Performance of the Defense Acquisition System, 2013 Annual Report

Abstract

While the United States achieves its national security missions by equipping its military forces with the best weapons systems in the world, questions continue about the performance of the defense acquisition system. How effective is it? How can that effectiveness be objectively measured? Can we use those measures to affect behaviors with appropriate incentives or determine which policies and procedures improve results and which turn out to be misguided? Answering these questions requires more than opinion. It requires analysis of unbiased data to discover insights into underlying effects. These, in turn, will inform better policy and programmatic decisions. This is the first in a series of planned annual reports on the performance of the defense acquisition system its programs, institutions, workforce, managers, executives, and industrial partners. By using objective data and analysis to measure performance, these reports will identify underlying drivers and inform future decisions on programs, policies, and processes. This first report focuses primarily on performance related to Major Defense Acquisition Programs1 (MDAPs). It will not delve into specifics of the individual programs but is intended to use aggregated data from these programs to shed light on macro-level performance indicators for the acquisition system as a whole. The report focuses on more in-depth indicators of system outcomes, particularly with respect to cost and schedule, and does so by looking at various institutional trends.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Jun 28, 2013
Accession Number
ADA587235

Entities

Organizations

  • Office Of The Under Secretary Of Defense

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Air Platforms
  • Ground and Sea Platforms
  • Human Systems
  • Space
  • Weapons Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Acquisition
  • Airframes
  • Business Administration
  • Contracts
  • Governments
  • Management Personnel
  • Military Acquisition
  • National Security
  • Navy
  • Organizational Structure
  • Reconnaissance Satellites
  • Regression Analysis
  • Space Systems
  • Statistical Analysis
  • Systems Engineering
  • Test And Evaluation
  • United States

Fields of Study

  • Political science

Readers

  • Computational Modeling and Simulation
  • Defense Acquisition Program Management
  • Strategic Security Studies