Getting Weapons Into Production With USD A&S Bill LaPlante

Acquisition Talk

The Undersecretary for Acquisition & Sustainment (USD A&S) Bill LaPlante joined us at the 2022 Conference hosted by George Mason University and Defense Acquisition University. He was on fire and dropped a ton of amazing insights, so I had to republish the audio to the podcast. I'll link to the video when it's up, but you'll get to listen to it here first. Bill LaPlante touches a number of important areas. The outline of the discussion is below. 2:30 - Production really matters 3:30 - Minimum sustaining rate 4:50 - HIMARS produced in a converted diaper factory 5:50 - In the past, DoD stopped production on HIMARS, Mark 48 torpedo, and Tomahawk 6:45 - In 70 years of demos, DoD has not gotten hypersonics into production 7:50 - DoD was bad at prototyping until MTAs and OTAs 8:30 - Don't tell me it's got AI and quantum, don't drop DevSecOps -- production at scale 9:20 - If something blew up in INDOPACOM next week, what does DoD have in quantity? 10:30 - Null Program found it takes 4 years for DoD to produce nothing 11:15 - Tech bros aren't helping much in Ukraine 12:45 - RFPs, source selections, money -- that's what matters 14:30 - FFRDCs get paid to write a paper that finds when quantity goes down, price goes up (duh!) 15:00 - Predicts that Congress will put billions into production lines 15:30 - M777, HIMARS, Stinger all have obsolescence issues 17:30 - National Armaments Directors from 45 partner countries meet to coordinate 18:30 - Industry won't invest without demand signal because DoD left them "holding the bag" in the past 18:45 - Supply chain issues in microelectronics, solid rocket motors, actuators, rare earth magnets 19:15 - Allies must not only be interoperable, but interchangeable 20:00 - Industry must be forced into interchangeability, like MOSA, because it lowers barriers to entry 20:30 - Take advantage of allied non-recurring development, like on E-7 Wedgetail 21:30 - US weapon production lines opening in Japan and Australia is a key deterrent 22:45 - Outsourcing production was a bad idea, dev & prod must be co-located 23:45 - Japan strategically kept rare earth processing capacity 26:00 - In JADC2, latency matters, link budgets matter 27:40 - Services working together very well on JADC2 28:30 - JTRS architecture was flawed from first principles, no one caught it 29:00 - Service oriented architecture was wrong for things like GPS OCX 32:30 - $50B spent on MTA, $2B for SWP (and another $8B in POM) 33:15 - MTA, SWP, BA 8 are small slivers compared to traditional acquisition 34:15 - Cycle time from Milestone B to C has not increased since 1960s, still 5-7 years 35:40 - Definition of success: production, relevant in high-end fight, and DOTMLPF 36:15 - Derek Tournear and SDA on path to do something remarkable 36:45 - Conventional Prompt Strike MTA may be first hypersonic in production next year 37:00 - Not many MTA successes in production yet 37:30 - OTAs not good for large weapon systems where DoD needs data rights 40:30 - Requirements, PPBE, and acquisition report up different chains, not synced 40:00 - How Air Force RCO decisions are made at the top, quickly 41:30 - RCO model doesn't scale to entire DoD, senior lead attention limited 42:20 - PEOs must be able to trade requirements and money in year of execution 42:30 - Cool if PPBE commission could make PPBE agile 44:15 - Appropriators won't want to give DoD flexibility 44:30 - Without PPBE reform, DoD is doing a "Poor Man's" version of portfolio management 46:25 - Remembering the late Ash Carter 47:00 - Acquisition community was not at war until 2009 47:30 - Creation of the Senior Integration Group (SIG) 51:30 - Bipartisan support for national security 52:40 - DoD response to inflation 53:00 - Believes suppliers are hurt by inflation, but no data yet 55:30 - Expects CPIF contracts will slip due to inflation 57:30 - Competition changes behavior, no question 57:50 - Little difference between classified info on Ukraine and public news 58:40 - Acquisition is fun