The U.S. Marine Corps has established a new center at its headquarters in Quantico, Virginia, that will first prioritize the rapid development of counter-unmanned aerial system technologies, Breaking Defense reported Tuesday.
The Fusion Center aims to restart the maturation of new capabilities developed by the Rapid Capabilities Office to bridge the “valley of death,” or the transition of technologies from development to full-scale production.
With the new center, the Marine Corps’ acquisition and requirements directorate can more effectively match the service branch’s mission requirements with the technologies it develops.
“Instead of really focusing on building new things and adding to the pile, we recognized. … We need to build an organization in the middle that allowed us to transition capabilities out of this incredible [research and development community] that’s out there with billions of dollars every year and we weren’t leveraging it to the maximum extent we possibly could,” said Kevin Murray, chief technology officer under the Marines Corps’ capabilities development directorate.
Brig. Gen. Stephen Lightfoot, director of the capabilities development directorate, said the goal is to get all Marines to be “able to go into the Fusion Center and to be able to talk through what are those issues that exist.”