Adding to the acquisition alchemy mix.

I would like to respond to Richard Rippere's article "Acquisition Transformation: Turning Lead into Gold" (Defense AT & L, July-August 2004). I enjoyed the article and agree with the underlying philosophy. That said, there are a few points I feel deserve further attention.

Rippere asks, "If the PM knows precisely what the objective required system capability is, then the program doesn't need spiral development.... So how can the program office evaluate proposals from bidders who equally can't foretell future technologic capabilities but can only propose against the first spiral requirements?"

First, spiral development is not the only evolutionary acquisition method. But enough on that. The assumption Rippere seems to make is that a single contractor taking us all the way through all the spirals or increments of an evolutionary strategy is the only competition strategy that applies to evolutionary acquisition. This is not necessarily so.

Addressing Rippere's question on how to choose between contractors who equally can't foretell the future state of technology (assuming a single contractor strategy): the decision can't be based solely upon a technical proposal. What becomes important then is how the proposers would manage getting to the objective end state. (In a sense, this is Rippere's second out-of-the-box idea.) If we don't assume a single contractor strategy, then the answer is simpler: we don't care. We will re-compete the follow-on spirals.

Closer cooperation with industry and academia is a partial solution. However, Rippere only discusses this in relation to concept development. I suggest that this is not using this idea to its best advantage, which would be to continue it throughout the entire acquisition.

But there are practical and philosophical issues to address. To avoid giving anyone an unfair competitive edge, we have to ensure that discussions take place over as wide a field as practicable. A different communications problem comes into play once we award the first spiral (or phase) of acquisition.

If we are not competing the following spirals, how do we avoid stealing intellectual property and handing it to our contractor to implement? In fact, how do we entice good ideas from other than our contractor, with the other party knowing it may not reap some tangible benefit?

If we are competing the follow-on spirals, what limits are there in discussing ideas with our current contractor to avoid giving an unfair competitive advantage for the next source selection? Conversely, how much of what is being developed in our ongoing phase can we share with outside parties (our contractor's competitors)?

Now let's turn to the question of whether we carry a single contractor through all the spirals of our acquisition. Granted there are advantages to this concept, but these are also to be gained for non-evolutionary acquisition. Yet this very concept, which has worked well for many in the commercial business world, seems to go against the government's philosophy of competing whenever practicable. Doesn't the idea of a single contractor through all the spirals go against that competition philosophy?

I don't claim to have the answer to all the questions I raise here and am interested in others' takes on them. These are worthwhile discussions that we need to have.

The author responds:

Mr. Slate is touching on the myriad complexities of the acquisition strategy process. All valid points. He is pointing out there is no single solution acquisition strategy. As we all learned at the Defense Systems Management College: "It Depends."