Gates: Procurement System Must Be More Responsive to Current Requirements

WASHINGTON --- The military procurement system needs to broaden its focus beyond high-end, high-tech systems so its better prepared to meet warfighters current requirements, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates wrote in the January/February issue of Foreign Affairs magazine.> Gates article, titled A Balanced Strategy: Reprogramming the Pentagon for a New Age, cites an almost 50-year trend in which the military opts for lower numbers of increasingly more capable systems.>> In recent years, these platforms have grown ever more baroque, have become ever more costly, are taking longer to build, and are being fielded in ever-dwindling quantities, he said.>> The problem, Gates said, is that the dynamic of exchanging numbers for capability is approaching a point of diminishing returns. A given ship or aircraft, no matter how capable or well equipped, can be in only one place at one time, he said.>> The secretary recognized that many high-end weapons and units can be used in low-end operations. Strategic bombers have provided close-air support for riflemen on horseback. M-1 Abrams tanks have routed Iraqi insurgents in Fallujah and Najaf. Billion-dollar ships track pirates and deliver humanitarian aid. And as the Army moves its Future Combat Systems program forward, its spinning out parts of it now to support troops in Afghanistan and Iraq. FCS is a modernization program aimed at providing soldiers the best equipment and technology available as soon as practical.>> But in light of the situations the United States is most likely to face in the future, Gates said, its time for the defense establishment to consider the requirements to support those efforts up front, not after the fact. This includes relatively low-tech equipment suited for stability and counterinsurgency missions.