The head of the Army Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) is battling requirements creep by trying to convince leadership to trade unrealistic requirements for enhanced capability.
TRADOC Commanding Gen. David Perkins on Tuesday presented a hypothetical scenario where he was trying to convince the Army instead of purchasing 28 kinds of helicopters that would be “barely trainable,” he could get leadership more capability if they pared it down to six aircraft.
“We’re looking at overall capabilities and trying to layout (options) for the chief and secretary,” Perkins told reporters at a Defense Writers Group event in Washington.
Perkins said multiple factors have contributed to excessive requirements in the Army. One, he said, is excessive stovepiping. Perkins said an effect of excessive stove piping was project management tending to “suboptimize” the world around a certain weapon, driving up requirements while forgetting that the weapon does not enter battle alone.
Perkins gave a farcical example of wanting a new bayonet to be stealthy like a new aircraft, with radar absorbing paint and a new metal called “unobtainium” that stays sharp forever, to emphasize how stovepiping leads to requirements creep.
“The problem is if we suboptimize the world for this bayonet, we forget to update the rifle so the bayonet doesn’t fit on the rifle now,” Perkins said.
Another factor contributing to requirements creep, Perkins said, is unrealistic expectations, which leads to weapons programs that “price (themselves) out of business, both price-wise and (in) capability.” Perkins said one way the Army could balance this out would be investing in an initial capability to mitigate a weakness instead of “spending all this money on this tank or this bayonet.”
“I tell folks ‘don’t come to me with ideas that violate more than two laws of physics because as TRADOC commander, I can only get a waiver for two laws at the same time,” Perkins said jokingly.
Based at Fort Eustis, Va., TRADOC recruits and trains soldiers and supports unit training, develops adaptive leaders, guides the Army through doctrine and shapes the service by building and integrating formations, capabilities and materiel.