Jeffrey A. Drezner

Analyzes the nation's aeronautic testing needs and the effectiveness of and management issues for, NASA's major wind tunnel and test propulsion facilities in serving those needs. The National Aeronautics and Space Adrninistration's (NASA's) wind tunnel and propulsion test facilities continue to be important to U.S. competitiveness across the military, commercial, and space sectors. Unfortunately, managemen tissues are creating real risks to these facilities. NASA needs to develop an aeronautics test technology vision and plan; analyze the viability of a national test facility plan; identify and maintain its minimum set of facilities; and identify financial shared support to keep its underutilized but essential facilities from entering financial collapse.

The authors explore defense contractor motivations and identify mechanisms that might more closely align those incentives with Department of Defense goals. They also analyze major defense acquisition programs to determine if it is possible to identify programs that might incur a future Nunn-McCurdy breach by reviewing a number of acquisition programs that have incurred breaches and analyzing them for common characteristics.

The authors investigate whether the tenure of program managers contributes to Nunn-McCurdy breaches. They also examine the existing decentralized systems used to track cost growth to determine whether additional guidance and control are needed to make acquisition category II programs performance more transparent. Finally, they investigate whether key assumptions, so-called framing assumptions, could be useful risk management tools.

Responds to Senate's concerns that further consolidation in the military-aircraft industry from its current three prime contractors would pose risks to innovation and cost through limited or no competition in contracting for military aircraft and related weapon systems for the Defence Department. Describes that industry, evaluates what is required to maintain the industry at a high level of innovation, assesses industry's prospects for innovation and competition, and identifies policy options open to the DoD.

The U.S. military's development of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) has been hampered by cost overruns, schedule slippage, and disappointing operational results. The High Altitude Endurance UAV (HAE UAV) joint program, initiated under the direction of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), incorporates several innovative elements in its acquisition strategy that depart radically from traditional acquisition approaches. The program's development phase for the Global Hawk and DarkStar air vehicles is analyzed in this research. The HAE UAV program has experienced problems that are typical of newly implemented methods, but it has produced significant benefits, and provides lessons that could improve a wide variety of future acquisition processes.

The impacts of climate change and other environmental threats are increasingly perceived by the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) as a national security threat. RAND researchers assess the knowledge, tools, and capabilities needed by the acquisition workforce to infuse environmental considerations into DoD requirements, acquisition, and resource allocation decisionmaking.

Technological superiority is vital to U.S. national security. New RAND research models and assesses the challenges and gaps in the Department of Defense (DoD) commercial technology pipeline, from concept to fielding. To better harness commercial technologies, DoD needs policies that incentivize and improve information sharing, coordination, and collaboration between defense innovation organizations and traditional acquisition stakeholders.

This report draws a distinction between joint program management and commonality and argues that it is possible to achieve some degree of commonality without joint program management. Based on reviews of historical joint initiatives and relevant business management literature, the authors identify some of the factors affecting joint program success and recommend ways to apply those lessons to the management of the Future Vertical Lift initiative.

Acquisition data and information are the foundation for decisionmaking, management, and oversight of weapon-system acquisition programs. The authors review 21 key acquisition data information systems, their origins and uses, and how acquisition data might be improved. They also summarize background on acquisition data; review commercial practices in data management; and offer findings and recommendations to improve quality, access, and use.

Acquisition data play a critical role in the management of the U.S. Department of Defense s portfolio of weapon systems, but identifying which unclassified but potentially sensitive data require protection as Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI) and how to label them appropriately is a challenge. The authors evaluated current CUI labeling procedures, practices, and security policies and recommend improvements."

The report contains two analyses. First, the authors examine the cause of a Nunn-McCurdy unit cost breach of the Joint Precision Approach and Landing System Inc. 1A major defense acquisition program. Second, they document a methodology to assess the performance of an acquisition portfolio. The methodology included identifying objectives, selecting data and metrics, and analyzing visualizations of portfolio performance.

Acquisition data underpin the management and oversight of the U.S. defense acquisition portfolio. However, balancing security and transparency has been an ongoing challenge. This report identifies the problems and challenges associated with sharing unclassified information within the U.S. Department of Defense and investigates the role of policies and practices associated with such sharing.

Recent conflicts have driven the U.S. military to acquire new capabilities rapidly to meet urgent operational needs. These needs have forced the U.S. Army to rely on nontraditional practices to acquire new systems. By examining nontraditional acquisition practices used during the conflicts, this study examines how U.S. Army program managers can better manage rapid acquisition, focusing on command and control systems.

Department of Defense policies, procedures, and organizations for program management and oversight of defense acquisition programs do not align well with shipbuilding. Ship acquisition programs have characteristics that deviate from the normal framework in significant ways, resulting in disconnects and some confusion. The authors examine these differences and suggest policies that can better account for them.