Rapid Fire September 19, 2012: DoD Contract Spending

* The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) published a data-rich report [PDF] on defense contract spending from 1990 to 2011, based in large part on FPDS data. This has a number of limitations, such as limited visibility into Air Force obligations given their significant use of classified contracts that are not filed in the FPDS database. The document includes a good number of interesting charts that track products vs. services, and relative obligations among and within the three major components. The Navy looks set to become again the biggest recipient among them, as it was before the Army saw a post-9/11 obligations boom that has been receding since 2008. The authors note that: “In the years 2008 to 2011 there was a profound shift in DoD contract spending. While absolute obligations for defense services contracts declined by $25 billion and dropped from 64% of total DoD acquisition outlays to 55%, noncontract defense spending increased by $71 billion and increased from 36 percent of DoD acquisition outlays to 45%. Therefore, as DoD contracts spending decreased at an annual average of 2.1% in total value, its noncontract acquisitions increased by an 11.1% CAGR for the same period. * The Taliban […]