General John Hyten is the Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He is widely known as one of America’s greatest strategic thinkers. In the video below, recorded 17 Jan 2020 at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, he provided insights into his position and his priorities. He also provided context on the nation’s strategic competitors, and then dives deep into a topic near and dear to our heart, the need for improvement in how DoD acquires software.
Notes I typed as he spoke (so paraphrased just a little):
Have you watched how fast the United States of America builds software? It is just amazing, when you go into the commercial sector and watch how they build software it is just so fast, you look at Google or Facebook or Amazon Web Services or any of the small startups… it is just amazing.
Have you ever walked into a defense contractor and watched them build software? It is just a nightmare, and you look at any defense program and it is just a nightmare. Why? Is it because the United States doesn’t know how to build software? No we are the leading software nation in the world. We just have not translated that to the DoD.
He then talks about the need to change the industrial age models of DoD like the Joint Requirements Oversight Committee (JROC). He says the answer is to let people take risk. And we have to re-work how people buy things.
I have to agree. But study after study after study says it also takes leadership on the issue of make vs buy. Something else needs to be done besides simply translating best practices or allowing more risk in software development.
Here is an idea, how about a direct military order like the following: No one in DoD, or under contract to DoD, can write a single line of code unless the Vice Chairman is convinced that a commercial product does not exist that can do the same thing.
I know that is extreme. And rational minds would want to moderate that extreme position. But as a thought experiment, think of the billions of dollars that would be saved by doing that, and the speed at which we would bring new capabilities to DoD, and the war winning potential we would be equipping our military with.
Watch General Hyten’s comments below and let me know your thoughts on my proposal. Would love to know if you would support a policy that says defense contractors and DoD could no longer write code without permission.
For more background on this topic of COTS vs GOTS see:
