Learning from Times the Department of Defense Broke the Rules

Proposing a way to field promising technologies without a formal requirement

This is a guest post by Jacob Winn and Wilson Miles (Associate Research Fellows at NDIA’s Emerging Technologies Institute).

The Department of Defense (DoD) is often criticized for its slow pace in adopting promising technologies and its inconsistent ability to field new capabilities rapidly, including those available in the commercial sector. Despite numerous efforts and ambitious rhetoric, the Department has not been able to implement a systematic means of integrating new technologies to support the Joint Force, instead relying on one-off exceptions and special organizations outside the traditional acquisition system.

Through these exceptions, DoD’s acquisition system can work when it matters most – during emergencies like active conflicts or pandemics – but we rarely step back, review, and try to adapt what worked during these crises into DoD’s standard operating procedures.

To explore this problem, the National Defense Industrial Association Emerging Technologies Institute (NDIA ETI) conducted a research study on these infrequent moments of rapid capability adoption. In doing so, we derived the attributes that made these historical efforts successful so that these cases are more often the rule, rather than the exception. We reviewed the Massive Ordnance Air Blast (“MOAB”) Program, the Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) Vehicle Program, and Operation Warp Speed.

ETI found six attributes across these three case studies that provide a methodology for identifying when a technology candidate is the right “fit” for rapid acquisition:

1.     There is high-level support for moving funding and bureaucracy

2.     There are few major policy or regulatory hurdles

3.     Funding can be provided for transition efforts

4.     The technology is mature enough to warrant rapid adoption

5.     The technology is manufacturable at required scale

6.     The technology is suitable for operational use

Our full report is forthcoming, but you can read the abridged copy that was presented at the Naval Postgraduate School’s 2024 Annual Acquisition Research Symposium here.

The recommendations in this report are intended to maximize one or several of these six principles in the acquisition system to enable more regular rapid capability development and adoption.

The most significant reform which we propose is the addition of a new acquisition pathway to the Adaptive Acquisition Framework (AAF). We call it the “Immediate Opportunity Pathway.”

Currently, policy guidance, instructions, and training do not describe how acquisition practices could be used to move a capability – whether from the commercial world or a government lab – into the hands of an operational user without clear, established requirements being previously promulgated.

This creates two problems. First, if real-world technology advances faster than a requirement, that can leave valuable capabilities underused by DoD. Also, if there is no established operational requirement that could make use of a promising technology, it can be difficult to build the development, experimentation, and testing regime that would demonstrate value in the first place.

The new pathway envisions a designated technology officer within each Service who is responsible for identifying such capabilities from sources across the commercial sector, defense industrial base, and military labs. We recommended that this duty be undertaken by the Principal Technology Transition Advisor (PTTA), which Section 806 of the FY2024 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) requires DoD to designate.

The role of this technology officer should be to “push” several technologically mature and manufacturable products to operational users for testing and validation, rather than waiting for a more typical “pull” signal from the requirements process.

Once the product is identified by the PTTA, the appropriate Program Executive Officer (PEO) within their Service would be authorized to use available financial resources to acquire limited existing units from the source (e.g., a commercial company) to immediately begin field testing and evaluation. The PEO would also be authorized to sign milestone contracts – an underused DoD authority that is increasingly being considered in non-defense contexts by technologists interested in “market shaping” – to support an additional limited procurement of existing units if the system works as intended, and to prepare for wider production.

If operational users derive value from the new capability, the Service should be authorized to use Operations & Maintenance funding to support continued operational use. At the same time, the PEO should consult with leadership to move through the traditional Joint Capabilities Integration and Development System (JCIDS) requirements process.

While the limited deployment and sustainment of the capability continue, the standard process can now take over by moving the capability and its new requirements to the Middle Tier of Acquisition (MTA) Rapid Fielding pathway, given that the AAF is intended to provide the acquisition community room to “tailor” and move between the pathways.

A new pathway like this – if implemented with the right authorities and financial management guidance as discussed in our report – would allow the Services to make a few different types of “bets” each year that are not based on a requirements system, which is often slower to notice and absorb technology.

In doing so, the defense ecosystem has one more way to move promising capabilities – mature or emergent – into deployment to ensure that the United States maintains its technological advantage by leveraging the full range of its highly productive innovation ecosystem.