Wartime Contracting Can Be Improved With Simple Steps

In the physical world of mechanics and engineering, errors or inexperience can lead to loss of property and lives. But disasters lead to new learning and remedies. The world of physical products provides countless examples of this. Being an airplane buff, I cite the first test flight of an airplane in the 1930s. The prototype for the storied B-17 bomber crashed, burned and killed two test pilots during its demonstration flight for the Army. Certain controls had been left in the locked position before the plane took off. That disaster led to development of detailed, pre-flight checklists – a simple but profound fix.

So why can’t simple but profound fixes also occur when the losses involve dollars, especially billions and billions of dollars?

That’s the big theme emerging the loudest, to me at least, from the final report to Congress from the Commission on Wartime Contracting. The final report contained few surprises. Regular reports issuing from the Commission have detailed horror stories. Between $31 billion and $60 billion in contracting appropriations for Iraq and Afghanistan went down a rat hole in the last 10 years.

The photos in the report nearly speak louder than the words. Afghan farmers trailed by small children working with their hands; desolate, dry-mountain landscapes lacking evidence of any basic infrastructure; hand written ultimatums from construction companies more worried about local tribal rulers than about the United States, which is paying the bills. Working in a place so corrupt and foreign to the U.S. frame of reference for business codes and ethics makes the job of contracting seem hopeless. U.S contractors like KBR don’t come off much better, operating with no task-order competition.

This is definitely not seeking bids for office furniture from three U.S. distributors for the latest new Washington office building.

I urge you to read the report. It’s not difficult or dense reading, but it will have you shaking your head.

To its credit, the Commission offers solutions which can mitigate these types of losses in the future. While contractors behaviors include incompetence, carelessness, and outright fraud, the Commission puts the onus to get taxpayers’ money’s worth on the buyer. That is, the Defense and State Department (including USAID) contracting communities.

If the combined might of the coalition forces in Afghanistan can do little to rectify millennia of tribal corrupt practices, it’s unlikely the Pentagon’s contracting corps can, either. But it can increase the odds in the taxpayers’ and warfighters’ favor. One way is to establish a dedicated team of contingency contracting specialists available to deploy as needed for either foreign wars or domestic emergencies and natural disasters. That’s suggestion #2 of the final report: “Develop deployable cadres for acquisition management and contractor oversight.”

Several recent stories have focused on the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) and its successes. How inexpensive, relative to the potential savings, would an acquisition JSOC be?

Two follow-on suggestions to the cadre idea follow in the report. Recommendation #6 is to “elevate the positions and expand the authority of civilian officials responsible for contingency contracting at Defense, State and USAID.” And #7 is “elevate and expand the authority of military officials responsible for contingency contracting on the Joint Staff, the combatant commanders’ staffs, and in the military services.”

Simple steps that could have substantial leverage on the overall problem.

In all, the Commission made 15 recommendations, but those are the most concrete and easy to implement. I believe they’d also be the ones to have the most positive effect the fastest, like adding a checklist to pre-flight preparations so airplanes fly instead of crash.