What's Wrong with Weapons Acquisitions?

The Pentagon now spends about $21.6 million every hour to procure new military systems. As the cost and complexity of defense acquisitions programs continue to spiral out of control, many defense experts believe runaway military spending is unsustainable. Meanwhile, soldiers in the field are being denied much-need equipment, while civilian programs go unfunded.>> In this special report, IEEE Spectrum contributing editor Robert N. Charette examines the root causes of the current crisis in weapons acquisitions and what can be done to reform the system.>>> Unlike the commercial sector, the defense business does not operate in the free market. In a free market system there are many buyers and sellers, and prices and profits are based on agreed exchanges of risk and opportunity among the parties. In the defense sector, there is one customerthe governmentthat dictates price, profit, risk, and opportunity for anyone who wishes to sell to it. A defense company cant decide on its own to make a tank or a fighter jet and then offer it on the open market.>> But a government is not a monolithic agent. Rather, it is made up of many constituencies, including, in the United States, the legislative and executive branches, the Office of the Secretary of Defense, and the armed services and their various branches. As the deputy undersecretary of defense for acquisition and technology, James Finley oversees the Defense Departments policies and procedures governing its procurement and acquisition process. The smallest team I have to deal with might be 40 people, Finley said in an interview. And each constituency can exert varying degrees of influence on the acquisition process, as can the press, lobbying groups, and the public at large.