Read the most recent CSIS research on Department of Defense acquisition policy and contracting trends.
We must ensure that we adapt the acquisition system to deliver the systems we need, rather than simply optimize it to deliver the wrong systems more quickly or more cheaply.
Expectations have been building for the FY 2020 defense budget request, a budget that acting secretary of defense Shanahan has called the “masterpiece.” As the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) works on finalizing the request, experts from the CSIS International Security Program outline what to look for in the FY 2020 defense budget.
Bad ideas. How much trouble do they cause in national security? How do they disrupt or hinder the protection and advancement of American interests? Listen to the War on the Rocks podcast featuring authors from the Defense360 “Bad Ideas in National Security” series.
With Deputy Secretary Patrick Shanahan now the acting Secretary of Defense, there has been some hyperventilating about whether Boeing has the inside track in the Pentagon. Industry can relax.
The Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) can and should be improved. But tossing out the FAR completely and starting over will slow, not accelerate, acquisition in the near term. Worse, it will ultimately undermine the usefulness of the alternative pathways that we are currently developing.
A group of reformers in both Congress and the executive branch have a common diagnosis of the Department of Defense’s (DoD) weapon system acquisition process: it is too slow and rigid. The DoD News coverage of Undersecretary for Research and Engineering Mike Griffin’s comments this past April succinctly summarize this concern: Download full report “The…
The notion of “requirements” is deeply embedded in military jargon and decision-making processes. But the notion of “requirements” has two perverse effects. The first is that it encourages advocates to ask for maximum capabilities. The second is that it sets goals without a sense of trade-offs. The term should be abolished.
It’s bipartisan Washington gospel that America’s private sector will deliver the innovation the country needs. However, at the front-end of an era of rapid, disruptive technological change in which global competition is heating up, such expectation is increasingly a bad idea without a far more strategic, centralized, and White House-driven approach to the challenges ahead.
The industrial base review coupled with policy and strategy documents gives DoD and its inter-agency network a great deal of homework for the upcoming year. While it is clear that the Department will be rigorously working toward supporting and reinvigorating industries as well as deeply engaging with its partners and allies, it will have to overcome the challenge of the competing interests associated with these two core strategic goals.
Acquisition Trends 2018: Defense Contract Spending Bounces Back analyzes the current state of affairs in defense contracting at a time when the defense acquisition system sits at an inflection point. Defense contracting has rebounded these past two years, but there are unanswered questions about continued defense budget growth and the long-term effects of the last few years’ acquisition reform efforts.