Weapon system programs continue to exceed their planned schedules (which are already too long) and budget baselines. At times, these programs become so narrowly focused on reducing costs that they lose sight of their primary objective: to provide the necessary capability to the warfighter.
In light of today’s ever-changing, chaotic threat environment, the DoD must transition away from the inflexibility and complexity that have characterized defense acquisition for decades—and toward agility and responsiveness. All of the major stakeholders have recognized that acquisition performance must be improved.
Between February and June of 2017 a cadre of defense experts convened a series of workshops to identify the needed changes. The goal of the workshops was to examine previous acquisition reform efforts, identify the root causes of the significant problems, review commercial and international best practices, and make recommendations to help transform the DoD’s acquisition processes – enabling the DoD to become a “world class buyer.” This report summarizes the finding from these workshops.