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In the mid 1990s, it became clear that the U.S. submarine force had lost the acoustic advantage over contemporary Soviet new construction submarines. At the same time, investment in undersea warfare suffered a marked reduction as the total obligation authority within the services continually eroded the means to develop capabilities in the traditional manner. New acquisition processes had to be created to grapple with the need to rapidly increase warfighting performance while continuously decreasing cost. The keys to solving this dilemma are based on three fundamental truths. First, meaningful competition for ideas always yields a better product at reduced cost. Second, the commercial marketplace readily provides low cost, high performance general purpose processing technologies. Third, the U.S. forward deployed naval forces can provide rapid, hands‐on customer feedback. These three elements are the centerpiece of the Submarine Acoustic‐Rapid Commercial‐Off‐the‐Shelf Insertion (A‐RCI) Program, which provided the vision and strategy to institutionalize a rapid acquisition process through new leader‐ship and management approaches, that has delivered to the Fleet a seven‐fold increase in submarine towed array sensor performance, while realizing a 60‐fold decrease in real processing costs.

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Since October 2001, improvised explosive devices (IEDs) have been responsible for many of the combat deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan. While the United States and its coalition partners have recovered well from the initial surprise of the IED threat, the fact is that our country was caught off guard by the extent and sophistication of this weapon on the battlefield. We should not have been. The United State's approach to its science and technology (S&T) program is in need of reevaluation and change so that our country will be better prepared for future warfare. Terrorist groups and rogue nations will continue to conduct sophisticated attacks simply by leveraging commercial technologies. This article describes the essential changes needed to S&T. The views expressed in this article are those of the authors and are not necessarily the official policy of the US Navy or any other organization. The intent of this article is to foster dialogue and the changes needed to continuously stay ahead of our adversaries.

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