Acquisition Trends, 2018: Defense Contract Spending Bounces Back
This analysis provides critical insights into understanding the current trends in the defense industrial base and the implications of those trends on acquisition policy.
This analysis provides critical insights into understanding the current trends in the defense industrial base and the implications of those trends on acquisition policy.
I warned in a 2019 year-ahead look at risks that uncertainty would rule. Let me double down on that bet.
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.
The average American wants choice and personalization, not a bundled, take-it-or-leave-it offering. That has left the market wide open for new entrants willing to break with past business models and orthodoxies, from Netflix to Donald Trump.
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 Defense Department has historically provided investment to help develop systems for its specialized needs. However the investment creates limitations in the defense market and as a result, it impacts innovation. This analysis outlines the challenges and provides recommendations to promote innovation in the defense market.