How the Pentagon can change its ‘culture of obstruction’

Earlier this week, the Defense Innovation Board unanimously approved a report by the National Defense Science & Technology (S&T) Strategy Review Task Force entitled “An Innovation Strategy for the Decisive Decade.” The Task Force was chaired by Mac Thornberry, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee (HASC) from 2015-2019 and ranking member for the following two years. Thornberry has a well-established reputation as a strong and thoughtful proponent for modernizing and accelerating the stodgy defense acquisition system.

Despite multiple efforts to reform the system on the part of both Congress and the Defense Department itself, including most recently the Department’s release of the first-ever National Defense S&T Strategy, the Task Force concluded that “the Pentagon is not moving at the speed necessary to meet the national security needs of the United States.” The Task Force bemoaned the DoD’s inability both to derive the greatest benefit from breakthrough technologies that non-traditional defense companies develop and to transition those technologies to the warfighter in a timely fashion.

The Task Force’s report constituted a blistering critique of the DoD’s resistance to innovation. It pointed out that “DoD’s process-focused, risk-averse culture creates enough obstacles to make it nearly impossible for non-traditional defense companies to contribute to the DoD mission.” It emphasized that the various elements of the DoD acquisition community “are more focused on professionalizing process than delivering results … increasing budgets or staff without increasing output … [and ] are risk-averse to new ideas.” It asserted that the failure to equip servicemen and servicewomen with “the most cutting-edge capabilities the nation can produce” is “morally indefensible.” All in all, the report concluded, the department suffers from what it termed “a culture of obstruction.”

The report acknowledged that a variety of organizations within DoD do indeed function efficiently and operate on a much more accelerated timeline to bring new technologies into the field. Nevertheless, it noted that “no one should be under the illusion that a handful of scattered offices, programs, and initiatives will enable us to meet our most challenging national security problems.”

The Task Force issued a series of recommendations to address the acquisition system’s shortcomings, beginning with the need for the Secretary and Deputy Secretary of Defense to personally “drive outcomes and re-align incentives.” It urged both leaders to instill a sense of urgency to department personnel in order to counter risk-aversion that is rife within the Pentagon. It did not, however, indicate just how that sense of urgency actually could be instilled; paper memoranda tend to have half-lives that last as long as the incumbents who issue them. The Task Force also suggested the use of financial incentives for programs that showed progress, while issuing program cuts to “punish obstruction.” Bureaucrats are masters at justifying inaction, however. “Obstruction” may therefore prove difficult to identify, much less punish.

The Task Force called on the department to work closely with Congress to “drive necessary changes to ensure technological advantage.” That has often, though not always, been the case in the past, as Mac Thornberry knows better than most. Finally, it urged the use of currently available reporting metrics to ensure greater accountability and reduce delays.

These and other recommendations are all well-meaning, but they do not fully overcome the heart of the challenge that the report identified, namely, changing the “culture of obstruction.” Bureaucrats will remain risk averse, even if they are encouraged to take risks, as long as they fear for their promotion and career prospects. Only if they are positively rewarded for risk-taking will their attitudes and behavior markedly change.

The 1986 Goldwater–Nichols Act offers a model both for instilling cultural change in the department and for doing so rapidly. The legislation provided that no officer could achieve flag or general officer rank unless he or she had served in a joint duty assignment, whether on the Joint Staff itself, or, for example, the staffs of the combatant commanders. With the circular Joint Staff badge virtually a necessary condition for promotion to senior officer rank, it was no surprise that the best and brightest officers sought and gravitated to joint positions.

The Department could apply a similar approach to promotions for the acquisition corps. Acquisition officers would only achieve promotions to flag/general officer rank if they demonstrated that they had made program choices that involved a degree of risk. The same criterion would apply to officials seeking to move into the Senior Executive Service. Congress could be helpful in passing legislation to underpin such an initiative, but the department could implement it on its own.

The net result would be a truly incentivized acquisition corps led by equally far-sighted senior officers and officials. Coupled with the recommendations the Task Force has put forward, such an approach could help the Defense Department ensure that its warfighters will continue to benefit in timely fashion from the highest technology capabilities for many years to come.

Dov S. Zakheim is a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and vice chairman of the board for the Foreign Policy Research Institute. He was undersecretary of Defense (comptroller) and chief financial officer for the Department of Defense from 2001 to 2004 and a deputy undersecretary of Defense from 1985 to 1987.