Congress should reorganize appropriations titles (the “color of money”) to reflect the kind of life cycle a thing has, not what part of the life cycle a thing is in. Congress appropriates funding for weapons systems by title depending on what phase of the life cycle that weapons system is in: 1) research, development, test, and evaluation; 2) procurement; or 3) sustainment funded in operations and maintenance. This way of organizing appropriations creates major delays when a system transitions from the developmental stage to procurement; it takes 18 to 24 months to get the right color of money to begin procuring a promising developmental system at scale.
Instead, Congress should consider appropriating funds for the full life cycle of a given weapons system according to the kind of life cycle it has: 1) enduring systems, such as ships and aircraft; 2) evolving systems, such as software; and 3) expendable systems, such as attritable drones and munitions. Reorganizing appropriations titles along these lines would preserve robust congressional oversight while also allowing the department to more easily move programs from development into production, as it would no longer require different colors of money.
That was from an excellent paper, “Make Good Choices, DoD” by Susanna Blume and Molly Parrish at CNAS. Interesting throughout. I would say that the reclassification doesn’t really help Congress make decisions from the top-down. In the old paradigm of linear thinking, investment in RDT&E was investment in the future. Procurement was getting hardware and real stuff into the field in a couple years. O&M boosted readiness today.
The enduring vs. evolving vs. expendable paradigm doesn’t have meaning from the top-down. Congress would have to reference all the programs from the bottom up, making the classification something that doesn’t really help appropriators simply the process. While a ship hull could be enduring, would you have to break out the combat systems into a separate evolving appropriation, forcing multiple funding upon a single program again? Then the ordnance and other parts would fall under expendable. ICBMs are “expendable,” but really they will endure for decades (hopefully), and will likely require evolving upgrades to seekers and otherwise.
I say a useful reclassification is based on organization in which each major organization represents a mission area (e.g., tactical aircraft, ground warfare) which mostly aligns with commands and underneath that, PEOs. In this way, you get rid of the “valley of death” while focusing attention on the human element of organizations rather than abstract programs. Certainly, there will be overlapping interest in programs across organizations. This can never be stamped out. But coordinating committees with “dual-hatted” heads of the organizations can help align interests.
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