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Last week we got our Christmas miracle of both a passed NDAA and a passed omnibus appropriations bill! As Bryant Harris's analysis points out, the federal budget bill "contains $8 billion specifically allocated to help the Pentagon cope with the impact of inflation, including $1 billion in acquisition-related costs and $3.7 billion for fuel."
In research, we've got a new paper from Emily Murphy at the Baroni Center for Government Contracting on the use of the Federal Property and Administrative Services Act to Direct Procurement Policy. This paper is a continuation of her 2022 symposium paper on the increasing use of executive orders for driving procurement policy. Another research paper attempts to quantify the administrative burden for businesses selling to governments, using data on Danish companies.
In acquisition and innovation news, AFWERX is transforming into version 3.0 with more personnel and increased efforts to transition technologies into fielded capabilities. DoD has updated its innovation pathways website to become much more interactive, walking users through different opportunities based on their role (academia, government, or industry) and other criteria.
In policy, the Biden administration has released its first (and the country's fifth) Open Government National Action Plan, with several initiatives related to acquisition: Ensure Transparency in Federal Procurement through Made in America Waivers, Develop Open Innovation Techniques to Engage the Public in Federal Procurement Policymaking, and Strengthen Agency Procurement Forecasts to Achieve Stronger Transparency in Future Contract Opportunities.
In ARP news, enjoy a thesis from one of the recent graduates. Brittany Thompson explored how and why acquisition professionals don't follow their stated priorities in the source selection process, and provides recommendations to address this behavioral challenge.
A few stories in the newsletter offer retrospectives of 2022. In our top story, Pete Modigliani gives a thorough rundown on the biggest stories in defense acquisition. Mallory Shelbourne summarizes Navy procurement actions and goals as well as Navy operations in 2022, and the Atlantic Council makes predictions for 2023 based on the global trends of 2022.
The Naval Postgraduate School is rounding out the year with a flurry of activity, with Secretary Del Toro's recent campus visit and commencement address serving as a capstone on a year in which NPS made big strides in education, research, and innovation. The team at ARP is proud to be part of these transformations to make military professionals more informed, discerning, and innovative in serving our nation. Thanks for being part of our community, and here's to a big and bright 2023!
This Week's Top Story
Defense Acquisition 2022 Year in Review
Pete Modigliani
The war in Ukraine brought untold horrors to Ukrainians, with ripple effects across Europe and the world. We are watching the destruction of the world’s third most powerful military by Ukrainian forces backed by U.S. and Allied support.
The war also exposed the DoD bureaucracy. It demonstrated the impact of rapid innovation and delivery at the speed of relevance, particularly harnessing commercial solutions. It further exposed the risks in our defense industry as they struggle to restart production lines of systems developed many years ago.
Steve Blank stressed the war highlights: National Security is Now Dependent on Commercial Technology. Ukraine leveraged autonomous ships, drone aircraft, and commercial space solutions as critical elements to shape the outcome of the war. Ukrainian ingenuity in uncrewed vessels are ushering in a new form of warfare at sea. Pete Newell even outlined six lessons for entrepreneurs from the war in Ukraine.
Dan Ward shared HIMARS’ Hidden Superpower and Other Acquisition Lessons from Ukraine. It furthermore identified the need to shore up our supply chain for national defense. Even NATO bought commercial imagery, irking the NGA and NRO. The White House wants a $550M critical munitions acquisition fund to replenish our dangerously low munition inventories that would last a week in a shooting war with China, but the appropriations committees shot that down. Mislav Tolusic notes: Ukraine makes it obvious DoD has to change how it buys weapons....
Read more for Pete's summary of other topics including deterring China, the valley of death, defense innovation ecosystem, rapid acquisition and contracting, PPBE reform, national strategies, Congress, space, autonomous systems, new weapon systems, and hails and farewells.
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