|
Happy Friday, and Happy March! This week we celebrate the latest continuing resolution to be passed for FY2024, keeping the US government out of shutdown but continuing to kick the budget can down the road--until March 8 for some agencies and March 22 for others, including DoD.
Senator Tim Scott penned an op-ed arguing for a yearlong CR, while admitting that CRs are "a terrible way to govern." His rationale? Each spending bill needs to be considered separately, outside of the bloated omnibus approach.
We've added a special section for "Continuing Resolutions," collecting this and other articles charting their increasingly harmful impact to DoD as the months pass by. Among the problems:
- The planned Air Force reorganization is stalled in its effort to create the new Integrated Capabilities Command as well as other changes.
- For the Space Development Agency, the cadence of launching new satellites every two years is in jeopardy, as well as the proposed FOO fighter contract.
- The CDAO can't maintain agile pace with some AI projects.
- And across DoD, services lack funding for personnel and modernization efforts.
Todd Harrison, ARP friend and perennial symposium participant, writes this week with Mackenzie Eaglen about the FY2025 budget, arguing that the President's Budget Request should create a topline based on needs rather than the limits set by the Fiscal Responsibility Act.
- Starting too low with the initial ask cedes negotiating power. In their words, budgets should be "resource-informed, not resource-directed."
The Army released a whitepaper outlining a change to its force structure, reducing 24,000 positions as it shifts from counterterrorism and counterinsurgency to large-scale combat operations.
Our top story brings news of pending acquisition reform in the UK, which is embracing spiral development to deliver capabilities that will continue to evolve as new features are available and in response to feedback from users.
In other acquisition news, Space Force's acquisition chief clarified that he sees the value of fixed price contracts applicable to most procurements, but not to the development of fundamentally new systems. He also articulated why unrealistically low-cost bids are bad for business in the long run, urging companies to abandon the practice.
If you're looking for inspiration, check out the 2023 Yearbook from DHS's Procurement Innovation Lab and the latest video from ASI Education, with five lesser-known ways government contracting changed American life. Both should be required material for contracting professionals.
In ARP news, we bring a recent student thesis providing recommendations for an agile test and evaluation process tailored to the F/A-18 program. Their recommended process creates a predictable yearly schedule and pushes down elements of testing to the squadron level.
And NPS was recently accepted into U.S. Space Command's Academic Engagement Enterprise, an alliance of academic institutions that contribute to USSPACECOM's mission. NPS' curricula, student programs and collaborative applied research will all be enhanced by this connection to defense-focused space technologies, skills, and priorities.
- Jim Newman, chair of the Space Systems Academic Group that conducts space research at NPS, will be part of our panel on space acquisition at May's symposium.
21st Annual Acquisition Research Symposium
Program is posted online!
Register now to join us for this action-packed two-day event.
This Week's Top Story
UK refocuses on spiral development as key to successful programs
Andrew Chuter, Defense News
The British military’s focus on increasing spiral development use means the Ministry of Defence is changing how it assesses new equipment being introduced into service.
The MoD will drop the use of the terms initial operating capability and full operating capability on spiral development programs. It will instead refer to new equipment as reaching “minimal deployable capability” as it is handed over to the military, procurement minister James Cartlidge told Parliament Feb. 28 in a statement about acquisition reforms.
“In a world where our adversaries are threatening to out-compete us in capability terms, we have no choice but to reform acquisition — or see our military competitiveness diminished,” Cartlidge told Parliament.
The changes to spiral development evaluation is one of five key areas of what the British call the Integrated Procurement Model.
Other areas of procurement marked for change include a greater emphasis on the exportability of equipment being purchased; more integrated requirements for the armed service and the breaking down of organizational stovepipes; earlier engagement with industry on future requirements; and new checks and balances to ensure better decisions at the start of programs.
Cartlidge said the key to the reforms is delivering new equipment more quickly.
In the future, “rather than striving for perfection before delivering to the frontline, capabilities at 60%-80% of their full potential will be provided to the user, allowing early application, and subsequent improvements to reach their full potential,” Cartlidge said. “We will pursue spiral development by default.”
|
