Getting the Requirements Right
Abstract
For the Navy and Marine Corps, that philosophy informs the way we acquire our ships, aircraft, armored vehicles and weapon systems. In other words, the Navy that sleeps on its ordnance is a Navy that must understand the technical details of its weapons and platforms long before, and after, industry is contracted to produce them. That culture and expectation of technical ownership is partly what couples the Navy requirements community closely to the Navy acquisition community, and vice versa. It is also important to the Department of the Navy to understand how technical requirements drive detailed design, and in turn, drive costs. Today, cost is a requirementon a par with warfighter requirements. In a speech at the Eisenhower Presidential Library in 2010, then Defense Secretary Robert Gates remarked that, Without exercising real diligence, if nature takes its course, major weapons programs will devolve into pursuing the limits of what technology will bear without regard to cost or what a real world enemy can do. "Inarguably, the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps are equipped with, and will continue to build, the worlds most technologically advanced naval warfighting systems. The increasing challenge is how to do so at a cost the nation can afford. In 2009, the Navy modified its acquisition process to ensure there is no gap between the requirements and acquisition communitiesto ensure, among other reasons, the Navy understands the relationship between requirements, technical feasibility and cost. The modified acquisition process, called Navy Gate Reviews, requires the Navy operational requirements leadership and acquisition leadership to agree, and repeatedly affirm that agreement throughout the development, acquisition and sustainment of a system
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Aug 01, 2015
- Accession Number
- AD1016326
Entities
People
- Sean J. Stackley