🚨 EMERGENCY POD! The Pentagon is standing up a new Autonomous Warfare Command. On the latest Mission Matters Podcast episode, David and I sat down with defense acquisitions expert Bill Greenwalt to discuss what it will take to stand up a new functional combatant command focused on autonomous warfare.
We discuss:
🇺🇸 The history of combatant commands and how they differ from the Services
🇺🇸 The role of Congress and the President in establishing a new command
🇺🇸 How this new command would work with other initiatives like Drone Dominance, JIATF-401, DRPM UxS, and more
🇺🇸 How this new command would compare to other functional commands like CYBERCOM and SOCOM
🇺🇸 What the establishment of AUTOWARCOM means for startups
As always, please reach out if you or anyone you know is building at the intersection of commercial technology and national security. And, if you’re interested in working at a Shield Capital portfolio company or another national security focused startup, please fill out this form to “Work in Defense Tech!”
You can listen to the podcast on Spotify, YouTube, the Shield Capital website, or right here on Substack.
Transcript
Maggie 00:36
On this episode of the Techquisition Edition of the Mission Matters podcast, we’re back with another emergency pod. On September 30th, just last week, Secretary Pete Hegseth signed a memo titled Project Agincourt, Pathway to the Autonomous Warfare Command. It lays out a plan to stand up a brand-new functional combatant command built around autonomous warfare. This has not happened in a very long time, so David and I wanted to break it down quickly to explain what this means, what a combatant command is in the first place, and how all of this is going to be affecting startups.
David 01:13
Certainly a way to end the fiscal year with a bang, and the name is not so subtle. The Battle of Agincourt was in 1415, where outnumbered English longbowmen with cheap, massed ranged weapons cut down the heavily armored French knights, the exquisite platform of the day. And if you’re wondering what the department thinks about a swarm of attritable drones and what it can do to a hundred-million-dollar platform, well, there’s your answer.
Maggie 01:42
If you listened to our episode on the DRPM UXS — that is the Direct Reporting Portfolio Manager for Unmanned Systems — this should feel like a continuation of a familiar theme. In fact, it is the DRPM UXS who is leading Project Agincourt. Establishing the DRPM UXS centralized how the department buys unmanned systems, but Agincourt is really about how we’re going to fight with them.
David 02:07
Exactly. But before we get to the memo, we need to level set. What exactly is a combatant command, and how is it different from a service? Who does it report to? What kind of authorities and responsibilities do they have? And when was the last time the Pentagon actually created one?
Maggie 02:24
To help explain what it will take to stand up this new combatant command, and whether we should be standing one up in the first place, we’re joined by Bill Greenwalt.
David 02:33
Bill is a friend, but he’s also a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. And if you’ve read anything about acquisition reform of the last twenty-plus years, you’ve definitely read some of Bill’s work. He served as a Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Industrial Policy, and he spent years as a professional staff member on the United States Senate Armed Services Committee under John McCain, where he shaped much of the acquisition reform legislation that we enjoy today. And he’s also worked in industry on the other side of the table. And then finally, he co-authored Competing in Time with Dan Patt, which every founder in this space should read.
Maggie 03:13
But before we bring in Bill, let’s level set with a quick primer on combatant commands.
David 03:19
All right, Maggie. Combatant commands. The simplest way I can say it: the services raise the force and the combatant commands fight with the force.
Maggie 03:29
Right. So the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, and Space Force organize, train, and equip. They recruit people, they run budgets, they buy most of the stuff that soldiers fight with, then they hand those forces to a combatant commander who actually employs them in combat. So if we look at the war in Iran, CENTCOM Commander Admiral Brad Cooper — he’s a four-star admiral — he’s in charge of actually directing troops in theater, telling them when, where, and how to fight. But CENTCOM did not hire the soldiers, train them, or buy any of the equipment that they’re fighting with. They did not buy the aircraft carriers, ships, fighter jets, munitions, et cetera. That is the responsibility of the services, the Navy, Air Force, Army. The combatant command structure as we know it today was established by the Goldwater-Nichols Act back in the 1980s to ensure that US forces fight as a single joint force under one commander, rather than as separate services all coordinating by committee. Congress passed this act after there were a string of failures in Vietnam, Iran, Beirut, Grenada, that showed that service rivalry and divided command were actually costing lives and missions. In some of these failure cases, different services weren’t even able to communicate with each other during the conflict, which led to some serious combat failures.
David 04:52
Absolutely. I feel like you’re bringing me back to my ROTC days where we learned about military history. But staying on theme, we have 11 combatant commands today, and there’s a difference between them. We have seven that are geographic, so they own a piece of the map. You know these as AFRICOM, CENTCOM, EUCOM, USPACOM, NORTHCOM, SOUTHCOM, and SPACECOM. So note SPACECOM is not a functional command, as space is considered a geographical area starting at 100 kilometers up, otherwise known as the Kármán Line. Also, SPACECOM should not be confused with Space Force. As Maggie already stated, Space Force is the service — the organize, train, and equip. It trains and hires the guardians, and they buy the satellites. But SPACECOM is the warfighting command in charge of actually directing an operation in space. So Maggie, why don’t you tell us about the functional commands, the non-geographic combatant commands?
Maggie 05:52
Yeah. So in addition to these geographic commands that control parts of the globe, we have four functional commands which each own some mission that cuts across every geography. So we have SOCOM for special operations, STRATCOM for nuclear deterrence, TRANSCOM for actually moving things all around the world, and then CYBERCOM, which is responsible for cyber operations.
David 06:16
And so what about the chain of command? Well, it’s really flat. You have the President, the Commander-in-Chief, and then you have the Secretary, and then you have the combatant commanders. And some might ask, well, what about the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff? Well, the Chairman advises, but they are not actually in the chain of command during an operation.
Maggie 06:37
And that’s the same with the service chiefs, right? The Secretary of the Army, Secretary of the Navy, they advise, but they do not actually command as part of a chain of command. Typically, a functional command — CYBERCOM, SOCOM, et cetera — will be supporting geographic commands during an operation. So there’s only ever one commander actually in charge. Again, if we think about what’s happening in Iran, CENTCOM is the commander in charge of the whole operation, but then we have functional commands in the chain of command providing operational support. So Cyber Command supporting cyber operations, TRANSCOM supporting mobility, and so forth.
David 07:14
And it should be noted that Space Command did employ some operations in the very early days of the conflict with Iran. And so for founders, there’s some additional nuance that not all functional commands are created equal. Some have special authorities. For example, United States Special Operations Command, or SOCOM, actually operates quasi as a service. Like the services, they have their own budget line, otherwise known as Major Force Program 11, or if you’re down in Tampa, they just call it MFP 11. They also have delegated acquisition authority, so you might be familiar with SOCOM Acquisition, Technology and Logistics, so SOF AT&L. They have their own program executive offices, not so dissimilar from the services. With TRANSCOM, it’s a little bit more of a contrast, but they kind of operate like a business. Congress does not appropriate a budget line to move things around. Instead, TRANSCOM runs off of what’s called a working capital fund, or in the case of TRANSCOM, TWCF, TRANSCOM Working Capital Fund. The services, when they need to move things around, or the other combatant commanders, they actually pay into this TWCCF fund, and then that’s how TRANSCOM pays for the gas and the people and the aircraft to move parts and people around. So when EUCOM asks for an armored brigade, the Army operations and maintenance account pays TRANSCOM to move it there. And finally, for CYBERCOM, they’ve slowly but surely been earning their own budget control. They have some acquisition authority, though they primarily rely on the services for that organize, train, and equip.
Maggie 09:03
So the last time we stood up a functional command from scratch was in 1987, where both SOCOM and TRANSCOM were stood up. Notably, STRATCOM and Cyber Command were created later, but they were basically rebranded earlier organizations that already existed, so they were not really created from scratch. It’s also important and interesting to point out Congress actually established SOCOM against the Pentagon’s wishes, and gave them that additional acquisition authority against the Pentagon’s wishes.
David 09:35
All right, so hopefully now everyone can take credit for some professional military education after this synopsis of combatant commands. Let’s get in with our subject matter expert. All right, with that, it’s a huge welcome to Bill Greenwalt. Welcome to the Techquisition Edition.
Bill 09:54
Well, thanks for having me, David and Maggie. I really appreciate being on, and hopefully we can have a great conversation here.
Maggie 10:02
Yeah. So Bill, first question. What was your reaction when you read this memo? What jumped out to you?
Bill 10:10
Well, my first reaction was I thought of Ukraine. And I thought of a recent Wall Street Journal interview with the commander of Magyar’s Birds, which was about a week ago, in the Wall Street Journal. And in that interview, Major Brovdi stated that something fundamental has changed about the threat that requires institutional changes to Western militaries. And he talked about creating an ecosystem for drones, and that the Western acquisition system is currently incapable of doing that. He criticized us as being too focused on building the best drone and putting it on the shelf, versus what is in essence serial, iterative, operational prototyping deployment that I’ve been trying to make the foundation of time-based acquisition now for over a decade. So when I saw this memo, I said, this is potentially a first step to really doing that. Maybe we’re actually going to get this right. And the Pentagon seems to be channeling and maybe trying to learn the right lessons from Ukraine, that the US needs an ecosystem for autonomy that is completely different from our current, sclerotic acquisition system. So there were a lot of positive thoughts I had when I first read it.
David 11:36
So Bill, with that, maybe walk us through what the memo actually directs. Are we establishing a command now, or how does that come to be?
Bill 11:47
Not yet. They’re establishing a pathway. So this is aspirational — the aspiration to create such an entity. And so the Direct Reporting Portfolio Manager for Unmanned Systems is tasked to lead the effort and to create this framework for a four-star command. Much of this will need legislation, but it’ll also need the department to think through how it wants to do this. And so I think this is the start of the thinking of what this entity is going to look like. They wanted to possess directive manpower, budget, acquisition authorities, and create dedicated career pathways for officers and enlisted personnel. So I think they’ve got the ideas, and frankly, Congress has actually already put some of this framework out there, so it’s also reacting to that. So we can talk about that a little bit later as we go.
Maggie 12:47
Yeah, in a previous episode a couple months ago, we did discuss the DRPM, Direct Reporting Portfolio Manager for Unmanned Systems, which was really designed to centralize the coordination of acquisition of unmanned systems under the Deputy Secretary of War. So how should we think about this autonomous warfare command compared to the DRPM? And similarly, how does it compare to some of these other initiatives like JIATF-401 — that’s the Joint Interagency Task Force 401, focused on counter-drone capabilities — the DAWG, the Defense Autonomous Working Group, each of which has tens of billions of dollars requested in the President’s budget request?
Bill 13:24
Yeah. I think I’m looking at this more akin to DRPM and such being the Space Development Agency, and the creation of Space Command in 2019, and a lot of what Will Roper was trying to do from the Air Force at the time. So there was the beginning of trying to figure out how to change acquisition to take advantage of these acquisition authorities in space, and they knew they needed someone outside of the bureaucracy to go faster, and a different culture needed to be established. And I think there’s an understanding that you need to marry up acquisition authority and budget, flexible budgeting, and then most importantly, the operators who are going to drive the requirements and provide the real-time testing and feedback to really make a serial, iterative, operational prototype system actually work, and that’s time-based. I kind of look at the Joint Interagency Task Force and the DAWG — they’re the money pieces that eventually have to pull in the concept. But the important part here is the operators and the acquisition side of the house, and I think that’s what they’re trying to do here. At least I hope that’s what they’re trying to do here.
David 14:46
Yeah, I think that’s right. And the way I have also been thinking about it as a functional combatant command interacting with the geographic commands: they’re submitting their capability gaps, right? Their integrated priority lists, the requirements. They’re clearly not satisfied with what they’re getting. I think Admiral Paparo is on the record for saying, I’m not getting any of this autonomous stuff out into the field. And so instead of submitting it directly back to the services, and then the services pick and choose amongst each other what activities they’re going to work on — ideally coordinated — what I’m sensing is that this will now be the combatant command that is testing, iterating, giving direction to the services on what to buy through the DRPM, and then getting it out there to each regional combatant commander based on prioritization of needs and efficacy of capability. So I’m almost seeing it as more of a centralizing force around this critical technology area that we know is necessary based on the results from Ukraine and some of the issues we’ve been experiencing in Iran.
Bill 16:11
This is a long-standing issue and problem, working the seams of the operators and the acquisition and budget system. And from my time on the Hill, we debated a lot on how much authority — how can we solve this? Can we bring in acquisition authority to the combatant commanders? And several decades ago, we gave it to the old Joint Forces Command, and that was the idea of how can we do experimentation and prototyping and actually get capability to the combatant commanders faster? Getting rid of Joint Forces Command got rid of the authority. Obviously, SOCOM and Cyber Command have gone forward on this model. But there’s this need to how do we get the requirements that are coming out of the geographic commands and get capability faster? JCID reform is designed to do just that. In other words, to bring in and start with experimentation in the geographical commands to drive new capabilities. And I see this as one functional way to do that, but there is a lot more that can be focused on to try to solve this disconnect between the urgent needs of the geographic combatant commanders and what is actually being produced in the acquisition system, which is frankly not meeting their needs.
David 17:46
Not fast enough, not enough of it.
Bill 17:49
Yeah, exactly.
David 17:51
So maybe, slightly switching gears. I’ve had the pleasure of being at Defense Innovation Unit and helping get it stood up. I’ve been in the Pentagon taking over a program that had a $5 billion budget and zero validated requirements, and working through the bureaucracy. But I’ve never had the pleasure of being boots on the ground at what would be the designs of the next combatant command. Bill, maybe from your storied history, both inside the department and as a professional staff member — what does it take to actually stand one of these up? Is it just a memo and a go-do and a POA&M, and now you’re off to the races?
Bill 18:33
Well, it’s got to start that way, but the reality is you need money, and of course you’re going to need Congress to pay for it, whatever it is you want to do. First you’ve got to figure out what you want to do, then you’ve got to figure out how you’re going to budget for it, and Congress needs to pay for it, and give really tacit approval and buy-in through the authorization and appropriations laws. So you’re talking time right there. And then when we start talking about acquisition authority, that’s not something that has been given freely to the geographic and functional commands. There was a huge debate on SOCOM decades ago. Cyber Command started off with a $75 million authority in 2015, 2016, when I was there, tried to bootstrap it and create this. So yeah, it takes a long time. You need staffing, you need personnel. All the problems you had at DIU at that level just magnify 100x.
Maggie 19:57
You brought up this piece around acquisition authority, and I know the memo stated, quote, “This command will possess directed manpower, budget, acquisition authorities, and create dedicated career pathways.” This seems reminiscent maybe of SOCOM’s acquisition authorities. SOCOM of course has its own money and acquisition authority under 10 USC 167. Does an autonomous warfare command need this kind of authority to matter?
Bill 20:23
Absolutely. I think this is going to be critical, because the services’ processes — budget, acquisition, and requirements — are just too slow to turn the cycles that are necessary for what we’re seeing in Ukraine. I think we really need to look at how the Ukrainians are doing what they’re doing. And that’s why I said that’s the first thing that hit me here, because they need to iterate and bring out new capability based on what the warfighter is seeing in days, perhaps in hours — not in decades or years. And not buy a bunch of capability, put it on the shelf, and wait for something to happen. They have to do it now. And we have to get into that mindset. And so what that mindset means is: here’s an operator doing something, here’s the requirement that’s not working. I need to turn to my contractor who’s sitting right next to me and make sure that that contract is getting paid to do this, to then put in the next iteration incredibly quickly. That’s not a model that we’re used to. We can do it, but it’s not a model we’re used to, and I think that’s what has to happen. And they have to have acquisition authority to do that, and put a lot of contractors on essentially speed dial, and various other transactions approaches and things like that to really make this work.
Maggie 21:58
And where do you expect these resources to come from? Of course, the budget has to come from somewhere. The people and billets and HQ all have to come from somewhere. Is this the services going to have to give this up, or are other combatant commands going to have to give something up?
Bill 22:12
In a static budget, that is absolutely right. It has to come from somewhere. And we can talk about whether we’re going to have a static budget or we’re actually going to have an increase, which you can then do more things with. But still, talent, while it may be fungible, there’s a limitation on it. And so you’re going to have to figure out how to bring the right kind of talent from wherever it is, and that’s obviously going to hurt someone who enjoys having that talent working for them. And so if we had an unlimited amount of personnel resources, that’d be great, but it’s not just billets. It’s like, who are the qualified people who can actually think this way and can work with the culture here? And they are probably in the current system few and far between. And so that’s going to be a real challenge when they set this up.
David 23:08
Yeah. When we talk about budget authority — so it seems like a lot of what the DRPM Unmanned Systems is planning on leveraging is the President’s budget request that the DAWG put forward, $54.6 billion. Most of that money is in reconciliation. It doesn’t look very promising for the — what, $350 billion reconciliation package to get through, especially with the midterms barreling down. So how is this gap going to be received on the Hill? Putting your professional staff member hat on, we’re all seeing the lessons learned of Ukraine and Iran. We know we need to move here, but shoot, now we’re in a continuing resolution, so we’re stuck to the spend from the previous year’s budget, and that was at $1 billion for the DAWG, and they’re trying to get to $54 billion. Something’s got to give. So how does this get resolved between the Pentagon and the Hill?
Bill 24:14
So the first thing I will say is that at least on the authorization side, in the Senate, because of Section 917 in this year’s bill — which essentially authorizes this type of command, this four-star command, or they call it, I think, Robotics and Autonomy Command — many of the principles from Secretary Hegseth’s speech are already in this year’s NDAA, at least on the Senate side. Now, we’ll see what the House thinks about it. And that to me will be an interesting thing in Congress, in conference on this year’s bill, if they get to an NDAA. Because there have been a lot of individuals who think that maybe this is the year the NDAA stops. I’m a little more optimistic, but it might take a while to get there, let’s put it that way. So that’s on the authorization side. So maybe we’ll see limited acquisition authority. In the bill, there’s a provision for limited acquisition authority at $20 million. That’s not sufficient, but it’s a start. And so the Pentagon and the Congress can actually work together to massage this particular provision. But none of this is going to work without flexible money to move within year of execution onto things that work, and move money away from things that don’t work. And the one benefit of the large pots of money in the reconciliation process is the flexibility inherent in those pots of money. And so a lot of this is going to kick back to the appropriators, and it’s going to kick back to whether the appropriators are willing to allow such a thing to happen. And if they don’t, they will essentially be subjecting the United States to technological inferiority and put us behind. And so this is a staff issue with the appropriators, and they have to get their arms around what they want to do in this particular area. And I don’t know yet, because they have not been forthcoming on where they really want to go and how they want to actually deal with the way technology is moving ahead.
Maggie 26:50
You’ve written for years about the importance of speed and competing in time. Do you see this new four-star command as a speed play, or is this just going to add more bureaucracy?
Bill 27:01
It can go either way. It really can go either way. I do think that the rationale for doing this is because the services have failed. This is an indictment of the services. This is an indictment of the acquisition system, the requirement system, the budgeting system, that we cannot do this. We cannot succeed in this without doing something different. And so I applaud the Pentagon for doing this, but I also applaud the US Senate for considering this as well, because this is something that is really needed. We need to focus on this area. Now, without agile requirements, without agile budgeting, without agile acquisition, this will be a bureaucratic nightmare, okay? And so they need all three of those. But having a central commander to do this, who’s working with the operators in the field to essentially bring this to fruition — it has a shot. And if they think through not in long-term, five-to-ten-year major systems acquisition, but in terms of near-term, rapid, serial, iterative, operational prototypes, minimal viable product that serially improves based on warfighter and operator input, they have a chance, because that’s what time-based acquisition is all about.
Maggie 28:38
So I want to turn to a question around the pros and cons of this, and let’s start with the cons. What are going to be the critiques of this kind of approach? Why might a geographic combatant commander or a service chief or someone on the Hill hate this idea?
Bill 28:51
Because it gores a lot of oxen. The traditional acquisition system — and budget system and requirement system — is the source of many, many jobs and many important positions of power. And this is designed to go completely around it. That’s what all acquisition, budget, and requirements reform is all about: going around those institutions that all they do is suck time and do not support the warfighter. But they live because they support the individuals’ jobs and self-esteem and power structure who are in them. And we have to change it. And so you’re going to hear all sorts of antibodies. Oh, this is going to — well, we’re not testing, we’re taking on too much risk. And risk is something that just scares everybody around here. Well, risk — we’ve got to throw at least five more years on time to make sure that we de-risk the whole thing. So I think you’re going to see that. But again, I have to applaud the Pentagon for trying something, just as they did with the Space Development Agency, which I think they then created problems in its implementation. Just as they tried in DIU, which I thought was a great operation, and they’ve still done things to slow that down and haven’t implemented it the way it should be. So yeah, this could end up in an implementation purgatory, but we need to try it, and we need to move forward. But yes, there’s going to be individuals in the command saying, oh, this is just another seam I have to deal with, another bureaucracy, just give me the money and I can do it. The services obviously, because this is an indictment of their inability to do something, are not going to like this. Congress, the appropriators, may not like it because it takes away from flexibility. They would rather essentially do something in ten years if they’ve had complete control over it than do something in the year of execution that actually helps the warfighter. That’s the indictment of the system we have to deal with, and we have to change it.
David 31:09
Yeah. One thing that always does bother me, though, when we stand up new organizations is we don’t actually apply the remedy. It’s an indictment of the status quo, but we don’t get rid of the entity that isn’t getting the job done, or we don’t call them out in the memo. So even with the standing up of a new four-star command — you’re elevating and shining a light on a systemic problem, which is we cannot get mass autonomous capability out to the operational warfighter, but we’re not getting rid of the thing that was inhibiting it in the first place. And whether that is the structures of the various commands, or a specific office, I don’t know. So Bill, you’ve been inside these discussions. Is it possible to get rid of legacy organizations that are in the way, and thus requiring us to work outside the system?
Bill 32:18
Perhaps we need an organizational BRAC. But no, it’s incredibly difficult. And the whole premise — and it may be the wrong premise — behind reformers is, if you stand up a new authority, if you stand up a way to go around the system, the reformers will move to that system, and the other part will atrophy and die. The problem is, that other part does not atrophy and die. It actually sees itself as existentially in jeopardy, and therefore does whatever it can to kill the new authority and to kill the new way of doing business. And this is a leadership problem. Leadership has to essentially DOGE it, okay? And the Pentagon is not ready to essentially bring in DOGE, or something like it, and start trimming away at the fat. And the fat is actually very productive, in a sense that they can justify they’re doing something. But they’re doing something that is not achieving the effects that we need. It’s not at speed. It’s not supporting the operator. We should be looking at everything as: is this supporting the operator today and in the future? And if it doesn’t, we should probably get rid of it. But that’s something that the Secretary and Congress need to really try to address. And it’s going to be hard, because these are all about jobs, money, and current power over the system.
David 34:03
Yeah. So Bill, we are a podcast that’s geared towards helping founders navigate this very complex system, trying to make it simple for them. Personally, I think that bringing in this new joint force command, aligning it to the unmanned systems DRPM — which is all about leveraging, in a lot of cases, venture-backed technology. If I’m a founder building autonomy software or systems, does this change who my customer is? Or what are the signals I ought to be looking for so I can plug into this?
Bill 34:44
I hope it does. I hope it’ll change who your customer is. And the reason for that is — the test of this is, are the founders, the entrepreneurs, the contractors being asked to come in and work side by side with the operators? Not the acquisition folks, not the prime contractor, not the FFRDC, not the systems integrator, but the operators, to essentially achieve what they need to do. I think when that happens, we will have success. But if we’re going through three or four chains to get to the operator to find out what it is they really need from Silicon Valley, or from autonomous drone companies, or from the commercial marketplace, we are failing. And that is what we do constantly on a daily basis, because we are not getting to the core of the problem. Again, that’s what JCIDS reform was about. The services haven’t even started to do that. We need flexible money to put to those problems that the operators are driving. We are not close to doing that. We need time-based acquisition that supports that. When your guys see that yes, we’re using other transactions in a commercial way, in a time-based way to essentially buy things and iterate the same way that the commercial marketplace does, then yes, we’re having success. But until that happens, we’re just going through the motions, and frankly, we’re wasting a lot of money, and putting ourselves in jeopardy, because we think we’re doing something, and we’re really not.
David 36:37
Amazing. I agree with you. And I think also, if I’m a founder, one thing when reading some of the documents — which I would assert as the tea leaves for where the department is going — if you read the DRPM UXS, which is all about autonomous capability, which is obviously aligned with this command: in it, it calls out Defense Innovation Unit as sort of the commercial liaison to industry. So they’re the ones that are expected to be engaging with the best in breed of what commercial technology can provide. And then you recognize that the former director of DIU, as of the other day, Owen West — who was critical in standing up the drone dominance program during his time leading the department’s DOGE efforts — he’s now been elevated specifically to the DERPM-UXS CEO-type role. And if you assume that the DERPM-UXS is going to be tightly aligned with this new autonomous warfare command, it feels like DIU is in a way getting elevated to be able to support this maturation of technology. So I feel as though if you’re a founder, yeah, you need to look into the budget line items, but I would be very keen to checking out the solicitations coming out of DIU or associated with DIU.
Bill 38:16
Agreed. And even more importantly, my criticism of DIU over the decade-long history is, we need to scale that. In other words, it can’t just be we’re doing a bunch of science projects and we’re getting some capability that’s not essentially getting out there. We need to use production OTs in the way that they’re supposed to be used, at high levels, and get the acquisition people to stop doing FAR 15, designing and managing these companies like they’re Lockheed Martin, but essentially treating them like the commercial companies that they truly are. And DIU needs to lead that charge, but understanding that they’ve had to go to the services before this. In this particular function, they can go to a different pot of money, and that might actually succeed, because the services are just not willing to scale up on these things. And we haven’t seen the success of DIU because the services — again, culture is broken. This is a bigger issue as far as where should acquisition authority go. Ten years ago, we tried to decentralize to the services, thinking that the centralized bureaucracy of OSD was just keeping innovation from happening, and they had their chance, and they blew it. They absolutely blew it. The service chiefs were given responsibility. Major acquisition authority was devolved to the services, and frankly, their culture just couldn’t deal with it. We’re seeing the same thing in requirements, and this department needs to reevaluate all that. We’re probably looking at another centralization trend. But the question is whether they can get centralization right. And I look at this as another centralization movement, and it’s all because the services have failed in their ability to manage and to take advantage of new technologies and the trends that are out there. And I hope that they can actually get their act together, but I’m not confident that they will.
David 40:30
Yeah. I agree with you. I would say that the standing up of all these DRPMs is essentially putting the services in receivership mode, where they no longer control the milestone decisions around the major programs of importance. You look at what General White from the Air Force leads under his DRPM, and he’s reporting directly to the Deputy Secretary of War, General Gutelein. When you think about some Space Force and Missile Defense Agency type activities, and then the DRPM for subs — the list goes on and on, and now we’ve got this new one with unmanned systems. I think you’re spot on. Of course, I remember coming into the services, into the Air Force as an acquisition officer way back when, and every major decision program was reporting up through what was then AT&L. And then it was divested. Maybe what’s old is new again. Well, Bill —
Bill 41:35
This was Senator McCain’s vision, to break up AT&L, to decentralize, to give the services — I mean, he trusted the Navy. He trusted that they were going to do the right thing, and they didn’t. And so what we’re seeing now is the split of AT&L into R&E and A&S, essentially our principal staff officers to the new AT&L, which is the Deputy Secretary of Defense. And so Congress doesn’t need to change it. They don’t need to resurrect AT&L. They have to understand that AT&L now exists at the Deputy Secretary’s office. It’s a different world, and it’s being centralized. And it’s a very interesting new phenomenon.
David 42:16
Yeah. Agreed. Well, Bill, we’ve definitely enjoyed having you on with us. It’s always a pleasure for me to get to talk to you. I don’t get to do it nearly enough, but I do get to read your awesome work. So for anybody who loves Bill’s verbal words, you’ll love his writing even more, so go check out his work at AEI, or just type in his name, Bill Greenwalt, and it’ll come right up. But we’re starting a new tradition here at the Mission Matters Techquisition Edition podcast. We want to have a bit of a sign-off question. So you’re our first guinea pig on this, but you won’t be our last. If you were king — had king authorities as the Secretary of the department — what is the one thing that you would want to do? And Maggie and I are going to keep a list of this and continue to publish it over time and see if these are truly the needed remedies.
Bill 43:15
So last year I would’ve told you kill JCIDS, because that’s what Dan Patt and I recommended, and the Secretary did. So this year I will say kill the PPBE process. It’s in the authority of the department to do that. They can formulate the way they want to do the budget in any way they want to. Congress can reject it or whatever — that’s up to them. But the process is driving so much bad behavior in the department. It’s a 50-, 60-year legacy of centralized planning. They should move off of it. And the first thing, if I had the ability to be king for the day, would essentially be to go to the Comptroller’s office and say, it’s over. And maybe put that level up to the Deputy Secretary, I don’t know, and start over with a new budget process.
David 44:09
Well, it was Secretary McNamara who gave us what was then PPBS, now PPBE. And his other major thing that he did was oversee the war in Vietnam. That wasn’t very successful. So are you saying the two might be related?
Bill 44:28
I’ll even say that this process came from the Ford Motor Company that Mr. McNamara had run into the ground after that. So yes, no one has a process like PPBE. Nowhere in the world — maybe the North Koreans do, I don’t know. I’m not an expert in North Korean budgeting. But it doesn’t exist anywhere, for a very good reason. And we should basically adopt a different process, and adopt the flexible authorities that the other agencies in the US government have that DoD does not. And that’s the one thing that came out of the PPB commission — how many flexibilities, many of them self-imposed, that the department puts on itself. And for those that are not self-imposed, it should go to Congress and say, why does the Department of Homeland Security have this? Why does the Department of Health and Human Services have this other authority? Why does NASA have this that we don’t have? And frankly, if the department was given the authorities that already exist out there to the rest of the government, it could essentially flexibly implement not just drone dominance, but a lot of other dominance as well.
David 45:46
Okay. I think we know exactly who the right man to implement that job is.
Bill 45:51
If only I could. It would be great.
Maggie 45:54
Well, Bill, thank you so much. This was fantastic. It sounds like there’s a lot more work to be done to stand up this new combatant command. There’s probably a fight ahead of us over people and money and authority. But it sounds like if this is successful, it could really push the needle on the adoption of autonomous weapons systems for our warfighters, and make us more competitive on the geopolitical stage. So thank you so much for your time, and hopefully we can get you on another Emergency Pod someday in the future.
Bill 46:26
I’d love to, and thank you very much for having me.
