Get to Know the Middle Tier of Awesome…Er, Acquisition
Summary
The Air Force fielded a squadron’s worth of upgraded fighter aircraft in less than three years, a feat that would likely have taken a decade using older methods. The Army has repeatedly upgraded the modularized autonomous platform, giving it sensor and networking advances and continuous agile software upgrades—all of which would have required multiple lengthy follow-on programs under the traditional approach. While IG audit reports typically highlight concerns and “opportunities for improvement,” this one’s overall finding was that “DoD acquisition personnel effectively leveraged the MTA pathway for all 11 programs we reviewed, to rapidly develop prototypes and field proven technologies to the warfighter as intended.” OK, so they didn’t use the word awesome, but they totally could have. This four-year-old pathway needs protection against powerful bureaucratic forces who seek to return to the outmoded acquisition environment, against those who want rapid programs to spend more time studying the problem, writing documentation, and navigating endless reviews. Today, MTA programs remain a tiny fraction of the Pentagon’s overall investment budget, but they represent a large slice of the recent success stories in DoD acquisition – especially in maximizing experimentation, competition, and rapid fielding.