Military Review English Edition November December 2016 | Page 65

ARMY ACQUISITION

To identify good business practices for acquisition, the authors reviewed the Air Force’s
Rapid Capabilities Office, the OSD’s Strategic
Capabilities Office, and the Office of Naval Research
TechSolutions and SwampWorks programs. In
addition, they explored successful research, development, and acquisition business practices used by
U.S. Special Operations Command (USSOCOM).
The effectiveness of USSOCOM’s practices illustrates
that the Army could overcome its reduced unity of
command, which results from bifurcated authority
chains.14 This bifurcation impairs the requirements,
resourcing, and execution phases of the acquisition
process.15 A key aspect of the USSOCOM business
model is its single chain of command that authorizes the commanding general of USSOCOM to
have oversight over the USSOCOM Acquisition
Executive. This organizational structure creates a
single pathway for articulating and acting on operational needs and priorities that are understood across
its enterprise. The Army could mitigate the negative
MILITARY REVIEW  November-December 2016

Maj. Gen. Cedric T. Wins (left), commanding general of the
U.S.  Army Research, Development and Engineering Command
(RDECOM), learns about a prototype version of the Joint Tactical Aerial Resupply Vehicle from Sgt. 1st Class Daniel Guenther
(right), an enlisted advisor at the U.S. Army Research Laboratory
Weapons and Materials Research Directorate 8 September 2016
at Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland. (Photo by Conrad Johnson, RDECOM)

impacts of its bifurcated system by streamlining the
enterprise to create enduring organizational processes that better align acquisition activities across the
under secretary of the Army and the Army staff.
Furthermore, the PPBE funding process conditions Army organizations to seek sustained funding
through materiel programs without consideration of
nonmateriel or less sexy technology solutions. This
promotes not only a harmful stovepipe culture but
also an insatiable appetite for resources. This situation may have been manageable in the past, but the
expanding operational requirements of the Army,
coupled with the increasing nondiscretionary cost of
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