Historically, new weapon systems have been developed by the military services to counter specific threats. Under DOD’s Requirements Generation System, the precursor to JCIDS, requirements frequently grew out of the military services’ unique strategic visions and often lacked clear linkages to the national military strategy and the needs of the joint force commanders, who are responsible for carrying out military operations. This service-centric, stovepiped approach often created weapon systems that lacked interoperability, were duplicative, or did not fill critical gaps. In a 2002 memo, the Secretary of Defense expressed dissatisfaction with the requirements system and commented that the system “continues to require things that ought not to be required, and does not require things that need to be required.” As part of its 2001 Quadrennial Defense Review, DOD determined that the department needed to shift from threat-based defense planning to a capabilities-based model that focuses more on how an adversary might fight than who the adversary might be or where a war might be fought. JCIDS was established to provide the department with an integrated, collaborative process to identify and guide development of a broad set of new capabilities that address the current and emerging security environment. Through JCIDS, capabilities are to be developed from national military strategy and should relate to joint concepts that describe how the strategy will be implemented. JCIDS is also intended to ensure a strong voice for warfighters and identify needs from a joint perspective to ensure that current and future warfighters are provided the capabilities they need to accomplish assigned missions. Furthermore, JCIDS emphasizes that needs be derived in terms of capabilities instead of specific system solutions. The JCIDS process is overseen by the Joint Requirements Oversight Council (JROC) and supports the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who is responsible for advising the Secretary of Defense on the priorities of military requirements in supporting the national military strategy. Within JCIDS, FCBs—headed by a general or an admiral and made up of military and civilian representatives from the military services, joint staff, COCOMs, and the Office of the Secretary of Defense—manage different capability area portfolios. The FCBs are intended to support the JROC by evaluating capability needs, recommending enhancements to capabilities integration, examining joint priorities, assessing program alternatives, and minimizing duplication of effort across the department. The JCIDS process requires that gaps in military capabilities be identified and potential materiel and nonmateriel solutions for filling those gaps be developed based on formal capability assessments. The results of these capability assessments are formally submitted as initial capabilities documents (ICD)—a capability proposal—by a military service, defense agency, COCOM, FCB, or other sponsor. ICDs are intended to document a specific capability gap or set of gaps that exist in joint warfighting functions and propose a prioritized list of various solutions to address the gap(s). When a capability proposal is submitted, a Joint Staff “gatekeeper” conducts an initial review to determine what level of joint interest and review there should be and which FCB should take the lead. Capability proposals deemed to have a significant impact on joint warfighting, such as those involving potential major defense acquisition programs, are designated as “JROC interest” and must be validated or approved by the JROC. A JROC-validated ICD provides the basis for starting a major weapon system acquisition. Specifically, it should lead to an analysis of alternatives, a concept refinement phase, and a decision on a preferred system concept. Before a weapon system program is approved to begin system development, the sponsor is required to submit a capability development document (CDD)—which defines a specific solution as identified in the analysis of alternatives—through JCIDS for approval by the JROC. The CDD defines the system’s key performance parameters or attributes against which the delivered increment of capability will be measured. Finally, the sponsor prepares a capability production document (CPD) to address the production elements of an acquisition program prior to the program starting production. Figure 1 shows how the documentation relates to the major milestones for a weapon system program in the Defense Acquisition System. While JCIDS is intended to determine needs from a joint, departmentwide perspective, capability needs continue to be proposed and defined primarily by the military services, with little involvement from the joint community—including the COCOMs, which plan and implement military operations. This can lead to stovepiped and duplicative solutions that do not necessarily support a joint force on the battlefield. In addition, virtually all of the proposals for new capability needs and weapon system solutions completing the JCIDS process since 2003 have been validated. The JCIDS process has also proven to be lengthy, taking on average up to 10 months to validate a need. Such a protracted process further undermines the department’s efforts to effectively respond to the needs of the warfighter, especially those that are near term. Our review of the documentation associated with 90 “JROC interest” ICDs submitted to JCIDS since 2003 showed that 60 proposals, or 67 percent, were sponsored by a military service, and 23, or 26 percent, were sponsored by a COCOM, an FCB, or the Joint Staff. (See fig. 2.) JCIDS is intended to encourage collaboration among the services, COCOMs, and other DOD organizations to identify joint solutions to capability gaps, and there are some cases where this has occurred. For example, the Navy submitted a capability proposal through JCIDS to get a precision and landing system in place to avoid delays in delivering its aircraft carriers in development. The lead FCB reviewed the Navy’s proposal and recognized that it was similar to a need identified by the Air Force and determined that the Air Force’s needs could be met under the same proposal. However, according to JCIDS officials, FCB, COCOM, and other stakeholder reviews have had little influence in promoting joint solutions. Past studies have also raised concerns that the services and the COCOMs do not routinely collaborate to identify possible joint solutions. For example, in 2006 the Army Audit Agency recommended that the Army improve collaboration with the joint community early in the capabilities planning process to improve the quality of its capabilities documents and facilitate more timely reviews of proposals that are submitted into the JCIDS process. In January 2006, the Defense Acquisition Performance Assessment Panel concluded that JCIDS resulted in capabilities that did not meet warfighter needs in a timely manner and recommended that JCIDS be replaced with a COCOM-led requirements process in which the services and defense agencies compete to provide solutions. The Defense Science Board similarly reported that JCIDS has not provided for increased warfighter influence, but instead actually suppresses joint needs in favor of military service interests, and recommended an increase in the formal participation role of the COCOMs in the JCIDS process. The Center for Strategic and International Studies has also pointed out that while the services are responsible for supplying operationally capable armed forces, the COCOMs are responsible for responding to threats and executing military operations. Therefore, it recommended that the Joint Forces Command take the lead in conducting capabilities development planning for the COCOMs and become a formal member of the JROC. By continuing to rely on stovepiped solutions to address capability needs, DOD may be losing opportunities to improve joint warfighting capabilities and reduce the duplication of capabilities in some areas. In January 2006, we reported that military operations continue to be hampered by the inability of communication and weapon systems to operate effectively together on the battlefield. In May 2007, we reported that while the military services have successfully planned and fielded a number of unmanned aerial vehicle systems over the past several years, DOD has struggled to coordinate the development of these systems across the services and ensure that they complement one another and avoid duplicating capabilities. Specifically, despite similarities in proposed capabilities between two key unmanned aerial vehicle systems—the Air Force’s Predator program and the Army’s Warrior program—the Army awarded a separate development contract to the same contractor producing the Predator. By taking separate tracks to developing these two systems, the Air Force and the Army missed an opportunity to identify potential similarities in their requirements and thereby avoid redundant or non-interoperable systems. Although the Army and Air Force agreed to consider cooperating on the acquisition of the two systems, the services are struggling to agree on requirements. JCIDS is intended to support senior decision makers in identifying and prioritizing warfighting capability needs. As such, it is meant to be an important tool in maintaining a balanced portfolio of acquisition programs that can be executed within available resources. However, the vast majority of proposals completing the JCIDS process are approved—or validated. Adding to a portfolio that already contains more programs than resources can support is likely to perpetuate instability and poor outcomes in weapon system programs. Of the 203 JROC-interest capability proposals (ICDs and CDDs) we reviewed, 140 completed the JCIDS process and were validated. Of the remaining proposals, 57 are still under review, and 6 are considered inactive (see fig. 3). According to a Joint Staff representative, some proposals are returned to sponsors for modifications because the supporting documentation lacked sufficient analysis to justify the capability gap and solutions being presented, or because reviewers raised other technical concerns that needed to be resolved. Returned proposals are usually modified and resubmitted to the JCIDS process. The 6 proposals that are considered inactive were not resubmitted by the sponsors. According to JCIDS officials, proposals are not prioritized across capability and mission areas. Instead, the extent to which any prioritization has occurred within JCIDS has been limited to the key performance parameters or requirements within individual capability proposals.