The Defense Science Board’s good rep faces a keen challenge with a 2006 summer study tasking—identify new ways the military can “counter or negate [non-state actor] safe havens and provide more effective capability in the new mission areas [of stability operations and domestic civil support].” There are six other pieces to this tasking, which the Pentagon has called “The 2006 Summer Study on 21st Century Strategic Technology Vectors.” The tasks range from a review of previous attempts to identify critical technologies covering these missions to identification of “mechanisms to accelerate and assure” technology transition into military capabilities. Whew!
With the Air Force in the midst of its biggest testing boom in decades, the Maintenance Operational Test (MxOT) Division at Nellis Air Force Base, Nev., is making sure those tests include an often-overlooked perspective: that of maintainers.