Acquisition Reform: A Warfighting Imperative
February 25, 2026
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This transcript was generated with the assistance of AI. Please report inconsistencies to comms@afa.org.
Kirk Rieckhoff:
All right, well good afternoon on the last day here of AFA. Thanks everybody who has made it through this far. I have a great panel today to talk about the warfighting imperative of acquisition reform. Before McKinsey, I was a fighter pilot for about 13 years, and I just assumed the jet always showed up and it was ready to go and it was gonna beat the adversary, and I’ve spent the past 20 years paying for that with McKinsey, realizing how hard that is, and it doesn’t just magically happen. So, to you all, why don’t we just jump into this one, and maybe General White, start with the first question. The Secretary laid out the imperatives at a pretty high level of what we’re trying to get done, but maybe we can jump into a little bit more of the how we’re gonna do this. So, what are one or two key shifts that you see the department is doing now to make ac-reform real?
Gen. Dale R. White:
Yeah, I think it’s, first of all, thanks to AFA and thanks Kirk for doing this. I know this takes a lot of time to prepare for this, so I’m really looking forward to this. So, I think, I mean, we could go after a lot of things. The Secretary did a really good job at a high level. I think now we take it down to the next level, and just think about where we are with our PEOs, what we’re doing with the PAEs, giving them authority to make decisions in real time, make trades, and be able to do probably the most important thing with this whole transformation is not measure ourself against acquisition outcomes, but measure ourself against mission outcomes, allowing that PAE to look at the operational problem and work to figure out a solution to that problem and be able to have the decision space to do so. So, I think that is the first thing, and that’s the challenge to every acquirer in the room. Find the operational problem and solve it. I think the second piece is, and this is something we just frankly have not talked about, which I find a little disturbing, but it’s the idea that we’re just not empowering PAEs. The idea is you get unity of command, you get unity of effort, you allow that contracting officer to have a voice in solving that operational problem, that FM person, that engineer. You change the cultural mindset of how we look at what we’re doing. It’s really key, and Elvis and I have talked about this lots of time, and I wanna push it over to him for a second. You know, he’s got some great examples of where we focused on an acquisition outcome, not an operational outcome, and we may have done well on the acquisition side, but how well did that align to the operational need and what we’re trying to do? So, it is really that hard reset. It’s the empowerment piece and changing the dynamic by which we study the problems that we have. And again, if it’s any words that you guys get really emboldened in your head, it’s mission outcomes.
William D. Bailey:
No, those are great points. And again, also, thanks to AFA for putting this kind of forum together and giving us a chance to talk about what our experience has been like to date as we’re pursuing this kind of transformation. Some of the points that I’d add to that, right? We spent a lot of time, our opening moves here weren’t about a process. Our opening moves weren’t about an org chart. Our opening moves were about how we make decisions and who has the authority to make that decision. And is that located to the person who’s gonna be accountable for that outcome? And we looked at, that’s how we ended up on authorities, was, hey, how do we enable those decisions to be made fully informed, to be made to seize opportunities, to made to affect operational outcomes? And hopefully you guys will feel that as we’re going forward. One example, as we were looking at an operational outcome, great examples coming out of our trainers, PEO, Rod Stevens. Here’s a guy who holds in his hand the T7 program, right? Which trumpeted kind of success there, we got a great deal. And as we’re in the pursuit of that deal, we encounter a lot of headwind, right? A lot of problems, delays. And we could continue to pursue that acquisition outcome. Rod’s also in charge of the T38 program. And he is also on the hook for providing a safe and stable and available platform to AETC. Right? And at the same time too, he has feedback that says, hey, when a pilot leaves UPT, it is a big leap from a T38 to an F35. How useful is that? So Rod has this all on his plate. How do we give him the opportunity to make those trades on what’s really happening out in the field and shoot for a superior outcome? How does he take risk knowing he’s got to balance all of that? And you got a chance to see that play through as his team collaborated with AETC on what they needed to get started. You saw the delivery of those first T7s and they’re in use now. We’re not done. We’re not done with testing, but we got very clear with AETC on what’s 80%, what helps them move the needle, what helps them get ready. Saw maintenance, being able to train on an aircraft. Hey, that design is stable enough and ready enough for you guys to train on. Now, in the past, it might’ve been compliance. Like, hey, look, we’re going to wait until we hit RAA before we make anything available to anybody. But every day that goes by, T38s continue to have to be sustained. Right? Availability is tough to come by. The leap between the pilots going from that initial trainer to their objective platform continues. So he takes that risk on, figures out what that deal is. And again, you’re seeing results of that play out right now. That’s why we focus so much on the decision-making because we believe if you can put a guy in a position to make a call like that versus have to ask many echelons up is it okay if I go do this, right? Then we will see these kinds of accelerations.
Thomas Ainsworth:
Yeah, I’ll add to that and echo the same points. You guys both said it very well. The Space Force has been in the process of standing up and getting going on a lot of these things. We were moving out on a number of these things. I’d say with a big shift from our perspective is now getting the unity of effort across the entire Department of War to support the kinds of things we want to do in acquisitions. The concepts and what we’re working with our AQ partners on, really enabling the PAEs, enabling their decision-making, enabling the entire team, to General White’s point, as well as the mission focus, right? That is where we’re trying to get to. We’ve been heading in that direction, but every one of the PAEs is going to be responsible for their missions, and the goal is to enable them to handle that and then to integrate across.
Maj. Gen. Stephen G. Purdy:
Yeah, and I think what I would add to General White’s first point on culture, and I’ll build on that piece, is the changes that we’ve already put in for this last year and then these changes that are coming down are getting after structural changes, organizational changes, and authority changes to continue to improve the culture of risk-taking by the acquisition community, particularly in space. We come out of a culture of long builds, expensive builds. We’ve been in a process for the past several years of moving into proliferated, moving into cheaper, going after that affordability and skill the Department of War is looking for, but it really gets after, I spent a lot of time this last year working with PAEs about, yes, you can take this risk. Yes, you can go after the 80% requirement. Yes, you can take the culture to move faster, and you have this authority, and you will have even more authorities to go do those trades internally, and that’s kind of, we’ve already been playing around with some of that, we’ve got some examples of that that we’ve done this last year, but I think we’re gonna see it in spades coming down in the future. I’m really looking forward to that.
Gen. Dale R. White:
Yeah, I wanna pile onto that for a second ’cause I think there’s two points that you made. First is when you talk about mission outcomes to solve operational problems, that by default tells you that that PAE is gonna be working directly with their operational counterpart. So this idea that the PAE has all this authority to make a decision in a vacuum, no. And so using what Steve said as an example, there are gonna be times where you’ll work with your operational customer to get to 80%. There’ll be times where the operational customer says, no, I have time to wait for 100%, we’re gonna do that. But just the mere fact that we’re having those conversations is different.
Kirk Rieckhoff:
If I could, this is kind of internal to the Air Force, folks, let me flip it around, a gentle pertinent, I’ll start with you. Industry is obviously the key component here as well as they’re bringing forward the various assets. What is the one change that you wanna see industry do?
Maj. Gen. Stephen G. Purdy:
So from a change on industry, I think if I was to be consistent, the words that I’ve used over the last year and following from Cal Valley before me is, hey, we need delivery on time, on schedule, on budget. That has been my talking point that’s been consistent. We have taken action on the government side and on the industry side when that has not happened in the last few years. We are getting better in many areas. But something that we’ve done over the last few years is we’ve not put up with those continual changes. And so there’s a whole host of things that we want, that we’ve talked about, but I’m gonna go back to the fact that we have got to deliver integrated war finding capabilities, and I can’t deliver if I don’t have a product out the door on time and on budget.
Thomas Ainsworth:
Absolutely, it’s all about delivery. Victory is not getting something on contract. Victory is getting something into the field, into the hand of the war fire, and actually being able to use it. That’s why we are doing this. So I just echo the same point. It’s just about delivery for us.
William D. Bailey:
As we talk about working with industry, you hear that it’s fairly consistent. The expectations on meeting our agreement. And that’s essential, though it’s particularly debatable. Do it. And what you also hear, too, is a desire for us to understand more. What are those opportunities? Again, with an eye towards that operational impact. How can I get more of that? How can I do that without getting set back? Elvis, every time you come in with something, you say you need more, it’s like a 48 month lead time. So give me the money, I’ll see you in a few years. We’re ready to have those conversations about how to get out of that mold. So it is a little bit of deliver on that contract that we signed up to. And the second piece is we’re ready to have a conversation about what else needs to happen in order to get a better outcome. We’re ready, we’ve practiced for a long time on additional tools to bring to the table, things like CSOs or OTs. We spent a lot of time with the workforce on other ways to make arrangements. So we need you to come to the table as well ’cause we’re ready to have those conversations when it turns into an operational impact.
Gen. Dale R. White:
Yeah, I’ll pull on what Elvis said. I think maybe I’ll be a little more direct in the sense that we need to have a partnership with industry and that partnership has to be balanced between a business deal and the defense of this nation. Right? I believe in my heart of hearts, and I’ve said this on the factory floor, I’ve said it in boardrooms, every single industry partner I have would put their badge on the table to defend this nation. But typically that time only comes in a time of crisis. Right? Well, I’m telling you and everybody else has told you, we are on the clock. And so we need partners that embrace that idea, come with different ideas. We understand that we have a challenging acquisition system and to Elvis’s point, we’re willing to have conversations, but it’s gonna require industry to lean in. I wouldn’t be doing my job here today if I didn’t embrace Secretary Feinberg, my boss, in talking about the investment with CapEx and things like capacity and things of that nature. And I understand that’s a challenge ’cause we are a capital market economy. I get all that. But at the end of the day, and I will continue to say this to anybody that will listen, militaries don’t go to war, nations do. Right? And if and when the time comes, it’s not inevitable. I totally get that, but deterrence isn’t cheap. And so we really need to have a true partnership that is focused primarily on the defense of this nation. And I understand that we’ll also have to balance the business side of that as well, but we have to get our priorities straight.
Kirk Rieckhoff:
Great. Look, this isn’t exactly the first time ACRI form has been tried. Last I checked, I saw 17 different reports that have been done on how to do acquisition over the past 25 years. What’s gonna make it different this time? Mr. Bailey.
William D. Bailey:
Yeah, I think there’s enough gray hair up here right now and said, yeah, we’ve been around for a lot of those rounds. I mean, we’re not all as old as General White, but. Hey, so we take a look at it and maybe you heard of it a little bit earlier. We didn’t approach this thing like there’s some magic wand out there. Like there’s a piece of a process. We go ahead and we pull the pin out of that thing. We’re gonna be fine. ‘Cause I think we’ve been around long enough to know it is far more challenging than that. So we are taking it on at its fundamentals, right? Back to that idea of the simple art of decision-making and what is stopping us from being able to make those decisions, right? So we’re going after fundamentals here. The second piece of it, and I think you heard a little bit from General White too, is there’s a lot of top-down support. Like I mentioned before, the leadership is ready to knock us out of whatever rut we found ourselves in. A lot of support from the secretary, the deputy, and the rest of that leadership team to walk the walk and go and drive the conversation outside the department. Also at the same time too, Congress. There was concerted effort from both the House and the Senate on reform. And to their credit, robust conversations with us about their thoughts and our feedback to their thoughts. So we’re not going after an easy button here. We’re going after cultural change. We think the leadership is ready to support us in that activity. That’s why it feels different for me.
Gen. Dale R. White:
Yeah, so I’m just gonna, I’m gonna lean right into this here for a second. The thing that’s gonna make this different this time is leadership, right? We will set the conditions. The PAEs, the PEOs have to lead. We could all sit around and talk about, and many of you read the op-ed that me and my counterpart, Steve, was a part of writing and putting out. Yeah, we could all sit around and say, “We’ve done this 12 times and it’s never worked.” We could do that. And I would argue, back to you, that’s an excuse not to lead. I will set the conditions, but we need people to step up and lead. We need PAEs to step up and find a way to work with industry, build that partnership, deliver the capabilities. It’s easy to say we’ve done this before. So to think that the department is gonna give you a gift that’s gonna solve acquisition, that’s a false narrative. We’re gonna give you the conditions by which you can lead and make a difference. The question is, are you gonna accept those conditions, or are you just gonna say this is business as usual? I will tell you, pick up a newspaper, this is not business as usual. We’re on the clock. We’re gonna give you the opportunity to lead and do things you’ve never done before. I would highly recommend you do that.
Thomas Ainsworth:
I mean, hard to add too much more to that. I mean, I think that’s really where we’re going with this, is putting folks into the position to lead, trying to get out of their way the best we absolutely can. The formula for success in these programs have been known. We’ve been doing this for years and years, and it always comes back to having the right talent in the right place, working the right partnerships, and being able to get it done. It’s never, oh, did you go through that process step? We’re trying to clean that up the best we can. We do need everyone to step up to be able to do it, but we’re gonna try to set the environment right. And again, to Elvis’s point, I would say it is kind of amazing. We have this all the way to Congress, all the way through the executive branch. The leadership in the department is absolutely driving this. Our secretary is absolutely driving this. The time is now for us to get this right.
Maj. Gen. Stephen G. Purdy:
Thanks. I think when you’re talking change efforts, I think there can be a desire to wait for somebody above you, assigned to you to write a document and hand it to you, and then train you, et cetera, right? And I think to build on General White’s point about it’s not us sitting up here talking, it’s about the doers actually doing. And I think that’s where I would point to and showcase that I think it’s different this time because we’re actually doing it right now. And so particularly, as I mentioned earlier, on the Space Force side, we are proliferating our systems. We are awarding to multiple contractors. We are stopping bad performance activities and taking actions on the contracts and the PMs on both sides. We are actually getting on contract faster. We are finding more innovative ways to do that. And we are learning to copy and paste those good ideas and actually apply those in other areas instead of just waiting for a PM to be individually brilliant and come up with it all themselves. And so because we’ve actually removed requirements, we’ve actually started doing these things, I wanna argue that we spent the time over the last year or so on both air and space to find innovative ways to do things. And I think that flywheel has started now, and I think we’ve given it all the energy we need to do. We’ll keep working on that. We’ll add in additional authorities, we’ll add in additional push, and that’ll allow us to continue to speed up, continue to go faster and better.
Gen. Dale R. White:
Yeah, it’s interesting. Recently, I had to make a decision. I want you to use an example of what I talked about earlier. We were in the throes of a very big decision, and the individual I was talking to on the other end, when I told them, “Hey, here’s my decision, go press,” they reported back to me several things that they would come back to me with. And I said, “I don’t need you to come back to me. “I need you to go execute. “You just keep going, “and when you need to stop, I’ll let you know.” And I think that confused them because we have programmed to think this way. So it’s the people on this stage are gonna have to continually say, “No, no, no, I don’t.” We have to back away from the desire to say, “Yeah, yeah, come back and give me a brief “and let me know how it goes.” No, go execute, and if it doesn’t go well, let me know. But I’m gonna expect you to deliver.
Kirk Rieckhoff:
One of the other things that I think, as I was talking with you all about what makes it different this time, it seems like you guys are really going after not just sort of the policy changes or the process changes, but actually how people are being developed and groomed through their career. And General, I just wonder if you can talk about the next two days of what you’re gonna be doing.
Gen. Dale R. White:
Yeah, so we, twice a year as an extension of AFA, we come together and we do what’s called an executive DT, and we review all of the acquisition leadership on both the military and civilian side and make sure we’re number one building a bench, make sure secondarily that we have people that are getting the experiences they need. And then we talk about how people are doing and where we should put them and the path. One of the key differences is, and this is what I’m really trying to enforce with my partnership with General Shipton, with General Hurry, and all of the other, anybody who rates an acquisition professional from a senior materiel leader perspective is at this panel, is how do we make decisions about people that align with mission outcomes? Right? I need this person and this job because I need this mission done, right? And this is the right person. You know, I don’t like calling out names directly, but look at Colonel Helfrich, right? Look at the path that he was on and how it built to the job that he’s in now. And now we have secured up an entire area of the mission area that we have the right guy with the right experience that’s gonna take care of that mission, right? And so we’re spending a lot of time doing that. We’re building off a couple of pillars that I think I talked to you about is, number one, what does the system think of you? Number two, how are you measured in the system? You know, what is your performance? How are you measured in the system? Number three, what’s special about you? Were you a test pilot? Were you a maintainer? Did you do a tour in missiles? Do you speak another language, right? And number four, what’s your personal situation, right? Do you have a sick child? Do you have a sick parent? Does your wife have a career? How do we balance all of that to build the force we need to actually deliver on this entire plan? Because at the end of the day, it’s people and leadership that make this happen. The rest of it is just talk.
William D. Bailey:
Yeah, and for my part there is, there are places where the analogy between what happens on the active duty side and the civilian side are very strong. And there are places where it’s not as quite aligned, right? But for us to be able to have a conversation, ’cause ultimately it is a challenge for talent. And how do you build those leaders? And how do you build that bench that comes with it? And to make sure that the conversation is sophisticated enough to handle the differences between active duty personnel and civilians.
Thomas Ainsworth:
I would say on the space side, I think this is a big challenge area for us. We’re small. We definitely plan to partner with the Air Force in figuring out how we can leverage it, particularly with the civilians, but additionally on the military side. We’ve got a lot of work to do in this area. But everything we’ve talked about is about empowering the people. We gotta make sure we’re taking care of the people and we’re growing the people. We do have some work to do there, though.
Maj. Gen. Stephen G. Purdy:
I think what I would add also on our side, a focus on and a desire to get after training the program managers to be better program managers. And eliminating the chaff out of the way so they can focus on that. And what I mean by that, obviously we have a very strong relationship with NRO, we look to them with the tower models. There’s a lot of overlap there. They’ve got a really strong office and culture over there of training program managers, and it’s something that we’re eyeing to be able to do long-term in the Space Force. But also to show you evidence of what we’ve done in the past, SQ cooperated, worked together with SSC, set up that AIQT program. So we eliminated a bunch of kind of randomized DAU classes. We pulled those essences all together, put it in one particular block, made it space-focused, and then SSC hosted those. And then we run, we’re gonna run, they’ve run one class and are getting ready to run more. All new program managers go through there. They get all that training, it’s space-focused, space examples, now all that training is out of the way, now go off to the office and work. And I think that’s a good example of where we’ve tried to piecemeal add these improvements in for them.
William D. Bailey:
One thing if I could add too is, you know, a lot of times we’ve put a tremendous amount of focus in on the program manager out there. I don’t want anybody to think it’s lost on us that there’s more to it than just a program manager, right? So also talking through, hey, sure, what does it take to have a well-experienced PAE, CFO, SCO, chief engineer? These are all paths that we need to make sure are, we’re educating, we like the pipeline, they show up with the right experiences, because we will be putting a lot on their plate. And they need to have perspective, perspective built on experience, right? So we’re focusing in on authorities around a PAE kind of thing. Sometimes we’re trying to make sure that message gets out okay, and it tends to drown out the fundamentals of, it’s not just that program manager who’s worried about an operational outcome, right? It’s that chief engineer that understands this is as far as we can go, then fine, this is what else we can do. To have that contracting officer collaborate with the rest of the team on how to apply a binding contract, this is great. All those things have to come together for us to be successful.
Kirk Rieckhoff:
Mr. Bailey, maybe back to you. We’ve been underway now for a little while with Ac-reform. So you’re starting to see how the implementation’s going. What’s one or two of the challenges that you’re seeing?
William D. Bailey:
Yeah, so challenges. You know, when we look at it, you’re there, everybody’s fired up, we’re gonna go shove off on this plan. And then you get into the details, right? And you start to see some aspects that you didn’t really talk about a whole lot when you first got started. You know, we talked a little bit earlier, but the idea of oversight was something we came across. And we exercise control, you know, through the function of oversight. You know, like General White was mentioning, hey, he gave that guy the authority. That guy assumed he had the authority to take the next step, and that was it, I need to report back in ’cause you’re providing oversight of my actions. And when you look at it that way, that idea of I’ll give you enough leash to take that next step, and then you gotta come back to me and then I’ll clear you to make that next step. And that’s oversight. You know, it almost presumes that, hey, look, even though you might get it right nine times out of 10, that setup assumes that every time it’s gonna be that 10th time. So we need to take a look at how do we get insight into what’s happening without turning it into a control mechanism, right? Not easy to do. Second piece, I think, as we looked at how to delayer and decentralize from, you know, our current situation, a lot of our structure is around a centralized delivery, centralized kind of control of an authority. And we’re looking, you know, again, that was presumed to achieve a degree of efficiency. And maybe it did and maybe it didn’t, but we’re looking at decentralizing. And as we do that, as we do that, what were those things that we were able to do because it was centralized? You know, the idea of standardization, the idea of how do I deploy a scarce resource across a bunch of needs, right? So as we look to decentralize, how do we plan to manage that issue, right? ‘Cause it isn’t just the, well, hold my beer and watch this moment where we’re just going to totally give these guys godlike authority only to have them direct the budget and develop odd standards for how they were doing business. It’s the wild west. So that was another one that turned into a pretty thoughtful dialogue as to how do I manage the other sides of these kinds of strategies. We need to go after that ’cause the status quo is not cutting it. So it’s not a question of if, it’s a question of how far.
Kirk Rieckhoff:
Thanks.
Thomas Ainsworth:
I would say probably the biggest challenge we’ve got is both, it’s probably two. It’s getting the talent, getting them to the right positions all of the folks that we’re talking about, right? FM, contracting, program managers, CETA contractors, FFRDC, getting all of that together and doing it in a time of extreme growth for the Space Force. We stood up two PAEs. One had a lot of help getting started and had a fairly robust structure. The other one, we’re starting from scratch. That was purposeful, right? We want to take the lessons from the organization that we knew we had and we want to learn the lessons as we stand up the new one and the plan is to then roll that through. But I’d say those are the two challenges right now.
Kirk Rieckhoff:
Thanks.
Maj. Gen. Stephen G. Purdy:
Couple challenge areas. One, I’m gonna double down on functional support that’s been mentioned here, but just particularly lift up the PK contracting community and FM community. Incredibly important resource that the Air Force runs and we tap into on the Space Force side and incredibly stressed career field. And I would argue the PK community is even a federal level issue. We have such a need for the PK community across the federal government. So all props to SSC who’s been kind of leading an effort to push some proposals up to help there. So that’s one, like we cannot, we’ve talked about PM work. We can’t get any of our work done without PK finance, other functionals as well, but particularly those areas. The other one is all things money. And we all know that, but I feel obligated to bring it up. Money, funding flexibility, in particular, I’ve mentioned several times recently, SBIR, Strat 5 reauthorization, critically important to the Space Force and the space industrial base. That’s become a huge feeding mechanism. And I look forward to that getting reauthorized and us being able to get back on track there. And then just, you know, any hope and prayers to the system to allow money to continue to flow down. We can have all the best PM trained folks. We can have them risk-taking. We can have all the structure in the world. If we can’t get the money to flow down, we’re all spinning our wheels.
Gen. Dale R. White:
Yeah, I’ll just, I’ll kind of piggyback on what Elvis said. Maybe I’ll take it a little, at the 50,000 foot level for a second. I think as we went into this, you know, we had this idea that we could just start wrecking the furniture and everything was going to change. And, you know, at the end of this, we’d have this great big system and everybody would be empowered to go execute. And as we always do, we quickly stepped into the idea that, as it turns out, people don’t really like change. I was really shocked by that. And then you get into this space of, how do you talk to those that are the receiving end of change and helping them to understand the opportunity? Right? And that’s what leaders do. We could forcefully say, hey, this is the way we’re doing it. Suck it up, go get it, right? I’m not sure that’s going to get us where we want to be. People don’t like to operate under duress. So Elvis and the team, specifically in the Tiger Team leads with, I could give you the names, you know, General Shipton, Josh Williams, Jason Voorhees, all the people that are really doing the heavy lifting is really understanding what change we have to create, understanding how we’re moving some folks’s cheese, right? And really just appreciating the idea that culturally, we’re embedded to the way we’ve always done things. And so people want to change, but at the same time, they’re balancing that with, you know, whether or not, what impact it’s going to have on them, whether it be organizationally or whether they lose authority, right? The contracting example is a good one. We spent a lot of time talking about the contracting person working for the PAE, and that you now have this unity of command. I don’t know that I see it that way. Now I have a contracting person that is directly aligned with the mission, and they may have some loyalty back to a home office from a matrix management perspective, but they’re aligned to that PAE, that mission, and they have a more powerful voice, because I will tell you, a PAE with a strong SCO, a strong CFO, strong engineering, strong logistics, surrounding themself with a strong leadership team, they’re unstoppable, right? And so I think just kind of creating that environment where, yeah, this is a big change, but there’s a tremendous amount of opportunity. And by the way, there’s more than just the four people on this stage working this. We got a mountain of people that are putting, I mean, long, long hours into getting this right, and we’re trying to let the PAEs and the folks, the doers, do a lot of the work and try to steer this plan.
William D. Bailey:
Yeah, that was an interesting aspect of it too. It was very tough to ask the field to assemble for us, and that was the ask. We said, “We know you’re busy, “but we need more of your bandwidth,” right? Us sitting back in a boardroom and imagining what the problems are is a terrible idea. And I think we’ve tried that before. But it took, it is currently taking extra bandwidth out of those guys, but they’re also committed because they’ve also been frustrated. They also see the opportunities missed, but they’re given 110%, right? They have a day job too, and they’re coming forward with great ideas.
Gen. Dale R. White:
Yeah, and I think one thing, and I’m actually gonna change the format here for a second. I’m gonna ask a question if that’s all right, Kirk. We’re gonna go by new rules here.
Kirk Rieckhoff:
Control is an illusion.
Gen. Dale R. White:
Yeah, control is an illusion. You know, one of the things that we realized early on when you talk about challenges is you don’t reform acquisition without reforming some other aspects of the Air Force. Right? That’s a big deal. All of a sudden you have PEs that can start talking about requirements or they’re starting making budget changes. Well, I’ll tell you, FM and A8 and A57, they kind of need to be a part of this. And so Elvis, I’ll kind of turn it over to you. How we started working through making sure that we brought everybody together, not just looking at it through the lens of just our single function, because this is a combined effort for the Air Force, the DAF.
William D. Bailey:
Yeah, that was, I know in terms of my personal experience, I was a couple assignments ago, I was in charge of acquisition operations, let’s say, for the Air Force. And part of that job included taking stock of the acquisition enterprise and looking at outcomes. And in our analysis, we looked at outcomes in terms of cost schedule and technical performance. And we had a pretty bad track record on schedule. We had a worse track record on cost. But we hit our performance targets 98% of the time, which of course, we’re like, the warfighter got what they needed, right? Or we would wait any year, pay any dollar to get 100% of those requirements. So that got to be the conversation of, hey, how do we make that part of the trade space, right? How does that get to be a part of that trade space? ‘Cause we’ll see that opportunity. And so very quickly inside our own debates, we’re like, hey, it’s gotta go beyond. Because if we wanna have a conversation about requirements, we need to be talking to somebody that knows what it’s attached to. Whether it’s back to the AETC level, with T-7s and T-38s, or the overall force design and talking to A57. When we talk about what’s happening with the resources, right, in terms of what can I do with what I have available, is it a year of execution conversation I’m having with FM? How is this gonna roll into the POM and the impact there? So we very quickly concluded, hey, we’ve gotta include. We’ve gotta include FM. We’ve gotta include the A8 community in this conversation. If we’re going, ’cause there are some things in here we see we can do if. But how do we do that responsibly, right? And that’s the conversations. Great conversations, looking at that tactical or operational level up to a very large strategic level has been the experience we’ve been having.
Kirk Rieckhoff:
Fantastic. All right, one final closing question here, if you don’t mind, I’ll start at this end with you General Purdy, we’ll come around. What’s one ask you have for the acquisition professionals out there or one piece of advice?
Maj. Gen. Stephen G. Purdy:
The ask I have would be that your job is to deliver integrated warfighting capability. It’s not to deliver a box. It’s not to get on contract. It’s not these intermediate steps. It’s the end step, which means so much more than what we used to just train you to do, cost, schedule, performance. So I need the program managers to pick the head up and be aware of this bigger piece. We just talked about collaboratively cooperating with all these other functional pieces, working with operations tests and all the different functional communities. So that would be one of the key ask is to pick the head up and have a bigger picture and realize that you have to deliver capability. And then also that there are tons of other programs and PMs out there that have seen similar situations and have got examples of how to move fast. Take advantage of that activity. Copy, paste, use some of that. Don’t go it alone. Don’t build it all over from scratch. There are lots of tools to help you and you’ve got all the support you need up here.
Kirk Rieckhoff:
Thanks.
Thomas Ainsworth:
Yeah, I mean, I’ll echo the same. I think the strategic look is what we’re asking for. I guess my ask back would be, I want the feedback back from the teams, whether it’s coming from contracts, whether it’s coming from FM, whether it’s coming from the PAEs, from the CETA teams, from the FFRDCs, from the industry team. We need feedback on this process, right? You can make a perfect process. You can throw all the processes out the window. You don’t learn and you don’t get better if we’re not getting feedback on it and we’re not measuring what we’re going through. So I’m going to be looking forward to measuring things and understanding where we are as we’re moving forward, but I want the acquisition community to know my door is open and I want their feedback as we’re going through.
William D. Bailey:
Good. I think, what would I ask for? I would ask for some courage. We talk about risk-taking, right? And to put yourself out there, to bring forward those ideas that you think are going to change and make a difference at the end. You’re going to run some risk. But think about it. Think about the consequences, right? What’s going to happen? I’ve been yelled at a lot, but I kind of know why, right? What was I trying to do? What was I pushing back against? What was I insisting on? Yeah, I got in trouble a few times for it and stuff, but at least I knew why. Had an old hockey coach say, “You go to the penalty box, “you better know why.” But have some courage. Back to the earlier example. Think what’s happening in the field right now, because you’re worried about getting yelled at. So have some courage. Think bold ideas. Push forward. Don’t wait. We’re rolling these things out to you as soon as we come across them, et cetera. You can do more than you think you can right now. All that example I gave you out of trainers, that’s before we had PAEs. That was a group of like-minded individuals that said, “Enough. “We’re going to go chart a new path. “We’re going to make that easier for them, but don’t wait. “Don’t wait for somebody to come by with a magic wand “and now say you’re empowered. “Go push. “Go get in trouble. “Go get yelled at.” Right? Anyway, that’s what I’m asking for.
Gen. Dale R. White:
Well, I could stick with the Wizard of Oz theme and say a brain and a heart, but I’m going to go with something different. So I would say leadership, and I know that sounds cliche, but lead with vision, lead ruthlessly, and lead with an intent to solve the operational problem. Come together as an Air Force. If you want to know what acquisition as warfighting a function means, it means come together as a team, the operational team, the acquiring team, and deliver on the outcome. And sometimes that means you’re going to make some tough decisions that you have to have courage to make. Make the decision. Drive for the outcome. Right? And I think that’s key. I would just ask, and by the way, when you get in trouble or you get overwhelmed, pop a flare. There’s still people there that are ready to parachute in and help you out when you hit that obstacle. That’s what we’re supposed to be doing. We’re supposed to be focusing on those things that are preventing you from delivering the operational outcome.
Kirk Rieckhoff:
Thank you, gentlemen, very much.