ALTERNATIVE ACQUISITION
FAR/NOT FAR
Optimism about Army modernization just might be reasonable, thanks to alternatives to old school FAR-based acquisition.
by Steve Stark
type projects that would enhance mission effectiveness and opened the door for the use of other-transaction authority. In that NDAA's Section 804, it called for middle-tier acquisi- tion and spelled out other acquisition pathways. Overall, the funding measure set in motion many of the trends in alternative acquisition we see today.
A
Now, the prevailing conversation within Army acquisition is not about reform but about much-needed modernization and innovation. It's about changes in Army acquisition and process improvements that are starting to show results. It's about alternative acquisition— or acquisition that doesn't take half a decade or more for programs to come to fruition. In other words, acquisitions that skip the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR), or minimize its involvement.
Among the experts Army AL&T interviewed for this article, some showed genuine opti- mism about the state of Army acquisition and defense acquisition in general. Others were more cautious. For anyone who’s spent more than a few years working in or around defense acquisition, optimism, cautious or otherwise, is cause to take note.
At the Association of the United States Army's (AUSA) 2021 Annual Meeting and Exposition in October, on a panel discussion on full life cycle acquisition, Mackenzie Eaglen, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, said, “I always say to people, you know, you might be surprised. Actually, the Army is doing a lot of great work and innovating.” Te optimism feels as though the Army's acquisition enterprise, after a string of losing seasons, is a home team that’s started to win again. One of the brightest—or at least busiest—spots in alternative acquisition is other-transaction authority. Te majority of those deals and dollars—the Army
https://asc.ar my.mil 9
rmy acquisition seems to have changed a great deal since Congress passed the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for fiscal year 2016, when all the talk in acquisition was about reform. Tat funding bill fundamentally changed things in defense acquisition. It authorized DOD to develop proto-
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