MEMORANDUM FOR THE DEPUTY UNDER SECRETARY OF DEFENSE (ACQUISITION REFORM)
FROM: William J. Lacey, Jr., Militec Corporation
SUBJ: Acquisition Reform
Army and Navy mid-level civilian managers are obstructing the introduction of MILITEC-1 into the military supply system, and are attempting to prevent its use by soldiers and sailors who are enthused about the product.. Since MILITEC-1 has an easily verifiable track record of successful use with both commercial and government users, that obstruction violates the spirit and the letter of SecDef's direction to take advantage of commercially available items, and the recently enacted Federal Acquisition Streamlining Act.
We recognize the need to protect personnel and equipment from harmful products. But, in the case of MILITEC-1 (and we suspect in other cases), over-zealous protectors of the system will not allow a product "Not Invented Here" to be evaluated by users in the field. Therefore, a legitimate function to protect the military system from harmful products has become subverted to where it makes no allowance for a NIH product, even though, in this case, the product has indisputable credentials.
A current "Catch-22" situation in the Army is life imitating art. The long time approved weapons CLP (cleaner, lubricant, preservative) - never embraced as effective by field units and disavowed by weapons manufacturers - has been found to be harmful: the solvent that acts as the cleaner is dangerous to users both during application on weapons and during firing of the weapons (the solvent component off-gasses). Onerous handling requirements for CLP make it very difficult to use. In contrast, MILITEC-1 is harmless and provides excellent results, but is obstructed by the gate-keepers. So, there is now a situation that an approved product is found to be harmful, is not endorsed by field users, but is kept in the system. At the same time, a new, NIH product is not harmful, is proven in use by other government agencies and strongly endorsed by many military field users, functions perfectly, but is not allowed in the system.
