if you're a small business the Army is the best place to do business perfect that's what I was looking for hi sir my name is Adam Rentschler I work for a company called Valid Evaluation we've been a contractor to the X-TEC program since the beginning so first to comment your remarks in these five initiatives proved to me as a small business person that the army is listening so thank you so much these are brave experiments that you guys are running it's not without risk to you and your team and I deeply appreciate that my question is this what's being done right now at your level perhaps even above within the Department of the Army to make risk taking okay for people that are running programs like X-TEC what are we doing to protect the people that are taking those risks and running those experiments what are we doing to make it okay to occasionally fail in pursuit of a more dynamic army that is better better equipped in the future well two things first of all thanks for your comment I really appreciate it and the credit really goes to the team that has developed these initiatives so I'm very grateful to the ingenuity that that the army leadership team has put together ask to your point about risk taking I couldn't agree with you more but I've served in in acquisition in the army before in you know 10 years ago 15 years ago and it was a very different culture than it is today when I come back to this job in 2022 and I would characterize that in a couple of different ways you know first I think Congress led the way in 2016 by changing the culture with authorities that were given to the Department of Defense and the expectation that each of the services would utilize them so I alluded to another question earlier the fact that the army has been the largest user of OTAs we've made extensive use of those different acquisition pathways that have been made available to include those you know mid-tier rapid pathways that we now currently have I think some of that begins to change the culture the army has also responded institutionally whether it's creating the rapid capabilities critical technology office it is the leadership within ASALT that I think is eager to move as quickly as it can with programs that are now delegated down to the army as opposed to manage up to OSD all of these things cumulatively make a difference and I think they set a very different culture so while I think there's always room for us to us for us to improve I think we've made some significant strides in encouraging people to fail fast fail quickly fail often whatever the case may be but we know that by starting for example prototyping efforts we're going to begin to get after maturing the critical technologies that we're going to need I think the jury is still out but I'm very pleased with the progress that we've been making so far excellent thank you so much thank you thank you I'm Jeff McChesney I'm CEO of a company called Target Arm we've got a leading edge bleeding edge actually innovation capability that we've been trying to sell to the army for a couple of years now and I keep running up against a wall of requirements versus something that doesn't exist today in the army's purview along the way the question is actually around cybers so cybers with the reauthorization for three years in the language of the law states that open topics now must be in all the services can you articulate what the army's view of that is and how you're going to actually execute that because it'll open up the door for me well I mean certainly I think if there's ways that we can make the cyber program a little bit more responsive to unplanned requirements I'm always all years and I'm very supportive of ways to do that I'm encouraged and I'm hopeful that everything gets reauthorized that we certainly we are we are strongly in favor of that I think the other part of it is we have a gap in our requirements process that we need to address and I hear this all the time even from larger businesses there are areas where they've invested I read in a capability that doesn't have a very clearly identified proponent on the requirement side and we're starting to see this for example even in the area of logistics so you heard secretary warmeth give a speech yesterday where she talked about pivoting to meeting our responsibilities for the joint force in the area of contested logistics we are going to relook for example in that space all of our requirements some of which have not been looked at for about 10 years to figure out how do we deal with for example fuel and water distribution and storage how do we make sure that we're leveraging commercial innovation tools to ensure that we can rapidly deploy and understand from a C2 perspective where our capabilities are anywhere in the battle space particularly we're looking at indopaycom where there's the tyranny of vast distances all of these things you it works really well when you have a very clearly defined proponent and requirements organization that develops that I think where we have these gaps we're going to need to find ways to address it as you know the army has been very innovative in this area in some cases we develop cross functional teams to address capability gaps in other areas we're putting a lot of emphasis on relooking old requirements so I think depending on what technologies you were other but are you gonna look at anything that doesn't have a requirement in other words you open up the functional area to say we're looking for anything in autonomy for example which is where I am absolutely versus saying this is exactly what we want and I was trying to meet that which we don't you know it's a square hole and around big yeah no and I think we have to have that flexibility because as you're working in the S&T base there isn't as much a defined requirement and depending on where you are in the process you know there's a lot of flexibility in that space but I think we can do better with some of these more mature applied technologies that maybe don't have an immediate requirement that we're responding to today thank you thank you yes sir good morning sir dangler with DG technologies and outperform management as you're probably aware many if not most small businesses live off of firm fixed price contracts with base plus awards in May and September your office released a memorandum was talking about managing the effects of inflation okay and on firm fixed price contracts that have base plus but we currently have an inflation rate that's out of control what is your office doing and what would your advice be to small businesses about how to manage contracts that were awarded with at an inflation rate which was two to three percent and now we're dealing with nine to eleven okay and you want us to retain and hire a high quality talent and keep them in those positions so we provide continuity of operations to the force what is your advice to small businesses that are now stuck or locked into a two to three percent inflation rate where we're having to the challenge of a workforce that's demanding significantly higher yeah no thank you for your question I think it's a timely one and I think it's on the mind of many people that are here I want to first say that we are very much concerned and very much thinking about the challenges that all of you similarly situated companies are currently facing whether it's challenges with a tight labor market issues with inflation or certainly supply chain concerns in which maybe your sources have changed markedly or dried up in the last couple of years as we've gone through a pandemic all of these perturbations I think are impacting all of you in ways that are very real what I will say is I wish I had a single easy solution to say go to this person and solve your all your problems but we don't I think depending on the challenge I think we need to find ways to work with you to find solutions that will are tailored to your particular program your particular effort and we work that through the contracting process as you know very very well you know what we have done in in FY 22 and I work this personally across the Department of Defense was to make sure that we could adequately assess where we which programs are experiencing the most perturbations as a result of inflationary pressures what I found and what I heard writ large was that these concerns were starting to show in 22 but we would really begin to see them in 23 and potentially into 24 so what I would encourage all of you to do is to work with your KO make sure that those issues are well known and I will personally as Undersecretary of the Army and Chief Management Officer of the Army making sure that we are looking at the problem systemically across our entire supplier base as you know it varies by commodity it varies by geographic location it varies by the type of program that you're working on but it's all important to us because what we can't afford is to have systemic failures across a group of our programs or in an area of investment so I'm committed to working with all of you to make sure that we do it better and we will only do that if we hear from you what your specific concerns are thank you sir thank you very much hi yes ma'am little short here Martha Dixon large business you I have a two-part question you mentioned part of your five initiatives number one was the Army catalyst and the funding being ten times larger than Ciber which is great for that program but I'm wondering what does that do to Ciber right does it take the possible small businesses that are would normally go to Ciber now go to the catalyst does it make Ciber obsolete and have you thought about increasing or increasing the range of grants awarded to the Ciber program so to the last part of your question yes we're going to relook at the range of grants that were awarded as part of Ciber and to be clear this catalyst program is a portion of the Ciber effort so we're going to reserve it's a withhold if you will of about 15% of the annual program to align it to those critical technologies that are needed for the army in a way where we can make a little bit more targeted more focused and more sustained investment to help us get where we want to go at the end of the day we're in the business of ensuring that our warfighters have the very best capabilities we possibly can we're in a technology race with our near peers and really frankly all over the world so we want to do try this as an effort to see if we might be able to help some companies you know get over the hump in terms of developing with our investment some capabilities that we're going to need in the future. Thank you. Thank you so much. Hello. Good morning. My name is Xiao Bing Feng I'm the global defense lead at the Advocacy Center of International Trade Administration in Commerce Department and we help US companies competing overseas for public tenders including defense of course so I just graduated from National Defense University and one of the programs there is about the procurement so our office watched very closely on procurement in other countries one of the things that we see the pattern is that our competitors let's say China they release a tender and then one of the competitor bidders win the tender and the other two maybe you know didn't get it but the Chinese government award some kind of a reimbursement for their the efforts the time the design they put in and then you know maybe later let's say the tech architecture a bit so later they might use portion of that design for other purposes so I was wondering for the army is there a possibility that we can do something similar to help smaller especially small businesses to compensate some of the you know if they don't make it to the the bid at least compensate some of the the efforts that they put into it I think that will inspire encourage the small business to bid for these tenders because in that class we heard that if the army military has some technology and they release a bit then only these bigger companies can afford to design and take that risk to lose and then once they lose they don't get anything out of that effort that's just something that from the commerce advocacy center perspective to provide some input for small business maybe help them no thanks your question I appreciate it and have been on in industry myself so I understand what a barrier you know BNP been proposal costs can be you know to be able to effectively compete you only have so many resources as a business owner and you've got to make sure you're placing the right bets to get your company where they need to go you know I think your your suggestion is an intriguing one I think we'd have to take a really close look about you know what defined portfolios might that make sense in where there's already areas where we are funding continued development maybe through other sources whether it's through grants you know other cooperative research opportunities or in some cases you know working with even the larger businesses there are fully funded efforts to continue iterating on designs and prototypes you know from multiple teams that gives different teams at different stages of a program opportunities to continue funded work by the government I'll give you an example so our tech demonstrator programs for for example future vertical lift or what we're doing now on our option man fighting vehicle are trying to cast as wide a net as possible among teams to continue to iterate on designs as much as possible we want to keep that competition going so I think we just have to look to see how we can best target something like that something you know we can certainly explore I think we just have to look to make sure that it's something that would be sustainable over time thank you very much appreciate it hello Victor sim from a startup company we are leveraging a new technology that's utilizing nano based up yarn and the questions I have are twofold first is we can address a lot of issues in the future some are low-hanging fruit like the climate adaptive wearables because our products can generate heat and generate electricity in remote areas and it's lightweight and our our technologies at like a level four for those those product line but we can address future product lines if we can get to kilowatts then we can address drones and other aircraft and vehicles the challenge we have is when we talk to the army they they ask where you are on your technology tier and on some product lines were at level four and some we're level two so if you were me you're me sitting here would you address the level two or the level four kind of space and what's the likelihood of success if we go after the higher level tier which is unique for us but it's not changed the world kind of technology and then the second question is for the raw materials the current cost to generate 10 watts or 50 watts is about a hundred K could we ask the army to help get the raw materials so that we can bring the cost down and make it more of a commercial product so that's my two questions yeah no those are those are very good questions are very specific so I think on the yeah bd consulting on the podium so so I think to your first question you know it's hard for me to say in the abstract you know which way you would go in terms of where to invest your resources I think that's a business decision you have to make what I would tell you though is engage with a wide range of army subject matter experts because I think you know for all of us which driving us is is where do we have the most urgent capability needs something might be trl4 or trl8 but if it's not as urgent to the NDS critical requirements the army has or or capabilities we know we're going to need in the next few years even something that's trl3 or 4 might be more urgent so it just depends but I think the only way you're going to answer those questions is if you cast enough a wide net to talk to the right proponents people who own requirements people who are doing acquisition in our program offices to get a sense of that and then as far as kind of you know co-development to help make pricing more competitive and commercial I think we'd love to do it across a whole range of areas we are limited of course by the resources that we have and the requirements that we have to prioritize so depending on the technology you might find an open door just depending on what it is and who you talk to thank you last question okay good morning sir I'm Peggy Salmon with Gene Capture and thank you for highlighting us we are definitely the beneficiary of a lot of the extra work that goes into matter protege and I wanted just to say that there's sort of some soft skills that come out of the matter protege program because it's not just looking how can you be more effective on this contract or this product but how can your business become more effective which in the grand scheme of things is important but here's my question for you you've got a lot of small businesses here today and we've talked a lot about successes and hitting the benchmarks what are your biggest frustrations about dealing with small business and meeting the needs that you have well I wouldn't say it's a frustration I think I think I share frustration that they have right it's understanding how to navigate the process I think and this is true not just of acquisition or small businesses I think a lot of what the Department of Defense does it can be very stovepipe so I think very quickly when we talk to people such as you in the audience we want to point you to the program that we've had that we know off the tip of you know the tip of our tongue we've been talking about you know for the last 10 15 years I think what my frustration is we need to continue to innovate I mean if we're going to stay ahead of the curve we've got to try and even if we fail try different efforts you know try a different route I was personally tired of the debate between and it was always about value of death do we get you know more funding directly to small businesses and commercial solutions and then how do we transition them and I've answered this question a lot since I've come back to government and I said it's a very limiting discussion because you're defining only two direct approaches I think there is a blend as all of us know who have been in business different ways to get your foot in the door different ways to do business with your customer set in the government and so I think our programs our initiatives and our efforts have to span that range as well so as long as I'm here in the job I'm going to try to push and some of these hopefully all of them will work if some of them don't we'll try different ones and I think that's that's what our responsibility is is to continue to try to innovate to find better ways to tap into the innovation that all of you provide. Thank you. Thanks so much. All right. Thank you so much. Ladies and gentlemen on the Secretary of the Army our next speaker is a little delayed so I'd encourage a break in place or normally I get you up and do calisthenics but I can't do them anymore so I want to ask you to do so we'll stand by for another five ten minutes till honorable Bush