Breaking Defense - March 15, 2016
By Katherine Blakeley
Rep. Mac Thornberry’s proposed acquisition reform bill is a bold and innovative attempt to solve two major problems with how the Department of Defense plans for and buys major weapons systems...
First, this bill from the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee has the potential to radically speed the fielding of new capabilities in mature systems by planning for the systems and components of a major weapons system to be upgradable from the start. Each Major Defense Acquisition Program (MDAP) started after October 1, 2018 would be designed so that major system components would be built around a modular open systems architecture with a standard interface, allowing new and improved capabilities to be added in a plug-and-play approach.
The value of planning for upgradability is especially great for large, costly programs with long lifespans, like ships and planes, where the rapid pace of technological innovation means that the avionics in one airframe may be upgraded a dozen times...
Having an open systems architecture also allows the component and systems upgrades to be competed, spurring greater technological innovation and lower costs...
Second, the services will be encouraged to adapt an agile, fail-fast approach to experimentation and rapid prototyping to meet high-priority needs, add new capabilities, or address capabilities gaps with an adversary, coupled with an acquisition pipeline to bring these developments from the lab to the field fast...
Creating a rapid experimentation, development and procurement pipeline to avoid this lengthy lag time is high-risk, but potentially high-reward... Each department would have a portfolio of experimentation RDT&E funds, organized across capabilities or weapons systems. Focusing on portfolio areas where capability improvements would give the biggest bang for the buck, projects within each portfolio would compete with each other for funding, spurring fast, achievable, and creative approaches. Projects would be chosen through a merit-based selection process, similar to how the military manages its successful medical research programs...
This proposal is well-thought out and designed to avoid likely pitfalls. Using unobligated procurement funds is an elegant solution: it allows initial production much faster than the two-year budget process, and means that the new project has to be a more attractive proposition than any of the service’s other procurement priorities...
In buying weapons systems, failing early is much better – and cheaper – than failing late. However, both the Defense Department and Congress will have to adopt a more open, agile, and innovative approach – one that necessarily involves the failure of some projects and ideas. But done right, these proposals will allow DOD to benefit from greater competition and rapidly incorporate innovations and technological advances, keeping our formidable technological edge sharp.