The Perfect Storm: The Goldwater-Nichols Act and Its Effect on Navy Acquisition

The Goldwater-Nichols Department of Defense Reorganization Act passed in 1986 was one of the most sweeping pieces of legislation to affect the Department of Defense and the military services in decades. Its passage resulted from dissatisfaction on the part of Congress and other influential policy makers with what they perceived as the U.S. militarys stubborn refusal to deal with long-festering problems. These problems included an inability on the part of the military services to mount effective joint operations and an inefficient, unwieldy, and at times corrupt system for acquiring weapon systems. But Goldwater-Nichols was only one manifestation of widespread discontent with the Department of Defenses operational and acquisition capabilities. Between 1986 and 1990, a remarkable number of events changed how the department was organized, conducted military operations, and did business. The climate surrounding the enactment of Goldwater-Nichols was indeed a perfect storm, a confluence of disparate currents, some flowing from longstanding problems and others from more-recent events. These currents not only facilitated the passage of Goldwater-Nichols but also shaped its implementation in the military departments. This paper focuses on the implementation of Goldwater-Nichols in DoN. It argues that the implementation of the act in DoN had three undesirable consequences 1 It erected an impenetrable wall between a military-controlled requirements process and a civilian-driven acquisition process to the overall detriment of acquisition in DoN, 2 Its personnel policies deprived the DoN of a blended acquisition workforce composed of line officers with extensive operational experience who provided valuable perspective that those who spent most of their careers in acquisition assignments lacked, and 3 It created a generation of line officers who had little or no understanding of or appreciation for the acquisition process.