Acquisition for the DoD has undergone many radical changes over the years. The current state is a mess that seeks to miracle-ize the acquisition process. First, requirements at the highest ORD level are often times are based on pure fantasy, and are not checked for technological achievability. It is not surprising to me that the requirement to meet camouflage in all environments, despite the obvious impossibility of such a task, became a “must have” in a uniform program.
Requirements for items to have characteristics that are incompatible with the required capabilities are common. This results in conflicting requirements that don’t necessarily say, but mean, “light but heavy”, “thin but thick”, “flexible but rigid”, and in this case “light but dark” or “tan but green”. Another huge issue is backwards compatibility, where users often insist that each new product be 100% compatible with every military product made since WWII. I call this one “new but old”.
Once a program is begun, it is not turned over to an expert like ADM Rickover to implement, but GS employee Program Manager (PM) who most likely has no idea or experience with the item. A subject-matter expert, whose job it is to represent the users interest, and to keep the fantasy element alive, is often brought in to participate, but the program remains in tight control of the PM.
Source Selection is an additional farce, where the guy who lies the most almost automatically wins the award. Either the firm is lying to government, or they lie to themselves. It does not matter as the result is the same. In the process of source selection, the unfortunate end result is not to pick the best player, but to rehabilitate the worst player(s) until they become acceptable. Realistic, truth-telling vendors are almost always eliminated as either being too expensive or not meeting (impossible) requirements.
The concept of “spiral development” has the unintended consequence of allowing the Product Team off the hook when major requirements are not met. The idea is that the product will be improved in future iterations. This does work in some cases in the private sector, but oftentimes it is just used as a “flex” when needed by bureaucrats. The otherwise effective Spiral Development concept conflicts directly with the Acquisitions Milestones model, and this is where faulty products and vendors are locked-in. They “shoot the engineers” who are often dumbfounded as to why the process has failed so miserably, yet marches on under full steam.
The final issue I see is the “executive-ization” of higher level Government employees. They have enormous power and prestige, and have slowly forgotten their responsibilities as Civil Servants. Publications like Government Executive only serve to feed their egos. If I were in charge, the first thing I would do is eliminate the name “Senior Executive Service” and change it to “Senior Civilian Service”. If you want to be an executive, then you should to go into private industry.
I actually got a certification in gov contracting a number of years ago. Interesting stuff, if a bit dull.
The big failing with the ACU colors was that they completed the entire testing cycle, then decided on a color scheme that hadn’t been tested at any point during the program. At least the MARPAT colors were based on real-world testing and previous research. Ditto Multicam, which again has some actual environmental colors. The ACU is almost a literal example of “what color is the sky in your world”.