United States Acquisition Command

Over the last 20 years there have been numerous reports on how the acquisition process is broken. The Government Accountability Office recently published a report stating that the "total acquisition cost of DOD's 2007 portfolio of major programs under development or in production has grown by nearly $300 billion over initial estimates. Current programs are also experiencing, on average, a 21-month delay in delivering initial capabilities to the warfighter." This is a phenomenon that is affecting the entire DoD, not just one particular Service or Agency. The result has been a loss of faith by Congress and OSD on the Services' ability to acquire capabilities. Focus has resided in fixing the unwieldy cost overruns, schedule slips, and performance deficits and several solutions have been offered to resolve those problems. While great suggestions all, they tend to be a point solution that does not truly address the root cause behind the issue. Through analyzing numerous publications, five root causes come to the foreground as contributing to acquisition failures: requirements discipline, funding uncertainty, optimistic assumptions, frequent management rotation, and industrial base issues. The DoD can no longer afford to do business as usual - the way systems are acquired must be transformed. By establishing a functional combatant command (FCC) for acquisitions - United States Acquisition Command - the acquisition process will finally be revolutionized in a way that gives acquirers the best possible chance for successful programs. This paper proposes a notional organization and processes for such a command. Additionally, it will provide an argument on how this FCC would resolve many of the current acquisition issues.