Title: Defense acquisition reform
Description: This study discusses reform initiatives from 1960 to the present and concludes with prescriptions for future changes to the acquisition culture of the services, DoD, and industry. (See Chapter Five) Despite all of the focus and effort dedicated towards reform in the past fifty years, certain systemic issues remain unchanged, implying strongly that the acquisition process has a number of built-in, even cultural, aspects that resist change: a workforce frequently with too little training, experience, and stable tenure enough to monitor and manage huge defense acquisition programs; the short tenure of senior politically appointed acquisition executives, averaging a mere eighteen months in office; an irregular and erratic flow of weapons system appropriations; the very nature of cutting edge, highly risky, research; an ill-informed requirements process that virtually mandates changes to contracts as requirements are added or changed; and the many financial incentives that reward low-ball bids and provides negative sanctions for failing to spend all available funds. These cultural challenges within the current acquisition system have great value to many of the key players in industry, the services, and Congress, and predispose those players to be generally resistant to change.