Is the ratio of investment between R&D to Production experiencing fundamental change?
Abstract
With the advent of the information age, both commercial industry and the Department of Defense (DoD) are moving towards complex systems over the simpler, mass-produced systems of the industrial age. For example, the software underpinning both the latest fighter, the F-35 Lightning II, and Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner have exponentially more lines of code, approximately 24 million and 14 million respectively, than the original Space Shuttle, which had just 400,000 lines of code. The F-35 and 787 are far from the high water mark in terms of number of lines: The Future Combat System (FCS) program had an approximate 64 million lines of code before the program was cancelled, while premium-class cars today may contain near 100 million lines of code. This phenomenon gives rise to the research problem of exactly how this trend towards greater complexity is driving a change in the planned and actual ratio of R&D activity to production effort. The objective of this proposed research effort is to use publicly-available budgetary data to better understand the historical trends in the ratio between R&D and procurement spending in complex acquisition programs. The proposed technical approach is a dual-tracked qualitative and quantitative methodology, this research project examines the initially planned and actual R&D-to-Procurement spending for both commercial and military complex acquisition programs. Furthermore, this research would explore the potential effects of a change in this ratio on the business strategies of select commercial entities. Through this dual-tracked effort, this research effort seeks to answer the following questions: - What are the historical trends in the ratio of research and development to procurement funding for complex acquisition programs? -What are the potential implications of these trends for the design and management of complex acquisition programs? -What are the potential implications of changes in these trends for industrial business strategies? The anticipated outcome of this research effort is a significant contribution to the broader academic literature on complex acquisition programs, as well as potentially providing private companies insights on potential implications of trends within complex acquisition programs on their business strategies.
Document Details
- Document Type
- DoD Grant Award
- Publication Date
- Apr 26, 2017
- Source ID
- N002441710017
Entities
People
- Andrew Hunter
Organizations
- Center for Strategic and International Studies
- Defense Threat Reduction Agency