Defence Strategic Review gives mandate to slash the time it takes to put new weapons into the hands of Australian military

The head of Defence’s maligned procurement arm says he wants to slash the time it takes to get new weapons into service – and the Defence Strategic Review has given him a mandate for change.

Capability Acquisition and Sustainment Group chief Chris Deeble. Picture: Jane Dempster/The Australian

The head of Defence’s much-­maligned procurement arm says he wants to slash the time it takes to get new weapons into service to just three years from the current eight to 10, declaring the government’s Defence Strategic Review has given him a mandate for change.

Capability Acquisition and Sustainment Group chief Chris Deeble, whose organisation will be central to the review’s success, said the urgency demanded by strategic circumstances required the agency to “be bold”.

The former F-111 navigator and Northrop Grumman Australia chief executive said his agency needed to work better with the defence industry as it embraced the review’s call for “minimum ­viability capability” ahead of perfect solutions.

“My goal would be to deliver the baseline capability within three years, and then be able to iterate with key updates in weeks and months, not years,” the Defence deputy secretary said.

Mr Deeble said new requirements would be introduced to set programs on a path to success ­before they began, to move them rapidly through procurement “gates”, and “pull through” struggling projects.

The review, released on Monday, warned the current approach to acquiring new capabilities “is not suitable given our strategic circumstances”. It called for a greater tolerance of risk, fewer time-wasting tenders, and an end to “the quest for perfectionism”.

New weapons and equipment will now be accepted into service when they reach 80 per cent of contracted capability, and then improved over time.

As well as getting capabilities into service faster, the approach would ensure systems could incorporate new technology as it became available, Mr Deeble said.

“When you deliver a capability over the eight-to-10-year time-frame, how it was originally conceived and specified is not the way that it is relevant eight to 10 years later, as that strategic environment has changed,” he said. Mr Deeble, who has been in the job for just nine months, said the change required to implement the new approach would not happen overnight, but “within the first year, you would expect to see change”. It would be “about a three-year journey to get us humming”.

The new approach would be underpinned by greater digitisation of the organisation’s processes, buying “off the shelf” when possible, limiting design changes, and eliminating competitive tenders when there was a standout “sole source” option, Mr ­Deeble said.

Two new delivery groups will be created – a guided weapons division, and another for air defence and space systems. A third will focus on strategy, planning and independent assurance of new capabilities.

Mr Deeble said Defence had “not engaged with industry well enough in the past”, and needed to work intensively with companies in the early planning stages to get projects off on the right track.

“The idea is we do more work up front, setting projects up for success, rather than … coming in after the die has been cast,” he said. “That way, as we’re working through the life cycle, we don’t get things that can’t be executed because we’ve actually influenced the execution from the get go.”

He said the new approach to project risk needed to be shared by the government’s central agencies, including the Finance Department, “that will often critique what we do”. Finance would also need to re-examine its procurement rules to support faster contracting, including greater acceptance of sole-source contracts.

Defence’s Capability Acquisition and Sustainment Group has a total workforce of about 19,000, including about 10,000 contracted service providers that maintain the ADF’s equipment, and about 5000 public servants and uniformed personnel.

Consultants and contracted support staff make up the remainder. Mr Deeble said many contractors would still be required, but their numbers would be reassessed, and Defence’s internal skill base improved.