DEFENSE WATCH

May 2006

Procurement Rules Remain Disconnected From Reality

by Sandra I. Erwin

A wealth of Pentagon rhetoric and lip service to the wonders of “network-centric” warfare has conveniently ignored a sticky issue: The purchase of information-age technologies often is entirely incompatible with the Defense Department’s buying habits.

Procurement experts and industry analysts for years have pointed out the obvious disconnect between the fast and furious pace of technology and a plodding Pentagon bureaucracy that historically has taken 12 to 15 years to move a weapon system from design to production.

Despite significant advances in weapons technology, for the most part, the military services have continued to operate many “legacy” communications networks and have stated wishfully their grand plans for things such as “global information grids,” “force nets,” and “command-and-control constellations.”

In the case of the Army, it wasn’t until the invasion of Iraq in 2003 that it came face-to-face with the sobering reality that soldiers’ ability to communicate in the battlefield had not changed much since World War II.

When the Army’s 3rd Infantry Division rolled into Iraq and began its speedy march towards Baghdad, commanders immediately concluded that the unit’s Cold War communications network was entirely useless. The system, known as “mobile subscriber equipment,” required the brigade commander to stop advancing and wait for the technical staff to set up the “tactical operations center” inside a large tent. This is not only time consuming, but also an entirely risky proposition when an army is operating in hostile territory. In the absence of the usual means of communications, “We were back to World War II push-to-talk line-of-sight tactical radios,” says Lt. Col. Chuck Gabrielson, an Army battalion commander who served in Iraq.

At times, even the radios didn’t work because the distances between units were so vast. One of the 3rd ID battalions leading the way to Baghdad, Gabrielson recalls, was so far forward that it did not even have voice communications with the brigade. Soldiers then resorted to their satellite tracking devices to send brief text messages.

When the 3rd ID returned from its first Iraq rotation, the Army decided it was finally time to ditch the outdated technology and equip units with modern communications systems. For the past two years, units deploying to Iraq have seen a drastically improved communications network, called “joint network nodes,” or JNN.

Commanders have so praised the performance of JNN that the Army now wants to buy it for the entire force, at a cost of more than a billion dollars.

The plan, not surprisingly, is colliding against the Army’s own outdated procurement rules. The senior official in charge of Army procurement, Lt. Gen. Joseph Yakovac, points to JNN as an example of why it’s been so difficult for the military to get the latest and greatest technology, even when it can easily afford it.

One reason is that it is hard for the procurement bureaucracy and its overseers to understand JNN. It is not a monolithic piece of hardware that can be displayed at the Pentagon parking lot. When it deploys, the Army sets up the JNN network in the back of humvee trucks, but the overall system is made up of dozens of pieces, spread across the battlefield. The budgeting and contracting procedures are not set up for such complex mesh of technologies, Yakovac says. Buying tanks would be a lot easier, he notes. “But we are not buying tanks.”

The Army is now working with the Pentagon acquisition office to figure out how to turn JNN from an urgent war requirement into a “program of record” that can be managed like any other military program. That has been a “huge challenge,” Yakovac adds.

Complicating matters are procurement laws that require the government to seek competitive bids from contractors. So far, the Army has gotten away with having a single contractor, General Dynamics, in charge of JNN integration, training and maintenance. That was OK as long as it was a war-emergency situation that did not allow enough time to go through the extensive competitive bidding process. But now things have changed. JNN is becoming a big-ticket program — the latest war-emergency spending bill includes $853 million for the system — and many companies are clamoring for an opportunity to bid.

The Army, for its part, has been satisfied with GD as the contractor, but also welcomes the chance to possibly get lower prices and improved technology via competition, says Michael LeBrun, an acquisition official who works in Yakovac’s office.

The contracting of JNN is yet another major stumbling block because there are so many moving parts, Yakovac explains. “We haven’t been down this road before. We’ll have to figure out how to do this.”

Contractors also need to begin to think differently about how to bid for these non-traditional programs, he says. “Industry would like to get contracts based on lots, like tanks. I’m not sure this marketplace lends itself to that type of contracting. All of our processes are great if you want to buy a tank … Even our budget process doesn’t like this program.”

The Army may consider selecting an “integrator” to manage the program, as it did for the “future combat systems.” But that has yet to be decided, LeBrun says.

In the larger picture of military procurement, JNN is emblematic of the Pentagon’s inflexible acquisition system, says Michael J. Sullivan, director of procurement at the Government Accountability Office. He recently wrote a detailed study that argues that the Pentagon’s ambitious “global information grid” may never come to fruition because it will run into many of the same roadblocks experienced by the Army with JNN.

It is unlikely that the Defense Department will make substantial changes to its buying practices in the foreseeable future. But the current debate surrounding the Army’s battlefield network shows partly why the military remains far from realizing its network-centric dreams.

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