Beyond Goldwater-Nichols: An Annotated Brief

Defense acquisition reform has been on-going almost continuously since the original Goldwater-Nichols legislation was passed in 1986. Unfortunately, too much attention has been paid to finetuning the “small a” acquisition execution process and not enough attention has been paid to the “Big A” overall acquisition system of requirements, budgeting and execution as we stated in our Beyond Goldwater-Nichols Phase 2 report (BG-N) published in 2005. CSIS made a number of recommendations for fundamental acquisition and logistics reform in BG-N Ph 2. This year, we are updating progress on acquisition reforms begun over the past 12 months and tracking recommendations of other influential panels on this topic. Specifically, this report reviews recommendations of the Defense Science Board (DSB) Summer 2005 Study Session on Transformation Assessment, the Defense Acquisition Performance Assessment Project (known commonly as either the “DAPA Panel” or as the “Kadish Panel” after the project Chairman Ronald Kadish, USAF LtGen Retired); and the 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) Report. This work can be considered as foundational for more substantive analysis and recommendations on DoD Institutional Governance to follow in BG-N Phase 4.