Here’s a slice from “The DSARC and PPBS decision making process within DOD” by Goral, Frank Ivan. Monterey, California. Naval Postgraduate School, Dec 1979.
Remember, the DSARC is today’s Defense Acquisition Board that serves as the milestone decision authority, which exists at OSD and Service levels. The PPBS and POM also exist today, they are the budgeting and resource allocation process.
Resource requirements for a new program are entered into the programming and budgeting portion of PPBS by means of the POM. Even though such a recommended “new start” does not become an approved SECDEF program by this process, it is still necessary to “line up” funds prior to SECDEF approval, because of the twenty-nine month delay between planning and budgeting built into the PPBS process.
A key point here is that even though SECDEF decisions during the DSARC process do not authorize funding, approved changes by the SECDEF to a program and budget decision process of the PPBS constitute budget approval and funding. These changes are to be incorporated into the DCP within thirty days of such a decision.
Of course, the same issues happen today. Except that the requirements process is much more well defined and lengthens the process even further. You have a time-based budget, a threat-based requirement, and a technical event-based acquisition process. They are all sequential. It is difficult to imagine they could ever perfectly align.
Therefore, you have the common case where everyone is anticipating a program, and therefore they start lining up the money years ahead of time in anticipation that all the other program documentation and approvals will go smoothly. If money is going to be there is a timely way, then the bureaucracy has to anticipate technologies, threats, and leadership approval. That means a recap or logical follow on to existing systems, never anything new or innovative.
Consider what actually happens. The bureaucracy lines up a program, sends it on up to leadership who only has the ability to do two things: (1) delay the program by requesting more information, and (2) rubber stamp the proposal. When the money needed to be lined up years ago, leadership was likely not even present in the building. So to feel useful, leadership is inclined to simply request more studies and delay. No one wants to be a rubber stamp.
The whole thing makes no sense. Decisions on process have to be started before relevant information is available to understand whether the program decision was wise. Then, a 30 year program gets started on the basis of (literally irresponsible) opinions rather than empirical evidence. This is what continues to exist in DoD today.
It all made sense and worked fine when “the threat” was the Soviet Union extending indefinitely into the future and the reason for the DOD’s existence was to deter a world war with same, and win it, if deterrence failed.
The PPBES works fine for the kind of big threat the Soviet Union represented. Smaller threats, not so much. Note that the CIA has not needed a PPBES to wage its (generally successful) fight against international terrorism. And one could argue that the “biggest” threat facing the US these days is domestic authoritarianism, which is in DOJ’s and DHS’s bailiwick, not DOD’s, and DOJ and DHS aren’t using PPBES either.
Trying to use the PPBES to successfully do something other than what was designed for has proven to be difficult. Maybe it’s time to stop expecting it to.