Driving in the Dark Revisited

Reflecting on the classic piece by Richard Danzig

As the Navy plans to honor Richard Danzig, the 71st SECNAV by naming a future Arleigh Burke-class Destroyer as DDG-143 USS Richard J. Danzig, it serves as a reminder to share his classic report for Defense Tech and Acquisition readers.

Danzig published Driving in the Dark: Ten Propositions About Prediction and National Security in Oct 2011 and the concepts still apply today. He examined the nature of prediction in national security and offers strategic recommendations for how the DoD can improve its predictive capabilities while also preparing for predictive failure.

The first five propositions cover: Humanity Is Compelled to Predict and Will Fail

1. The Propensity to Make Predictions – and to Act on the Basis of Predictions – Is Inherently Human.

2. Requirements for Prediction Will Consistently Exceed the Ability to Predict.

3. The Propensity for Prediction Is Especially Deeply Embedded in the DoD.

4. The Unpredictability of Long-term National Security Challenges Will Always Confound the Irresistible Forces That Drive Prediction.

5. Planning Across a Range of Scenarios Is Good Practice but Will Not Prevent Predictive Failure.

Or as former SECDEF Bob Gates said earlier in 2011 to West Point cadets:

“We can’t know with absolute certainty what the future of warfare will hold, but we do know it will be exceedingly complex, unpredictable, and unstructured. When it comes to predicting the nature and location of our next military engagements, since Vietnam, our record has been perfect. We have never once gotten it right.”

We wanted to focus on his second five propositions which are prescriptive.

They show how, even as they strive to improve their foresight, policymakers can better design processes, programs and equipment to account for the likelihood of predictive failure. Doing so will involve several actions:

6. Accelerating Decision Tempo and Delaying Some Decisions.

In a world characterized by unpredictability and increasingly frequent surprise, there are heavy penalties for ponderous decision making and slow execution. The U.S. government is now designing and producing equipment on political and technological premises that are outdated by the time the equipment reaches the field. To counter this, military departments must dramatically narrow the time between the initiation of a concept and its realization. Programs must also be designed to defer some decisions into the later stages of development.

• In a world of unpredictability, there are heavy penalties for ponderous decision making and slow execution.

• Private sector managers make and execute decisions in days, weeks or months because more extended development cycles are understood to be too vulnerable to unpredictable evolution in the market.

• DoD operates in decision cycles…which are measured in years and the time from conception to mass production is measured in decades.

• While IEDs were responsible for 50-80% of US fatalities in Iraq, it took over two years for the Pentagon to act upon the request for MRAPs.

• Conversely, delay some decisions until the latest point in time to have the maximum insight.

The DoD needs to measure, publicly report, and work to continuously streamline the timelines from Idea to IOC for acquisition programs.

In 2015, as part of a Portfolio Acquisition presentation at NPS’ Acquisition Research Symposium, one of us proposed scoping programs based on mature technologies that could deliver capabilities within five years for weapon systems (hardware) and 18-months for IT systems (software). This would be from Milestone B to IOC. Keep in mind this is years before the MTA and SWP pathways were developed. The panel chair immediately scoffed at those timelines.

The DoD must continue to accelerate timelines to deliver capabilities. Every month spent “burning down acquisition risk” simply transfers the risk to operators who are using 30-year old legacy systems and manual processes.

This is primarily accomplished by:

• Scoping requirements for most programs based on currently available technology.

• Harnessing and iterating on commercial solutions instead of redesigning an entirely new program from defense requirements.

• Greater deliberation with various industry partners on what is achievable - rather than dreaming up Cadillac systems in a back room based on every potential want.

• Improved risk acceptance from the operational community (and test community) that enables fielding of systems that are not initially zero risk or 100% effective.

This reality is enabled by:

• Improving program manager accountability that coincides with them having more control over programmatic decisions and more longevity in the role.

• Acquisition leaders providing guidance and support to enable program offices to understand and navigate the various processes and reviews faster and smarter.

• Holding active engagements with key stakeholders early and often to address potential conflict, issues, or rework prior to program execution.

• Congress and DoD limiting the ability of agencies with limited equity in a program from being able to say “no” as so many can today.

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7. Increasing the Agility of Our Production Processes.

A 21st-century DOD must invest in capabilities to respond rapidly to unanticipated needs. Accordingly, ponderous defense manufacturing systems must be redesigned for agility, using adaptive manufacturing techniques that generate the ability to switch products and modify models quickly as new circumstances arise.

• Production agility is the capability of design and manufacturing systems to respond, in terms of both quantities and characteristics, to unanticipated needs.

• The architects of systems like Civilian Reserve Air Fleet (that reallocates civilian aircraft to military uses) and Defense Production Act were clear about ensuring existing industrial capabilities were preserved.

• DARPA is developing programs that go further by re-conceptualizing not only products but also manufacturing processes.

• A DARPA Defense Science Office program demonstrated that within 16 weeks, it can produce a million units of a capable vaccine against a previously unknown virus.

• DARPA sought designers and foundries to develop and manufacture mix-and-match parts per agreed upon design rules to improve efficiency and reliability.

DARPA continues its efforts to advance manufacturing processes with efforts such as the TRAnsformative DESign (TRADES) program, which develops design tools to enable the creation of previously unimaginable shapes and structures of interest to defense and commercial manufacturing. To address the future wave of microsystems innovation, DARPA selected 11 organizations to begin work on the Next-Generation Microelectronics Manufacturing (NGMM) program. They also support the Rubble to Rockets (R²) program which aims to overcome current limitations to manufacturing in supply chain-denied environments by developing production and design approaches that can accommodate widely variable input materials.

Building on the success of the Civil Air Reserve Fleet, Space Force is awarding contracts for a Commercial Augmentation Space Reserve (CASR) that provides funding to commercial providers to prioritize capacity or capabilities for military use, in times of crisis or war.

The real game-changer however for DoD, apart from the need for more shipyards, is the introduction of two new paradigms: Adaptive Tooling and Industry 4.0. DoD needs to foster these new approaches through targeted investments, inducements through OSC, and through contract language.

• Companies like Divergent and its Adaptive Production System (DAPS) are helping to change what it takes to get quickly into production, ramp-up and shift to new product lines. It works to “make the complex simple” with a modular digital factory where digital requirements can be rapidly computationally engineered, additively manufactured, and any complex structure assembled.  

• Companies like Palantir with its Foundry for Manufacturing are helping to onboard Industry 4.0 with its connectivity across the entire value chain from suppliers to internal processes leveraging four types of disruptive technologies:

  • Connectivity, data, and computational power: cloud technology, the Internet, blockchain, sensors;

  • Analytics and intelligence: advanced analytics, machine learning, artificial intelligence;

  • Human–machine interaction: virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR), robotics and automation, autonomous guided vehicles;

  • Advanced engineering: additive manufacturing (such as, 3-D printing), renewable energy, nanoparticles.

8. Prioritizing Adaptability.

In the face of unpredictability, future military equipment should be adaptable and resilient rather than narrowly defined for niche requirements. To achieve this, the requirements process should be modified to place a premium on operational flexibility. New criteria of this kind will require new metrics of merit.

The F-22 is an example of a military airplane with low adaptability; it is precisely designed for a narrowly defined mission and will have trouble taking on other roles.

The B-52 bomber is an airplane with high inherent resilience; essentially a flying box, it is used as a platform for weapons, communications, and missions that were not, indeed could not have been, envisioned by its designers.

Five changes to facilitate greater adaptability of equipment

1. Premium should be placed on operational flexibility in requirements.

2. DoD should maximize the platform approach - see B-52. The basic weapon platform is like an operating system with capabilities added like apps.

3. Resilience over time is as important as resilience over a range of capabilities and conditions.

4. The DoD should encourage, plan for, and facilitate field modification.

5. The DoD could achieve more general utility by designing equipment leanly. Clarify desired core function and design as closely as possible to that function.

The solution here for DoD is three-fold:

• Design Simpler Systems

• Design Modular Systems

• Maintain Flexible Requirements

Dan Ward’s The Simplicity Cycle has many of the ingredients for how military systems should be designed but often we associate adding requirements as a positive (more is better) without appreciating the virtues that simplicity brings such as making upgrades easier and adapting to changing environments. DoD needs to encourage program managers and requirement owners to cut desired functionality and through rapid prototyping and experimentation with operators, identify the minimum solution needed to improve operations. This will enable greater speed of delivery, lower cost to develop, produce, operate, and sustain, and lower risk/complexity.

DoD has had MOSA mandates for many years and numerous programs are adopting them in their contracts. Yet, implementation results are very mixed and in many cases we likely paid for modular engineering but got little in the way of desired outcomes. CSIS identified some of the elements needed for MOSA readiness that arguably we have not solved. MOSA’s goals and industry examples demonstrate that the goal is still worthy. Designing systems with looser coupling and segmenting the hardware from the software are key elements to system adaptability.

Flexible requirements today generally only exist very early in a program’s lifecycle or in some select software programs. To gain the full benefits, DoD needs to drastically modernize the requirements system to enable greater speed and agility as the pace of change in operations, threats, and technologies continue to accelerate. The war in Ukraine demonstrates the impact of field modifications on a wide range of weapon systems and commercial capabilities used for war. We cannot predict the pace of technology (three years ago only deep-tech scientists were working on LLMs) so we must be prepared to pivot across multiple weapon system portfolios. Only a dynamic and collaborative system will get us there.

9. Building More for the Short Term.

Major acquisitions are now built for long-term use but would benefit from greater recognition of the unpredictability of technology development and combat environments. The defense community should seek to acquire more equipment for the short term, as is done in the consumer environment.

• The rise of unmanned systems opens opportunities for a different procurement emphasis – one that accepts expectations of service periods more like those of computers than carriers.

• Recognition of unpredictability in technology development and combat environments would place a premium on this attribute and begin to refashion the defense world to look more like the consumer environment.

• This approach would be more viable if coupled with the three just-recommended strategies of speed, flexibility and adaptability.

As the pace of changes in technologies, threats, and operations continue to accelerate, this advice is even more true today. With the major weapon systems averaging over 30 years old, the DoD continues to plan for systems to operate 50-80 years. The DoD intends to use F-35s until 2088! Congress prevents retiring outmoded legacy systems to reinvest in modern platforms, in part due to risks of decreased force size until new systems are delivered, often in the 2030s.

We must continue to invest in what Mike Brown and Lorin Selby championed as Hedge Strategies, that HAC-D and DIU are now beginning to pursue. To complement the massively large, costly, and complex major weapon systems, DoD needs to rapidly acquire and deliver high quantities of small and mid-size systems, often autonomous/ unmanned, and heavily leveraging software elements.

Instead of designing systems to last 50 years, knowing full well it will not be relevant 30 years from now, design for 10-20 year lifecycles. Examine models to then sell the 10-20 year old systems to foreign militaries while maintaining a robust industrial base that continually designs, develops, and produces newer systems.

Will Roper championed the Digital Century Series while Air Force Acquisition Executive. Whereby digital engineering, open systems architecture, and advanced software development accelerating future aircraft development with many companies compete with shorter production runs and regular iterations of weapon systems. He continues to champion digital engineering and Formula 1 mindset where teams design > 1,000 digital twins per race and cars evolve 85% from their initial designs by the end of the season.

10. Nurturing Diversity and Creating Competition.

Currently, the centralization of planning and acquisition, combined with an emphasis on efficiency and an avoidance of redundancy, stifle competition and technological diversity. The reality of unpredictability suggests another approach. Competition and diversity produce a valuable range of potential responses when unpredicted challenges and difficulties arise.

• The genius of the capitalist system is that it has no pretensions about prediction: It does not preselect winners and losers but instead facilitates competition based on different premises.

• Jointness is richly rewarding, and indeed often imperative, in many operational settings. However, the perspective about prediction offered here suggests that long-term planners should recognize limits to their enthusiasm for central staffs and central control.

• Insofar as the aircraft chosen by the various branches of the military reflect different concepts of warfare, they compete with one another and hedge against uncertain futures.

• Although the diversity of investments and system designs among U.S. allies can be frustrating, it can be rewarding if compatibility can be achieved.

• Effective capitalist competition is premised on something subdued in the defense context: Starting more programs than can be sustained, comparing them side by side, killing the ones that are least cost-effective and allowing only survival of the fittest. This approach is anathema for central planners.

For years we heard defense and Congressional leaders focus on “weeding out duplication.” If the Army and Air Force were building something similar, we’ll only fund one and force them to work together. However, a joint program comes with its own substantial risks and as the F-35 demonstrated doesn’t eliminate redundancies. Cost efficiencies are easier to envision than realize. System designs that seek to satisfy multiple competing domains introduce too many compromises and becomes suboptimal. Funding the program from multiple Services adds undue complexity and incentivizes undesirable behaviors.

We see opportunities for inter-Service competition to satisfy mission sets with different capability suites. This provides more opportunities for industry to leverage talent and investments to compete instead of a winner-take-all contract where the losers abandon the sector and winners gain monopolistic power. It also ensures that issues with one system don’t jeopardize the larger joint force. F-35’s sitting on the production line awaiting government acceptance impact the Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps as well as dozens of allies and partners. Diversity mitigates that risk.

We need PEOs, SAEs, and OSD portfolio managers to develop and maintain robust portfolio strategies that map out legacy systems, current acquisitions, and projected efforts. One that considers industry competition, capacity, and capital to rapidly and iteratively deliver capabilities. One that looks beyond DoD to other USG agencies and international allies/partners/industries to align efforts as diversified portfolios.

In Closing

It’s ironic how his opening five propositions focused on humans’ high rate of failure in predictions, yet then covers elements like:

• Rapidly producing a vaccine to prepare for an unknown global pandemic

• The rise of unmanned systems

• Breaking from the procurement mindset of aircraft carriers.

Driving in the Dark should be a must read for every new defense acquisition professional and revisited every 5-10 years to reinforce these insightful approaches. The long requirements, budget, and acquisition timelines to produce systems at scale are at odds with the rapid pace of changes in the world today. Following a global pandemic, a land war in Europe, another hot war in the Middle East, and a perilous environment in the Indo-Pacific, we must focus on speed and agility.

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