2

Strategic Value of Owning the Technical Baseline

Before discussing the barriers the Air Force will need to overcome to own the technical baseline in its acquisition programs, it is important to discuss the value to the Air Force of owning the technical baseline. Ownership of the technical baseline not only provides benefits but also helps to reduce risks. It is informative to view some of the benefits through the lens of examples within the Air Force as well as in other agencies that own the technical baseline for their programs. The following sections in this chapter will highlight the importance of owning the technical baseline, the risks associated with not owning it, and how similar agencies own the technical baseline of their programs.

THE IMPORTANCE OF OWNING THE TECHNICAL BASELINE

New weapons systems require enormous investments in systems and people, as well as in tactics, techniques, and procedures. The system itself needs to be well understood throughout its life cycle, from concept formulation through operational use. Modern warfighting systems operate within a system of systems, and the complex web of interfaces and integration nodes among these systems requires planning, investment, and support. The trade-offs and decisions required for optimal planning and execution of these advanced systems can only be made by the entity—in this case the USAF—responsible for the integration of all elements across the entire system and their eventual use to defend U.S. interests. In today’s world, almost all of the systems the Air Force will acquire and integrate into its operations will be developed by the private sector and will demand a high degree

of varied technical knowledge and understanding and communication between the acquisition and operational communities.

“Owning the technical baseline” means that program managers (PMs) and associated personnel have sufficient technical knowledge, experience, and authority to enable program success by making informed, timely, and independent decisions to manage cost, schedule, and performance risk, while ensuring disciplined and integrated program execution. In short, owning the technical baseline allows the government acquisition team to respond knowledgeably and effectively to systems development, operations, and execution and avoid technical and management barriers to mission success. In some cases the supplier has critical knowledge that the acquisition team does not possess—which can be exacerbated if the Air Force does not own the technical baseline. This can include not understanding the constraints that limit performance, which could result in the requirements not being met or can mean that those requirements are unrealistic for the technology readiness level (TRL) of the proposed technical solution. Owning the technical baseline makes certain that government personnel understand the chosen design, understand why that particular design and its various features have been selected over competing designs, and understand the alternative paths to the final product in the face of unanticipated cost, schedule, and performance challenges.

To be effective, the entire government acquisition team, not just the PM or the chief engineer, needs to collectively own the technical baseline; PMs, contracting officers (COs), engineers, budget managers, and maintainers make or contribute to decisions that depend on their knowledge of the technical baseline, and all share a common responsibility for mission success. The entire government acquisition team needs to be able to understand the implications of a proposed change, both its current effects and its downstream effects, on a system’s functional and sustainable capabilities; on program risk, schedule, and cost; and on contractual details. Informed decision making, particularly when dealing with large, complex, and technically advanced weapon systems, depends critically on the ability of the government acquisition team to control, understand, and modify the technical baseline when necessary.

THE RISK OF NOT OWNING THE TECHNICAL BASELINE

Loss of the technical baseline has many ramifications. First and foremost, the government acquisition team needs to understand the technical and programmatic risks, as well as mitigating strategies to limit their impacts, associated with developing and fielding the required capability. If the team relies solely on a prime contractor for this assessment, the government’s decision-making capability is supplanted. As a result, the time lines may lengthen because the team needs more time to work through technical challenges it may not fully understand. More govern-

ment resources, in terms of both people and money, may be required to complete the work, threatening the overall budget, the program objectives, and the Air Force missions themselves. The risk of late delivery of operational capabilities begins to rise, with potential negative impacts on the interoperability of system elements and on the ultimate integration of the product or service into either a new system or the overall system of systems. System support over the life cycle is likely to be more expensive, while its operational capability may fall short of need and expectations. The entire program investment may be imperiled by poorer performance, thus failing to meet the standards required by the operators, program offices, and Air Force leadership. The benefit of owning and the risk of not owning the technical baseline can be illustrated by several examples contained in Box 2.1.¹

HOW OTHER AGENCIES OWN THE TECHNICAL BASELINE

Owning the technical baseline is essential to assuring that the technology the USAF is acquiring meets its operational needs. Put differently, the Air Force performs missions that are uniquely military and inherently governmental. The Air Force values operational input when acquiring technology that is essential to mission performance. Accordingly, for the most part and as in the other Services, the PMs who occupy key leadership positions in the Air Force acquisitions arena are mostly uniformed officers supported by a largely civilian technical workforce.

There are numerous examples in other federal agencies and departments in which ownership of the technical baseline of programs and existing systems is achieved.² Such agencies and departments typically place a high value on the technical proficiency of their workforce and view the operation of the government acquisition team as a necessary complementary unit. These teams most often include experienced technically grounded program managers who possess a strong sense of mission, responsibility, and accountability and who are supported by a well-trained engineering and technical cadre, including experienced contracting, financial, and other functional personnel who are considered and treated as an integral part of the government acquisition team.

___________________

¹ The examples in Box 2.1 are representative vignettes and do not contain all background and contextual information. Information for each example was provided by Air Force Life Cycle Management Center representatives. While they are documented in an abbreviated manner in this report, the testimony heard by the committee demonstrated more fully the consequences of abdicating decision making, reclaiming it, and owning it from the start.

² Representatives were interviewed from the following agencies and departments: the Department of the Navy, the Department of Defense, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the Missile Defense Agency, the National Nuclear Security Administration, Defense Acquisition University, and Defense Innovation Unit-Experimental. A full list of meeting participants can be found in Appendix C.

Top leadership support within each department or agency, for both the missions and the programs, is an essential part of successful ownership of the technical baseline. Successful ownership of the technical baseline in other departments and agencies allows the leadership to make key and other integral decisions in program planning, budgeting, and execution with participation and buy-in across the entire organization. Those agencies and departments maintain an acquisition workforce that is staffed and balanced appropriately, and they clearly spell out and document PM roles, responsibilities, accountabilities, and authorities. Moreover, they view the acquisition force as a vital functionary and mission enabler, with the ability to understand and execute the complexity of acquiring new systems.

As seen through examples in other agencies, successful government acquisition teams possess clear leadership support that openly promotes a risk-tolerant culture and demonstrates a clear sense of urgency to achieve the organization’s goals. PMs have unquestioned accountability for the overall program, which in turn provides a compelling motivation for them to own their technical baseline. A professionally managed and valued engineering workforce with defined career paths and reward structures is essential to producing capable PMs, as is having a program management workforce that has prolonged and relevant experience with industry. A well-managed program management workforce is characterized by PMs who possess continuity and longevity in their positions and a wealth of experience within their

domains, matched with the necessary continuing education and training as well as mentoring opportunities both up and down the chain of command.

The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), in addition to maintaining the nation’s nuclear stockpile, builds nuclear propulsion systems that are typically first of a kind. Similar to many Air Force programs, safety and long-term, high-quality performance are critical concerns for these systems. NNSA owns its technical baseline in part by using the Department of Energy’s national laboratories as a deep technical bench for subject matter expertise. Programs use clearly defined technical requirements to guide an integrated team of program officers, contractors, and end-users toward a set of documented program objectives.

NNSA has also developed a federal risk register to perform its own technical risk assessments, which are subsequently compared to and reconciled with periodic independent external assessments. The risk management guidelines are part of a set of guidelines for project and program management that follow industry best practices and have been tailored to the NNSA environment. This practice fosters an awareness of a program’s baseline and helps prevent small problems from becoming larger ones. Additionally, NNSA enforces management practices that work to retain talented practitioners, and to cultivate a sense of mission and dedication to the program. All of these attributes are considered vital for owning the technical baseline.

The U.S. Navy, like the USAF, acquires specialty military technology that meets demanding operational requirements, many of which are unique to the naval service. The Navy has chosen a different and more nuanced approach to reconciling the need for a distinctly service-oriented operational point of view by providing education, training, experience, and succession planning to enable its personnel to perform competently in the operation of technology acquisition. The Navy employs a tiered approach for developing personnel to effectively lead acquisition programs. There is a cadre of officers who enter the Navy’s engineering workforce after a few years of operational experience as junior officers and postgraduate education in an engineering discipline. The careers of these officers, designated as Engineering Duty Officers or Aeronautical Engineering Duty Officers, are managed so that some specialize in the maintenance of systems and some specialize in acquisition development programs. These officers are restricted to serving in engineering positions within the Navy. PMs for major programs are often selected from this cadre of technically educated, experienced engineering duty officers. Typically these officers have had several assignments supporting program managers in activities such as test and evaluation, research and development, or the administration of acquisition contracts in the field before they are assigned as program managers for major acquisition programs. In general the career paths for engineering duty officers are managed by repeat tours in one of the warfare specialty subsets of the Navy (i.e., submarines, Aegis surface ships, aircraft carriers, aircraft, etc.) all the way to flag officer rank.

The Navy also trains and educates an “unrestricted” cadre of officers who specialize in acquisition-related activities during shore duty and may later enter the ranks of materiel professionals. These officers qualify as acquisition materiel professionals³ through obligatory training. This training and experience allows these officers to bring more recent operational experience to the government acquisition team. Senior military leaders for Navy acquisition programs are selected from the ranks of engineering duty officers, aeronautical engineering duty officers, or materiel professionals, whose backgrounds emphasize and focus on the importance of technical and engineering experience.

Owning the technical baseline provides the natural benefit of a rewarding acquisition career path that allows assimilation of crucial operational knowledge. The committee considered distinctions between the Navy and Air Force training, and discussed whether the Air Force should adopt the Navy’s engineering duty officer career path as a model for improving the technical acumen and operational experience of acquisition personnel. This latter approach evoked mixed reviews by several current Air Force program managers when it was raised in the interview process. Generally, concerns over implementing the engineering duty officer career path in the Air Force were focused on assuring a high level of operational experience and knowledge, the potential disruption of current promotion processes, and the ability to gain broader experience in the Air Force. These concerns when the Air Force was considering an alternative strategy for developing a more professional cadre of experienced Air Force officer acquisition personnel did not seem to be based on an analysis of alternative approaches. Operational experience and concerns are also critically important in Navy acquisition programs. The Navy officer professional acquisition cadre remain keenly aware of operational needs throughout their careers. A contributing element in the way senior PMs are selected in the Air Force may stem from a fundamental career development problem in that many young people are needed to operate Air Force aircraft and systems, but few are needed to fill senior leadership positions in operations. A way of addressing this personnel management problem has been to “lateralize” capable Airmen into senior positions in the acquisition field despite little or no acquisition experience.

As mentioned previously, there are numerous examples in other federal agencies and departments in which ownership of the technical baseline of programs and existing systems is achieved; this report highlights only a few of those examples.

___________________

³ The Defense Acquisition University defines “materiel management” as “direction and control of those aspects of logistics that deal with materiel, including the functions of identification, cataloging, standardization, requirements determination, procurement, inspection, quality control (QC), packaging, storage, distribution, disposal, maintenance, mobilization planning, industrial readiness planning, and item management classification. Encompasses materiel control, inventory control, inventory management, and supply management.”

Representatives from other agencies interviewed by the committee regarded ownership of the technical baseline as an essential element of successful acquisition, and they managed their acquisition workforce to emphasize acquisition experience in those individuals responsible for managing programs. The details of exactly how that experience is acquired vary among the agencies. The Air Force cannot implement all of the methods for owning the technical baseline used by other agencies and departments, but it can recognize that policy, education, and experience all need to emphasize the importance of owning the technical baseline for Air Force programs.

The next chapter discusses barriers to owning the technical baseline identified within the Air Force and the subsequent recommendations for overcoming those barriers. These recommendations were developed based on the information presented to the committee by the Air Force as well as by other agencies and departments.