Fixing The Broken Procurement Process

The Navy and Marine Corps appear to be the first to move on repairing broken procurement processes. Two stories in today's CHIFO Clips discuss the moves. The first, from Inside The Navy titled "Navy, Marines Ante Up Funds For Acquisition Workforce Growth" announces a step toward resolving problems in the acquisition corps:

The Navy and Marine Corps will contribute $714 million across the next five years to grow the acquisition workforce, as directed by lawmakers in the Fiscal Year 2008 Defense Authorization Act, according to Navy spokesman Lt. Cmdr. Victor Chen.

The funds are required under Section 852 of the 2008 authorization act to “ensure that the Defense Department has the capacity, in both personnel and skills, needed to properly perform its mission, provide appropriate oversight of contractor performance and provide the best value for the expenditure of public resources in DOD acquisitions,” according to the report accompanying the Senate version of the bill. Each service is required to allocate funds for this purpose.

The Navy and Marines will use the majority of the acquisition work force funds, about 78 percent across the next five years, to “hire interns, journeymen and highly qualified experts,” Chen wrote in a Dec. 4 e-mail to Inside the Navy.

“The Department of the Navy has a very successful Naval Acquisition Intern Program and hires 400 interns per year,” Chen added. “Section 852 funding is expected to increase intern hiring by an additional 100 per year. In addition, the Navy plans to hire 150 journeymen and up to 30 [highly qualified experts] per year.”

The remaining funds will be used for recruitment and training of acquisition professionals, the spokesman said. “About 16 percent of the Department of the Navy’s allocation will be used for recruiting and retention incentives,” he said. “The remainder will fund leadership development and acquisition training for employees. This represents a balanced approach to building the right workforce between adding new talent and expertise and the retention of critical experience.”

The second story, from Defense Daily titled "Navy Updates Acquisition Instructions, Adds In Gate Review Process", announces some key procedural changes.

Navy Secretary Donald Winter has signed off on an update to the service's acquisition instructions, adding in the new gate review process as well as aligning them with the Pentagon's regulation.

"It's a combination of the DoD 5000 as it applies to the Department of the Navy (DoN) and the Joint Staff Instruction on the Joint Capability and Integration Documentation system that is in the Joint Staff instruction 3170," a Navy official told Defense Daily in a recent interview. "That's the document that describes the requirements process."

The 195-page update to the Navy's acquisition instruction was signed by Winter in November and was effective immediately, the official added.

What the Navy did was take Joint Staff instruction and the Department of Defense (DoD) 5000 regulation, which governs the major weapons system acquisition process, and put the two together in a single source of information for Navy program managers, the official said.

"What's new about this version, it does incorporate the Secretary's new acquisition governance process...that's the gate review," the official added.

The new acquisition effort had been referred to as the two pass six gate process. It is now known as the acquisition governance process, the official noted.

"That's probably the most significant change that's in this version," he added. "The overall intent is to lay out a process for how we go about acquiring capability."

Earlier this year, Winter put in place a new review process for all pre-Major Defense Acquisition Program (MDAP) programs, all MDAP Acquisition category I (ACAT I) programs, all pre-Major Automated Information System (MAIS) programs, all MAIS (ACAT I) programs and selected ACAT II programs (Defense Daily, April 17).

The memo, issued Feb. 26, 2008, "establishes a review process to improve governance and insight into the development, establishment, and execution of acquisition programs in the Navy. The goal is to ensure alignment between service-generated capability requirements and acquisition, as well as improving senior leadership decision-making through better understanding of risks and cost throughout a program's entire development cycle."

"This governance process...the significant change here...we now have the department leadership at very senior levels...the CNO, Commandant, ASN levels...collaborating in the decision making process," the official said. "That's what these gate reviews are all about."

To date, the Navy has done 39 gate reviews, he added. But even with 39 reviews run through the new process, the jury is still out on whether the process has streamlined acquisition, the official said.

While it will take years to discern if the course corrections are effective, it certainly demonstrates Secretaries Gates and Winters are taking the problem seriously. Acquisition is not really my strong suit, but readers with a better handle on the process and problems are invited to weigh in.

[Update] After chewing on this for a while, it seems to me there is still one piece missing, and that's how this statement from Mr. Gates' recent policy paper gets integrated:

When it comes to procurement, for the better part of five decades, the trend has gone toward lower numbers as technology gains have made each system more capable. In recent years, these platforms have grown ever more baroque, have become ever more costly, are taking longer to build, and are being fielded in ever-dwindling quantities. Given that resources are not unlimited, the dynamic of exchanging numbers for capability is perhaps reaching a point of diminishing returns. A given ship or aircraft, no matter how capable or well equipped, can be in only one place at one time.

This is the keystone upon which the success or failure of the whole procurement strategy depends. Considering the attention procurement problems are attracting in the policy world, Congress and, increasingly, the media, it would be best to clearly iterate an overarching philosophy and make the distinctions between wants and needs in current and future programs obvious.

SecDef's Personnel Problem

One quote from Sec. Gates' recent Foreign Affairs piece has been raising questions in my mind. Here's the statement:

One of the enduring issues the military struggles with is whether personnel and promotions systems designed to reward the command of American troops will be able to reflect the importance of advising, training, and equipping foreign troops -- something still not considered a career-enhancing path for the best and brightest officers.

This might present some challenges for Mr. Gates and his successors. As a result of a policy directive during Mr. Rumsfeld's tenure, the services are all required to create communities of officers that oversee the "advising, training, and equipping foreign troops"--the Foreign Area Officers.

These officers, while they have a background in a warfare specialty, are no longer eligible to command line units like battalions, ships and squadrons. Is there a move afoot to shift back to the old way of doing business whereby officers developed foreign area experience as an additional qualification instead of a primary specialty? It will be interesting to see if and how this personnel problem gets addressed.

SecDef's Vision Of The Road Ahead

Secretary Gates has laid out his vision of the road ahead in Foreign Affairs and there aren't too many surprises. As expected, it is a more measured and less interventionist vision which still allows for unilateral and multilateral action against threats. Here's the Secretary's thinking on the current conflict:

What is dubbed the war on terror is, in grim reality, a prolonged, worldwide irregular campaign -- a struggle between the forces of violent extremism and those of moderation. Direct military force will continue to play a role in the long-term effort against terrorists and other extremists. But over the long term, the United States cannot kill or capture its way to victory. Where possible, what the military calls kinetic operations should be subordinated to measures aimed at promoting better governance, economic programs that spur development, and efforts to address the grievances among the discontented, from whom the terrorists recruit. It will take the patient accumulation of quiet successes over a long time to discredit and defeat extremist movements and their ideologies.

The United States is unlikely to repeat another Iraq or Afghanistan -- that is, forced regime change followed by nation building under fire -- anytime soon. But that does not mean it may not face similar challenges in a variety of locales. Where possible, U.S. strategy is to employ indirect approaches -- primarily through building the capacity of partner governments and their security forces -- to prevent festering problems from turning into crises that require costly and controversial direct military intervention. In this kind of effort, the capabilities of the United States' allies and partners may be as important as its own, and building their capacity is arguably as important as, if not more so than, the fighting the United States does itself.

And here's Mr. Gates' thinking on the current conventional threats:

Even as its military hones and institutionalizes new and unconventional skills, the United States still has to contend with the security challenges posed by the military forces of other countries. The images of Russian tanks rolling into Georgia last August were a reminder that nation-states and their militaries do still matter. Both Russia and China have increased their defense spending and modernization programs to include air defense and fighter capabilities that in some cases approach the United States' own. In addition, there is the potentially toxic mix of rogue nations, terrorist groups, and nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons. North Korea has built several bombs, and Iran seeks to join the nuclear club.

What all these potential adversaries -- from terrorist cells to rogue nations to rising powers -- have in common is that they have learned that it is unwise to confront the United States directly on conventional military terms. The United States cannot take its current dominance for granted and needs to invest in the programs, platforms, and personnel that will ensure that dominance's persistence.

But it is also important to keep some perspective. As much as the U.S. Navy has shrunk since the end of the Cold War, for example, in terms of tonnage, its battle fleet is still larger than the next 13 navies combined -- and 11 of those 13 navies are U.S. allies or partners.
...
Other nations may be unwilling to challenge the United States fighter to fighter, ship to ship, tank to tank. But they are developing the disruptive means to blunt the impact of U.S. power, narrow the United States' military options, and deny the U.S. military freedom of movement and action.

In the case of China, Beijing's investments in cyberwarfare, antisatellite warfare, antiaircraft and antiship weaponry, submarines, and ballistic missiles could threaten the United States' primary means to project its power and help its allies in the Pacific: bases, air and sea assets, and the networks that support them. This will put a premium on the United States' ability to strike from over the horizon and employ missile defenses and will require shifts from short-range to longer-range systems, such as the next-generation bomber.

Then the Secretary comments on current procurement woes:

When it comes to procurement, for the better part of five decades, the trend has gone toward lower numbers as technology gains have made each system more capable. In recent years, these platforms have grown ever more baroque, have become ever more costly, are taking longer to build, and are being fielded in ever-dwindling quantities. Given that resources are not unlimited, the dynamic of exchanging numbers for capability is perhaps reaching a point of diminishing returns. A given ship or aircraft, no matter how capable or well equipped, can be in only one place at one time.
...
The Department of Defense's conventional modernization programs seek a 99 percent solution over a period of years. Stability and counterinsurgency missions require 75 percent solutions over a period of months. The challenge is whether these two different paradigms can be made to coexist in the U.S. military's mindset and bureaucracy.

He follows by noting some key institutioinal problems that require remedies:

In Iraq, an army that was basically a smaller version of the United States' Cold War force over time became an effective instrument of counterinsurgency. But that transition came at a frightful human, financial, and political cost. For every heroic and resourceful innovation by troops and commanders on the battlefield, there was some institutional shortcoming at the Pentagon they had to overcome. There have to be institutional changes so that the next set of colonels, captains, and sergeants will not have to be quite so heroic or quite so resourceful.

One of the enduring issues the military struggles with is whether personnel and promotions systems designed to reward the command of American troops will be able to reflect the importance of advising, training, and equipping foreign troops -- something still not considered a career-enhancing path for the best and brightest officers. Another is whether formations and units organized, trained, and equipped to destroy enemies can be adapted well enough and fast enough to dissuade or co-opt them -- or, more significant, to build the capacity of local security forces to do the dissuading and destroying.
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In the end, the military capabilities needed cannot be separated from the cultural traits and the reward structure of the institutions the United States has: the signals sent by what gets funded, who gets promoted, what is taught in the academies and staff colleges, and how personnel are trained.

And finally, Mr. Gates signals a defense policy that will be less pre-emptive and interventionist:

I have learned many things in my 42 years of service in the national security arena. Two of the most important are an appreciation of limits and a sense of humility. The United States is the strongest and greatest nation on earth, but there are still limits on what it can do. The power and global reach of its military have been an indispensable contributor to world peace and must remain so. But not every outrage, every act of aggression, or every crisis can or should elicit a U.S. military response.

In the big picture of defense policy, there are no radical developments to be found in Mr. Gates' thinking, though Mr. Obama and the other members of the new national security team will no doubt shape the when, where and how of any future military action. Of all the topics discussed, I suspect the new Administration will move most quickly and boldly further emphasizing and developing the domain of the Foreign Area Officer programs and continue to step up military-to-military contacts and training.

From the perspective of the Sea Services, there's nothing in the Secretary's piece that signals a dramatic departure from current force structure and shipbuilding plans, though I expect pressure to fix the procurement process to increase and the tendency to always build platforms a generation ahead of competitors to diminish.

Are You Smarter Than A Politician?

The Intercollegiate Studies Institute reminds us of something to keep in mind when elected officials are involved:

Of the 2,508 People surveyed, 164 say they have held an elected government office at least once in their life. Their average score on the civic literacy test is 44%, compared to 49% for those who have not held an elected office. Officeholders are less likely than other respondents to correctly answer 29 of the 33 test questions.

In the interest of full disclosure, I took the test and got 33 of 33 questions correct, though I have been having a rather good day. The political distribution of the office holders in the sample closely matches the distribution in the population, so the result appears to be a measure of bipartisan and nonpartisan ignorance.

The Yankee Sailor, TAD To ID

Galrahn has graciously offered me the opportunity to blog here for the next five months or so and I've accepted. The job I'm in right now doesn't allow me the time to maintain my regular blog properly. For those of you that don't already know me, my profile is available at The Yankee Sailor.

See ya 'round the waterfront!