Last week Breaking Defense published an overview of Pentagon leaders’ recent step into reforming the ponderous process used to acquire new weapon systems. "To rapidly field new weapons, they are revamping how requirements are validated and bidding adieu to the controversial Joint Capabilities Integration and Development System (JCIDS) process." [Pentagon terminating JCIDS process as part of larger acquisition reform: Memo   - Breaking Defense]

Unfortunately, instead of looking back multiple years and relying more on individual service-led requirements, a new ACRONYM-RIDDLED TOP-DOWN REPLACEMENT HAS EMERGED, including a “Requirements and Resourcing Alignment Board (RRAB)”… “shall select topics from the top-ranked KOP (key operational problems)” ... “funding from the Joint Acceleration Reserve (JAR)”. REALLY?

ADDITIONALLY, “DoD is also getting a Mission Engineering and Integration Activity (MEIA) within 120 days. The idea here is for the JROC [Joint Requirements Oversight Council] to prioritize KOPS, then the MEIA will reach out to industry, conduct mission engineering analysis to help refine requirements, and conduct rapid integration of new capabilities while also creating experimentation campaigns.” 

FINALLY, WITH CONGRESS JOINING IN, THE EVENTUAL OUTCOME IS A TOSS-UP. Reportedly, the House would create a “Requirements, Acquisition, and Programming Integration Directorate (RAPID), which would evaluate technological options and their costs and provide its own recommendations to the deputy defense secretary”, while the Senate would create “Newly designated ‘ “Portfolio Acquisition Executives”’ among each of the services [who] would in turn have broader latitude to manage requirements ...”

IT REMAINS TO BE SEEN HOW ALL OF THESE NEW ACRONYM-RICH CHANGES WILL AFFECT THE SPEED OF ACQUISITION! 

Granted, a very large acquisition program, such as the new Iron Dome Missile Defense Shield for America [https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2025/01/fact-sheet-president-donald-j-trump-directs-the-building-of-the-iron-dome-missile-defense-shield-for-america/], will clearly require top-level Pentagon leadership. However, Army, Navy, and Air Force leaders of many other weapon system programs ought to be allowed to establish requirements and proceed with much less Pentagon oversight.

THIS IS NOT A NEW OUTCRY AGAINST PENTAGON BUREAUCRACY. GO BACK, FOR EXAMPLE, TO 2017, when experts argued forcefully for the Pentagon to back off and permit more individual-service acquisition authority, especially in establishing requirements.  

– In Defense News, General Mike Loh, former commander of the Air Force Air Combat Command, urged a focus on the requirements document, not the process! Specifically, he said

“Every new administration deplores the defense acquisition system it inherits and pledges to reform it aggressively. And every administration, while trying valiantly, fails. Instead, the system becomes more and more complex and lengthy. One big reason is the focus on process, not product. 

The most important, yet most overlooked product in the defense acquisition system is a succinct operational requirements document. The operational requirements document, or ORD, is the foundation of the acquisition process from concept development through system development.

However, the Defense Department’s acquisition process is so overloaded with Office of the Secretary of Defense as well as Joint Staff bureaucracy, unqualified personnel, multiple reviews and councils, and duplication of the service’s requirements organizations, the ORD gets lost. That series of processes — the Joint Capabilities Integration and Development System, or JCIDS — in place since 2003, adds little value and never focuses on the ORD as the centerpiece. ...” 

General Loh’s full article can be read here.

– Defense AT & L Magazine critcized “the top-down Pentagon hierarchical control processes in force since World War II ... the process moves too slowly to keep up with the light-speed pace of the evolving threats that it is intended to counter and much too slow to acquire and field the technologies required to fill 21st century capability gaps. (As noted by former Air Force Vice-Chief of Staff for Intelligence Lt. Gen. David Deptula, “Al Qaeda doesn’t have a JCIDS process … we need to be able to operate much quicker and inside our adversary’s decision loop.”) ... in terms of staying ahead of the threat curve, the DoD will need to sacrifice control for speed by allowing the Services more authority to seek innovative solutions and to more rapidly acquire new, cutting-edge technologies (both hardware and software) and get them in the hands of the warfighter.“

IN CONCLUSION, YES, DO AWAY WITH JCIDS, BUT DO SO BY MINIMIZING TOP-LEVEL PENTAGON CONTROL, NOT MAKING IT MORE COMPLICATED!