Ernest Y. Wong

The Armed Forces Casualty Assistance Readiness Enhancement System (CARES) A Case Study in Rapid Prototyping and Design for Flexibility

Numerous government benefits are available to the surviving family of fallen U.S. military service members. Unfortunately, most of these entitlements require a considerable amount of paperwork to be correctly processed, necessitating a great deal of patience, attention to detail, and composure from families at a time when their grief is raw. Even though the U.S. Army appoints a Casualty Assistance Officer (CAO) to help surviving family members through this process, the soldiers serving as CAOs tend to be inexperienced and oftentimes find themselves challenged to provide accurate and thorough assistance. Consequently, some families do not receive all benefits in a timely manner, and some entitlements may be overlooked entirely. To help with the militarys Casualty Program, we have developed the casualty assistance readiness enhancement system (CARES) - an information system that improves how the Department of Defense cares for military families in arguably their greatest time of need

Work In Progress: College Faculty Development - Systems Engineering and the West Point Way

Over half of the instructors at the United States Military Academy are rotating military faculty members who are officers in the U.S. Army. Most have obtained advanced degrees from some of the most prestigious universities in the nation and are obligated to teach three years at West Point. By virtue of their leadership experiences and educational qualifications, these officers constitute a valuable resource. They not only teach a majority of the cadets at West Point, but they also serve as exemplary role models for the cadets. However, exceptional military service and impeccable academic credentialing do not necessarily confirm that these officers will be knowledgeable and proficient undergraduate instructors. Therefore, prior to the start of each academic year the Department of Systems Engineering conducts a faculty development workshop aimed at ensuring rotating faculty members enter their first classroom assignments as capable, competent, and confident instructors

Disruptive innovations to help protect against future threats

Innovation is back in vogue within the U.S. military. In the face of defense spending cuts and reductions in military manpower after prolonged campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S. is turning once again to developing key technologies to offset its quantitative inferiority in conventional forces. The U.S. has pursued this offset strategy twice before—the first time was in the 1950s with nuclear deterrence countering the numerically superior armament and fighting forces of the Warsaw Pact, and the second time was in the 1970s with DARPA-led efforts to gain technological superiority from enhanced intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance, precision-guided weapons, stealth technology, and space-based communications and navigation. The current Third Offset Strategy targets many promising innovations including robotics and autonomous systems, miniaturization, big data, and advanced manufacturing. The U.S. military has even created a number of new organizations such as the Army Cyber Institute to explore high-tech innovation and the Defense Innovation Unit Experimental to expedite the transfer of cuttingedge technology to warfighters. Nonetheless, some critics believe the U.S. military is such an unwieldy bureaucracy that it lacks the nimbleness to transform into a force that can win tomorrow’s wars—particularly in cyberspace. These critics also note that most of the innovation the U.S. currently seeks come from groundbreaking research—the type of innovation that is expensive to develop. This paper proposes that by adding disruptive innovations—the type of innovation that tends to be cheaper and less technologically complex—into its R&D portfolio mix, the U.S. military will not only strengthen its offset strategy, it will also better protect itself from future threats by reducing the likelihood of strategic surprise. In this paper, we review Christensen and Bower’s disruptive technologies framework, illuminate successful disruptive innovations in military history, and provide insights into how the U.S. can foster disruptive innovation.

The Casualty Assistance Readiness Enhancement System: A Case Study in Rapid Prototyping and Design for Flexibility

Numerous government benefits are available to the surviving family of fallen U.S. military service members. Unfortunately, most of these entitlements require a considerable amount of paperwork to process correctly, necessitating a great deal of patience, attention to detail, and composure from families at a time when their grief is raw. Even though the U.S. Army appoints a Casualty Assistance Officer (CAO) to help surviving family members through this process, the soldiers serving as CAOs tend to be inexperienced and oftentimes find themselves challenged to provide accurate and thorough assistance. Consequently, some families do not receive all benefits in a timely manner, and some entitlements may be overlooked entirely. To help with the military’s Casualty Program, we have developed the Casualty Assistance Readiness Enhancement System (CARES), an information system that improves how the Department of the Army cares for military families in arguably their greatest time of need. The tool and associated process reduced the time required to complete forms, reduced the potential for errors on repetitive information, assisted CAOs through the process, and provided electronic copies of completed forms.

Work in Progress: Project MathWORKS! Introducing Operations Research to High Schools

Project MathWORKS! reaches out to high school math and science instructors, introduces them to operations research methods that help solve real-world problems, and excites them into teaching math in ways that help improve student learning. Instructors and undergraduates at the United States Military Academy conduct workshops that relate mathematical ideas to familiar context - such as reducing waiting time in a fast food restaurant, maximizing profit for a manufacturing company, or choosing of the most appropriate college upon graduating from high school - so that high school instructors can then incorporate the material into their classrooms. MathWORKS! seeks to introduce practical methods and tools that help promote the love of learning, dispel the notion that mathematics is incomprehensible, and empower teachers and students alike with the capacity and imagination to leverage math in the solution of everyday problems. In short, MathWORKS! aims to show that math does actually work