Rapid Fielding Initiative

Doing an end run around military bureaucracy:

Engineers often point out that they can deliver much more quickly if they are allowed to use the old "70 percent solution" rule. This bit of engineering wisdom is based on the fact that some capabilities of a weapon or other item are not essential but take an inordinate amount of effort and expense to create. Thus a "good enough" item can be produced very quickly, if you are willing to sacrifice 30 percent of the capabilities you thought you needed (but probably don't). Despite official opposition, the 70 percent solution has become all the rage over the last decade because the troops have found that this is frequently good enough and a real lifesaver in combat. In the last decade this often meant adopting civilian gear (radios, hunting accessories, electronics, clothing, tents) that was not “militarized” (made much more expensive and not arriving for a long time.)

The age of change began with the troops who, thanks to the Internet and a flood of new civilian technology, got into the habit of just buying new stuff with their own money and using it in combat. If the army had developed a lot of this gear it would have had more features, probably been more rugged, and taken a lot longer to arrive, if it ever did at all. But for the troops, the off-the-shelf gear filled important needs, even if it was a 70 percent solution.

Troops have been finding and buying non-standard gear for decades but it had been growing more frequent since the 1990s. The army became tolerant of it, largely because this unofficial civilian gear (sleeping bags, boots, rifle cleaning kits, etc.) often was better and even officers used the stuff. As the number of these items increased tremendously over the last decade, and more officers came back from commanding combat units with personal experience with this sort of thing, a growing number of senior commanders began demanding that the army procurement bureaucracy get rid of the traditional 10-15 years it takes to find, develop, and approve new technology for the troops. The troops have long understood this but now four star generals agreed and often did so from personal experience.

Even when I was on active duty in the Corps during the late 80s and early 90s, it was common for infantrymen to buy our own stuff. Tanto knives and Danner "Ft Lewis" insulated combat boots were two of the most popular items. Of course you still had to keep and maintain all the regulation gear for the depressingly frequent inspections, but when it was time for field ops, most everybody carried "substitute" items or augmented the issue gear. When I later served with an Army LRRP company (Long Range Recon Patrol, now called Long Range Surveillance), we often carried personal weapons in addition to our rifles. That's because it was a five or six man team jumping in deep behind the lines, meaning we were totally isolated and therefore self-dependent. The officers may have frowned at men rigging up for a jump with a sawed-off pump shotgun or a razor-sharp short sword strapped to their packs, but they were wise enough to say nothing.

As the article shows, this trend has made it into the flag ranks over the last decade and grown dramatically in scope, often "official-izing" non-standard and civilian gear through the Rapid Fielding Initiative. That's because it helps win battles, which is all combat troops of any rank care about. But it's stepping on the toes of the military-industrial complex, the very people Eisenhower warned us about. Now that we're winding down major combat operations, those Daddy Warbucks want the RFI to go away so they can go back to developing substandard equipment for outrageous amounts of money. Maybe our Congress critters will have the sense to stop that happening, but I seriously doubt it -- especially since many of them are in bed with that very military-industrial complex via our disgustingly perverted lobbyist system.

All hard lessons have to be re-learned by each generation, it seems. In the case of poorly-designed, overpriced military equipment, however, it's not just money that is lost, but the lives of good men who love their country. And that makes me want to strangle a politician -- an increasingly frequent impulse as I get older.