BEWARE THE RUSH TO FAILURE
ON TIME AND EFFECTIVE
Combat eyewear needs to be rugged. Rushing a delivery and risking effective- ness is not a winning strategy. (U.S. Army photo by Sgt. Alon Humphrey, 3rd Armored Brigade Combat Team, 1st Armored Division Public Affairs)
Te program was schedule-driven based on the urgency of need— the threat that biological agents would be used on the battlefields in the Middle East against American service members. But in the end, it failed to deliver the capability to the warfighter. No amount of money or demand could whip a not-ready-for-prime- time technology into shape (possibly in defiance of the laws of physics) to meet the need. Te capability required more time for research and development, a hard pill to swallow for senior lead- ers in the past and today as the pressure mounts to fix the slow, unresponsive defense acquisition system.
ACQUISITION REFORM—GO FASTER! Resources (i.e., funding) can also create pressure for a schedule- driven program. Te program’s planned research, development, test and evaluation, procurement, and operations and support funding (generally referred to as the colors of money) and the planning, programming, budgeting and execution system force each program, in fact, to be schedule-driven—incorporating an inherent risk for failure.
Tis is the dilemma facing program managers (PMs) and acquisi- tion professionals: Te pressure to close an urgent capability gap and plan the proper color of money continues at the same time that the push for acquisition reform intensifies. Go faster is the message that comes across loud and clear. Well, senior leaders, be careful what you ask for—it may be a rush to failure and unnec- essarily increase the risk of not delivering capability to warfighters.
Acquisition programs can go fast, as evidenced by the numer- ous successful rapid acquisition efforts over the last two decades to support combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, like the Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicle program. Given unlimited funding, a priority of effort and reliance on mature commercial technologies, the MRAP program is an acqui- sition success story—delivering capability to the warfighter in record time for an acquisition of this magnitude, over a $30 billion program.
In 2005, during my time in the Army’s Rapid Equipping Force, I was a team member in numerous successful rapid (albeit lower
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Army AL&T Magazine
Spring 2019
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