Streamlining DOD Acquisitions: Balancing Schedule with Complexity

摘要

Since at least the late 1960s, the Department of Defense has been trapped in an escalating cycle of cost overruns and schedule delays on large acquisition programs. In particular, state-of-the-art aircraft programs have ballooned from one to five year sprints during and immediately after World War II to the 25-year marathons of the present day. An aerospace force that once blackened the skies over Europe with tens of thousands of aircraft of all shapes and sizes and swelled our nation's nuclear deterrent with thousands of leading-edge missiles and warheads now struggles to purchase a few dozen modern bombers, barely 150 fighters, and a few hundred airlifters and tankers despite enormous outlays over the last 20 years. Over this time, the average age of operational USAF aircraft has grown from just a few to approximately 24 years, and seems inevitably bound to approach 40 years within decades. In response to these trends, a parade of commissions and surveys, marching to a seemingly perpetual acquisition reform drumbeat, have proposed a dizzying array of cures for the gamut of ills effecting the acquisition corps. Yet despite these heroic efforts, program schedules and costs continue to grow, confounding even the sharpest minds of American industry. The United States has so far been able to compensate for this growing inefficiency by leaning on the massive industrial might of the world's greatest economy. Unfortunately, it appears that the age of defeating our enemies by outspending them is ending. To begin, the American share of the world's economic output has been steadily shrinking since the end of World War II, and some estimate that the United States will be replaced by China as the world's largest economy by the year 2030 and may well slide into third place behind India by 2050.