One of the things that you see when you read Project 2025 is not just the racist dog whistles, but some ideas that were exactly lifted from some of the most extreme white supremacists ever.
Department of Defense
career repercussions. Senior acquisition leaders should design a system that allows decision-makers to stay within the law but bypass unnecessary departmental regulations that are not in the best interest of the government and hamper the acquisition of capabilities that warfighters require.
2. The Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment, Under Secretary for Research and Engineering, and all service secretaries should assess their acquisition workforces; determine what additional personnel, resources, and training they need; and develop implementation plans. The goal is to develop, prototype, acquire, and field required capabilities at the speed of relevance to meet America’s pacing threats and maintain a warfighting advantage.
3. Decentralize Defense Acquisition University (DAU) offerings and expand the DAU mission to include accreditation of non-DOD institutions. The critical shortage of trained and certified acquisition personnel must be addressed with urgency in order to support DOD mission objectives and goals. With the rapid evolution of training and educational technologies, including remote and virtual practices, there is no reason for DAU to maintain a monopoly on the knowledge and certification that are required to perform as acquisition professionals. Further, the cost to private contractors and non-DOD civilians who aspire to such a role limits the supply of trained and certified candidates. DAU has become an unnecessary barrier to entry in a career field that is vital to the DOD mission.
DOD RESEARCH, DEVELOPMENT, TEST, AND EVALUATION (RDT&E) The FY 2017 National Defense Authorization Act established the position of Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering and assigned broad responsibility for “all defense research and engineering, technology development, technology transition, prototyping, experimentation, and developmental testing activities and programs, including the allocation of resources for defense research and engineering, and unifying defense research and engineering efforts across the Department,” to the new Under Secretary, who also was tasked with “serving as the principal advisor to the Secretary on all research, engineering, and technology development activities and programs in the Department.”° This led to the single largest DOD structural change since the Goldwater-Nichols act of 1986’ and was organized effectively during President Donald Trump’s Administration.
Needed Reforms
Champion, engage, and focus the American innovation ecosystem. To maintain leadership in the era of great-power competition and succeed against our adversaries, a key DOD effort must be the creation of mechanisms and processes to embrace America’s most significant competitive advantage: innovation.
Engage and leverage all of America’s scientific, engineering, and hightech production communities to research, develop, prototype, and rapidly deploy advanced technology capabilities on a continuing basis to preserve our warfighting advantage.
Increase integration and collaboration among the DOD, government labs, and private companies to solve the department’s most difficult problems.
Reduce the number of critical technology areas from 14 to a more manageable number to concentrate effort and resources on those that bear directly on great-power competition.
Rebuild RDT&E infrastructure that resides in Cold War-era facilities and is not well-suited to the current era of rapid development and testing of advanced technology and concepts to the maturity level necessary for acquisition and operational fielding.
Move toward a much more comprehensive independent risk-reduction approach to increase understanding of the technical risks by drawing on the expertise in DOD laboratories and agencies to help acquisition
programs succeed.
Improve the rapid deployment of technology to the battlefield. America’s military advantage has derived from the professionalism of our servicemembers and our ability to manifest our technological advantage in battlefield capability. The current era of great-power competition will continue for the foreseeable future, and technology will be the currency of competition. Our ability to prevail will rest on our ability to develop new technologies and move them onto the battlefield more rapidly than our adversaries can.
1. Accelerate the prototyping cycle to meet immediate battlefield needs.
2. Require tighter integration with user communities to provide value.
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3. Establish a pipeline of near-term, mid-term, and long-term technology that is aimed at great-power competition (China) and can be matured, prototyped, and evaluated to support major acquisitions (the ability to produce at scale) to break the cycle of schedule delays and cost overruns from underdeveloped and poorly understood technologies.
• Develop a framework to protect the RDT&E enterprise from foreign exploitation. Strategic competition and adaptive adversaries require new thinking about how to protect technology. China has been relentless in stealing U.S. technology, using the full range of measures from influence operations to outright theft. This has been a major factor in its ability to close the gap and in some cases to exceed U.S. capabilities.
1. Implement acomprehensive approach to preserving U.S. technological leadership that is based on outpacing our adversaries; clear about what we need to protect; tailored to various specific sectors (for example, academia, the defense industrial base, and laboratories); and underpinned with a full range of consequences for attempted or actual theft.
DOD FOREIGN MILITARY SALES
The United States must regain its role as the “Arsenal of Democracy.” In fiscal year (FY) 2021, U.S. government foreign military sales (FMS) nosedived to alow of $34.8 billion from a record high of $55.7 billion in FY 2018.° This decrease hinders interoperability with partners and allies, decreases defense industrial base capacity, and increases the taxpayer burden on the U.S. military’s own procurements. Under previous Administrations, the United States built its reputation as a reliable partner with a strong defense industrial base that could supply military articles and goods in a timely manner. Today’s FMS process is encumbered by byzantine bureaucracy, long contracting times, high costs, and mundane technology.
The United States can change this downward trajectory by improving internal processes that incentivize partners and allies to procure U.S. defense systems, thereby expanding our “defense ecosystem.” We must reverse the recent dip in FMS to ensure both that our partners remain interoperable with the United States and that our defense industrial base regains much-needed capacity in preparation for future challenges.
Needed Reforms
• Emphasize exportability with U.S. procurements. The record-low FMS sales in 2021 were driven partly by the high costs of converting weapon systems on the back end of production rather than emphasizing exportability in initial capability planning.
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