The Department of Defense’s (DoD) bureaucratic processes are hindering tech acquisition and stifling generational innovation, slowing the military’s ability to adapt to rapidly evolving technologies, according to a former senior official of the Air Force.
During a conversation hosted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) on Monday, Will Roper – founder and CEO of Istari Digital and former assistant secretary of the Air Force for acquisition, technology and logistics – explained that the DoD’s bureaucratic process is “slow, cumbersome, and expensive.”
“Building a system that’s less complex is a great step. Don’t make it harder than it needs to be,” Roper said. “[But] you get a ton of complexity injected. And every year … the bureaucracy of the Pentagon for overseeing programs does not get smaller.”
He explained that DoD’s current bureaucratic process “discourages innovation” in large part due to the complexity associated with the certification process.
According to Roper, the current technology acquisition process in the department is complex, heavily regulated, and often slow, involving multiple layers of certification and approval at various stages.
“The paradigm … especially in a lot of the critical classified programs, [is] we hadn’t brought a new technology in in a decade for fear of busting certification. So … the way the process is now, it discourages any innovation … You’re living in the past because you fear the cert,” Roper said.
He offered automation of the certification process as a solution to accelerate the acquisition process and in turn, improve innovation within the department. Roper highlighted the Department of the Air Force’s Kessel Run program as a clear example of “success in automating cybersecurity compliance.”
Kessel Run is an Air Force unit that delivers command and control and targeting software capabilities to provide warfighters decision advantage.
“We could lift and shift industry’s playbook for software, and apply it to us, and just get it military certified for whatever,” Roper said. “But we need a completely different playbook if we were going to do this for physical systems.”
