The Naval Surface Warfare Center (NSWC) Crane Division has partnered with a Department of Defense (DoD) technology transition office to speed up the fielding of hypersonic weapons, National Defense Magazine reported Tuesday.
The DoD Joint Hypersonics Transition Office's (JHTO) partnership with NSWC Crane comes as part of efforts to establish a strategy for identifying milestones and deadlines for programs focused on integrating new capabilities into hypersonic technologies.
Gillian Bussey, director of JHTO, told the publication in a prior interview that her office seeks to implement “an integrated, collaborative, enterprise-wide plan” for addressing issues such as moving hypersonic capabilities from research and development to manufacturing.
She noted that JHTO is working to identify contract requirements from the start to help improve the transition of technologies like the Lockheed Martin-developed air-launched rapid response weapon.
“One thing that we kind of thought it was missing was a rigorous systems engineering approach,” she said. “We’ll go through the list of projects and identify the priority ones and the ones that we can fund."