Author Description

Defense acquisition reform initiatives have been Department of Defense perennials over the past fifty years. Yet reforming the acquisition process remains a high priority each time a new administration comes into office. Many notable studies of defense acquisition with recommendations for changes have been published, and each has reached the same general findings with similar recommendations. However, despite the defense community's intent to reform the acquisition process, the difficulty of the problem and the associated politics, combined with organizational dynamics that are resistant to change, have led to only minor improvements. The problems of schedule slippages, cost growth, and shortfalls in technical performance on defense acquisition programs have remained much the same throughout this period.The importance of the Department of Defense's huge acquisition projects over the years cannot be overstressed. The United States has often turned to cutting-edge technological solutions to solve strategic and operational challenges. To highlight the importance of acquisition issues, the Department of Defense began a project in 2001 to write a history of defense acquisition from the end of World War II to the start of the twenty-first century. The U.S. Army Center of Military History served as the executive agent for that project until funding was effectively withdrawn in 2009. Two volumes of that history are nearing publication, which will take the story up to 1969. To capitalize on essential information on defense acquisition reform initiatives from the three unpublished draft volumes covering the period from 1969 to 2000, the Center decided to publish extracts from those volumes, with additional analysis by J. Ronald Fox, a subject matter expert on acquisition and an adviser to the project. Much of chapter two of this acquisition reform study was written by Walton S. Moody and David G. Allen for their draft Volume III (1969-1980) of the Defense Acquisition History