I was pleased to have Pete Newell back on the Acquisition Talk podcast to discuss the urgency of getting innovative defense prototypes into the field and working with partner nations. Pete is founder and CEO of BMNT Inc., a global technology advisory firm, co-founder of Hacking 4 Defense, and a retired Army Colonel who ran the Rapid Equipping Force that fielded hundreds of products into Iraq and Afghanistan.
- 1:05 – The problem with the National Defense Strategy
- 2:55 – Hacking for Allies program
- 5:30 – Doing DOTMLPF in six months instead of six years
- 7:50 – Congress will have to drive change
- 10:00 – Acquisition risk reduction increases warfighter risk
- 12:25 – Joint assignments for innovation
- 14:40 – Ukraine’s speed to incorporate new tech
- 16:30 – Story of heroic tech transition at the REF
- 23:30 – Turning saboteurs into advocates
- 28:00 – Program Manager personal networks
- 32:50 – What to do in 3-5 years to deter China
- 35:00 – How to fix Defense Innovation Unit
- 40:00 – Office of Strategic Capital
Download the full-text transcripts
DOTMLPF in Six Months
Pete said that he applauds the work done by AFWERX and other innovation cells that used Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grants to open the aperture of new companies to enter the defense business. But many were unable to get onto large FAR-based contracts that would help transform their company and DoD warfighting. “It just created more volume against that impenetrable wall,” Pete said.
Too often defense officials are concerned with “perfect compliance” that prevents such transitions rather than a mindset of “barely compliant.” The whole system is geared for building a program of record and sustainment plan for a 30-year program, rather than something that will only be fielded in 3-5 year increments. “DOTMLPF” is the end-to-end process for fielding a major capability, including doctrine, organization, training, materiel, leadership/education, personnel, and facilities. Pete asked, “How do you do DOTMILP… in six months instead of six years?”
He brings up the idea of an innovation doctrine that will create a different kind of culture. Just like Goldwater-Nichols created joint-duty billets that were a requirement to promotion to senior positions, Pete says there should be an equivalent experience required in innovation. Perhaps an officer would spend a year at Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) or at Stanford or an innovative company, and that experience qualifies him or her for promotion to an O-6 or flag officer. For another example, Program Managers might be selected based on their personal network in warfighting and technology circles. Certainly that network is a large grading point for commercial investors selecting which founders or CEOs to back.
Perfect is the Enemy of the Good
Pete discusses how DoD acquisition obsession over risk reduction only reduces risk to the program breaching cost-schedule-performance, it does not reduce the risk on the battlefield. “In fact, every delay that you go through delivering something increases the risk to a warfighter on the battlefield.” Moreover, getting a not-perfect solutions into the field earlier actually accelerates discovery of the right technology, concept of operation, and requirement — it often leads to getting the right product at a lower cost rather than the specified product that doesn’t actually meet the need. Here’s Pete talking about how it was done at the Rapid Equipping Force (REF):
REF was about speed of delivery. We would sacrifice cost and performance for speed of delivery, which means I would accept a 70% solution that I paid too much for in order to get out to the battlefield faster so that I could get feedback on the problem I was solving and feedback on the capability I was delivering. And then over time, we would improve performance and reduce costs. So I’m gonna sacrifice performance and cost in order to gain speed. And then I’m gonna use what I learned to improve performance and drive cost down.
The current system says you have to get all that right before you deploy it, which means more than likely you’re gonna deploy something that doesn’t really solve a problem, or you’re gonna delay delivering a capability because it’s not perfect while people are dying on the battlefield.
Do you think you’ve heard anybody in Ukraine say, we’re not ready to deploy drones yet because we don’t know how to fly them? They said, give us the stuff. We’ll figure it out. And the more they gave them, the more they figured out, and then they actually got better at it. But I’m sure that the first few days of employing switchblade was probably not the prettiest thing you ever saw, but today they’re actually pretty darn good at drone attacks and it’s only been a year. In the current PPBE system that would take us five years. And in the case of switch blade 10 years. I put switch blade in on the battlefield in Afghanistan at 2011. And here we are in Ukraine for the first time actually using it.
Organizing for Rapid Innovation
Pete discusses how the United States doesn’t have decades to deter China. What is possible in the next three to five years? It requires pulling things out of the labs, commercial industry, and IRAD and recombining those into new capabilities that disrupt China’s plans. But no one is in charge of that window.
Defense Innovation Unit, for example, is not correctly organized. Pete says DIU doesn’t belong under USD R&E or USD A&S. Instead, it should have its own budget for prototyping as well as acquisition and sustainment. Currently, DIU and AFWERX think about technology transition as taking something undeveloped and handing that concept over to the traditional program offices. However, he saw wisdom in the REF organization that took more of an end-to-end ownership.
God bless the guys who designed [the REF]. They did a beautiful job. It had its own PE [budget] line that provided O&M, Procurement dollars, and a smidgen of RDT&E that was mostly test and evaluate — and had all that authority. But we also had the ability to sustain, not just for short term, but for years.
Some of the things we put on the battlefield that did not fit neatly into a program and even when I tried to transition something from REF to a program or record, I paid for the first two years of sustainment, which would allow the program to actually POM for the money they needed to take over that capability.
I think there’s some wisdom there.
Thanks Peter Newell!
I’d like to thank Pete Newell for joining me on the Acquisition Talk podcast. Be sure to check out his op-ed in The Hill, We can gain a critical edge in the great power competition. He was recently on the Agile Giants podcast. And check out the Red Queen Problem Part III report from the Common Mission Project.
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