Journal: Intelligence & Innovation Support to Strategy, Planning, Programming, Budgeting, & Acquisition
Robert David STEELE Vivas
Chuck Spinney is still the best “real” engineer in this town–almost everyone else is staggering after fifty years of government-specification cost-plus engineering. Also, as Chuck explores in the piece on Complexity to Avoid Accountability is Expensive we in the “requirements” business are as much to blame–Service connivance with complexity has killed acquisition from both a financial inputs and a war-fighting relevance outcome point of view. The Services have forgotten the basics of requirements definition and multi-mission interoperability and supportability.
The Marine Corps Intelligence Center (MCIC) was created by General Al Gray, USMC (Ret), then Commandant of the Marine Corps, for three reasons:
1. Intelligence support to constabulary and expeditionary operations from the three major services was abysmal to non-existent.
2. Intelligence support to the Service level planners and programmers striving to interact with other Services, the Unified Commands, and the Joint Staff was non-existent–this was the case with respect to policy, acquisition, and operations. The cluster-feel over Haiti and the total inadequacy of our 24-48 hour response tells us nothing has changed, in part because we still cannot do a “come as you are” joint inter-agency anything.
3. The Marine Corps understood long before everyone else that the consolidation of many tactical intelligence billets and dollars at the unified command level was a huge mistake, ultimately stripping essential tactical capabilities from those that needed it most–direct support to Fleet Marine Force (FMF) units unable to get what they need from theater or national sources has been a major success story for MCIC.
In my view, acquisition is like sailboat racing–you win or lose the race the minute you nail down your requirements (or in the case of sailing, finish assuring hull perfection before putting the boat in the water).
If the requirements are wrong or inadequate or worse, exaggerated, the plans and programs will stink, the budget will be unexecutable, and what comes out the other end will not only be an ugly baby, it will be a comatose baby. There are many examples, but the Striker comes to mind as a classic failure of intelligence all around–including a failure to plan for long-haul liftability.
Across the board, multi-disciplinary inter-domain machine-speed processing is non-existent. This is one of two sucking chest wounds in defense intelligence today, the other one is the resistance to fully embrace what could be accomplished with Multinational Engagement on an Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) foundation. We need to launch a lifeboat that I absolutely guarantee will establish a benchmark for the classified disciplines that will save tens of billions of dollars in less than a decade.
As the Secretary of Defense goes about conceptualizing defense acquisition reform, we hope that he remembers intelligence preparation of the battlefield. Without an understanding of the totality and diversity of the threat spectrum, one cannot craft a strategy–especially if one hopes to rely on multinational partners for critical elements of support in executing that strategy. Without a strategy one cannot devise a multi-level joint-coalition-whole of government capabilities box, and the dollar actions that follow.
Acquisition reform has to start with defense intelligence reform across all disciplines, but particularly in the sub-functional area of requirements definition. Our standard was set in New Orleans in WWII by the US Marine Corps and Andrew Jackson Higgins. That standard is achievable today. All it takes is integrity. St.
See Also:
Journal: Complexity to Avoid Accountability is Expensive
Search: Intelligence Preparation of the Battlefield
Journal: The Intelligence War Not Fought
Journal: Strategy versus Secrecy
2009 Perhaps We Should Have Shouted: A Twenty-Year Restrospective
Search: Strategic Analytic Model
1990 Expeditionary Environment Analytic Model
Journal: A Tale of Two Flying Pigs
Worth a Look: Book Reviews on Innovation
Worth a Look: Book Reviews on Leadership for Epoch B
Worth a Look: Book Reviews on Peace
Worth a Look: Book Reviews on Stabilization & Reconstruction
An outstanding commentary! Steele’s understanding of the acquisition process is dead on. Many of the problems associated with military and intelligence community acquisitions such missed deadlines and cost overruns are caused by poorly developed initial requirement sheets which are continually revised as a contract is executed.
When bidding for a project contract in the secret intelligence world, I always advised my leadership to ignore the initial requirement write up, find out from the actual people going to use the product about what they needed to do their job(s), and then do an initial sales presentation to the contract specialists in which their half baked requirements were ignored. This was made possible by starting such a presentation by explaining to these worthies what the people they wrote the requirements for actually did, how they did, and why the product offered would help them do a better job. Usually this won the contract, because strange though it seems the contract specialists wrote up requirements for a product without really knowing how it would help in production or indeed what was really needed.
The military does not do this, but in this case the contractors fail to realistically guide potential customers in what is financially wise and what is not. The F-22 Raptor was designed around requirements from at least two generations of fighter pilots who provided detailed needs that were received pretty much without discussion as long it was felt the technology was there to meet those needs. The result was probably the best fighter plane that has ever been built, but also hopelessly expensive with incredible maintenance costs.
What I have found, among many other findings over the past 30 years, is that secrecy perpetuates mediocrity and lack of accountability, e.g. defects in systems are classified so only the original contractor can be asked to fix them; the government does not actually do operational test & evaluation and conceals all of its mistakes while Congress overlooks those mistakes because Congress got lots of pork (PAC contributions) for funding those mistakes; and finally, we still have not gotten a grip on the FACT that contractors are in the business of sucking money from the taxpayer’s pocket NOT in the business of actually delivering long-term (sustainable affordable interoperable) solutions. The contractor’s highest priority is to lock in the client to a single point technology solution that does not work with anything else, so the contractor can have the luxury–at taxpayer expense and often at the expense of the lives of our troops–of creating work-arounds for enternity to come. This is treason in my book, but no one else seems to see it that way. St.