The Pentagon lost another top IT official on April 18, with the resignation of Preston Dunlap, founding chief architecture officer of the Air and Space Forces.
In an open resignation letter posted to social media, Dunlap wrote that he was proud of the three years he spent at the Defense Department, but that bureaucracy, a risk-averse culture, and other internal issues made innovation more difficult than it should have been.
He said the department fostered an environment in which it was “hard, but not impossible” to innovate and compared the effort required to break through Pentagon bureaucracy to the effort needed to push satellites past Earth’s gravity.
“I’ve spent the last three years working to defy gravity and get desperately needed technology into our operators’ hands,” Dunlap wrote. “By the time the Government manages to produce something, it’s too often obsolete; no business would ever survive this way, nor should it.”
Dunlap’s resignation follows that of Pentagon Chief Software Officer Jason Weiss earlier in April, and that of Air and Space Forces Chief Software Officer Nicolas Chaillan in October. Both Weiss and Chaillan used their resignations to warn that out-of-control bureaucracies were preventing a talented and dedicated workforce in the Defense Department (DoD) from succeeding.
“This is a massive loss for DoD,” Chaillan said in reference to Dunlap’s departure. “The number of top talent leaving the Pentagon is very concerning.
“I don’t know anyone who is as good as Preston in the entire Department. [He] will be very tough to replace, particularly since they have yet to replace me. Even worse after [Weiss] left last month too.”
Dunlap: Pentagon Lacks Budget, Authority, Vision
In the eight-page document marking his departure from the Pentagon, Dunlap painted a bleak picture of a military bureaucracy run amok, with little to no resources or support being available for those trying to change the status quo.
“Not unsurprisingly to anyone who has worked for or with the Government before, I arrived to find no budget, no authority, no alignment of vision, no people, no computers, no networks, a leaky ceiling, even a broken curtain,” he said. “You get the picture. Sadly, I was probably better off than most who show up to serve.
“Ironically as I’m writing this, I received notification that the phone lines are down at the Pentagon IT help desk. Phone lines are down? It’s 2022, folks.”
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