We join an interesting conversation between Mr. Battista, a Pentagon watchdog and test advocate, and Representative Sheley. They are discussing the recent roll-out of OMB Circular A-109, which added tons of controls on the front-end of the acquisition cycle. It required earlier and more thorough approvals of requirements before development.
What’s more, OMB Circular A-109 basically forbid even component and subsystem development until the need was matched with a fully articulated weapon system. That system needed to go through a Mission Equipment Needs Statement (MENS), which decided whether or not a concept is worth pursuing. It paralleled the rise of Milestone Zero in 1977 (which was canceled, re-introduced, then canceled again).
Here’s Battista:
Mr. BATTISTA. Admiral Whittle, I believe is the Chief of Navy Materiel. He is certainly not enamored with A-109. At least he did not advise us of his acceptance of it.
Admiral Armstrong, who is the Navy Chief for R&D, advised us that in his judgment it was going to lengthen rather than shorten, the acquisition cycle.
We talked to Geneial Skantze. General Skantze said if we had A-109 in the days of the formulation of the strategic triad, we would still be cogitating over the alternatives and wouldn’t have any system to offer for our Strategic Forces.
So, the people we spoke to in the military, and the top-ranking civilians, certainly did not accept A-109 or believe that it enhanced the acquisition process in any way….
“Mr. SHELEY. First, there are several things that come to mind, Mr. Battista. No. 1, many of the systems that are in trouble, coming out the end of the pipeline today, were not conceived under A-109.
There is not a system that has proceeded through the process. It has only been in operation a little over 3 years, as far as is concerned. I would grant you that formal notification, but I think this is a different type of notification.
If A-109 is genuinely followed in terms of the upfront MENS statement, you are going to come in with a solution to a known problem, not a solution in a search of a problem, which has happened many times in the past.
Mr. BATTISTA. Well, give me some examples of those many times. Frankly, Mr. Sheley, anybody who came up here with a weapons system for which a requirement did not exist should be fired. Can you give me examples of weapons systems that we have developed for which there was no requirement? […]
Mr. SHELEY. It is not a question of no requirement. It is a question of whether you have got the best solution to the requirement.
Mr. BATTISTA. Well, at what point do you establish you have the best solution?
The last was a good question, one that Rep. Sheley could not answer. There is no answer.
I would note that there were plenty of systems that skirted the official requirements process. In 1975, Major Lutton from the Marines said that about half of the developments had no requirements to back them up, but many were smaller scale projects. The F-16 and F-18, of course, had no requirement until after full-scale development started and the GAO/Congress got all angry about it. These instances were far easier to find before Robert McNamara era starting in 1961.
In many places, development experts have stated that if the requirements process were strictly enforced, then we’d never have developed any of the significant technologies. Battista is interesting because he said that about OMB Circular A-109 would have that effect, but then validated the requirements-pull approach as sound.
Of course, it is a non-linear interaction between requirements-pull and technology-push approaches. There is no one-size-fits-all for development development, because that would represent a silver-bullet. And yet, Congress and the bright minds in DOD leadership tend to believe that they can reduce development to a routine, and that they, as oracles, can pick winners and losers many years out.
If these officials could pick technologies as well as they think they could, then they would make a killing in market-place venture capital, where the biggest all-stars only get it right maybe 30-40% of the time.
Source:
“Improvements to the Department of Defense Acquisition Process: Including Certificates of Competency.” Hearings before the Investigations Subcommittee of the Committee on Armed Services, House of Representatives, Ninety-Seventh Congress, First Session, Hearings held May 19, 20, June 11, 24, October 7, November 4, 1981.
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