The Pentagon needs to deprioritize easy acquisition performance metrics like cost and schedule performance in favor of whether a program will maximize the military’s combat capability, according to the outgoing acquisition czar.
“I would like to see things that are going to most improve the combat capability of the United States,” outgoing Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics (AT&L) Frank Kendall said Tuesday at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) think tank in Washington. Kendall was reminiscing about a story from a DARPA conference a few years ago. “I think we should think more about that than we do, particularly given that we’re being challenged…for tech superiority.”
Kendall said he’d like to bring back some of the operations, research, systems and analysis expertise that was standardized in the Cold War. He said a decision about a requirement or a system wasn’t made without consulting this expertise first to see if it would make a difference on the battlefield. Kendall said this goes along with his metric for if a new program or system maximizes combat capability.
Kendall also lamented the trend toward rapid acquisition, which he called high risk and low quality because requirements aren’t well thought out, leading to costly programs (Defense Daily, Jan. 17).
“We’re doing an awful lot of requirements decisions, in my view, on the seat of our pants,” Kendall said. “I think we can do better than that.”
Kendall said the Pentagon is a bit unrealistic about expectations for development costs. He doesn’t think it is a “travesty” for a development program to have a 10 to 20 percent cost overrun. On the contrary, Kendall thinks it is a success. He doesn’t want to set goals so that overruns never occurred because it would lead to wasted money. Kendall wants to keep the pressure on people to perform.
Kendall’s last day is Thursday. He released a book called Getting Defense Acquisition Right as one of his last tasks as acquisition czar.