The MCRU/Penn State Connection

The Marine Corps' Lean, Mean Research University

By ARTHUR P. BRILL JR.

Arthur P. Brill is a frequent contributor to Sea Power.

"Happy Valley" in central Pennsylvania is a colorful place to visit on a football weekend, but dreary in the winter. Penn State University (Penn State), the area's number one "business," is completely landlocked and a long way from sunny Marine Corps landing beaches in California, Hawaii, and the Western Pacific. Penn State, however, has forged a unique relationship with the Corps.

Marines pride themselves on being lean, mean warriors who are people-oriented. That is an accurate description, but to defeat its adversaries the Corps is involved in some unique and complex technology. To stay ahead in expeditionary logistics, nonlethal weapons, tiltrotor aircraft, communi-cations in urban areas, and other ad-vanced technologies it relies on the Marine Corps Research University at Penn State.

"The other services have had working relationships with major universities for years. This is a Marine Corps first," said Col. Dennis B. Herbert, assistant for program development at Penn State and a retired Marine aviator. "Information technology is advancing so rapidly, a system that uses uniforms can't keep up."

In the past, the Corps' warrior mentality, its modest research and development effort, its rapid turnover of personnel, and its relatively small civilian infrastructure hampered Marines from reaching out. However, the benefits of linking up with a multidisciplinary major research university became evident in the 1990s.

An Outgrowth of Enlightenment

"We will win in the future by building relationships with people who can help us," then-Marine Commandant Gen. Charles C. Krulak told Sea Power in 1998. "We can tie into academic institutions that will keep us ahead."

Krulak called it "leaning into the 21st century" and he used the Marine Corps' Chemical/Biological Incident-Response Force (CBIRF) as an example. Academicians and pharmaceutical companies helped produce special cameras, for example, that allow CBIRF personnel to analyze mucus dripping from victims' noses. "Why build something in our military that already exists on the outside?" Krulak asked.

The Marine Corps Research University (MCRU) is an outgrowth of this enlightened attitude. Krulak signed the MCRU contract in June 1999 in one of his final acts as commandant.

The contract appears to be a mutually beneficial, cost-effective arrangement. With no retainer fee involved, the vast resources, facilities, and minds of the 10th largest university in the United States are available to the Marine Corps. Not being limited to the expertise of a single research facility makes the MCRU unique. Because no subject is out of bounds, the entire university staff has the potential to help.

Penn State benefits only when the Marine Corps contracts work out. The number of those contracts is increasing. Thus far, Penn State has completed 10 of the 29 delivery orders funded through the Marine Corps contract for a relatively low cost of $13.5 million.

"Penn State is not guaranteed any money," said Ron R. Madrid, MCRU project manager and another retired Marine aviator. "It costs the Marine Corps no money to support MCRU. We generate revenue only when we sell a Penn State capability to the Corps."

A Rapid-Response Capability

Penn State was a natural fit for the Marine Corps. It has had a long-term relationship with the Department of Defense (DOD) and is second only to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in federal research funding. The university's Applied Research Laboratory (ARL) has enjoyed a 55-year affiliation with the Navy that allows classified work through Top Secret.

Founded in 1855, Penn State is a state-related school but receives only about 17 percent ($300 million) of its almost $2 billion operating budget from Pennsylvania. Its 80,000 students are enrolled in 24 campuses throughout the state. The main campus, and research hub, at University Park, with 40,000 students, is in the geographic middle of the state, less than a four-hour drive from New York City, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, or Washington, D.C.

Presently in the first option year of a renewable five-year omnibus contract, MCRU is a lean operation consisting primarily of one university official and the two retired Marines--who are paid by the university. Herbert and Madrid serve as middlemen between the Marine Corps and the Penn State faculty, researchers, and graduate students who work on Marine projects. MCRU is presently headquartered in the ARL, but will move shortly to a facility near Beaver Stadium, where Penn State's "Nittany Lions" play football.

"We respond quickly to the requirements of the Marine Corps," said Madrid. "There isn't much bureaucracy and we can get answers within hours."

Parameters of Fulfillment

After the signing of the MCRU contract, Madrid ensured that the relationship between Penn State and the Marines blossomed. He went to deans, department heads, and faculty members and bluntly told them about the Marine Corps. He explained that the MCRU program was not a grant, but a deliverable contract with fixed-time and cost parameters written in.

"I explained what was expected," said Madrid. "They have not let me down. Everyone is on board from the president to the individual performer. The Marine Corps will not be treated like just another customer."

The MCRU attitude and the scope of Penn State's services apparently impressed the Corps' current commandant, Gen. James L. Jones, during his one-day visit last October. To eliminate gatekeepers, Jones appointed the three-star commander of the Marine Corps Combat Development Command in Quantico, Va., as the MCRU contact.

MCRU projects happen in three ways. First, a Marine Corps sponsor states a requirement and Penn State fulfills it, provided it has the expertise needed to meet the requirement. Second, knowing the Corps' needs, MCRU hooks up potential Marine sponsors with Penn State experts--in the college of health and human development, for example, which specializes in family advocacy programs including child rearing, the prevention of substance abuse, and coping with domestic violence. (Several Marine projects are pending in this area.) Third, faculty members approach MCRU with their own ideas. If those ideas have merit MCRU will seek Marine Corps sponsors.

"Thus far, we've had an exceptional experience with Penn State," said Lt. Gen. Garry McKissock, deputy commandant for installations and logistics at USMC Headquarters.

The starting points for the MCRU were the new focus on the use of nonlethal weapons and the need to improve the Corps' logistics capabilities. Jones is DOD's executive agent for the development of nonlethal weapons, and Penn State offers the only university program focusing on that esoteric subject. The school carries out technical assessments, and human-effects advisory panels evaluate every nonlethal system under DOD consideration.

"We want to guard against developing a weapon that produces horrible human effects the first time we use it," said Madrid, who teaches nonlethal courses to DOD personnel. "We [would] never be able to use it again."

In June, 40 Marine field-grade officers are scheduled to tour the Wal-Mart district center near Penn State to learn about supply chain management. To improve its expeditionary logistics capabilities, the Marine Corps wants to know and master the best commercial practices in inventory control, transportation, and other links in the supply chain.

The Wal-Mart tour is part of the Marine Corps' semiannual Logistics Education Program (MCLEP), which started last year. MCLEP is conducted by Penn State's Center for Logistics Research from the Smeal College of Business. Ranked first by the Journal of Business Logistics, Smeal runs the largest academic logistics and transportation program in the country.

"Three years ago we realized that information technology was important and that we would make no progress until we understood how to ... [use] it," said McKissock "We needed help."

Fine-Tuning the System

The Marine Corps has always had a good reputation for supplying its troops on the beach, but up to and through the Gulf War, the Corps, and the other U.S. services, relied primarily on unsophisticated mass-distribution techniques. Without knowing how to move individual equipment items quickly, the Marines took with them everything they might need, "just in case."

"We didn't have the information and the sophisticated distribution systems we have today," said McKissock. "Our challenge for sea-basing now is ... [to] tailor the load so our footprint is much smaller."

Bypassing expensive "inside-the-beltway" consultants, McKissock contacted Penn State. Thanks to experts there from Kmart, Sears, Federal Express, Wal-Mart and others, the Corps developed its highly regarded Integrated Logistics program, which moves away from mass distribution by leveraging information to reduce inventory. Using modern distribution methods, Marines are now moving the right things more quickly to the right people.

The potential savings--in both money and manpower--generated by the program, and by the use of better business practices, is significant. Last year, the Marine Corps Material Command in Albany, Ga., assumed management of $1 billion of the Corps' inventory. So far, about $80 million in inventory has been reduced and more reduction is coming.

Penn State also conducts a four-day logistics training course for Marine base and station commanders, their chiefs of staff, and other staff officers. Last December, 36 general officers and colonels, representing every major Marine facility, attended the first session. The course will be offered twice a year.

"A base commander is like a city manager or a mayor. In the past, there were no training programs in this demanding environment, so command-ers learned by experience," Madrid said. "Our training exposes them to how industry and other organizations deal with like challenges."

The Marine logistics courses were so successful they attracted the attention of the other services, and of the Defense Logistics Agency, which has arranged a number of supply chain management and base commanders' courses with Penn State.

"The other services are taking advantage of what we're doing with the Marine Corps," said Madrid. "They figure that the Corps is a tough customer and if its needs are satisfied, that's good enough for them."

MCRU is a promising development that allows the Marine Corps to keep abreast--through an honest broker--of new technologies and management trends in the private sector. "As long as we're happy with the product," McKissock said, summing up MCRU's future, "Penn State will have an eager customer."

ARL: An Undersea Warfare Center of Excellence

The U.S. Navy established the Applied Research Laboratory (ARL) at Penn State in 1945. Under Dr. Eric Walker, its first director, the Garfield Thomas Water Tunnel was completed in 1949 to serve as a naval hydrodynamic facility for torpedoes. Walker succeeded Milton Eisenhower (President Eisenhower's brother) as Penn State's president in 1956. In his 12-year tenure, research thrived as enrollment leaped and hundreds of acres were added to the central campus.

ARL is a Department of the Navy-sponsored research facility under the auspices of the Office of Naval Research. The Navy is ARL's major sponsor, funding 75 to 95 percent of its work. A university center of excellence in naval science and technologies, ARL specializes in undersea missions and related areas. ARL's "secure" main building, about a mile from Beaver Stadium, encompasses 200,000 square feet for engineering and testing. ARL also occupies several off-campus test sites nearby and has field offices in Keyport, Wash., Warminster, Pa., and Washington, D.C.

ARL is a technologist's utopia. Over 1,000 "man-years" (equating to about 1,400 different researchers, faculty members, and graduate students) work in 66 diverse project areas. Their areas of expertise include acoustics, electro-optics, laser processing, navigation, propulsors, sonars, ultrasonic inspection, undersea vehicles, and others. Thermoacoustic refrigerators, drivetrains, and medical technology are just a few of the ARL projects that benefit business as well as government and the Navy. The ARL's thermoacoustic refrigerator prototypes have flown on the Space Shuttle, and are used to cool radar electronics aboard Navy ships.

Following are some other ARL success stories:

Various ARL water test tanks determine the acoustic characteristics of sonar devices, the strength of structures, and the viability of sensors and propulsors.

The ARL's fleet of multipurpose test vehicles--fitted with bottom-searching sonars, fiber-optic gyroscopes/guidance wire systems, and intervehicle communications--help develop unmanned undersea vehicles and weapons systems.

The unique navigation facility at Warminster, located at what is believed to be the most seismically and environmentally "quiet" spot in the continental United States, helps ARL explore new navigational and sensor concepts.