Defense Acquisition Performance Assessment project findings.

The Defense Acquisition Performance Assessment (DAPA) project, headed by retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Ronald Kadish and including representatives from the military, industry, and academia, has submitted eight major findings and associated recommended actions across the spectrum of the defense acquisition process. The panel presented their findings in a 155-page report, dated January 2006, to the deputy secretary of defense.

Strategic technology exploitation as a key U.S. advantage. Militarily critical technologies need to be identified and documented early in the acquisition process to ensure that cutting-edge technologies have appropriate export controls.

U.S. economic and security environments have changed. The fundamental nature of defense acquisition and the defense industry has changed substantially and irreversibly over the past 20 years. New and emerging global markets have substantially affected the dynamics of acquisition reforms envisaged in the Gold-water-Nichols Act. In 1985, defense programs were conducted in a robust market environment where more than 20 fully competent prime contractors competed for multiple new programs each year. The industrial base was supported by huge annual production runs of aircraft (585), combat vehicles (2,031), ships (24), and missiles (32,714). In 1985, threats were well-known and well-defined. This allowed the department to conduct stable strategic planning. Today, the department relies on six prime contractors who compete for fewer and fewer programs each year. Reductions in plant capacity have failed to keep pace with the reduction in demand for defense systems (188 aircraft, 190 combat vehicles, eight ships, 5,072 missiles). The security environment has become unpredictable, threats are often difficult to define, and situations often require asymmetric responses. The world dynamic has changed.

Acquisition system must deal with external instability. The acquisition system must deal with external instability, a changing security environment, and challenging national security issues. The Department must be agile--to an unprecedented degree--to respond quickly to urgent operational needs from across the entire spectrum of potential conflicts.

DoD management model based on lack of trust. The Department compounds the chaotic nature of its financial model with a program oversight philosophy based on lack of trust.

Oversight is preferred to accountability. Effective oversight has been diluted in a system where the quantity of reviews has replaced quality, and the tortuous review processes have obliterated clean lines of responsibility, authority, and accountability. The oversight process allows staffs to assume de-facto program authority, stop progress, and increase program scope.

Oversight is complex--not process- or program-focused. The current system is focused on programs, not on improving and standardizing the processes of acquisition; it inhibits rather than promotes steady improvement in achieving program success.

Complex acquisition processes do not promote success. Complex acquisition processes do not promote program success--they increase costs, add to schedule, and obfuscate accountability. Although the Department functions with a single serial acquisition process with extended planning horizons, the Department's budgeting process is based on short-term decision making in which long-term cost increases are accepted to achieve short-term budget "savings" or "budget year flexibility."

Incremental improvement applied solely to "little a" acquisition process requires all processes to be stable--they are not. The acquisition system is believed to be a simple construct that efficiently integrates the three interdependent processes of budget, acquisition, and requirements termed "Big A." "Little a" is the acquisition process that tells us how to buy but does not include requirements and budget, creating competing values and objectives.

The Defense Department is reviewing the team's recommendations. Review the entire report at <http://www.acq.osd.mil/dapaproject/documents/DAPA-Report-web.pdf>.