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  2. Defense Acquisition Magazine
  3. Defense Acquisition Magazine March-April 2024
  4. Speed and Scale—Finishing The Story

Speed and Scale—Finishing the Story

two soldiers standing in a gray field

by Dave Riel


Dr. William LaPlante, Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment (USD[A&S]), has emphasized that DoD’s top priority is to “deliver integrated capabilities at speed and scale.” Current crises and demand surges driven by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and our Great Power Competition with China have illuminated the importance of faster and better acquisition and sustainment and the “imperative for increased and improved defense capabilities for both the United States and our allies and partners,” as Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks stated in her introduction to the recently released National Defense Industrial Strategy (NDIS)

Over the last five years, the national defense focus shifted from defeating terrorism to increasing innovation. DoD Directive 5000.01, The Defense Acquisition System (DAS), makes innovation our number one principle—“Deliver Technology at the Speed of Relevance.” 

Recent National Defense Authorization Acts passed by Congress have given the DoD new authorities, leading to the Middle Tier of Acquisition and Software Acquisition pathways. These are part of what former USD(A&S) Ellen Lord called the “most transformational reform in decades” in defense acquisition. This change has increased pressure on program offices to rapidly develop prototypes and incorporate new commercial technologies.

In a webinar discussion with DAU President James Woolsey last year, LaPlante noted that, “We rightfully have celebrated prototypes and real innovation, but we have to finish the story.” Procurement, research, development, test, and evaluation funding are increasing, but LaPlante stresses that “what matters is fielding at scale.” 

But how will this be accomplished? This is a two-pronged challenge involving both sustainment and production.

Sustainment

During implementation of the Middle Tier of Acquisition (MTA), which can perhaps be credited as the kickoff of “speed of relevance,” the Office of the USD(A&S) increased its emphasis on sustainment. The April 16, 2018, memo titled Middle Tier of Acquisition (Rapid Prototyping/Rapid Fielding) Interim Authority and Guidance authorized and encouraged DoD Components to use the MTA pathway. We have since witnessed an increasing importance placed on ensuring that sustainment is not sacrificed in the pursuit of innovative technology and the “residual operational capability” set forth as a requirement by the Fiscal Year 2016 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). 

That memo was followed by the Services and the U.S. Special Operations Command each providing its own guidance for specific MTA procedures. The Office of USD(A&S) in 2018 added governance provisions to ensure that the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) and Congress would retain “confidence in the appropriateness of the Components’ use of this authority.” 

In her second governance memorandum of March 20, 2019, Lord focused on the need for the Services to include “sustainment considerations” and assigned the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Sustainment to “review the sustainment-related data.” The memorandum also stated that the USD(A&S) was “empowered to address concerns directly with the Component Acquisition Executives.”

As the Adaptive Acquisition Framework gained momentum and structure, instructions were dispersed under DoDI 5000.02 across the six pathways, including separate DoD instructions for functional areas, such as engineering and logistics, among others. 

In each of these updated and new policies, OSD rightfully made a concerted effort to emphasize sustainment. In its first meaningful update in 17 years, DoDD 5000.01, published in 2020, highlighted the need to “emphasize product support and sustainment.” A new separate and overarching policy was added to “Implement Reliability and Maintainability by Design.” 

Similarly, when the Office of USD(A&S) published its first pathway instruction, DoDI 5000.80, Operation of the Middle Tier of Acquisition in 2019, it noted that the “CAEs will designate a Project Manager (PM) and product support manager for each program using the MTA pathway” and indicated that “PMs, with the support of the product support managers, will develop and implement sustainment programs addressing each of the integrated product support elements to deliver affordable readiness.”

In DoDI 5000.91, Product Support Management for the Adaptive Acquisition Framework, the Office of USD(A&S) again emphasized the need to focus on supportability with an entire section of the instruction dedicated to MTA. Product support managers were urged to “influence design through coordination with users to assess models or physical prototypes, to ensure maintainability and usability within an operational environment.”

Due to the five-year statutory time limits and the pressure of delivering capability at the speed of relevance, it may prove difficult to focus PMs on product supportability and the integrated product support elements. But the instructions and personnel have been put in place to lead in that direction. 

Production

What about producibility? If we’re to “finish the story,” we will need the capability to build quality products at speed. But how? One place to look is DoD’s Manufacturing Readiness Level (MRL) Deskbook with its manufacturing threads and subthreads. Logically, these threads can also be used to prepare for scaling the manufacturing and production of innovative defense weapon systems and supplies pursued by our speed of relevance efforts.

It is incumbent on all of us to better understand how production and manufacturing can achieve the needed production scale.

One resource for understanding the Defense Industrial Base (DIB) perspective is the National Defense Industrial Association’s Vital Signs report. The Executive Summary of the 2023 fourth annual Vital Signs notes that the DIB workforce has diminished by two-thirds since 1985, and the number of DIB companies has decreased by 17,045 just in the last five years.

DIB funding has also declined as a percentage of the GDP and is less predictable in a time when passage as part of a Continuing Resolution or stopgap funding has become the norm in place of the annually required appropriations. Vital Signs also notes that the challenge of limited surge capacity is due partly to “overreliance on sole source suppliers.” This in turn was connected to a significant U.S. defense industry consolidation in the early 1990s, one of the legacies of the end of the Cold War. 

The February 2022 State of Competition within the Defense Industrial Base report laid out five recommendations: 

  • Strengthen Merger Oversight to limit the consolidation pervasive in the DIB driven by the pursuit of an end-of-the-Cold-War-era “peace dividend” in the early 1990s.
  • Address Intellectual Property (IP) Limitations, including identifying long-term IP needs early in acquisition while competition exists.
  • Increase New Entrants by reducing barriers to entry, among other initiatives.
  • Increase Opportunities for Small Businesses, especially in priority sectors.
  • Implement Sector-specific Supply Chain Resiliency Plans targeting specific sectors identified in DoD’s report on Executive Order 14017, Securing Defense-Critical Supply Chains.

These measures also are addressed in the NDIS, which more broadly outlines four critical areas of focus, including resilient supply chains, workforce readiness, flexible acquisition, and economic deterrence. 

While the defense industrial ecosystem is critical to our ability to “finish the story,” within individual programs there are other manufacturing threads and subthreads (as outlined in the DoD 2022 MRL Deskbook) that can heavily influence our ability to scale while not inhibiting speed. The following are three such threads.

Design

The design manufacturing thread directly affects our ability to scale. A design philosophy for manufacturing and assembly will reduce cost and allow faster production and the ability to scale in keeping with the new DoDD 5000.01 overarching policy to “Implement Reliability and Maintainability by Design.” Twice in my career, I observed programs that were negatively affected by design considerations and weight-reduction criteria. 

The first such experience involved the requirement for special tooling and machining operations in which about 98 percent of a titanium block was removed to produce a required part. Though there were other contributing factors, the result was a steep reduction in the number of assets procured and significantly increased sustainment costs.

It is incumbent on all of us to better understand how production and manufacturing can achieve the needed production scale.

Items in the second negatively affected program were not overly challenging to manufacture and produce; however, each required additional time and care to avoid quality issues. For example, in an effort to reduce weight, a thinner aluminum honeycomb was procured that involved using a special, lightweight adhesive. Personnel who had no experience working with this honeycomb frequently damaged it until special handling equipment and training were developed and applied. 

Perhaps, in these cases and many others, the requirement outweighs the need for a friendlier design. Yet, the conversation at the time was centered on “Can you manufacture this?” not “What is the cost and schedule impact of this requirement?” For the sake of scale, it is time to ensure that cost and schedule are primary concerns.

Soldiers standin in a field

U.S. Air Force Senior Airman Jason Stratton, 435th Security Forces Squadron contingency response team member, monitors a treeline with a robodog during a field training demonstration at the Polygone Training Compound in Bann, Germany, Oct. 20, 2023. This routine training event aimed to build on contingency response operations and strengthen the 435th SFS’ intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, and sensor capabilities by utilizing new and emerging technology.
Source: U.S. Air Force photo by Senior Airman Madelyn Keech 
Photo cropped to show detail.

Process Capability and Control

Process Capability and Control also influence our ability to scale with speed. The MRL Deskbook notes that this thread “requires an analysis of the risks that the manufacturing processes are able to reflect the design intent (repeatability and affordability) of key characteristics.” Again, ask not “Can we manufacture this component?” But rather ask, “How can we manufacture it effectively (repeatably) and efficiently (affordably)?” When design simplicity is made impossible by requirements, does our industry partner have the equipment and process tools needed to ensure that the key characteristics of those parts and components are manufactured effectively and efficiently? Are they able to consistently provide quality parts? These questions flow into the following thread.

Quality

Quality “requires an analysis of the risks and management efforts to control quality and foster continuous improvement (DoD 2022 MRL Deskbook).” As previously discussed, quality can be heavily influenced by design and process control. However, this is also where Lean and Six Sigma experts can provide tools and techniques to “foster continuous improvement.”

Does your industry partner have a culture where the wisdom of value-added technicians and other process evaluation tools, such as run charts, are used to target areas of continuous improvement (CI)? Are CI experts available to guide production and manufacturing teams in evaluating critical tasks and develop ways to ensure greater effectiveness and efficiency?

In our pursuit to “Deliver at the Speed of Relevance,” I have found that the schedule risk assessment (SRA) helps effectively identify the most critical tasks to pursue. With subject matter experts determining the best, worst, and likeliest time durations for the individual tasks in a program’s integrated master schedule, the SRA results in a sensitivity analysis often called the “tornado chart.” This analysis identifies those tasks that can create the greatest impact on the product’s delivery—good and bad. Those tasks with the greatest potential impact can then be targeted by the CI and work teams with tools such as value stream mapping to eliminate waste, better understand the task’s processes, and target areas for additional resources. Those limited resources can then be focused on either mitigating the risks that lead to worst case scenarios or on pursuing the opportunities that can improve the schedule.

Conclusion

Your thorough review of the remaining manufacturing threads in the MRL Deskbook will surely indicate similar trade-offs and areas where management can best make improvements.

We owe it to our Warfighters to carefully consider those trade-offs and actions and ensure that we can quickly and affordably produce war-winning capabilities.

Ultimately, it will take the triangulation of speedy development, easily producible systems, and designed-in sustainment considerations to guarantee that our Warfighters are ready to meet and win the Great Power Competition. 


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RIEL is a professor of Acquisition Management with DAU’s Midwest region. Prior to joining DAU, his work included a 20-year U.S. Air Force career on a variety of programs, including the F-22 Advanced Tactical Fighter and the Global Hawk Unmanned Aerial System. He also worked for several years as senior manager of manufacturing and continuous improvement in the defense industry. 

The author can be contacted at [email protected].


The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and not the Department of Defense. Reproduction or reposting of articles from Defense Acquisition magazine should credit the authors and the magazine.


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