Opening Statement (As Prepared)

Click here to stream the hearing.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I want to thank the Chairman for holding this hearing today. I believe it has been over 40 years since this committee held a field hearing and I can’t think of a timelier topic or a more appropriate location.
 
I continue to be concerned that the Department of Defense (DoD) is not able to innovate quickly enough to keep pace with our potential adversaries. There is no economy in the history of the world that is capable of innovating faster than the United States. Innovation is built into higher education and our commercial markets and we have to be able to leverage that advantage. We have made some significant strides in this area, much of which originated in this committee. I want to give credit to former Chairman Mac Thornberry who was a great leader in this area and helped shepherd unique authorities like expanded Other Transaction Authority and Mid-Tier Acquisition authority, and helped to eliminate red tape within the bureaucracy. The Defense Innovation Unit (DIU), created by former Secretary Ash Carter, has also been a positive step. DIU has been able to kick start the Research and Development (R&D) side of the innovation process and I support their efforts. Unfortunately, the good news stops there as we make the transition from R&D to development and procurement. Bottom line, buying the actual thing takes way too long. This lengthy process dissuades the emerging technology companies from wanting to do business with DoD. There is no incentive for a company to share their innovative ideas and technology with DoD if they are not confident they will at least have the opportunity to compete for the actual fielding of their products.
 
It is important that we all understand why the process is what it is. There are painstaking examples of where we attempted to buy something that was not what the warfighter actually needed. I am reminded of things like that Navy and Marine Corps Internet and the Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle as prime examples. As a result, we have adopted a process that is overly burdensome, too bogged down with requirements and strangled by a bureaucracy of too many people trying to people-proof the system. We must break though this and start doing things differently. It cannot take 5 to 10 years to develop a requirement that is then obsolete or irrelevant by the time it is fielded. We have to empower program managers to make decisions, move quickly and also fail. Failure is learning and we can no longer be afraid of it and need to embrace our tolerance of risk. Our commercial partners know this and we can all see the results. That is why we are here today. We want to hear from some of our most innovative companies that are working with DoD and hear what we can collectively do to further attract additional companies to work with DoD.

 

###