ously were underdeveloped and un- derutilized. For example, the original statute called for establishment of the Rapid Prototyping Fund. The lan- guage from the original FY 2016 au- thority stated that the “Secretary of Defense shall establish a fund to be known as the ‘Department of Defense Rapid Prototyping Fund,’” in addition to other funds that may be available for acquisition programs under the rapid prototyping pathway. It might be argued that these aspects of FY 2016 NDAA Sec. 804 were best to be underutilized and/or underdevel- oped. Either way, in the codification of MTA in Title 10, U.S.C. 3602, Con- gress made some changes by delet- ing all mention of the Department of Defense Rapid Prototyping Fund for funding MTA programs. The FY 2016 NDAA also offered streamlined procedures for where the senior acquisition executive (SAE) directly assigned the PM of an MTA program who was to report directly to the “service acquisition execu- tive of the military department con- cerned.” It also stated that the SAE would “evaluate the job performance of such manager on an annual basis.” This was perhaps designed to shorten communication and decision delays. The FY 2025 NDAA language de- letes both paragraphs regarding this direct relationship.
With the maturation of the AAF in 2020 to include MTA as one of six pathways, the more prevalent role of the SAE described by the original statute is now more likely to prove managerially unrealistic. Congress has expressed the desire to see the DoD develop and use MTA pathways with greater frequency. Section 832 of the FY 2025 NDAA calls for deploy- able field training teams, staffed by DAU, academia, and/or private sec- tor personnel, and includes ‘‘using the middle tier acquisition pathways” as one of three specific focus areas. One of the most interesting changes to the law (now Title 10, U.S.C. Sec. 3602) is the greater lati- tude given SAEs for rapid prototyp- ing programs with regards to the five-year limit. A new paragraph has been added to Rapid Prototyping, “(E) a process for iterating prototyping and fielding within the rapid prototyping pathway that may use a process de- scribed in paragraph (4)(F).” Para- graph 4 is “Streamlined Procedures” under which a new paragraph reads: (F) If an operational capability is fielded for a program or project for which the authority under this section is used, the appropriate service acquisition executive may permit continuous iterative proto- typing and fielding under the same pro- gram or project for an unlimited number of subsequent periods, where each period is intended to be five years. That paragraph indicates that the SAE has the authority to extend rapid prototyping
programs beyond the five-year threshold, provided that new innova- tive technologies warrant iterations that are consistently fielded, referred to as a “residue operational capabil- ity” in the Rapid Prototyping section. Implementation of this new paragraph will be determined by the USD(A&S) MTA policy to address how iterating prototyping will work. However, since paragraph (4)(F) is not referred to in the RF section of 3602, the same latitude does not seem authorized to allow for extension of RF programs beyond five years of producing assets with proven technologies. One substantial element that the new law retains is that the programs “shall not be subject to the Joint Ca- pabilities Integration and Development System Manual and Department of Defense Directive 5000.01.” This is especially interesting because DoDI 5000.01 was significantly rewritten after 17 years and published in Sep- tember 2020 to include seven new directive statements (as well as delet- ing and combining others). The first of new statements is to “Deliver Perfor- mance at the Speed of Relevance” and includes six operating policies and the directive that “The DAS [Defense Acquisition System] will: (2) Use an adaptive acquisition framework to emphasize these principles,” which, of course, includes the six pathways, one of which is the MTA and its cor- responding DoDI 5000.80. However, there are still items in DoDD 5000.01 that could be viewed as prescriptive so that the intent of OSD and Congress to provide PMs latitude in adapting and adopting new and proven tech- nologies for our Warfighters can likely best be maintained with this state- ment excluding DoDD 5000.01. Conclusions That’s a lot of growing up! So, where does uncertainty still lie? For one, there remains a percep- tion among RF programs that if they need to transition to the MCA pathway due to exceeding the five- year “complete fielding” requirement,
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