Why hasn’t the Army’s regular acquisition process produced anything in decades?

At the Future of War (FoW) conference, one of General Odierno’s comments referenced the problem of ‘utopia requirements’ in our Defense Acquisitions process. He defined ‘utopia requirements’ as basically overzealous requirements that are not feasible within current technology readiness levels. In the past one might have called these ‘gold-plated’ requirements – the kind that exceeds the warfighter ‘needs’ in favor of the ‘wants.’ GEN Odierno further described this as the primary driver of our inability to get systems fielded.