Development vs. Deployment: How Mature Should a Technology be Before it is Considered for Inclusion in an Acquisition Program?

Despite repeated attempts at reforming the defense acquisition process, DoD programs continue to experience substantial cost overruns, schedule delays, and performance shortfalls. While there are likely multiple causes for reform failure, this paper aims to address only one of the critical issues that contribute to these acquisition challenges: the maturity of critical technologies employed in major defense acquisition programs. There have been repeated calls for the DoD to use evolutionary rather than revolutionary acquisition strategies. The DoD has revised its acquisition polices to that end, but despite these new policies, recent GAO reports have indicated that most major acquisition programs are still revolutionary rather than evolutionary and do not follow current DoD guidelines for knowledge-based acquisition. To that end, this paper investigates two key questions: What level of maturity is acceptable for a technology to be included in a major acquisition program, and what obstacles prevent the DoD from implementing an evolutionary acquisition process? The findings will show that, relatively speaking, it is better to employ mature technologies; thus, an evolutionary strategy is superior under most circumstances to a revolutionary strategy. However, when a program relies on multiple, critical technologies, especially those intended for a multimission role, the evolutionary strategy is unstable and there is a natural tendency to revert to the revolutionary technology strategy even though it is not in the best interest of the warfighter. This paper discusses the background of knowledge-based, evolutionary acquisition and why it is considered important for defense acquisition; develops a high-level simulation model of acquisition to help one investigate these issues; uses the model to analyze defense acquisition policy alternatives regarding technological maturity; and presents the policy implications of this analysis. The paper includes 28 briefing charts. Published in the Proceedings of the Fourth Annual Acquisition Research Symposium of the Naval Postgraduate School, Acquisition Research: Creating Synergy for Informed Change, p11-30, Apr 2007. Presented at the Annual Acquisition Research Symposium of the Naval Postgraduate School (4th), Acquisition Research: Creating Synergy for Informed Change held in Monterey, CA on 16-17 May 2007. The original document contains color images.