Cartwright says DoD needs to be flatter

By Jason Miller
Executive Editor
FederalNewsRadio

Gen. James Cartwright wants the Defense Department to adhere to the theory of “The World is Flat.”

Like the best selling book says, the globalization of the economy forces companies to do things differently. Cartwright, the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, takes that concept to the battlefield.

“As you look toward the future, pretty much we see persistent conflict and that conflict most likely is at the asymmetrical and irregular warfare end of the equation,” says Cartwright during a speech Wednesday at AFCEA’s Northern Virginia’s Naval IT day in Vienna, Va. “It is sustained and unique. How are we going to in this environment of persistent conflict, manage our forces and give them the capabilities they need across a much broader spectrum of conflict as we move toward the future?”

He says the cycle time, for instance in the fight against improvised explosive devices (IED), is about 30 days. But Cartwright asks how does DoD react to those changes?

“We are living in an environment that needs persistent adaptation,” he says. “The reality in business today, if you don’t get yourself distributed or flattened, if you are not adaptive at point of transaction, read that the warfighter, if that is not where you are empowered then you cannot keep up with the change.”

He says the cycle time to take information and process it is way too slow, and only leaves the warfighter disadvantaged.

“The priority is getting knowledge and the capabilities and the adaptation out to the edge and only way to do that is with these networks we are using,” he says. “Moving the processing, moving the storage, moving the programmers out to the edge. If we don’t do that, we will end up like many businesses do, feeling good as we go to Chapter 11.”

Too often, DoD wants to centralize power, which means bringing all information to the commands, and then distribute it.

“In the cyber fights today, we are finding 14 days between application changes and less than 14 minutes in changes of tools,” he says. “Those are the fights that we’ve got to start to prepare people for and advantage them in. We cannot do that by taking all information, taking it back to the center and distributing it back out. It’s bassackwards.”

He adds that the world DoD wants to live in has greater knowledge, power and adaptation at the edge. Yet, DoD is building systems to make all its information centralized and then distributed.

He says DoD must understand this concept as it develops the Quadrennial Defense Review and Nuclear Posture Review.

“We find ourselves in a world in which the strategic corporal is doing irregular warfare and may well find themselves in a major conventional warfare and all the way up to nuclear,” Cartwright says. “Trying to understand in the department what’s the right balance between most likely and most dangerous. That will be the heart of QDR.”

He says part of the problem, especially in technology, is the acquisition process.

“We are building code and tools in cyber on the rules associated with building aircraft carriers,” Cartwright says. “They’re irrelevant before they even get to Milestone A. And there is no rule against to doing it different. We just don’t want to because it would disturb the power centers. We’ve got to start putting the pressure of value into this discussion. People die over these decisions.”

Cartwright says DoD has to solve this issue by changing the system to have more than one way to get at the need and solution.

“It takes longer to declare a new start than the lifecycle of a software package,” he says. “Can we have different risk calculus, structures, timelines associated with product centers? For instance in cyber, can we take Milestone and requirements decision authority and move it to a common point in an organization that does nothing but work in an IT world?”

Cartwright says DoD has given this decision authority to Strategic Command, Joint Forces Command and Transportation Command. Now he says his intent is to give similar authority for requirements to the Defense Information Systems Agency and the National Security Agency.

“I will petition the authorities to work inside the Federal Acquisition Regulations, but relieve themselves of the 5,000 restrictions that are inappropriate for that kind of risk or that kind of program,” he says. “We have to do this because we are so disadvantage with how we are doing business right now.”

The DoD 5000 is the regulations for how DoD manages and procures technology systems. One service member at the conference called the latest update “onerous.” DoD updated the regulations in December.

Cartwright says DoD needs to get the headquarters to understand that we are in an era of constant change and constant adaptation, and address needs that way.

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On the Web:

FederalNewsRadio – Lawmakers calling for more procurement oversight at White House Summit

FederalNewsRadio – Gates: DOD faces ‘hard choices’ on acquisitions

DoD – Operation of Defense Acquisition System-DoD 5000 (pdf)

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