Americas Defense Meltdown - IT Acquisition Advisory Council

92 • Maneuver Forces: The Army and Marine Corps After IraqEFV’s land-combat capability has also detracted from its ship-to-shore, high-speed,over-the-horizon, attack mission. Originally, the Marine Corps wanted 1,014 EFVs,but the laws of physics combined with questions about the utility of re-enacting WorldWar II amphibious assaults have reduced that number to roughly 400 at an estimatedcost of $22 million each, 29 or nearly five times the cost of an M1A1 tank. 30If the Marines are going to be employed together with Army forces far from thesea as they are today in Afghanistan and Iraq, then, Marines should be equipped todo the job. 31 Dragging amphibious tractors designed to ferry Marines from ship toshore 300 miles inland is stupid. 32 In fact, it’s worse than stupid because it puts thelives of Marines at unnecessary risk. 33In a perfect world, the Joint Capabilities Integration and Development System (JC-IDS) as codified in the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Instruction No. 3170.01Fwould help solve these problems, but it doesn’t. JCIDS is just the latest in a line ofrequirements generations systems that are predominantly focused on “authorizing”procurement of material solutions; material solutions created inside the services’ ColdWar bureaucracies.JCIDS is a year long process that starts a two-year budget cycle. At best, thisrepresents a 36-month combined cycle before the defense community can field asolution to a requirement put in at the front end of the process (excluding urgentoperational needs that shorten the process to about 6 to 18 months depending onthe complexity of the solution/testing, etc.). The combatant commanders’ (COCOM)planning horizon normally reaches out to 18 months, so the COCOM’s advocacy ofcapabilities is disconnected from “long lead” procurement planning and execution.While the JCIDS process, Functional Capabilities Board Validation and JROC reviewand approval system promise greater warfighter influence, in practice the acquisitioncommunity and the technologists lead and dominate.Part of the solution to this problem involves reform and a re-allocation of the powerand the authority to new decision-makers with their roots in the warfighting community.But any solution also argues for a concomitant cultural change driven by a philosophy ofacquisition that is very different from the thinking of the industrial age that plagues thebig defense programs. When it comes to acquiring technology, the defense leadershipmust consider that a civilization didn’t get this far by embracing every idea that camealong. It got this far by accepting certain changes that were inevitable and certain othersthat were demonstrably beneficial, and by opposing, sometimes violently, changes thatwould have imperiled the species. With these points in mind, consider the followingas the basis for a new philosophy of acquisition and modernization:• Effectiveness in action is measured in terms of capabilities. New capabilitiesreally emerge when soldiers employ new technology in a climate of innovation,and develop the concepts and organizations to exploit them.