Chapter 6: United States Defense Acquisition Research Program - A New Look

Mark E. Nissen, Ph.D. Naval Postgraduate School
Keith F. Snider, Ph.D. Naval Postgraduate School
Ira A. Lewis, Ph.D. Naval Postgraduate School

Overview

Acquisition represents a critical process to the United States (US) Department of Defense (DoD), but the acquisition process suffers from neglect. Although acquisition in the DoD is moving to reflect best commercial practices, we face a novel and rapidly changing military environment that calls for new acquisition processes. But the current DoD is ill equipped to develop such new acquisition processes, as they require new knowledge. This condition calls for research, as the researcher's primary motivation is knowledge creation. The DoD Acquisition Research Program addresses this condition directly. Sponsored by the US Defense Acquisition University, and managed by the US Naval Postgraduate School (NPS), this program explicitly targets top researchers from leading institutions to engage in high-level, high-quality acquisition research. Taking a broad, multidisciplinary approach, this research program—now in its third year—is effectively engaging prominent academics to address topics of interest to the acquisition practitioner, policy maker, and researcher. This chapter outlines key aspects of the DoD Acquisition Research Program.

Acquisition may be viewed as a process that transforms user needs into products, services, and the information required to satisfy those needs. It pertains to the strategy, planning, procurement, contracting, program management, logistics, and other activities required to develop, produce, and support systems and other materiel required to accomplish the mission of an enterprise (Nissen, Snider, and Lamm 1998). A more concise description is simply the process employed to satisfy enterprise materiel requirements.

Although in the US acquisition is often described in the context of weapon system development (e.g., in support of the defense mission), the breadth of this term indicates it does not apply solely to the US Department of Defense (DoD). Rather, we consider it axiomatic that the acquisition process occurs in similar ways in the various domains of defense, the broader public sector, and the private sector. Thus, though there may be some differences in the ways it is manifested in a particular domain, acquisition's theories and practices are generally relevant for enterprises in the public and private sectors alike.

The field of project management has strong historical ties to acquisition, and many consider it to represent the most important acquisition area. Many writers locate project management's roots in the large, highly complex weapons projects, such as the Manhattan project and aerospace projects that were undertaken during and following World War II (Acker 1993, 4–5; Przemieniecki 1993, 13). Project management concepts, methods, and organizations became the means by which DoD attempted to exploit and integrate scientific and technological advances in increasingly capable and complex weapon systems that often took many years to design, develop, and produce. And project management soon became the focus of DoD training programs in acquisition. Today, the design, development, and production of almost all major defense systems proceed under project or program management.

Because acquisition and project management are so closely connected, researchers in each area have many concerns in common. In this chapter we describe the origins, purpose, and operations of the DoD External Acquisition Research Program (EARP). Our purpose is to inform project management researchers of the details of this program in order to facilitate the exchange of ideas among scholars of both communities on the pressing research needs of the new millennium.