Acquisition woes revisited.

In the April 2008 edition of National Defense, several different articles--"Impending Collision Between Military Needs and Resources," "Changes to Military Strategy," "Overpriced, High-Maintenance Hardware Hurts the Army," "The New Pentagon," "Special Operations Command: It Takes Too Long to Get Equipment," "Rolling Ahead," and "Driving Forces," all address a serious, yet common thread issue. This is stated in the Readers' Forum, "Acquisition Woes."

The pre-9/11 mindset still prevails in the acquisition world. It is a multi-facet sequential process involving numerous procedures, decisions, milestones, evaluations and several meetings, among other cost producing measures. This antiquated way of doing business is time consuming at best and extremely costly to the war fighter at its worst. Current measures exist to maximize the use of laws and regulations to alleviate this dilemma.

While serving in Iraq in 2003-2004 as a contingency contracting officer, we did not wait for the one-year to 18-month process when it came to putting armor on military vehicles. We didn't have that long when soldiers were being killed in action on a daily basis.

Instead, we identified soldiers' need for protection, solicited multiple local vendors who operated with metal for sample plates no thicker than a quarter inch, tested the plates at 20 meters with 7.62 rounds, selected the first piece that stopped all rounds, identified the vendor who owned a factory that produced this metal, signed a contract and had the armor installed onto thousands of humvees at $600 per vehicle. This covered all four doors, under floor-boards, and back plates. The whole process from identifying the user need to full installation took approximately six weeks.

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There is a solution to "Acquisition Woes" if our Defense Department acquisition mindset is restructured toward a new 21st century war strategy.

Maj. Scott A. Meehan, Ret.

U.S. Army