At this same time (1993 1994), the Pentagon acquisition leadership introduced the concept of ACTDs. ACTDs were intended to apply mature technologies in innovative ways and rapidly put the capability in the hands of overseas theater commanders for their field evaluation in the "real world." The entire process from start to finish was to take no more than 3 to 4 years, which would avoid the traditional acquisition process that took 10 to 20 years from concept to delivery, and would allow for inputs from the ultimate customers, the warfighters in the theaters; i.e., to be joint rather than Service- centric in perspective.

The first class of ACTDs included both the Tier II and Tier III UAV projects, and indeed, over the coming years, ACTDs became the preferred route for acquiring Defense Department UAVs. They were bare-bones funded to quickly produce one or two examples of the concept without long- term industrial commitments, possibly because the theater commanders could judge them to be of no real value. They were experiments in which there were failures and where rejection still represented success. The problem was that no one had mapped out how to transition an ACTD product that the theater heartily endorsed into a producible, sustainable system, complete with a training syllabus, a spares inventory, or a logistics chain to support it.

It was also an uninvited guest. The bureaucracy that produces the defense budget is a rolling process with a long outlook (7 years ahead)...