By Carlo Munoz
NATIONAL HARBOR, Md.–Navy acquisiton officials are refocusing the service’s development and procurement process to ensure much-needed capabilities make their way to the field faster, rather than languish in service red tape, according to two top service leaders.
The crux of this effort will be to move integral warfighting systems into the “fast lane” by leveraging lessons learned from previous acquisition programs and technological advances made in the commercial sector, according to Navy procurement executive Sean Stackley.
Far too often service program officials fail to incorporate these aspects into system development, resulting in programs that run overschedule and over budget, Stackley said yesterday during a luncheon at the Navy League’s annual Sea, Air and Space symposium here.
The “speed to the fleet” initiaitve will incentivize defense firms to get systems to the field faster, while still adhering to the service’s cost and efficiency goals, the service acquisition chief said.
Moreover, the initiative will also look to get promising technologies and system applications to develop into full-fledged programs, if they can be shown as critical to key Navy warfighting capabilities. Many times, Stackley said, these technologies get bogged down in the early stages of research and development, never being able to bridge themselves into a full program, despite their clear benefits to the fleet.
This effort, he added, will look to make sure those technologies do not get left behind.
When asked if the sea service would have to undergo a formal change in its acquisition process to codify this new initiative, Navy Undersecretary Bob Work said such as step was unecessary.
“We do not need to formalize it” into the service’s current procurement process, Work told reporters shortly after Stackley’s speech. Rather, the focus on speed–as well as cost and capabiltiy–will be validated via regular performance reviews of current contracts, and a willingness to cancel contracts that do not meet those criteria, he added.
While this initiaitve does put a premium on speed in the acquisition proces, Stackley and Work both reemphasized that cost and capability would remain king, in terms of future procurement decisions.
“Not everything we want to do we are going to be able to do, [so] we ask ourselves ‘how much does it cost, what capabilities does it buy us, can we afford it and how can we make it more affordable,'” Work said. “So the companies that can prove that they can deliver a good product…[and] speed it to the fleet, they are going to get more contracts.”
This approach to how the Navy will buy what it needs will also be tempered by the service’s ongoing plan to continue the efficiencies initiative spearheaded by Defense Secretary Robert Gates, as well as anticipated shrinking budget toplines across the services and the Pentagon.
That fiscal reality, according to Work, will be all the performance incentive industry will need, if they want to continue doing business with the Navy.
“That is the incentive…everyone will have to get into the [mindset] of competing for a smaller amount of [defense] dollars and performing,” Work said. “If they do not perform, we are not going to award contracts just because someone has been building something for a long time.”