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(originally printed in Encore Magazine 12/6/87)
Before me is a 431-page document entitled Program Solicitation -- FY-1988 Defense Small Business Innovation Research Program(SBIR) published and distributed by the Department of Defense. In essence, this is the Pentagon's Christmas list, covering every item and service which the various service branches would like to see explored and developed by domestic entrepreneurs.
The program works as follows: Private sector Research & Development firms match listings from the SBIR book with their own talents and submit proposals which are then reviewed by military authorities for feasibility, etc., and then grants are made to those firms whose proposals have been deemed worthy to fund further research and development.
This is a great idea. After all, scandals about Pentagon purchasing procedures and all those nice charts and graphs President Reagan shared with us for eight years have convinced everyone that private firms can do any job more efficiently than the government, right? Sure, but there's one little catch -- Very few private firms are set up to endanger their employees' lives, and those that are so designed are unwilling to do so for the SBIR program's maximum grant amount of $50,000. To me, this creates an empty market niche, one that I might profitably fill.
Here's an interesting item on the SBIR list: "Harness Force Measurement Techniques." Condensing the item description, the Army now drops paratroopers at a maximum air speed of 150 knots, and this low speed makes it probable that the plane can be hit by, for example, any armed person who happens to be riding a camel under the flight path. To solve this problem, the Army will pay up to $50,000 to any enterprising soul who wants to jump out of a plane moving at 250+ knots, just to see whether or it's safe ... Dear Uncle Sam -- Where do I sign up? I've always wanted to be a soprano... "
"Techniques for Developing Executive Decision and Thinking Skills" isn't as fine tuned for thrillseekers and those with death wishes as the item listed above, but sounds like just as great a deal for the entrepreneur who takes the project on. Basically, for up to $50,000, you have to develop thinking skills in Army officers. If memory serves, it was Rene Descartes who said, "I think, therefore I am not in the Army."
Other branches of the service have wish lists as well, and they too are covered by SBIR, with the same grant parameters. The Marines want "Small Mobile Field Bakery Units." Apparently, the Corps is still using bakery trucks designed during WWII, and we can hardly expect them to function in the field without fresh croissants. There was a time when the Marines didn't want anything more than bullets and something live to chew on; now they want crullers delivered daily and cushy embassy jobs ... Talk about having one's cake and eating it, too.
The Navy wants someone in the private sector to look into "Alternate Buoyant, Flame Retardant Insulating Materials for Clothing Applications." In other words, for $50,000 max, you're supposed to come up with some new kind of clothing material, stay up all night stitching it into a set of "Crackerjacks for the Nineties," put it on, jump off Mercer's Pier to see if it will float and, if you survive that, hold a lighter to your trouser cuff to see what will happen. I would keep this one to myself and go forward with product engineering, but Navy blue is not my color,
Technology is a wonderful thing, but to date has left the Air Force with a little problem they'd like some private sector whiz kid to help them out with. Some airborne cannon shells, it seems, are supposed to explode at the moment of contact with their targets. The problem is that the shells now being produced go off when they hit anything, including raindrops. The Air Force realizes that this situation might make for some rather futile strafing runs and dogfights, and so they're offering $50,000 incentive to anyone who happens to have some extra time on his hands and access to vast quantities of aircraft cannon ammunition and testing equipment and who, incidentally, thinks that $50,000 is enough incentive to risk blowing himself to Hell and back.
Here's one the Air Force and I would both like, going under the SBIR list name, "Shelter, Highly Erectable Dome." What they want is a portable hangar, a building large enough to house any plane that can carry it, plus heating/cooling facilities, aircraft crew/ground crew quarters, loading/unloading equipment, and maybe one of those new Marine Corps Mobile Bakeries, just in case company drops in. If I could make a building like that for $50,000, I'd have it air-dropped onto Masonboro Island and use it for concerts and other profitable entertainment events.
Some of these SBIR items seem to my admittedly unmilitary, unscientific mind to be luxuries, like this "Fiber Optic Detector for Aromatic Fluorocarbons." If Porky, the base mascot, has been sick in the corner of the Officers' Mess again, I don't think anyone's going to need fiber optic technology to figure it out. Indeed, one must suspect that some of the military masterminds that put the Program Solicitation -- FY-1988 Defense Small Business Innovation Research Program(SBIR) together must have aromatic fluorocarbons for brains.
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