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Our top story covers DoD's plans to improve foreign military sales (FMS) with six recommendations. Among them: accelerate acquisition and contracting support and expand defense industrial base capacity. This latter strategy will include use of multi-year contracts and enhanced use of the Special Defense Acquisition Fund.
The HASC subcommittees met this week to begin markup on the National Defense Authorization Act. Full committee markup for both HASC and SASC is scheduled for next week. Some notable pending provisions:
- Expand use of multi-year contracting, particularly for rare earth elements
- Rename the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering to the Under Secretary of Defense for Technology Integration and Innovation, adding responsibilities meant to better identify and apply commercial technology
- Pilot flexible contracting approaches to reduce risk in contested logistics environments
DoD has announced the establishment of a Defense Civilian Training Corps, the latest outreach effort from DoD to recruit and train young talent. College juniors from the four collaborating universities would receive a scholarship, focused education, and internship with DoD in acquisition-related areas. This pilot is being led by the Acquisition Innovation Research Center.
In NPS news, we're thrilled to share that the ARP-supported Simulation and Ideation Lab for Acquisition Sciences (SILAS) has been recognized with NCMA's Innovation in Contracting Award. Initiated by Professor Dan Finkenstadt, this lab has generated research and prototypes of acquisition training games that allow students to reimagine contracting basics for the 21st century.
We also bring our next video from the symposium: the panel discussion on the future of Navy and Army acquisition, with LTG Dave Bassett, VADM Francis Morley, and Michael Williamson, LTG (Ret.). Williamson kicked off this panel by suggesting "acquisition isn't broke," and focuses the conversation on speed, innovation, and collaboration.
Finally, NPS graduation is today! 349 graduates will be receiving degrees, and we're especially proud of the ARP-supported students in the Department of Defense Management. Of the students graduating with DDM degrees, seven have outstanding thesis awards. We'll be bringing their thesis research to your attention in the coming weeks.
This Week's Top Story
Pentagon pitches six steps to speed up foreign arms sales
Stephen Losey, Defense News
The Pentagon aims to speed up its lagging Foreign Military Sales process, in part by fostering better discussions with other nations about their defense needs as well as expanding industry’s capacity to build more military equipment.
Defense officials at the Pentagon on Tuesday announced six recommendations on how the department plans to speed up foreign military sales, which also include streamlining the processes for reviewing and releasing technology to allies and partner nations; finding ways to speed up the approval of non-programs of record cases; better mapping out the process for prioritizing and awarding foreign sales; and working with the State Department, lawmakers and other parts of the government to find more ways to improve the process.
“Our allies and partners are a center of gravity and the greatest strategic advantage for the U.S. military” as it prepares for a possible conflict against an advanced nation, according to Sasha Baker, deputy undersecretary of defense for policy.
“The [National Defense Strategy] is a call to action for the defense enterprise to incorporate our allies and partners across the board at every stage of defense planning, and obviously FMS has a big role to play in that process,” Baker said in a briefing with reporters.
The United States typically sells tens of billions of dollars of weapons to foreign governments each year, reaching a recent high of $83.5 billion in 2020, before dropping to nearly $35 billion the next year and then growing again to nearly $52 billion in 2022.
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