NDIA President on Defense Acquisition Reform

Over at National Defense Magazine, US National Defense Industry Association (NDIA) President Lawrence P. Farrell Jr. talks about the Defense Acquisition Performance Assessment (DAPA) reform project, which DID has covered. Despite the improvements made over the last 20 years – and there have been many of them – this was certainly a sobering set of statistics: “Currently, more than 80 new major weapon systems are under development, with a combined cost growth of $300 billion and total acquisition cost of nearly $1.5 trillion. A recent Government Accountability Office study of 26 major acquisition programs suggests the top five programs have nearly doubled in cost during the last four years – in fact, skyrocketing from $281 billion to $521 billion. The trend is not abating – estimates of cost growth and development time of these same five programs grew 14.3 percent and 5.5 percent, respectively, in the past year alone, according to GAO. After more than 20 years of numerous attempts to improve the acquisition system, the perception is that no reforms have addressed systemic weaknesses in structure, process and governance of major weapon systems development.” Reading that, it’s hard to disagree. Some of Farrell’s thoughts include: * The issues DAPA […]