ACQUISITION CHECKPOINT
Through the change of administration, DOD is expected to keep a steady course.
by Margaret C. Roth I
n a transition between presidents who could hardly be a sharper study in political contrast, the outlook for Army acquisition is not one of dramatic change.
Perhaps surprisingly but understandably, given the
limited time the Biden administration has to complete the first major step in imprinting its priorities, the federal budget for fiscal 2022, the newly installed DOD lead- ership is focusing its attention on a few high-visibility initiatives, including the new presidentially driven China Task Force, with the mission of identifying vulnerabilities in the defense industry and U.S. materiel from reliance on Chinese funding and supply; support for the COVID vaccination and prevention effort; and a push to prioritize air and missile defense modernization.
Just when the White House will release the new adminis- tration’s first budget has become a political issue in itself. Whatever the date, the defense budget is expected to remain flat under the multitrillion-dollar pressure of the coronavirus pandemic.
U.S. military spending in coming years needs to focus on its preparedness to counter threats from China and Russia, particularly China, Pentagon leadership asserts. In the continuous balancing act of force structure growth, training, equipping and modernization, that means
“continued investments in joint force readiness and force modernization, along with accelerated investments in arti- ficial intelligence, machine learning, and other advanced technologies,” according to written testimony submitted by Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III to the Senate Armed Services Committee as part of the confirmation process. For the Army specifically, it means “continued investments in mobility, logistics and force protection for Ground Combat Teams,” among other priorities.
Across the services, the Pentagon also is likely to continue its “shift in technology development away from tradi- tional acquisition approaches and toward other transaction authority agreements,” according to an analysis by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a prominent Washington think tank, noting the 712 percent increase in defense other-transaction obligations between fiscal years 2015 and 2019. “DOD has shifted toward implementing and understanding the impact of these reforms rather than pursuing additional reform efforts,” states the analysis, “Defense Acquisition in the Biden Administration,” by Rhys McCormick, an associate fellow with CSIS’s Defense-Industrial Initiatives Group.
Tis shift in direction is likely to continue, McCormick concluded. “In the immediate future, it is more likely that the Biden administration will make incremental
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