SMC Launch Team Wins DOD’s Top Acquisition Award

The Air Force Space and Missile Systems Center’s launch enterprise has won the Defense Department’s highest award for acquisition teams, the 2019 David Packard Excellence in Acquisition Award, the service said Nov. 1.

“SMC’s launch enterprise team crafted an acquisition strategy of innovative public-private investments in launch vehicle development, resulting in the continuous delivery of acquisition performance with both affordability and speed,” the center said in a release.

The award is named for David Packard, a former deputy defense secretary from 1968-1971 and a co-founder of technology giant Hewlett-Packard. It was instituted in 1997 and went to another SMC team in 2018.