Leo Grassilli & John Christensen

When it comes to the federal government’s role as an early adopter of hydrogen and fuel cell opportunities, is DOD the 600-lb gorilla or too busy?

Ships, installations, weapons systems, administrative vehicle fleets, and deployed units - all are very often viewed as targets of opportunity for those who seek early adopters of fuel cell technology.  Worse, businesses looking for that first customer look at the size of the DOD budget and know that they only need the smallest bit of that budget to make their product commercially available.

The problem unforeseen by many is that the DOD budget has already been allocated because the budget has been developed from the ground up over the previous several years.   Military and civilian service-members have identified their needs to meet mission requirements and have justified their budget to superiors, and the process has been repeated as superiors report upward.  Thus, the budget process has already trimmed the fat and despite its size, the budget Congress passes annually is often the minimum amount to do the job of defending our Nation.

The question, then, is how does a hydrogen or fuel cell developer sell its product to DOD?  There are essentially three ways:  an organization can try to get a piece of DOD’s S&T/R&D budget; an organization can identify existing mission requirements that their technology can meet cheaper, better, and/or faster; or an organization can take its chances with an earmark.  This presentation will discuss the first two.

On stateside installations and with deployable units, a variety of equipments and requirements are needed to ensure mission accomplishments.  For commercially-ready and/or dual-use applications, vendors should identify the requirements of the user and then meet those requirements without making the job harder for the service-member, civilian or military.  For example, if a regenerative hydrogen-fueled PEMFC makes a better remote power source, the vendor should not ignore pack-up requirements because a solid photovoltaic system is more efficient than a foldable photovoltaic system.  While a solid system may be convenient for the developer and work well at a stateside application overlooking a fence line or a bunker, it will be tougher for the warfighter who had to pack-up the system and move it to another location.  Again, as with meeting the demands of the commercial market, it will be incumbent upon the vendor to know and meet requirements.
Alternatively, there is the opportunity to meet S&T and R&D requirements.  Each service, the Army, the Air Force, and the Navy-Marine Corps Team have developed S&T plans and these plans have been coordinated with OSD.  Each service S&T plan meets the needs of its various systems commands and additionally, there are other DOD agencies such as DLA and DARPA with separate S&T/R&D activities.  Many would-be developers do not understand how DOD activities fit the big picture, what DOD program category definitions are, or what their customers need.