U.S. Military Program Management: Lessons Learned and Best Practices

book.

Introduction

This book provides a unique, broad, and deep discussion of what it takes to successfully manage some of the most complex military major weapon system programs in the United States. The book discusses U.S. military program management lessons learned and best practices based on extensive research, case studies, and proven effective best practices. The book is divided into six functional areas, which comprise the key competencies of effective U.S. military program management. They are:

Requirements management

Program leadership and teamwork

Risk and financial management

Supply chain management and logistics

Contract management and procurement

Special topics

Further, the book discusses U.S. military program management from both the U.S. government and defense industry/contractor perspectives. An extensive research effort was required to gather, edit, and assemble this vast amount of valuable information from 15 contributing authors and package it into this book. This book contains a combination of high-level U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) and defense industry analysis, recommendations for overall improvement, and specific case studies from the U.S. Army, U.S. Navy, and U.S. Air Force that highlight lessons learned and best practices.

DoD and the related defense industry is arguably the largest and most powerful government and business entity in the world. Together, DoD and the related defense industry develop the most expensive and complex major systems ever created. This book provides a wealth of information from a multifunctional view of what it takes to manage major U.S. military programs. This book contains articles and symposia papers drawn from the literature of U.S. military program management. Some articles have been included with the approval of the authors and publications, including the Defense Acquisition Review Journal of the Defense Acquisition University (DAU), the Journal of Contract Management, and Contract Management magazine, as well as books published by the National Contract Management Association (NCMA).

Additionally, this book contains academic papers, with the approval of the authors, from the proceedings of the Acquisition Research Symposia of the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School (NPS).

In addition, the book provides several valuable appendices, including:

The U.S. Department of Defense Report on Defense Acquisition Performance Assessment—Executive Summary (December 2005)

Several executive summaries of GAO reports on defense acquisition

Glossary of key terms

References

Finally, the book provides a user-friendly index for easy referencing.

We hope you will find the book to be a valuable reference for many years to come!

Sincerely,

Gregory A. Garrett, CPCM, C.P.M., PMP

and

Dr. Rene G. Rendon, CPCM, C.P.M., PMP

CHAPTER

1

Toward Centralized Control of Defense Acquisition Programs: A Comparative Review of the Decision Framework from 1987 to 2003

By John T. Dillard

The issuance of Department of Defense (DoD) Directive 5000.1¹ and Instruction 5000.2² on May 12, 2003, marked the third significant revision of acquisition policy in as many years. Looking further back, these three revisions of regulatory guidance had evolved from two previous versions in 1991³ and 1996.⁴ Each had its major thrusts and tenets and—perhaps of most importance to program managers—modifications to the Defense Systems Acquisition Management Process⁵ or Defense Acquisition Framework,⁶ which is the broad paradigm of phases and milestone reviews in the life of an acquisition program. The purpose of this author’s research was to examine the evolution of this framework and elucidate the explicit and implicit aspects of recent changes to the model to better understand its current form. Provided here is a synopsis of the most important findings. The full report of this research, examining both private industry and defense acquisition decision models, is available at http://www.nps.navy.mil/gsbpp/ACQN/

publications/FY03/AM-03-003.pdf.

The very latest DoD 5000 policy changes have come during a time of DoD transformation, which, while greater in scope than solely equipment and technology, is chiefly focused on changes to force structure and weapons employment capabilities. This latest version of the 5000 series was drafted in the documents rescinding its predecessor. In a memorandum signed October 30, 2002, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz said the series required revision to create an acquisition policy environment that fosters efficiency, flexibility, creativity and innovation.⁷ Interim guidance was issued, along with the recision, as a temporary replacement, outlining principles and policies to govern the operation of the new defense acquisition system. Among them:

3.1 Responsibility for acquisition of systems shall be decentralized to the maximum extent practicable. 3.18 The PM [program manager] shall be the single point of accountability for accomplishment of program objectives for total life-cycle systems management, including sustainment. 3.27 It shall be DoD policy to minimize reporting requirements.⁸

Though the 5000 series provides guidance for all levels, or acquisition categories (ACAT), of programs, its language is particularly applicable to the largest, ACAT ID, major defense acquisition programs (MDAP). In such cases, the milestone decision authority (MDA) is the defense acquisition executive, who also chairs the Defense Acquisition Board (DAB), a decision-making body for program milestone reviews. There is in fact both a component acquisition executive and program executive officer (PEO) in the hierarchy between them, and direct communication between the MDA and the PM is infrequent. Other top management stakeholders are Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) staff principals who sit in membership on the DAB, where milestone decision reviews are conducted. Communication between PM and OSD staff principals is more frequent, especially via the Overarching Integrated Product Team process.⁹ As of this writing, there are 36 MDAP (ACAT ID) programs in the DoD.

THE CHALLENGES OF DEFENSE PROGRAM MANAGEMENT

Defense systems, known for their size and technological pursuits, are considered to be among the most challenging of projects. Owen C. Gadeken, building on previous studies at the Defense Systems Management College, concluded that the project manager competencies of systematic and innovative thinking were among the most needed and critical to accommodate growing complexities.¹⁰

The inherent difficulty of managing any program is exacerbated for the DoD by several additional factors, which have become even more prevalent in the last twenty years. Large defense systems are very complex, consisting of hardware and software, multiple suppliers, etc., and requiring design approaches that alleviate complexity by breaking down hierarchies into simpler subsets. Rapid technology changes, leading to obsolescence, have become particularly problematic for very large systems with acquisition life-cycles spanning a long period of time. Thus, it may not even be feasible to fully define the operational capabilities and functional characteristics of the entire system before beginning advanced development.¹¹

The DoD 5000 series acknowledges these many complexities and difficulties facing MDAs and PMs in their management and oversight of large weapon system developments. An approach to mitigate these technological challenges, especially in the post-2000 series, is evolutionary acquisition, referred to by some outside of DoD as progressive acquisition. Also advocated by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), evolutionary acquisition has evolved worldwide as a concept over the past two decades. It is an incremental development approach, using iterative development cycles versus a single grand design. Described succinctly by the Western European Armaments Group, the progressive acquisition approach is:

a strategy to acquire a large and complex system, which is expected to change over its life-cycle. The final system is obtained by upgrades of system capability through a series of operational increments. (It) aims to minimize many of the risks associated with the length and size of the development, as well as requirements volatility and evolution of technology.¹²

DoD’s adaptation of this approach as evolutionary acquisition is a major policy thrust in the series, and it is the stated preferred approach toward all new system developments. This particular policy thrust is important to this study as it pertains to the framework of phases and decision reviews of a program moving toward completion. It is meant to change the way programs are structured and products delivered—separating projects into smaller, less ambitious increments. It is, additionally, one of several aspects of the new policy that affect the framework and its use as a management control mechanism.

ORGANIZATIONAL CONTROL THEORY AND DEFENSE ACQUISITION

Max Wideman also advocated progressive (evolutionary) acquisition and recognized senior management’s responsibility for financial accountability in private and public projects and their preference for central control. He noted problems with senior management control over complex developments, such as software enterprises like Defense Information Systems, even when projects were not very large or lengthy.¹³ His observations of large, complex programs align with classic contingency theory, which holds that organizational structures must change in response to the organization’s size and use of technology and as external environments become more complex and dynamic. Indeed, it has long been accepted that when faced with uncertainty (a situation with less information than is needed), the management response must be either to redesign the organization for the task at hand or to improve communication flows and processing.¹⁴

In his treatise Images of Organization, Gareth Morgan traces organizational theory through the past century and depicts organizations with a variety of images or metaphors. He warns that large, hierarchical, mechanistic organizational forms have difficulty adapting to change and are not designed for innovation.¹⁵ Further research by Burrell and Morgan indicates that any incongruence among management processes and the organization’s environment tends to reduce organizational efficiency and effectiveness.

His organizational development research, in accord with the conclusions of contingency theory, makes a strong case for consistency and compatibility among internal subsystems and changing external environmental circumstances.

In their book The Intelligent Organization, Gifford and Elizabeth Pinchot make an even stronger case for decentralized management in large, complex organizations faced with transformational change. They suggest that as organizations face increasing complexity, rapid change, distributed information, and new forms of competition, they must grow more intelligent to confront and defeat the diverse and simultaneous challenges. They posit that for an organization to be fully intelligent, it must use the intelligence of its members all the way down the hierarchy. They note that with distributed information there is distributed intelligence, and failure to render authority to those closest to the problem will yield lethargy, mediocre performance, or—worse—paralysis. Control will be maintained, and anarchy will not occur—but neither will success.¹⁷

What the cumulative research appears to support is that for large, complex hierarchies such as DoD, decentralized control and empowerment should be an organizational strength, given today’s environment of program complexity, evolving requirements, and rapidly changing technology.

AN EXAMINATION OF PROJECT MANAGEMENT LIFE-CYCLE MODELS

Models have long been used to illustrate the integration of functional efforts across the timeline of a project or program. The successful integration of these diverse elements is the very essence of project management. Models also help us to visualize the total scope of a project and see its division into phases and decision points. The interaction and overlapping of many and varied activities such as planning, engineering, test and evaluation, logistics, manufacturing, etc., must be adroitly managed for optimum attainment of project cost and schedule and technical performance outcomes. The Project Management Institute’s Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK®) provides generally accepted knowledge and practices in the broad field of project management. Striving for commonality across diverse business areas and product commodities, it provides a generic framework as a structure for understanding the management of a project or program.

Project management difficulty climbs as system complexity and technological uncertainty increase, but is simplified by division of the effort into phases, with points between for management review and decision. The conclusion of a project phase is generally marked by a review of both key deliverables and project performance to (a) determine if the project should continue into its next phase and (b) detect and correct errors cost effectively. These phase-end reviews are often called phase exits, stage gates, control gates, or kill points.¹⁸ The institute acknowledges a variety of approaches to modeling project life-cycles, with some so detailed that they actually become management methodologies.

THE EVOLVING DEFENSE ACQUISITION FRAMEWORK

The 1996 Model

Models of program structure are important to DoD when communicating the overall acquisition strategy of a large acquisition project. The 1996 revision of the 5000 series was published after a rigorous effort to reform the defense acquisition system during the first half of the Clinton administration.

The 1996 model (Figure 1-1) is streamlined and simple and depicts only four phases and four decision reviews. Low-rate initial production (LRIP) could and frequently did occur before Milestone III in Phase II as a service secretary decision. Another key change from the 1991 model was the very deliberate move of the declaration of program initiation from Milestone 0 to Milestone I. Program initiation also serves as a benchmark of OSD interest in annually reporting to Congress, per 10 USC § 2220(b), the average time period between program initiation and initial operational capability (across all ACAT I programs of any commodity). In 1994, the average was 115 months.²¹

Figure 1-1. Defense systems acquisition management process.²⁰

TOWARD CENTRALIZED CONTROL OF ACQUISITION PROGRAMS

The Current 2003 Model

The current 2003 model (Figure 1-2) has five phases and six potential decision reviews. The most apparent, but perhaps least significant, change between the models is from numerical to alphabetical designation of major milestone reviews. Another obvious—and important—change is the appearance of divided phases and within-phase decision and progress reviews. With the latest release of the regulatory series, these additional subphases (or work efforts), along with pre-acquisition activities, have brought the total number of distinct activity intervals to eight, with as many as five phases and six decision reviews—more than at any time past. Each of these subphase efforts has its own entrance and exit criteria, making them more in practice like distinct phases of acquisition. All of the reviews are conducted at OSD level. Newest is the design readiness review, an evolution of the critical design review (which had heretofore been a PM-level technical review) in the previous interim model—and before that a mid-phase interim progress review. This model has several other significant implications, regarding placement of the milestones and activities, that this article does not address.²³

Figure 1-2. Defense Acquisition Management Framework.²²

The current policy describes reviews as decision points where decision makers can stop, extend, or modify the program, or grant permission to proceed to the next phase. Program reviews of any kind at the OSD level have a significant impact on program management offices. Much documentation must be prepared and many preparatory meetings conducted en route to the ultimate review. And while non-milestone reviews are generally considered to be easier to prepare for, a considerable amount of effort managing the decision process is still expended. For many years, six months have been allotted for OSD-level review preparation.²⁴ It outlines the requirements for meetings and preparatory briefings to staff members and committees. Some representatives from program management offices keep an accounting of travel and labor costs associated with milestone reviews for an MDAP system. While only anecdotal data was available for this research, it is apparent that a substantial amount of program office funding is expended on items such as government agency or support contractor assistance, with supporting analyses and documentation, presentation materials, frequent travel to the Pentagon, and other associated expenses in preparation for high-level reviews.²⁵

With evolutionary acquisition as the preferred strategy, the policy now describes notional systems as shorter developments (in system development and demonstration (SDD)) with iterative Milestone B-to-C cycles. The new DoDI 5000.2 prescribes, In an evolutionary acquisition program, the development of each increment shall begin with a Milestone B, and production resulting from that increment shall begin with a Milestone C.²⁶ Thus, program managers can expect to undergo the management reviews determined appropriate not only for the initial increment of development in their program, but also the reviews specified for the follow-on increments. The strategy suggests the initiation of low-rate production of an 80% solution at Milestone C as the preferred approach. So a more accurate depiction of the new model, with perhaps only one spiral or increment of evolutionary effort, is shown below (Figure 1-3), presuming the achievement of 100% capability in the same timeframe as under the traditional single-step project strategy. The diamond icons represent decision reviews.

What becomes more apparent here is the increased number of actual decision reviews required, as well as the concurrent activities involved in managing a separate follow-on development increment and its requisite reviews. In fact, the most recent published guidance shows an example of a system with two increments of evolution having no less than fourteen reviews in its first eleven years from concept decision.²⁷ Assuming that advanced development (SDD) for an 80% solution is indeed shortened, and further assuming that concept and early prototyping phases are no longer than before, the time and effort spent on control activities appears almost certainly to be disproportionate within the same 100% system capability delivery timeline. It seems in the least to be counter to the policy espousing decentralized responsibility, innovation, and flexibility at the program management level.

On the whole, the 2003 acquisition model prescribes a very new paradigm, and only time will tell us whether Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz’s goals of program management flexibility and innovation have been achieved. No major program has yet gone through the entire model, and none will for many years to come.

However, time spent managing the bureaucracy has long been an encumbrance to PMs. Back in 1988–89, military research fellows studying commercial practices at the Defense Systems Management College wrote about an imbalance of authority between PMs and the OSD staff.²⁸ They recommended eleven improvements to the acquisition process, and the third on their list was Reduce the number and level of program decision milestones. In the context of the 1987 Life-Cycle Systems Management Model of five acquisition phases and five key decision points, they recommended that only one of these reviews be conducted at OSD level—the review for advanced development. They quoted the 1986 Packard Commission’s conclusions, which said, He (the PM) should be fully committed to abide by the program’s specified baseline and, so long as he does so, the Defense and Service Acquisition Executives should support his program and permit him to manage it. This arrangement would provide much needed program stability.²⁹

As mentioned earlier, contingency theory encourages senior leaders to find the best fit for their organization’s structure to its environment, understanding that some situations might call for rigid bureaucratic structure while others might require a more flexible, organic one. The concept of control also is a cornerstone of cybernetics, or the study of organizations, communications, and control in complex systems. It focuses on looped feedback mechanisms, where the controller communicates the desired future state to the controlled, and the controlled communicates to the controller information with which to form perceptions for use in comparing states. The controller then communicates (directs) purposeful behavior.³⁰

Figure 1-3. Comparison of 1996 and 2003 acquisition framework models.

The fundamental need for communication constrains the options for control, making the communications architecture a critically important feature of the control system. It is often heard that with communications in today’s information age warfare, we seek to act within the enemy’s decision cycle. For acquisition decision makers, the information architecture is the command and control hierarchy within our bureaucracy. And the decision cycle in the course of a program still, after many years, reflects 180 days of typical preparation lead time for a decision review. This Defense Acquisition Board decision cycle appears to be one very important process that has yet to undergo transformation.

Similarly, when the authors of New Challenges, New Tools for Defense Decisionmaking wrote about DoD decision making pertaining to training, equipping, manning, and operating the force, they suggested that decisions be based on senior leadership’s desired outcomes. They acknowledge that with a decentralized management style comes dilution of responsibility and accountability, unless vigilance of execution is maintained. But they agree with other theorists that while centralized decision making was consistent with the Cold War and well suited to the 1960s, it can be stifling and can restrict innovation.³¹

The Pinchots’ Intelligent Organization does not call for decentralization to undermine bureaucracy, but to improve it. The Pinchots advocate decentralization with horizontal interconnection (a network organization) between business units to lessen the reliance on going up the chain of command and down again for communication flow and decision. Rather than total autonomy for PMs, they support self-management, from trust, with responsibility and accountability.³² This thinking seems particularly appropriate to the information age and for a professionalized bureaucracy such as the DoD acquisition workforce, with disciplined standards of training, education, and experience steadily progressing since implementation of the Defense Acquisition Workforce Improvement Act (DAWIA) in the early 1990s.

CONCLUSIONS

It is evident that the debate about centralized control and the number of OSD-level reviews has been taking place for a long time. The current model increases the number and levels of reviews, and their placement with regard to program events indicates that we are moving toward an even more centralized approach to control of acquisition programs. (A recent GAO report calls for even more departmental controls over acquisition than are now in place.³³) But what is perhaps even more significant than this observation is that moving toward greater centralization of control at the higher levels may be a cause for serious concern, given predominant management theory cited herein. The mainstream of thought indicates that more efficiency and effectiveness might be gained from a different approach to an external environment of instability and uncertainty, whether from unclear threats and uncertain scenarios or from complexities of rapidly changing technology and systems acquisition.

Centralization of control is a management issue to be dealt with—the challenge is to avoid anarchy, with no guidelines or parameters, as well as excessive control. Might programs actually be lengthened by more cumbersome reviews? Whether fourteen reviews in eleven years are too many is a matter of conjecture and more debate. However, it is obvious that there are more reviews today than ever before, and these do have a requisite cost associated with their execution. We likely will continue the struggle to find the appropriate balance between centralized functions at OSD and autonomy for the management of programs in both explicit or implicit management policies and frameworks. Perhaps further areas of research can focus on the effectiveness of such reviews, and will almost certainly demand that the program costs of centralized decision reviews be measured. Another focus is the area of computational organizational theory, which singles out centralization as a project management model input variable that typically reduces risk but lengthens overall schedule. Moreover, a study of how DoD might exploit its current capacity through increased horizontal communication might provide insight toward how it can attain the decentralized empowerment it advocates.

Author’s Notes

The research presented in this chapter was supported by the Acquisition Chair of the Graduate School of Business & Public Policy at the Naval Postgraduate School. Copies of the Acquisition Sponsored Research Reports may be accessed from the web site www.acquisitionresearch.org.

Endnotes

1. USD(AT&L) Department of Defense Directive 5000.1, The Defense Acquisition System, May 12, 2003.

2. USD(AT&L) Department of Defense Instruction 5000.2, Operation of the Defense Acquisition System, May 12, 2003.

3. USD(A) Department of Defense Directive 5000.1, The Defense Acquisition System, February 23, 1991.

4. USD(A&T) Department of Defense Directive 5000.1, Defense Acquisition, March 15, 1996.

5. Defense Systems Acquisition Management Process, Defense Systems Management College, January 1997.

6. Defense Acquisition Framework, Defense Systems Management College, 2001.

7. Wolfowitz, Paul. Memorandum for Director, Washington Headquarters Services. Cancellation of DoD 5000 Defense Acquisition Policy Documents, October 30, 2002.

8. Secretary of Defense Memorandum, Defense Acquisition, Attachment 1, The Defense Acquisition System. October 30, 2002. (Interim Guidance 5000.1, p. 6).

9. Office of the Under Secretary of Defense (Acquisition and Technology), Washington, D.C. 20301-3000. DoD Integrated Product and Process Development Handbook, August 1998.

10. Gadeken, Owen C. Project Managers as Leaders—Competencies of Top Performers. RD&A, January–February 1997.

11. Pitette, Giles. Progressive Acquisition and the RUP: Comparing and Combining Iterative Process for Acquisition and Software Development. The Rational Edge, November 2001.

12. Western European Armaments Group WEAG TA-13 Acquisition Programme, Guidance On the Use of Progressive Acquisition, Version 2, November 2000.

13. Wideman, R. Max. Progressive Acquisition and the RUP Part I: Defining the Problem and Common Terminology. The Rational Edge, 2002.

14. Galbraith, J. R. Designing Complex Organization. Reading, Massachusetts: Addison-Wesley, 1973.

15. Morgan, Gareth. Images of Organization, Sage Publications, 1986.

16. Ibid.

17. Pinchot, Gifford, and Pinchot, Elizabeth. The End of Bureaucracy and the Rise of the Intelligent Organization. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 1993.

18. Project Management Institute. A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK® Guide), 2000 Edition. Newtown Square, Pennsylvania, 2000.

19. Ibid.

20. Department of Defense 5000.2-R, Mandatory Procedures for Major Defense, Acquisition Programs and Major Automated Information Systems, 1996.

21. Ibid.

22. USD(AT&L) Department of Defense Instruction 5000.2, Operation of the Defense Acquisition System, May 12, 2003.

23. Dillard, John T. Centralized Control of Defense Acquisition Programs: A Comparative Review of the Framework from 1987–2003. NPS-AM-03-003, September 2003.

24. Defense Acquisition University. Program Managers Toolkit, 13th edition (Ver 1.0), June 2003.

25. Author’s unpublished interview with an anonymous representative from a major program office going through a milestone review, Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, California, February 19, 2003.

26. USD(AT&L) Department of Defense Instruction 5000.2, Operation of the Defense Acquisition System. May 12, 2003.

27. Defense Acquisition University. Program Managers Toolkit, 13th edition (Ver 1.0), June 2003.

28. Defense Systems Management College. Using Commercial Practices in DoD Acquisition. December 1989.

29. Packard Commission. A Quest for Excellence, Final Report to the President, 1986.

30. Ashby, W. R. An Introduction to Cybernetics, London: Chapman & Hall, 1960.

31. Johnson, Stuart, Libicki, Martin C., and Treverton, Gregory F. New Challenges, New Tools for Defense Decisionmaking. Rand, 2003.

32. Pinchot, Gifford, and Pinchot, Elizabeth. The End of Bureaucracy and the Rise of the Intelligent Organization. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 1993.

33. GAO. DOD’s Revised Policy Emphasizes Best Practices, But More Controls Are Needed, GAO 04-53, November 2003.

CHAPTER

2

The New Joint Capabilities Integration Development System (JCIDS) and Its Potential Impacts on Defense Program Managers

By David F. Matthews

The June 2003 release of the radically revised CJCSI 3170.01C and CJCSM 3170.01 promulgating the new Joint Capabilities Integration Development System (JCIDS) literally turned the legacy Requirements Generation System (RGS) upside-down. The decades-old threat-driven, bottom-up development process of warfare materiel requirements was summarily replaced by a revolutionary, capabilities-driven, top-down process.

Historically, the service-unique requirements development processes and organizations and their entrenched institutional memories had been forcibly altered, with the imposition of the Joint Requirements Oversight Council (JROC) and Unified Commanders in Chief (CINC) participation, by the Defense Reorganization Act of 1986 (hereafter cited as Goldwater-Nichols). Then, seventeen years later, this act was suddenly superseded by a new and rapidly evolving process and organization driven by DoD and the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS).

Drastic changes typically have very complex origins—and indeed, this one did. This chapter will thoroughly explore this highly political metamorphosis and will provide an executive summary of JCIDS (including the March 2004 Change 1) and highlight significant changes from the legacy system. It also will emphasize the nearly concurrent changes made to the DoD 5000 series governing acquisition management that were either forced by, or made in correlation with, the JCIDS revolution.

Such change has caused many to be concerned that JCIDS may be trying to resolve legacy RGS problems and disconnections in a manner that may be injecting new, equally disruptive deficiencies. This chapter will provide an analysis, from a program manager’s perspective, of the potential impacts of these changes on the acquisition community. Finally, this chapter will present conclusions and offer recommendations for possible adjustments to JCIDS.

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

Modern American military history is replete with examples of weapon systems that proved to be either inadequate or inferior when confronted with serious hostilities. The reasons for the flaws are varied and complex, ranging from failures to recognize the militarily significant applications of emerging technologies, to faulty intelligence and threat identification, to inadequate developmental and operational testing. The early WWII Mark XIV submarine torpedo fiasco is a very painful example of the latter.

That war also saw the rise of joint and combined operations and the formation of the JCS. Yet, equipment developed parochially by one of the two branches of the armed services frequently failed to operate adequately with the other’s in-joint systems. Early WWII problems with performing amphibious operations and obtaining effective naval gunfire support for the Marines and Army provide vivid examples. Various attempts were made at two-service and, after 1947, three-service cooperation in requirements generation. These efforts were judged by many to have been largely unproductive.¹

Behind this lack of successful cooperation existed a long history of service parochialism, arrogance, and competitive infighting. The contention between the fledgling Air Force’s B-36 and the Navy’s supercarriers in 1948–49 is a vicious case in point. The interservice conflicts and myriad Congressional interferences literally drove the first Secretary of Defense (and former Secretary of the Navy), James Forrestal, to commit suicide.

Presidents Truman and Eisenhower, and their Secretaries of Defense, vainly struggled with the services and many members of Congress to empower the DoD and to inculcate jointness and improved interservice cooperation. Despite the Key West Agreement of 1947, the still-autonomous services continued to try to poach other services’ roles and missions. What was good for the service far transcended what was good for the DoD. President Eisenhower tried to deal with this service intransigence in his national security initiatives that resulted in the Defense Reorganization Act of 1958. He tried to strengthen the power of the Secretary of Defense, the Chairman of the JCS, and the Unified Commanders in Chief. He felt strengthening these positions would increase the integration of the military services in support of JCS strategic plans and the Unified CINCs. Congress, however, was not ready for a major transformation and passed a diluted bill that initiated few substantial changes.

Later, President Kennedy empowered Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara to reform the Pentagon’s requirements generation and resource allocation/management processes by introducing the whiz kids with their systems-effectiveness analysis and by imposing a formal planning, programming, and budgeting system (PPBS) for the DoD. Although some limited further joint rationalization occurred, Kennedy’s assassination and President Johnson’s subsequent focus on the Great Society, and increasingly on Viet Nam, basically acquiesced the administration to the DoD status quo.

President Nixon was likewise enmeshed in Viet Nam and, subsequently, his very survival in office. President Ford served only two years, and President Carter, although a former regular Navy officer, had other priorities. Then came the Iranian hostage-taking and the joint service Desert One failure; these led to the beginning of a transfer in the impetus for DoD/JCS reform from the executive branch of the government to the dissatisfied and increasingly concerned legislative branch. As the Reagan administration began its sweeping defense buildup, the 1983 Beirut Marine barracks bombing tragedy occurred; likewise, the disjointed Grenada invasion again revealed serious shortcomings in the armed services’ ability to act effectively and unselfishly in the conduct of joint operations.

Many in Congress, already concerned about the effects of service parochialism, saw these incidents as evidence that the DoD required major reforms in its capability to equip, organize, and execute joint operations in the defense of the country. Therefore, they called for a major reorganization. Several critics asserted that service autonomy would have to be sacrificed in the interests of improved effectiveness in the joint arena.

Late 1983 saw the commencement of a series of hearings in both houses of Congress that would culminate three years later in the landmark Goldwater-Nichols legislation. During the latter part of this period, in July 1985, President Reagan chartered the Packard Commission to investigate the DoD’s procedures and activities for procuring military equipment and materiel. The commission staff, as well as some members of Congress, directly coordinated their investigations with the inquiries of the relevant House and Senate committees and their staffs.

The work of both bodies significantly parallels and overlaps in the portions of the legislation and commission report that pertain to requirements generation and acquisition management. The Congressional emphasis on jointness in requirements generation dovetailed tightly into the Packard Commission’s recommendations on acquisition management reform.

Over vehement service protests, particularly those of the Navy and its diehard coterie of Congressional supporters, Goldwater-Nichols established the permanent position of vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (VCJCS). Among the new position’s specified duties was the responsibility to preside as the chairman of the newly created JROC, which consisted of all the service vice chiefs of staff and the assistant commandant of the Marine Corps, and which was facilitated by a small, permanent staff. The JROC’s charter was, with input from the Unified CINCs, to oversee the materiel requirements documentation validation process for all major defense acquisition programs (MDAPs) (classified by DoD as Acquisition Category I [ACAT I]). It was also to authenticate that the proposed capability was required and not duplicative of another service’s program, and that the submitted documentation adequately addressed all DoD/JCS-level joint-warfare and interoperability concerns.

The second new major VCJCS acquisition-related duty was to serve concurrently as vice chairman of the newly created Defense Acquisition Board (DAB), which was chaired by the also newly created defense acquisition executive (DAE). The DAB, an outgrowth from the former Defense Systems Acquisition Review Council (DSARC), had been created to advise the DAE—as the DoD Milestone Decision Authority (MDA)—concerning the readiness of developmental programs to advance into the next acquisition management phase. These two principal duties assigned to the office of the VCJCS promised significantly increased DoD/JCS influence over the service-initiated requirements generation and service-managed acquisition management processes.

Goldwater-Nichols also promulgated a major change in the services’ acquisition management systems. Although the 1976 OMB Circular A-109 (which established acquisition management policy for the executive branch) had required all agencies to establish short, clear lines of acquisition responsibility, authority, and accountability, as of 1986 the DoD still had not institutionalized this policy. Therefore, embracing a Packard Commission recommendation in order to assist the DoD’s acquisition management policy, the legislation required the adoption of what has become known as the PEO system. In this system, lines of acquisition management authority and oversight flowed from a service-chartered program manager (PM) to a commodity-oriented program executive officer (PEO) overseeing a group of related PMs, to a service acquisition executive (SAE), and finally to the DAE. The existing service hardware systems commands (HSCs) were to provide support to the PMs on a matrix basis and be reimbursed by program funds which, in another major change, would now flow through the PEO chain.

The PEO system, once fully implemented, constituted a significant improvement in acquisition management and accountability; it was and still is considered a success. However, the inauguration of the JROC Requirements Oversight system proved to be more difficult and controversial. Admiral William A. Bill Owens was appointed as the third VCJCS and, therefore, as chairman of the JROC. Press reports from the period relate that the JROC meetings were characterized by rancor and parochial infighting. These reports likewise suggest Admiral Owens became increasingly frustrated by service intransigence and his inability to orchestrate a joint consensus on many issues that, to achieve improved commonality and interoperability, required serious service concessions and compromises. Sandra Irwin, in National Defense, states that Admiral Owens:

created what he called the JWCA, or joint warfighting capabilities assessment, that was designed to more closely match the needs of joint commanders with the services’ procurement priorities. The JWCA didn’t achieve the expected results, officials claim, because it was a bottom-up review process that began at service level and ended at the JROC.²

Press reports asserted that both these prolonged frustrations and severe service criticism of his efforts were the principal reasons that he declined nomination for a second two-year term as VCJCS.²

Yet, Owens wasn’t the reason the JWCA didn’t survive:

But the real reason why JWCA was only a passing fad—and why JCIDS may encounter a similar fate—is that ultimately the services have ownership of their programs and the responsibility to justify them before Congress. The Navy’s littoral combat ship (LCS) program is a particularly relevant illustration of the challenge that the services face in getting major programs off the ground. While LCS critics on Capitol Hill charge that the Navy has done a poor job validating and articulating the need for the ship, the program passed the JCIDS review with flying colors and then some.

At the very least … JCIDS will serve as a valuable forum to debate the relevance of major programs in a joint context, which certainly has merit. But some still wonder about a process that apparently ignores the long-standing relationship the services have with the movers and shakers on Capitol Hill.³

Subsequent administrations shared the same frustrations with the RGS. These frustrations culminated with Defense Secretary Rumsfeld’s initiative to radically transform the legacy system. The initiative grew out of studies conducted early in the Bush administration aimed at improving the responsiveness of the acquisition management system. These studies concluded that the RGS was part of the low responsiveness problem. The service-initiated bottom-up system was not conducive to commonality, interoperability, and jointness. Therefore, Secretary Rumsfeld decided to direct the JCS to take responsibility for initiating materiel requirements from the top down to ensure that requirements were born joint.

JOINT CAPABILITIES INTEGRATION DEVELOPMENT SYSTEM (JCIDS)

The newly released National Military Strategy (NMS), A Strategy for Today; A Vision for Tomorrow, clearly articulates the strategy and vision from which JCIDS was derived.

The foreword highlights protecting the United States, preventing conflict, and prevailing against adversaries. The Chairman, USAF General Richard B. Myers, sets forth three priorities. The first is winning the war on terrorism, which will require the full integration of all instruments of national power. The second is enhancing our ability to fight as a joint force. He asserts, "Joint teamwork is an integral part of our culture and focus as we develop leaders, organizations, systems, and doctrine (italics added). The third is transforming the armed forces by ensuring that U.S. forces emerge from the struggle against terrorism with our joint force fully prepared to meet future