Processes are no substitute for production. The U.S. Army’s effort to reform the processes associated with its acquisition system, from requirements definition through investments in technology to engineering development and production, is moving forward. However, it is not clear that the Army has the luxury of time to first reorganize the acquisition system and then develop an array of new platforms and systems. The Army needs to accelerate current efforts to upgrade existing capabilities beyond the levels in the current Pentagon budgets. For example, there is still capacity at the General Dynamics tank facility at Lima, Ohio. The Army should max out the capacity at Lima, around 325 tanks a year, which would result in the entire Abrams fleet being modernized in around five years. I have written about how to speed up Army procurement for RealClearDefense here.
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