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Powerful Examples Initiative

Powerful Examples are real-world acquisition stories of best practices and lessons learned that highlight a success or other outcome that may be useful to other organizations. We hope these stories of innovative defense acquisition practices provide the acquisition workforce with fresh ideas, techniques, and approaches that may be repeatable in their organizations. We ultimately hope that sharing these Powerful Examples will lead to improved development, delivery, and sustainment of capabilities to the warfighter.

The purpose of the DAU Powerful Examples initiative is to seek out and share stories of innovative defense acquisition practices that generate results. The intent of sharing these stories is to give members of the acquisition workforce ideas that can be repeated within their programs for greater success.

What is a Powerful Example?

Powerful examples are real-world stories of success or failure curated by DAU that help to reinforce elements of culture change in the Defense Acquisition Workforce. Generally, these examples focus on a single decision, action, or inflection point that had a noticeable impact on the ability of the workforce to deliver capabilities to the warfighter.

The powerful example format is how DAU packages these stories into meaningful learning assets. Because every situation is unique, every example should include elements that are tailored to its specific story. By including different and diverse elements as part of every example, DAU can share it across multiple platforms and with a wider audience.

Key elements of a Powerful Example include:

• A background story along with the need for a particular course of action
• Actions taken to overcome the challenge
• Outcomes (realized or potential) and any lessons learned that others could benefit from

Latest Powerful Examples:

Joint Precision Approach and Landing System (JPALS): Surviving and Thriving through a Nunn McCurdy Breach

Link to Full Screen Video

Link to presentation

The Joint Precision Approach and Landing System (JPALS) program was originally structured to support all United States (U.S.) Department of Defense (DOD) aircraft for ship, shore and expeditionary Global Positioning System (GPS)-based precision landing. At the time, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) was planning to phase out the Instrument Landing System (ILS), necessitating an alternate precision landing system for DOD aircraft.

Starting in 2010, FAA diverged from DOD’s incremental phased approach to move toward a shore-based GPS based technology. Subsequently, the U.S. Army and U.S. Air Force reassessed their precision approach and landing capability and requirements. In 2013, the U.S. Navy decided to remove shore JPALS requirements, reducing the quantity from 33 to 23. The Navy also restructured JPALS to a single increment supporting sea based F-35 and UCLASS. This resulted in a critical Nunn-McCurdy (NM) breach for Procurement Acquisition Unit Cost.

The success of the JPALS program following the critical NM breach, was primarily due to the development of a realistic plan and excellent communications between PMA 213, industry, test and the Fleet. The acquisition program schedule was developed using realistic dates and without dependency on individual platform integration schedules. Incentive contracting and involvement of the appropriate Subject Matter Experts during proposal discussions resulted in clear communications of Government requirements to the Contractor. The Engineering Team worked closely with fleet users (the customer) and resource sponsors to capture requirements accurately. Finally, close coordination and transparency with the test community fostered an environment of trust between DOT&E, Operational Test and Evaluation Force and PMA 213. Trust, good communication and flexibility are core competencies that were key to JPALS success.

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