$
It’s clear that he approaches acquisition improvement from the methodical, problem- solving perspective of an engineer, but also from the thoughtfully considered perspective of a professor urging his students to think outside the box.
seriously eroded technological advan- tage. In his keynote, he talked about the first and second offsets, and the unprec- edented technological superiority of the U.S. in the 1950s, ’70s and ’90s. “We don’t have that anymore,” he said. “We’re much more in an even game, if you will, with the globalization of technology.”
He is not the only one who sees this as a big problem and to say, “We need a way to restore dominance.” Tat would be the third offset, even if whatever that finally may be is still open to dis- cussion. Te armed forces face a wide range of challenges with a wide range of characteristics, and “we’re asking our military to be able to do a lot of differ- ent things simultaneously—different theaters, different types of threats … counterterrorism campaigns up to major warfare against near-peer competitors in different types of domain-dominated theaters,” Kendall noted.
Addressing those threats and getting the kind of innovation that the United States needs costs money. For Kendall, it also requires re-examining how DOD does its job. “Given what’s happened in the world, we really do need to examine the way we do business and whether we’ve got it fun- damentally right or not,” he said, adding,
“I think there are some indications … that we need to make some changes.”
Te technologies used in the first Gulf War and elsewhere at that time were developed in the 1970s. “Twenty-five years is a long time in terms of technol- ogy and the application of technology to operations,” Kendall said. “Tink about 25-year increments starting with about 1865 and how much warfare changed in each of those increments. It’s pretty dramatic, and here we are, 25 years after the first Gulf War, with largely the same operational concepts, and we’ve modern- ized, we’ve improved to a certain degree, but we really haven’t fundamentally changed. … Others have been working very hard to figure out how to defeat us since then.”
It’s much easier, Kendall said in his keynote, for countries that have lost to re-examine what they’re doing and to change. “It’s harder for countries who have been very successful,” he said.
CONCLUSION Getting back to the people at the top of his list of BBP principles, Kendall said in his presentation, “If you wanted to do something easy, you shouldn’t have gone into defense acquisition. It’s full of
complexity, it’s full of difficult and tough problems to solve.”
Part of his concern for people—the professionals who keep Army acquisi- tion going—has to do with the Army in particular. “I have some concerns, quite frankly, about the Army, about the sus- tainment of your workforce as you go through what for all of us is a very stress- ing time—keeping your engineering talent pool up, keeping your contracting talent pool up, keeping your program management talent pool up, the various professions that are critical to the success of bringing your programs in. … Tose are the people that make all the differ- ence in the world,” he said.
“My themes for 2016 are, first of all, sus- tain the momentum, and second of all, keep your sense of humor, because there are some things going on that require one—to either be very, very frustrated or keep your sense of humor.”
Whatever Congress does, whatever the election brings, it’s a sure bet that Ken- dall will keep motoring forward with his own version of acquisition improvement. Eventually, if he has his way, his evolution of the process will become a revolution— that’s just what he said he will do.
MR. STEVE STARK is senior editor of Army AL&T magazine. He holds an M.A. in creative writing from Hollins University and a B.A. in English from George Mason University. In addition to more than two decades
of editing and writing about
the military, the Army, and science and technology, he is, as Stephen Stark, the best-selling ghostwriter of several consumer health-oriented winning novelist.
books and an
award-
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