House Subcommittee Hears Administration’s Defense Conversion Plans
Defense conversion was the topic of a July 20 hearing by the House Science Subcommittee on Technology, Environment and Aviation. The hearing focused on efforts by the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) and the Department of Commerce’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to help defense-based industries develop dual-use technologies and diversify into the commercial marketplace. Members of industry and regional coalitions also described their activities to shift from defense-based to commercial economies.
Since World War II, the nation’s defense industry has been a primary driver of economic and technological development. But with Cold War concerns giving way to global economic competition, much of the defense industry is seen as inefficient, outmoded and obsolete. The Clinton Administration and Congress see the industry’s expertise and technology base as a vast resource for the nation’s economic competitiveness. Consequently, the federal government plans to encourage development of dual-use technologies, deployment of state-of-the-art manufacturing and processing technologies, and retraining of defense workers. The program designed to implement these goals is the Technology Reinvestment Program (TRP), which is part of the Administration’s Defense Reinvestment and Conversion Program.
The TRP is a cooperative effort headed by ARPA (formerly DARPA) and involving NIST, DOE, NASA, and, most recently, the Department of Transportation, with funding of $481 million this year and a request for fiscal year 1994 of approximately $324 million. ARPA is spearheading the effort to promote development of dual-use technologies. Awards will be made in a number of technologies deemed critical to the nation’s competitiveness. Estimates of the number of proposals ARPA will receive ranged from 3,000 to over 10,000. ARPA director Gary Denman stated that “our mission is to transition to a growing, integrated, national industry capability that provides the most advanced, affordable, military systems and the most competitive commercial products. We are attempting to do two mutually supportive things simultaneously: stimulate economic growth and bring defense and commercial industries closer together.”
While ARPA plays the major role in promoting technology development, NIST is responsible for deployment activities, through its already-existing Manufacturing Extension Program. NIST director Arati Prabhakar stated that NIST’s portion of the TRP would fund outreach centers to bring manufacturing technologies to small companies and areas of low manufacturing concentration, programs to help states implement an industrial extension infrastructure, and a network system linking these centers with sources of new technology.
The biggest concern of many subcommittee members was whether the awards would be targeted to areas hardest-hit by military base closings. Denman testified that for the long-term economic success of the program, “it is paramount that we fund the best proposals” through free and open competition. There was unanimous agreement that the complexity of the military procurement process was a major barrier to diversification. Denman noted that a reform effort was underway. He said the TRP award process did not operate under DOD procurement rules, and would “take a flexible approach” to such issues as intellectual property rights and in-kind contributions.
Representatives of industries and consortia vying for TRP awards seconded the concern over procurement regulations. They testified to the importance of cooperation between industries, local governments, and academia to strengthen a region’s technology base. While several of the witnesses argued for greater state and local government autonomy in deciding what proposals to fund, it was Denman’s opinion that some states might not have the capability to determine the best proposals for funding.
