Army rethinks, again, how to acquire technology.

• Author: Erwin, Sandra I.

A decade of war taught the Army, among other lessons, that it needed a new approach for buying information-age technologies such as computers and communications systems.

Senior Army leaders in 2011 introduced with great fanfare a nontraditional plan for acquiring wireless networks for combat brigades. The centerpiece of the strategy are "network integration evaluations" where soldiers get to test every widget before the Army buys it. NIEs also, for the first time, allowed the Army to put together and test all the pieces of an information network at once, rather than wait for troops to experiment with new systems while in combat.

These technology trials are scheduled every six months at training ranges that simulate real-war conditions. They have been praised by Army officials as a welcome departure from the old ways of doing business. No more wasting years testing widgets in laboratories. And no more buying radios and computers that, by the time they reach deployed forces, are technologically obsolete.

Army officials, though, are now rethinking the original plan. They want to continue to host NIEs, but they are looking to make changes in how technologies are sought and selected. Without the urgency of war requests, they also want to slow down the process to give contractors more time to allocate corporate research funds to projects that are more likely to result in production orders. Officials have concluded that the fast-paced NIEs of the past two years have not allowed sufficient time for Army strategists to decide what new equipment soldiers might need years from now.

Among the most vocal critics of the NIE have been military contractors as well as contractor wannabes who are lured by the $3 billion annual market for Army networks. Vendors see the NIE as a huge opportunity to showcase their products, but participation requires a significant upfront investment with no guarantee of future sales. Participants have complained that NIEs have not opened up the market to newcomers and essentially have rubber stamped existing "programs of record."

Growing pains notwithstanding, the Army wants to stick with the NIE, and is taking steps to improve it, said Army spokesman Paul Mehney.

"We went back and looked at the NIE process," and a number of changes are being considered, he said.

A top concern is to ensure that as many contractors as possible continue to sign up for future NIEs. The Government Accountability Office noted in a recent report that...