Pentagon Releases First Annual Report on Defense Acquisition

Over the past two decades, the Air Force has been able to reduce total cost growth on contracts and also decrease schedule growth in its contracts, said Frank Kendall, the Pentagon’s acquisition executive. Further, fixed-price contracting has proven not to be a magic bullet to controlling acquisition cost, he said. These are just two of the findings of the Pentagon’s newly issued 2013 annual report on the performance of the defense acquisition system, he said in a July 8 release. The 126-page document, dated June 28, is the first of what is expected to be a series of annual, data-driven reviews to determine what is functioning well in defense acquisition and where the Defense Department needs to improve, said Kendall. “Very recent data show statistically significant improvement, but only time and further analysis will tell if these trends continue into the future,” he said. This first report focused at the macro level, examining the performance of the major defense acquisition programs. Future work will delve into areas such as contracting, acquisition of services, technology development, and industrial base concerns, states the report’s forward. (Annual report full text; caution, large-sized file.) (AFPS report by Karen Parrish)