year.” Some, however, fear that the Sen- ate version of the FY17 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) would take DOD back to the pre-Goldwater-Nichols era of interservice rivalries and cost and schedule overruns. Goldwater-Nichols essentially removed the service chiefs from the acquisition chain of command, a move some see as a serious defect in the law.


Te very mention of acquisition reform causes eyes to roll, as Rep. Mac Torn- berry can attest from personal experience. Yet, according to Tornberry, the Texas Republican who chairs the House Com- mittee on Armed Services, “A couple things have changed in recent years. One is the technology cycle is faster than it’s ever been and it’s speeding up. Secondly, we have a greater number and more diversity of serious threats than we’ve ever faced. So, the way I explained it to the Rotary Club back home is, if it takes us another 20 years to field the next air- plane or ship, it’s going to be out of date by the time it gets there and we will not be able to defend the country.” Torn- berry made his remarks in March at the Brookings Institution. “Te necessity of getting better technology into the hands of the warfighter faster seems to me to be an imperative,” he added.


Tornberry went on to say that he’s a bit haunted by history. “Tere have been


nations that have just missed a major change in warfare and have gone into decline as a result.” He’s concerned, he said, that history “will catch up with us someday, but if I can do anything through different reforms, whether it be the organizational reform, the personnel reform or the acquisition reform to delay that day when we go into decline, then I want to do it.”


OVERSIGHT AND OVERHEAD Personnel, organizational and acquisi- tion reform are all important, but reform in oversight and regulation might be in order as well. In “Defense Acquisition Reform, 1960-2009: An Elusive Goal,” Dr. J. Ronald Fox literally wrote the book on acquisition reform, and he provided the following breakdown of the many layers of oversight:


“Each participant in the acquisition pro- cess exercises an oversight responsibility to ensure that laws and regulations are observed and programs pursued effi- ciently. Consequently, there are numerous oversight and monitoring agencies. Te executive branch has the Justice Depart- ment and the Office of Management and Budget; the Department of Defense and each military service have an independent inspector general and auditing office; and Congress uses the Government Account- ability Office for program audits and


assessment, the Congressional Budget Office for budget and program cost esti- mates, and the Congressional Research Service and Office of Technology Assess- ment for analyses. Industry has its legal resources, Washington


representatives,


and industry associations to protect its interests. Te government manager of a major systems acquisition program must be sensitive to all participants’ positions and their vested interests.”


And that’s not to mention the acquisi- tion bureaucracy itself, plus the test and evaluation bureaucracy, including


the


powerful Office of the Director, Opera- tional Test and Evaluation in the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD).


What does all that cost? What percent- age of the budget for any given program or weapon system goes to overhead? On the industry side, that’s easier to measure because overhead is built into the con- tracts. On the government side, there are no charge numbers to distinguish between direct work and overhead work. As such, it’s next to impossible to mea- sure the costs of all of


those layers of


bureaucracy—the personnel doing the reporting or testing or evaluating and the time it takes for people working on a pro- gram—in industry or government—to respond to all of the regulatory require- ments. According to Etherton, Congress


1962 and 1964 ‘The Weapons Acquisition Process’


Two innovative books resulted from the three- year Harvard Business School (HBS) case study:


•


Merton J. Peck and Frederic M. Scherer, “The Weapons Acquisition Process: An Economic Analysis” (Boston: Division of Research, HBS, 1962)


•


Frederic M. Scherer, “The Weapons Acquisition Process: Economic Incen- tives” (Boston: Division of Research, HBS, 1964)


(Photo by Horst Faas via Associated Press) ASC.ARMY.MIL 19


1955-1975 VIETNAM ERA


ACQUISITION


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