I recommend reading a nice Breaking Defense article, Senate Appropriators Cut R&D To Buy More Weapons. The SAC-D recommended that the Air Force and Navy take roughly $1.7B cuts each to their RDT&E programs. Some highlights: (HT: Will S.)
- $93.5M cut to ABMS from $302M request
- $70M cut to NGAD’s $1.04B request
- Plus $1.7B for F-35s
- Plus $1.4B for Navy shipbuilding
- Plus $140M to MDA for hypersonic/ballistic tracking, and a $20M transfer to SDA for the same
- Plus $60M for Army hypersonic glide body, and $47 for test infrastructure
Perhaps because hypersonic vehicles are physical objects with relatively known CONOPS and traditional prime suppliers, its easier for them to supply the kinds of information Appropriators like.
Middle-Tier and Oversight
I want to focus on the SAC-D’s discussion of the Middle-Tier programs. I think it really shows the disconnect between Appropriators and forward-leaning leaders in the DoD. Appropriators still believe defense acquisition is a deterministic process, rather one characterized by experimental learning and incremental decisions. Here’s the SAC-D:
While supportive of efforts to deliver capability to the warfighter in an accelerated manner, the Committee notes that under current law several reporting requirements that apply to traditional acquisition programs, to include independent cost estimates and test and evaluation master plans, are not required for mid-tier acquisition and rapid prototyping programs and to date have been provided only when specifically directed by the Committee. As the Department of Defense appears to increase its reliance on such acquisition authorities, the Committee is concerned by this lack of standard acquisition information. Further, the Committee is concerned that the services’ growing trend toward procuring de facto operational assets via prototyping acquisitions may limit the services’ ability to successfully manage their acquisition programs in the long-term by eliminating the full understanding of long-term program costs upfront; unnecessarily narrowing down the industrial base early in the acquisition process; and eliminating opportunities for future innovation by reducing competitive opportunities over the life of the acquisition. Further, the Committee is concerned that budgeting for these de facto end-items incrementally with research and development appropriations instead of fully funding them with procurement appropriations obfuscates costs and limits transparency and visibility into services’ procurement efforts. [emphasis added]
… [The DoD is] directed to provide to the congressional defense committees with submission of the fiscal year 2022 President’s budget request a complete list of approved acquisition programs—and programs pending approval in fiscal year 2022—utilizing prototyping or accelerated acquisition authorities, along with the rationale for each selected acquisition strategy, as well as a cost estimate and contracting strategy for each such program. Further, the Under Secretary of Defense (Comptroller) and the respective Financial Manager and Comptrollers for the Army, Navy, and Air Force are directed to certify full funding of the acquisition strategies for each of these programs in the fiscal year 2022 President’s budget request, including their test strategies; and the Director, Operational Test and Evaluation, is directed to certify to the congressional defense committees the appropriateness of the services’ planned test strategies for such programs, to include a risk assessment.
This means that the services cannot be aggressively transforming the budget into emerging tech and new CONOPS. Even if the services submitted such a budget, CAPE, Comptroller, OMB, and others would have to give them a dose of reality, and so the whole effort of transformation is upended before it starts.
[Update: Also, I think there’s a one-time schedule benefit when Middle-Tier was started because there already were planned programs going through the process that could be turned onto the more streamlined processes. Fresh programs won’t have that head-start.]
By the way, all the requirements for lifecycle cost estimates, DOT&E approved test strategies, and so forth, must happen before the budget request, which then takes another year or two to result in appropriations. So 3-5 years realistically, even with Middle-Tier! The DoD has been able to move faster than that with Middle-Tier in the past — perhaps 1-2 year lead time — because it was flying under the radar to some extent.
Competition
SAC-D thinks that rapid prototyping, early fielding, experimentation, iteration, etc., will result in (1) the early elimination of alternatives; and (2) the reduction of competition. I’m not sure how they arrived at that conclusion. Indeed, those are the precise outcomes of the current system based on monolithic programs planned over 5 to 8 years.
I wonder if the Appropriators have been paying attention to what Roper, Geurts, and others have been doing — that Middle-Tier was OK’ed by Ellen Lord to allow subsystem prototyping and then rapid integration of high TRL components into a system at the speed of relevance. That creates an ecosystem of open standards, modular contracting, incremental development, and devsecops which allows the DoD to increase industry competition!
Leave a Reply