Innovating Faster, Cheaper and Smaller at the Pentagon

James Hasik

Security,

What progress has been made in the last year to bend cost curves?

In January 2015 at the Atlantic Council, Air Force Secretary Debbie James delivered an address on “Bending the Cost Curve,” emphasizing that her department needed to get off the path towards Augustinian singularity. The initiative she outlined had three parts: enhancing communication with industry, expanding competition, and accelerating development processes. The secretary specifically wanted to look for opportunities where small adaptations and innovations could yield big improvements in capabilities. So how has Defense—and not just the Air Force—been doing lately? For a challenging reform effort, it’s a reasonable report card, but we have a long way to go.

Enhancing communication means actually talking to your suppliers, just like premier league commercial supply chain managers do. This hasn’t been a strength of government for some time, and at one point, the relationship was legendarily bad on the Joint Strike Fighter program. On Groundhog Day at the CSIS, the Navy Department’s head of contracting, Deputy Assistant Secretary Elliott Branch, offered one thought: ignore the lawyers as much as you can. The fear, uncertainty and doubt which the government’s attorneys are professionally incentivized to spread stifles the exchange of ideas between procurement officials and prospective contractors. The Defense Department has had some successes elsewhere over the past few years: the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle development provides a good example of how frank discussions of the art of the possible can keep a program on track. That can-do culture needs inculcation across the rest of the acquisition enterprise.

 

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