Acquisition reform.

• Author: Halloran, Dave
• Position: Reader

Your article, "Congress Takes Another Stab at Fixing Pentagon Procurement' (National Defense blog, April 13) has raised again the obvious to many of us in the business.

Where are the folks who really understand what is driving costs? They, not Congress, procurement organizations, operations folks, the Pentagon, are the ones driving those costs. Those folks are the engineering, manufacturing, testing and procurement planning personnel of our industry.

Several years ago when Ashton Carter was in Frank Kendall's chair as the undersecretary of defense for acquisitions, technology and logistics we had the pleasure of briefing some of his staff on procurement simulation models that we had developed and utilized to counsel our clients on what it would take to beat the competition at the price line. We have heard all the stories that price is only part of the equation, but once the basic product in its manufacturing configuration has been accepted by the buyer and the war fighter, the competition is price, price and price, just like it is in the commercial market.

This is particularly relevant in the disastrous environment we find our defense market in today, for all the obvious reasons.

An outstanding example of how the engineering, manufacturing and management genius of U.S. industry operates is the Joint Direct Attack Munition, JDAM. Over the years, the contractor, Boeing McDonnell Douglas in St. Charles, Missouri, has built these precise weapons at continually lower prices. It is so well done that their efforts, always fixed-price, have preempted outside competition from entering the market. What they have done is to dissect the manufacturing and, equally important, the procurement process.

It is the guy on the manufacturing floor, the designing engineer, and all that contributed to that product reaching that stage, who impact the costs.

At the end of the Cold War, then-Defense Secretary David Packard called a meeting of all of the CEOs in the business in order to urge them to merge to cope with the reduced spending expected in defense. That was the genesis of the Northrop Grumman, the Lockheed Martin, the Boeing McDonnell Douglas combines that had the net effect of reducing competition with the...