ALTERNATIVE ACQUISITION
“Fast-paced innovation requires a focus on training and culture, better supported by organizational budgets and not program budgets.”
in acquisition, starting with requirements, the program objective memorandum, and much more. Indeed, dropping the program focus would very dramatically change the face of acquisition as we know it.
Too often, Eaglen observed at that AUSA forum, the services spend years developing new operating concepts and then going to industry to look for technology to support their ideas, rather than looking at exist- ing technology and developing operational concepts around that. She cited as exem- plary the development of the Integrated Visual Augmentation System (IVAS), with the Army using middle-tier acquisition and working directly with the contrac- tor—with Soldiers and coders working side by side.
“What innovation means and what it can do is often misunderstood,” Eaglen said. “Uber … there were already driv- ers and there were already cars and there were already taxis, they just had to get the technology to totally upend a traditional system.”
With most traditional prime contractors structured around the incentives created by PPBE, it is unlikely that they will eagerly support its demise. But Lofgren isn’t advocating for its wholesale ouster. Instead, he's arguing, that “any change should move deliberately.” One of the first steps to increasing budget flexibility, he
said in a November email exchange, "is to improve program reporting and analy- sis so that the department can build trust with its stakeholders.”
Lofgren is not alone. Both armed services committees,
in their versions of the
National Defense Authorization Act for the 2022 fiscal year, have earmarked fund- ing for a commission to study the PPBE system, Lofgren said.
CONCLUSION In the end, optimism about Army acqui- sition comes from the Army's own determination to do a better job of solv- ing difficult problems. It stood up Army Futures Command, the biggest change in Army structure since the 1970s. It argued for Congress to push OSD to delegate decision-making downward to the lowest level practical. With the new authorities in contracting that Congress has given DOD, the revision of the 5000 series by OUSD (A&S) and creation of a concretely tailored middle tier of acquisition—all of this has converged to create a sense of strong forward motion.
For those accustomed to the Army forever talking about innovating but still flying helicopters and driving tanks designed in a different century, it may seem surprising that there is real innovation going on. Te Army's xTechSearch program, developed by the Office of the Assistant Secretary of
the Army for Acquisition, Logistics and Technology, is actively helping nontradi- tional contractors work with the Army. Trough that program, and with the help of creative thinking, the Army has uncov- ered some highly useful technologies. It's a savvy way to find innovation, but it remains at the small scale.
The next few years will begin to see either the fielding of the Army’s priority programs or their cancellation. No one expects everything to go perfectly. But nonetheless, expectations are high.
For more information on how defense acqui- sition works, go to
https://tinyurl.com/ km4kpt2s.
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, science and technology, he is, as Stephen Stark, the best-selling ghostwriter of several consumer health-oriented books and an award-winning novelist.
https://asc.ar my.mil
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