Call for change: army's vice chief: 'we have to speed up how we procure things'.

• Author: Erwin, Sandra I.
• Position: Army

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The Army's antiquated ways of buying new equipment are depriving soldiers of the latest technology and making it more difficult for them to do their jobs, says Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Peter W. Chiarelli.

A former commander of the 1st Cavalry Division and Multi-National Corps Iraq, Chiarelli has been a vocal critic of the Army's procurement system. He is particularly frustrated by the inability of the Army to grab technology from the open market and make it available to soldiers quickly, at least before it becomes obsolete.

"We have to find better ways to keep up with technology. It doesn't do us any good to have a procurement cycle that takes 10 to 15 years," he tells National Defense.

"If our procurement system were doing the iPhone, we'd still be five to seven years away from putting the first one on the market," he says.

Chiarelli's own experience using the iPhone stands in painful contrast to how technology is acquired and employed in the Army.

"I've had three models of the iPhone, and each one has been better, with more features, and each costs less than the previous one," he says. The Army's radios, by comparison, take years to develop and the newer models come with staggering price tags. When military radios need upgrades, the Army pays millions of dollars for new software. Under the iPhone business model, users download low-cost or free applications that were developed by independent vendors. Such ability to "get the things you need" fast is sorely lacking in the military, Chiarelli says. "We have to be better at being able to reach out, harness technology and get it into the hands of our soldiers quickly," he says, "We have a procurement system that is exceedingly slow. We have to find a way, with technologies changing so quickly, to speed up our procurement process, to be more nimble."

Technology, no matter how dazzling, is not useful to the Army if it's not affordable and can't be fielded to all deployed troops. The Defense Department confronts that dilemma as it develops a state-of-the-art "joint tactical radio system" to replace older radios. The JTRS radios are far more sophisticated than the previous devices, but cost thousands of dollars (some as much as tens of thousands) apiece, which will make it difficult for the Army to buy in large quantifies for every soldier.

Chiarelli cautions that he's far from suggesting that the iPhone would solve the Army's IT challenges. Two major drawbacks in the iPhone...