ARTICLE

October 2004

Website Lets Sailors Suggest Solutions

by Roxana Tiron

U.S. Navy sailors and Marines increasingly are being encouraged to provide feedback on their equipment needs and quality-of-life issues.

To expedite the process, the Office of Naval Research has created a website specifically to log complaints and suggestions.

Operating under the name Tech Solutions, the $10 million-a-year project is intended to let the science and technology community get first-hand reports from the fleet, said Master Chief Petty Officer James Blessé, who heads the effort.

“Tech Solutions is a rather simple idea if you take a look at it,” Blessé told a recent ONR conference. “We have a lot of really smart sailors out there with the average age of about 22. Rear Adm. [Jay] Cohen [director of ONR] said, ‘Let’s put a group together that can tap into that resource,’” Blessé recalled. That was several years ago.

By providing enlisted personnel with an opportunity to suggest exactly what they need, gaps can be closed, Blessé said. “The scientist in the lab builds things that he thinks the ship needs, compared to a sailor who knows what the ship needs,” he said.

Blessé’s role is to act as “the conduit in between the junior sailor that has to operate a piece of equipment and the scientist that has to design it,” he explained.

“I am about as near-term as it gets in the science and technology world,” he said, noting he operates in a 12-to-18-month window. The shortest effort was accomplished in three months, while an average endeavor would take up to a year, he explained.

Programs such as Deep Blue (see related story p. 22) look to solve problems that are discerned at the commander’s level. In comparison, Tech Solutions is looking at the “deck plate level,” Blessé said. That is, he basically looks for input from E4 to O4 pay grades, he explained.

As far as programs are concerned, “I run the whole gambit; I am not afraid of taking on anything,” he said.

Tech Solutions currently is working on improving communications on the flight decks and on improving shock mitigation for rigid hull inflatable boats, Blessé said.

In the past, Tech Solutions has provided special operators with underwater communications equipment and sailors with a scrubber for the non-skid decks of aircraft carriers, which saves the Navy $35 million a year just in deck cleaning, he said.

Other efforts include the development of small-arms training devices for ships that lack realistic targets, aircraft carrier surveillance devices, an integrated database for submarine schedule and readiness information, wearable wireless computers, and air quality monitoring devices.

Responses to problems usually come from the naval research enterprise, which comprises all the labs, universities and researchers that work with the Navy. Sometimes, the answer lies in a technology program already under development.

To find the proper solution, Blessé contacts hundreds of people, he said. The result: five or six ideas on how to solve the problem, he said. “Then, we pick the one that makes most sense and review that with the experts in ONR,” according to the petty officer. Once a decision is made, the project receives funding and will be demonstrated on the ship.

Sometimes, answers are pulled out of the future naval capabilities concepts, he said. He accelerates a certain FNC technology, and then puts it back into the FNC to speed up that development.

Blessé cautioned that he does not work directly with industry. The relationship is rather indirect and involves those companies that already work with, or have affiliations with, the naval research enterprise.

“The NRE already has contracts with the industry, so that means Tech Solutions does not need to strike up another contract and eat more time. Why duplicate that effort?” he said.

Blessé noted he tries to give funding to a project within two months from when a query hits the website, www.techsolutions.navy.mil. “Sometimes it is two weeks. Other times it stretches out more, because there is more research and more people involved. Sometimes, we have to go into the joint world to see what other services are doing,” he said. However, he said it is essential to bring in the acquisition officials from the very beginning.

What makes the program work is the fact that the sailor or Marine is involved in the development process from the moment he submits his idea, “so I am actually producing something that he is going to use,” Blessé said. “The sailor that submits the request is involved in viewing the ideas that come in. He is involved in incremental updates of the program. He is involved in the demonstration, so I actually build something that the guy is looking for, and not what I think he is looking for.”

While Tech Solutions strives to find viable technologies in 12 to 24 months, it also offers a rapid response capability. “That is something I can turn around in a matter of hours or days,” he explained.

A good example is QuikClot, a rapid blood clotting material, “because it already existed,” he said. QuikClot is a sterile hemostatic treatment that rapidly accelerates coagulation in large wounds, including high-volume venous and arterial bleeding. It saves lives by arresting hemorrhage before victims go into shock caused by loss of blood.

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