By Lisa Ferdinando DoD News, Defense Media Activity
WASHINGTON, March 6, 2018 — The Defense Department needs to
speed its acquisition processes and allow decisions at a lower level if it
wants to stay competitive, the undersecretary of defense for research and
engineering said today.
"The Chinese love our acquisition system, they are the
biggest fans of our acquisition system that there could possibly be; they
certainly don't want us to change it," Michael D. Griffin said here at the
ninth Defense Programs conference, hosted by McAleese and Associates and Credit
Suisse.
Griffin pointed out DoD takes about 16.5 years to go from
statement of need to initial operating capability. The U.S. used to operate in
the time frame that China now operates in -- two to three years, he said.
The Chinese are “pouring hundreds of billions of dollars
into these enterprises,” Griffin said. China, he continued, is “setting about
the task of becoming a global power and challenging our power, which has been
largely uncontested for seven decades, since the end of World War II.”
Unless the United States acts, the undersecretary said,
China will get its way.
Changing Landscape Demands Changes
What is slowing the processes for DoD, Griffin said, is the
need to be perfect every time.
Replacing broken hardware is inexpensive, he said,
explaining the greater costs come from all the time, the checks and balances,
the analysis, and all of the work to ensure you never break a piece of
hardware.
“This nation, for decades following World War II evinced a
capability and an overwhelming superiority that simply deterred our primary
adversary and prevented the growth and instantiation of any secondary or
tertiary adversaries,” the undersecretary said.
To put it simply, Griffin said, the U.S. was on top, “So we
could afford to take long periods of time to do things and spend a lot of
money.”
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the United States
thought it would never have another adversary, he pointed out. That thinking
contributed what he described as an “unhealthily lackadaisical state of mind.”
The recently released National Defense Strategy points out
these false assumptions the U.S. has been making, the undersecretary said.
Speeding Up Processes
DoD needs to return to the point where decisions can be made
at a lower level and processes move forward with speed, Griffin explained.
Besides, if you are wrong, physics will let you know, he said.
The United States got to where it is through its
technological superiority and being able to “bring stuff to the fight, to get
stuff deployed [and] to do it in a rapid, robust fashion,” the undersecretary
said.
The department can learn from mistakes instead of striving
for perfection, Griffin said. DoD does get it right, it just takes an enormous
amount of time and money to get to that point, he said.
“This is a country that knew how to do things quickly and
reasonably well,” the undersecretary said.
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