If You're Taking JCIDS, Grab CAPE While You're at it
low hanging fruit if you are looking to reform The Pentagon
Sometimes I read something that makes me realize that, yes, someone gets me—they really get me.
Via Stephen Losey at Defense News:
…in a report released Monday, titled “Required to Fail”, former Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Industrial Policy Bill Greenwalt and Hudson Institute Senior Fellow Dan Patt argue JCIDS has failed to produce the promised results and — after at least 10 failed attempts at reform — is beyond salvaging.
“JCIDS has failed too completely, too systematically, to be rescued by another committee’s review or a fresh coat of bureaucratic paint,” Greenwalt and Patt said in the report. “The DOD needs to burn it down to its smoldering foundations and let it vanish into history.”
That is almost pr0nographic to my ears. I may need to sit down for a minute or two.
…JCIDS has held back military progress — at times, taking more than two years to validate a requirement while adversaries proceed much more swiftly — left potential innovations tied up in bureaucratic red tape and prioritized “paper shuffling” over actually figuring out what would be the most combat-effective system.
JCIDS is “a burdensome layer of ceremony, divorced from the real decisions that shape our future military edge,” Greenwalt and Patt said.
Amen.
The process has become the product. It is no longer fit for purpose, if it ever was.
As we have often discussed, the accretions encumbered acquisition process that has become the greatest impediment to a military prepared to face the world’s threats. No serious person without a stake in the current system supports keeping it. It stifles innovation, is comically bureaucratic, and is intentionally designed to get between those who have to fight our wars and the equipment they need to fight them.
Getting rid of it is long overdue.
Yes, burn it to the ground. Salt the earth.
Side note: if you don’t understand what CAPE is in the title, this helps.
CDR Sal, your ability to apply precision fires to the target has never been better demonstrated. Since I agree with every word, you must be right...(-;
"The process has become the product. It is no longer fit for purpose, if it ever was...no serious person without a stake in the current system supports keeping it. It stifles innovation, is comically bureaucratic, and is intentionally designed to get between those who have to fight our wars and the equipment they need to fight them...Getting rid of it is long overdue. Yes, burn it to the ground. Salt the earth." You're right about CAPE as well...in spades. (I knew it as PA&E, yes, I'm that old).
Those of us who want to buy the right stuff, agree 100% with you. Those who have a vested interest in DoD purchasing from "them", whether it's the right stuff or not, will vehemently disagree. See military industrial complex (TM), senior DoD bureaucrats, and Congress, otherwise known as the "Iron Triangle". Breaking that triangle up, and getting rid of JCIDS (which they love) requires outside disruptors to have any chance of succeeding. Fingers crossed.
As a former J28 Action Officer and BAFCB (Battlespace Awareness Functional Capabilities Board) rep to the FCB, I WHOLEHEARTEDLY AGREE that JCIDS has had terminal cancer for years and has been draining the Pentagon innovation ecosystem by remaining on life support for the last decade! I can't begin to describe the incredible amount of bureaucratic BS that goes into finding and developing new capabilities. I still have nightmares about UONS and JUONS, and I've been out of the Army for over a decade!