Army Seeks Faster, Better Focused Acquisition

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. — The US Army's chief of doctrine development and future plans said the service is conducting high-level discussions to revise the way it conducts wartime acquisitions, in part to make them quicker.

Gen. David Perkins, commanding general of the Army's Training and Doctrine Command, told an audience at the Association of the United States Army conference here Tuesday that the Army staff, under the guidance of Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Daniel Allyn and Undersecretary Brad Carson, are working to update the applicable regulation, AR 71-9.

"How do we increase our rate of delivery, how do we measure risk," Perkins said. "Sometimes we measure risk by saying here is a fairly large and cumbersome set of requirements, and if I don't meet those requirements, I have risk on the battlefield. … But another risk is that my requirements defy the laws of physics and therefore my ability to produce it is questionable."

AR 71-9, "Warfighting Capabilities Determination," is the guidance for force development and materiel requirements.

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Rather than "buying things to fight," the Army must field, "capabilities to win," Perkins said.

The process, rooted in the Army's new operating concept, "Win in a Complex World," examines whether adjusting one of the requirements for something might make it easier to produce, field and maintain.

Perkins' talk was notable for not listing acquisition priorities, as his predecessors have done, nor did he reference sequestration budget cuts, which has been a ubiquitous talking point for general officers in public remarks over the last few months.

The Army will face an unknowable future, and must be agile and interoperable with joint and interagency partners, as the foundation force for collaborative operations. The Army, he said, not only uses firepower, but projects national power, creating multiple dilemmas for an enemy — one who will avoid the Army's strengths or use them against it.

"If the only dilemma you can provide an enemy is you target them, they stop becoming a target, so they may not coalesce in groups and may not wear a uniform or go subterranean," Perkins said. "We cannot afford one-trick ponies that only provide one dilemma."

In Mosul, Iraq, the Islamic State has provoked the US military with public beheadings, and uses cheap stolen trucks and irregular forces, Perkins said. True to form, the US has responded by dropping multimillion-dollar bombs on those pickup trucks.

"We may have won the tactical firefight, but what about the economic exchange ratio," Perkins said. "We have to avoid million-dollar solutions to hundred dollar problems. That doesn't put us at any advantage. That puts us at an economic disadvantage at the strategic level."

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