HASC Chairman Mike Rogers, Ranking Member Adam Smith, along with Reps Don Bacon and Ro Khanna published an interesting op-ed Future of US defense depends on culture shift prioritizing innovation. They covered a wide range of topics so we thought to highlight, unpack, and reinforce them in a post here.
"To get our national security right and to ensure that we maintain a strong national defense, we must figure out how the Defense Department can innovate quickly enough to keep pace with potential adversaries. Though increasing authorities have been given to DOD, it continues to struggle to adapt and pivot at the same rate as some competitors."
We fully agree the DoD needs to leverage the authorities given to operate with greater speed and agility. Of course authorities are only one piece of the puzzle. There must be an enabling culture that supports their use in the way that was intended. We have seen many indications that hindrances to using these authorities to their fullest extent possible are emerging including:
Exemptions from certain processes starting to creep back in with a bias for returning to the status quo (both DoD and Congress are guilty here).
Review boards are taking much longer spans and imposing a level of oversight not envisioned nor desired in the statute’s creation.
Training to support widespread use by the larger acquisition force is desperately lacking and many professionals still perceive new methods as risky.
Key Points
“Over the last 10 years of NDAAs, Congress passed authorities to streamline R&D and acquisition to include OTAs, MTAs, APFIT, and buying commercial.”
Last year we published our Top 10 NDAA sections related to acquisition and these topped our list.
“DoD established DIU, SCO, CDAO, Replicator, and RDER.”
We outlined how RDER, APFIT, and the Valley of Death work in the broader ecosystem and the broader reforms needed to enable their success. We were glad to see SECDEF elevate DIU and HAC-D properly fund their efforts. CDAO has some growing pains but remains the key organization to enable data and AI structures for the DoD. We also outlined a comprehensive post on Replicator to include what should and should not be included and the keys to enable Replicator success. We remain encouraged that APFIT continues to provide a value multiplying effect despite the relatively small dollars and that Replicator is postured to deliver real capability and hopefully serve as an igniter for many follow-on unmanned efforts.
“However DoD still largely follows a slow and costly acquisition process hamstrung by a focus on the process and rigid requirements than fielding a capability and achieving results.”
We helped develop a dynamic Adaptive Acquisition Framework to enable acquisition professionals to tailor in the processes, reviews, and documents unique to their programs, yet more work is needed to shape AAF implementation. This includes properly executing Middle Tier of Acquisition programs for rapid prototyping and rapid fielding. When done right, it can enable Middle Tier of Awesome!!
“Officials are more punished for failures than rewarded for creativity and adaptability. Cultural risk aversion drives a dangerous and costly tendency — one that too often results in cutting-edge technology becoming stale and outdated by the time it is put into play, if not earlier.”
We couldn’t agree more. Yet we need to unpack the WHYs. Why are so many DoD professionals so risk averse? Acquisition policies and leaders historically focused on burning down acquisition risk. Spending more time in upfront analysis, creating more documents, and conducting more oversight reviews were all put in place to ensure programs were nearly completely derisked. Yet what we really saw was that every month it took to achieve total compliance with every policy, statute, and direction just transferred risk to the operational community who are forced to operate 30-year-old legacy systems that are increasingly unavailable and costly to maintain.
When programs and organizations lean forward to experiment with a new pilot program intended to enable greater speed and agility, they’re negatively rewarded. They get increased oversight from Service leadership, OSD, and GAO. Critics who fear their oversight authorities are threatened will impose legacy requirements and thinking to the rapid initiative and seek to actively sabotage it.
Contracting officers who lean forward with novel strategies that succeed rarely stand up and champion their work for others to follow. They often keep their head down for fear that some bureaucrat will find some minor non-compliance issue. New pathways and initiatives are often only rewarded with more GAO and DODIG audits (if you doubt us, look at how many GAO reviews were conducted on the Software Pathway before it even had two years in execution). That culture must change.
“We also need to change how DOD interacts with Congress. Bold ideas require early collaboration which does not fit into the model where nothing can be disclosed or discussed with Congress until the president’s budget is released.”
Agreed. This includes initiatives like Replicator as well as the annual defense budget development and execution. We need greater collaboration early and throughout the PPBE budget processes between the Services and OSD along with DoD and Congress. The complexity of the budget documents and the various initiatives underway demands more than a couple briefings and some static responses. DoD leaders and key congressional members need to be in constant communication, they need to reach a common understanding on the strategic objectives, then work together on how to best achieve them.
“The FY24 NDAA tasks DOD with modernizing the requirements process by avoiding prescriptive language, focusing on mission outcomes and assessed threats, enabling a more iterative and collaborative approach with the services and maximizing the use of commercial products. We expect to be briefed on an interim implementation report in the coming weeks. Getting this right is an absolute imperative.”
The time has come to Modernize Defense Requirements for the 21st Century. The Atlantic Council Commission on Defense Innovation Adoption made this a key recommendation which was codified in the FY24 NDAA Section 811 that the department is working through. We need new models and a focus on Being Responsive to the Combatant Commanders.
“Finally, Congress itself is part of the problem. Parochialism, overly restrictive and inflexible appropriations, risk aversion and an unfortunate habit of killing messengers — to say nothing of the corrosive and wasteful use of continuing resolutions — create dangerous barriers to agility and innovation. The final report of the PPBE Reform Commission lays out many of these issues in more detail.”
This starts by rebuilding trust between the department and Congress through increased collaboration, transparency, and authorities. DoD needs fewer colors of money, consolidated program element accounts, increased flexibility to shift funds and operations, threats, and technologies rapidly change, and modern budget documents to enable Congress to pass a budget on time. We applaud the great work of the PPBE Reform Commission and outlined first steps to implement their recommendations.
“We have the most innovative economy in the world. We have the best universities, capital markets and entrepreneurial spirit. It is our duty to make sure the government can access that unmatched advantage in an effective way to give our military what it needs to meet our national security needs.”
We’re thankful to read this piece by bi-partisan HASC leaders and are committed to working with them to enable these needed reforms before its too late.