Thursday, August 7, 2008

On the need for a USAF requirements writing office

Long article in Aviation Week bemoaning various recent Air Force project disasters such as the tanker mess, a troubled recon satellite program, a follow on UAV program, and pontificating upon a fix. The author blames bad specification writing, in particular bad requirements specification writing as the cause, and calls for a special corps of requirement spec writers as the fix.
Do I believe that a bunch of well trained paper pushers can solve all the problems of military procurement? No. However better requirements would certainly help.
Back in ancient history, the F105 and F106 fighters from the Viet Nam era, maintainance of which was my duty in those days, we had a pair of hot fighters loaded with fancy gadgets that never worked or were never used. The F106 flew with the Tactical Situation Display inop, the retractable beacon lights fully extended, and the doppler mode of the radar inop. The F105 never put bomb one into it's fancy internal bomb bay, the doppler navigator and the UHF radio were so flaky the planes flew in groups of four, hoping that ONE doppler and ONE UHF would be working upon return.
These "issues" (down right failures actually) started at the requirements spec level. Nice to have, but troublesome and non essential requirements, burdened the aircraft with gear that took up space and weight but didn't work. The space and weight would have been better dedicated to carrying more fuel and armament. Had the requirements spec been trimmed of excess fat before going into production, considerable taxpayer expense would have been saved.
So the issue of proper requirements is a real one. If we speced it right, a lot of time, money and aggravation would be saved. When we spec it wrong, or fail to spec it at all, trouble insues.
The best requirements spec writers are experienced operators. Want a good requirements spec for an aircraft or a tank or even a jeep? Get the users together and let them write the spec. You might need a secretary from the bureaucracy to clean up the language, but the users know what's essential and what's a frill. Specially trained requirements spec writers won't.

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