Doctor, It Hurts When I Do This

Abstract

Despite Herculean efforts and decades of acquisition reform, defense acquisition is in big trouble. There is a ground swell of discontent from within and outside the Department of Defense. On Jan. 27, 2009, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee, saying, Entrenched attitudes throughout the government are particularly pronounced in the area of acquisition: a risk-averse culture, a litigious process, parochial interests, excessive and changing requirements, budget churn and instability, and sometimes adversarial relationships within the Department of Defense and between DoD and other parts of government. Thus the situation we face today, where a small set of expensive weapons programs has had repeatedand unacceptableproblems with requirements, schedule, costs and performance.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Oct 01, 2009
Accession Number
AD1016022

Entities

People

  • Alan Haggerty
  • Roy Wood

Organizations

  • Defense Acquisition University

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Air Platforms
  • Weapons Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Acquisition
  • Aircraft Carriers
  • Cold War
  • Communities
  • Defense Industry
  • Defense Systems
  • Denial Of Service Attack
  • Department Of Defense
  • Engineering
  • Governments
  • Military Acquisition
  • National Security
  • Natural Disasters
  • Naval Architecture
  • Nuclear Powered Ships
  • Systems Management
  • Training

Readers

  • Defense Acquisition Program Management
  • Military History of the United States in the 20th Century.