DoD policy toward military specifications & standards.

For over a decade and a half, Department of Defense policy has limited the use of military specifications and standards in procurement actions. That policy encouraged the use of commercial standards rather than DoD standards, canceled numerous specifications and standards, and downgraded standards to handbooks that could not be cited in DoD contracts. Furthermore, of the remaining standards, only those identified as "standard practices" could be invoked without seeking a waiver before use.

Policy Memo 05-3, dated March 29, 2005 (page 91), has significantly changed that existing policy and aligned the overarching DoD direction to reflect changes published in the Defense Acquisition Guidebook released in the fall of 2004. This change includes elimination of the waiver requirement before use of military specifications as well as military standards not identified as "standard practices"; however, the revised policy does not eliminate the requirement to exercise good judgment in the use of any specification or standard.

Eiband is a professor of systems engineering with DAU. His article "Using Military Standards in Acquisition Programs" appeared in Defense AT & L. March-April 2005, and was written before Policy Memo 05-3 was released.