Acquisition Policy, Cost Growth, and Cancellations of Major Defense Acquisition Programs

Abstract

The Department of Defense (DoD) acquisition enterprise as a whole buys severalmillion different products. Some items (weapon systems, automated information systems)require large development efforts before there is an end item to buy, while other items arein effect bought from a catalog and shipped directly to a DoD organization (e.g., ahospital) or to a DoD supply depot.This study is concerned only with major defense acquisition programs (MDAPs). Itis further confined to "acquisition costs," which is a term of art defined as the sum ofResearch, Development, Test and Evaluation (RDT and E) funding and procurementfunding (that is, the cost of buying the system once it has been developed). Procurementcost is typically (although not invariably) on the order of five times RDT and E cost. As arough rule of thumb, acquisition cost for the portfolio of MDAPs in development orprocurement at a point in time ranges from 10 percent to 20 percent of total DoD funding.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Sep 01, 2018
Accession Number
AD1122550

Entities

People

  • David L. Mcnicol

Organizations

  • Institute for Defense Analyses

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Engineered Resilient Systems
  • Human Systems
  • Space
  • Weapons Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Air Force
  • Commerce
  • Computer Programming
  • Contracts
  • Cost Analysis
  • Cost Reductions
  • Databases
  • Defense Systems
  • Department Of Defense
  • Governments
  • Information Retrieval
  • Information Systems
  • Law
  • Military Acquisition
  • Military History
  • Military Science
  • National Security
  • Network Protocols
  • Procurement
  • Statistical Analysis
  • Surface To Air Missiles
  • Test And Evaluation
  • United States

Readers

  • Defense Acquisition Program Management
  • Industrial Economics
  • Military Logistics and Supply Chain Management