11 février 2022 | International, Aérospatial
A Sneak Peak At The Singapore Airshow Flying Display
Despite a lower attendance and fewer participants, the Singapore Airshow continues to attract a respectable lineup for its flying display.
2 janvier 2020 | International, Aérospatial, Naval, Terrestre, C4ISR, Sécurité
Too many cooks in the DoD: New policy may suppress rapid acquisition
By: Eric Lofgren
In 2015, Congress passed middle tier acquisition, or MTA, authorities for rapid prototyping and rapid fielding. Lawmakers expected detailed guidance to follow shortly after. By June 2019, the Government Accountability Office found little clarity on documentation and authority. Congress reacted by threatening to withhold 75 percent of MTA funding in 2020 until the Pentagon released guidance.
Dangle the purse strings and compliance follows. The undersecretary for acquisition and sustainment, or USD(A&S), released Department of Defense Instruction 5000.80 on Dec. 30, 2019. The MTA guidance, however, is more likely to pump the brakes on rapid acquisition than propel it forward.
Programs designated “middle tier” do not have to follow regulatory processes for requirements and milestone reviews. That can shave years off a program schedule. In return, the prototype must be completed — or system fully fielded — within five years.
As of March 2019, there were 35 middle tier programs. The term “middle tier” is perhaps misleading considering nearly half of them exceed the cost thresholds for major weapon systems — roughly $200 million for prototyping or $1 billion for fielding.
Many questions remained unanswered until the new policy. How big was a middle tier? What documentation does it require? What is the role of oversight and USD(A&S)?
Authority
For several years, acquisition authority had been delegated down to the services. While the services only managed 48 percent of major programs in 2014, the figure grew to 90 percent in 2019.
DoDI 5000.80 reverses the trend. While the services can approve MTA for non-major programs, only USD(A&S) may approve major programs. Moreover, major programs have far more entrance documentation than non-majors, including approved requirements, an acquisition strategy and a cost estimate.
The services may avoid some documentation by disaggregating major systems into multiple MTA programs. For example, two of the Navy's non-major programs are components to Standard Missile-6 Block 1B. The same is true of the Air Force's Airborne Warning and Control System.
USD(A&S), however, can still disapprove any MTA program, whether major or non-major. With advisers from all around the Office of the Secretary of Defense, there will be will numerous potential veto points. Each official may extract concessions from MTA programs managed by the services.
Even though 31 out of 35 MTA programs are rapid prototyping efforts, the undersecretary for research and engineering, or USD(R&E), has been relegated to a secondary position. All MTA authority rests with USD(A&S). Almost as an affront to USD(R&E), he was given control over a rapid prototyping fund that Congress stopped funding.
The outcome reflects a broader weakening of USD(R&E). Congress has reacted negatively to the undersecretary's effort to move fast and reallocate funds to higher value uses. USD(R&E) may lose control of the Missile Defense Agency to USD(A&S).
Documentation
While MTA exempts programs from traditional requirements and milestone processes, documentation abounds.
Each service must create its own requirements process with approval in six months. Joint service requirements are discouraged from using MTA pathways.
MTA requirements, however, must still meet the needs determined by four-star generals in the Joint Chiefs of Staff and combatant commands. This may in effect bring the same approvals from the Joint Capabilities Integration and Development System process back into MTA.
Many of the DoDI 5000.02 processes also apply. Still required are system analyses, sustainment plans, test strategies, cybersecurity, risk assessments, cost estimates and more.
Contractors performing on MTA programs must still report cost data. No exemption was made for earned value management systems. Sidestepping many contract regulations — for example, with other transactions authorities — remains a separate process.
Most importantly, Congress requires detailed justification in the budget for every MTA program. That means the services must start justifying MTAs at least two years in advance of funding receipt. Many of today's MTA programs spun off existing, budgeted line items. New programs may find a hard time finding funds.
The present situation is reminiscent of the time David Packard attempted rapid acquisition between 1969 and 1971. A couple years later, new layers of bureaucracy descended. Similarly, MTA has built within it the seeds of another slow-paced bureaucratic order.
Adm. Hyman Rickover's skepticism to the reforms nearly 50 years ago rings true today. As Rickover wrote to Packard in a memo:
“My experience has been that when a directive such as the one you propose is issued, most of the effort goes into the creation of additional management systems and reports and the preparation of large numbers of documents within the Service to ‘prove' that the requirements of the directive are being met in order to justify funds for the Service.
“So long as the bureaucracy consists of a large number of people who consider that they are properly performing their function of approval and evaluation by requiring detailed information to be submitted through the bureaucracy, program managers will never be found who can in fact effectively manage their jobs.”
Sur le même sujet
-
-
6 avril 2021 | International, Aérospatial
Saab and FMV Extend Support and Maintenance Contract for Gripen
The order value amounts to approximately SEK 1.6 billion for the period from 1 April 2021 to 31 December 2022
-
23 juin 2020 | International, Aérospatial, Naval, Terrestre, C4ISR, Sécurité
New European Defence Agency boss warns against ‘rash’ budget cuts by EU members
By: Martin Banks BRUSSELS — The new head of the European Defence Agency, Jiří Šedivý, has thrown down the gauntlet to European Union member states, telling them: “It is up to you to deliver.” In an interview with Defense News, he said the onus is on EU countries “to use the EDA to its full extent.” Šedivý has extensive experience in the defense domain, having served as defense minister and deputy defense minister of the Czech Republic, NATO assistant secretary general for defense policy and planning, and permanent representative of the Czech Republic to NATO. His term comes amid a fast-changing European defense landscape and new EU defense initiatives that are under increasing pressure to deliver results. How will the COVID-19 health crisis affect European defense spending in the near, mid and long term? Let's be realistic: We are still in the middle of the pandemic and, at this stage, nobody can foresee what its exact repercussions will be. But being realistic also means that we have to anticipate, already now, that national and European defense budgets might come under pressure as a result of the massive economic and financial costs of COVID-19, whether we like it or not. Here our answer should be straightforward: Rather than cutting national defense expenditure rashly, let's coordinate, pool and share our resources and invest more in collaborative capability development because a collective approach is much more cost-effective than national solo efforts. The same goes for defense research where national ministries of defense might face problems to receive the same funding than in the past to finance their individual national programs. The best response to shrinking national budgets for defense research is to join forces and resources and to engage in more cost-effective collaborations at EU level. We therefore should maintain our European defense ambitions, keep course and pursue the implementation of the new EU defense instruments — the Coordinated Annual Review on Defence (CARD), the Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO) and the European Defence Fund (EDF) — which are all in place, fit for purpose and ready to be used. The COVID-19 crisis could offer us an unexpected and unique opportunity to reinvigorate defense cooperation in Europe. The defense portion of the proposed EU budget has come under pressure. If the European Defence Fund is indeed curtailed, how do you expect EDA to adjust its objectives? It is too early to speculate about the Fund's future budget allocation as negotiations are still ongoing. Therefore, we have to wait and see. This being said, the EDF will be an essential part of the EU's defense-cooperation toolbox, together with CARD and PESCO. Therefore, it is crucial that the Fund receives the financial means it needs to play its role properly. I thus hope for adequate funding for this important collaborative tool because for the reasons I just explained, we need more defense cooperation in the future, not less. And the Fund will serve not only as an incentive to that end, but also as a point of leverage for economic recovery. In any case, EDA's activities are not directly linked or dependent of the Fund's budget as we are an intergovernmental agency entirely and directly funded by our member states, not through the EU budget. U.S. defense companies want to be allowed to compete for EDF money and PESCO participation. How do you believe it is possible to strengthen intra-EU defense cooperation without shutting out trans-Atlantic ties at the same time? Third-party participation in the EDF is among the topics currently discussed between member states, the Commission and the European Parliament as part of the legislative process on setting up of Fund. So the jury is still out on the outcome of these talks. EDA is not involved in that process and therefore I cannot comment. However, I want to recall a basic underlying principle of European defense cooperation, namely that the European Union is fully committed to working with the U.S. as a core partner in security and defense matters. The EU defense initiatives must be understood in this context: They are not directed against our trans-Atlantic partnership but aim to enhance Europe's contribution to our common trans-Atlantic security by sharing a greater part of the burden. PESCO and EDF will help enhance EU member states' investment in the joint development of defense capabilities and deepen cooperation to make more efficient use of defense spending in the EU. The resulting defense capabilities will not be owned by the EU but by its member states. Which means they will also be available to NATO, at least for those EU member states that are NATO allies. As a result, EU cooperation ultimately also strengthens NATO as well as our trans-Atlantic partners. What is in store for the dozens of PESCO projects currently underway? For example, do you expect new ones to join the roster at some point, or some to be canceled if they fail to deliver? As you know, PESCO is a member states driven initiative. It's therefore up to the 25 participating countries to decide whether they want to launch new collaborative projects in the future. If you ask me, I expect indeed more projects to be added in the future but not this year as it was decided to skip 2020 after three consecutive waves of new projects launched — 47 in total to date — since December 2017, when PESCO was established. Focusing on the project implementation and delivering tangible outputs is thus the priority now. Equally, it is up to the member states involved in a given project to decide about possible changes or adjustments to be made or, to answer your question, even to cancel a project that would fail to deliver. It's the member states who own the projects, so it is up to them to implement them in the way they want. This being said, EDA is available and keen to support them, if they wish, in the implementation. As the European hub for collaborative capability development, we have the expertise and experience needed to do that. We therefore encourage member states to make full use of the Agency and to seek our know-how and support for bringing their PESCO projects forward. And we see that they start to rely more and more on our help. The number of PESCO projects which have been or currently are supported by the agency has constantly increased and now stands at six; two of them (in the areas of CBRN surveillance and deployable underwater capabilities) as EDA projects. Judging from informal expressions of interest received, we have reasons to expect those numbers to further grow in the future. https://www.defensenews.com/global/europe/2020/06/22/new-european-defence-agency-boss-warns-against-rash-budget-cuts-by-eu-members/