The Defense Business Board, in a space acquisition report last month, recommends significant improvements to the Joint Capabilities Integration and Development System (JCIDS) in order to help scale up the use of commercial space technologies.
JCIDS “is time-consuming, cumbersome, and limits opportunities to leverage commercial innovation,” the study said. “A follow-on DBB study should look at options to reform the JCIDS requirements process.”
Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld created JCIDS in 2003 to inject jointness into the requirements process up front, but critics over the last 20 years have called for eliminating JCIDS, including former Vice Chief of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Marine Gen. James Cartwright more than a decade ago.
“It is no wonder why the organizations revered for their procurement speed in the DoD are also the ones relieved from using the traditional JCIDS path (Missile Defense Agency, SDA [Space Development Agency], SpRCO [U.S. Space Force Rapid Capabilities Office], Special Operations Command),” last month’s DBB study said. “Ironically, the best solution for improving JCIDS to date has been to avoid it altogether, as evidenced by the [fiscal year 2016 National Defense Authorization Act-created] MTA [Middle Tier Acquisition method] and Software Acquisition Pathways, exempted from its use by law.”
“Like JCIDS, exempted pathways and organizations are focused on meeting warfighter needs, but they do so in much closer collaboration with current users and technologists,” the report said.
Lawmakers want details from DoD on how it will scale up commercial space systems, including commercial satellite communications (Defense Daily, Dec. 8). Since its inception, JCIDS has faced criticism. More than a decade ago, former Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Marine Gen. James Cartwright called for the elimination of JCIDS, but to no avail.
JCIDS, burdened by a 341-page handbook and 114-page directive, stultifies innovation through a solution-centric requirement and results in more than two years for an average system to go from an initial capabilities document to approval by the Joint Requirements Oversight Council, DBB said in last month’s report.
“With a narrow requirement, bidders are constrained from offering an innovative approach and are given no incentive to experiment,” the report said. “On the lengthy billion-dollar acquisitions, where proposal requests only come once a decade, many companies only bid mature technology to improve their chance of winning the contract. One start-up business found this out the hard way when it approached a major prime about including its cyber solution in their proposal. ‘The government does not want innovation in this program. If they wanted that, they would have asked for it. They didn’t ask for it, so go away. You’re a liability, not an asset.'”