Samantha Cohen – författare

International joint development programs are important because of their potential to reduce costs and increase partnership benefits such as interoperability, economies of scale, and technical advancement. While all major development and acquisition programs are complex undertakings, international joint development programs introduce additional layers of complexity in the requirement for coordination with more than one government customer, supply chain and organizational complexities resulting from international industrial teaming, and technology control issues. The performance of international joint development programs varies greatly. This study compares the best practices of international joint development and domestic development programs through case-study analysis to identify the key variables that contribute to a program’s eventual success or failure and to understand the elements that are crucial to managing these programs.

This report is the second in an annual series examining trends in what the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) is buying, how DoD is buying it, and from whom DoD is buying. This year’s study looks in depth at issues in research and development, acquisition reform in the FY2017 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), performance of the defense acquisition system, the future of cooperative International Joint Development Programs, and major trends apparent in the activities of the major defense components. By combining detailed policy and data analysis, the study provides a comprehensive overview of the current and future outlook for defense acquisition.

In light of Section 881 of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2017, which expanded the legal definition of the National Technology and Industrial Base (NTIB) to include the United Kingdom and Australia, this report informs NTIB partners on barriers and opportunities for effective integration. The expansion of the NTIB is based on the principle that defense trade between the United States and its closest allies enables a host of benefits, including increased access to innovation, economies of scale, and interoperability. In order to reap the greatest benefits of a new era of NTIB, this report uses the lessons learned from study of the present state of integration to identify areas of opportunity for policy reforms and greater cooperation.

This paper garners information crucial to understanding business growth for new entrants and small businesses who contract with the federal government by utilizing publicly available contracting data from the Federal Procurement Data System (FPDS) to track new entrants from 2001-2016. This information is then used to evaluate entrances, exits, and status changes among federal vendors with the purpose of comparing challenges faced by small businesses with those of larger ones. Measuring market trends over time and in multiple sectors shows how the challenges facing small businesses, such as market barriers to entry and imperfect competition, keep them from growing. The final results compare the survival rates between small and non-small new entrants contracting with the federal government and analyze the graduation rates for those small new entrants who grew in size during the observation period and survived after ten years. The study finds that around 40 percent of new entrants exit the market for federal contracts after three years, around 50-60 percent after five years, and only about one-fifth of new entrants remain in the federal contracting arena in the final year of observation. Across the six samples studied, thegraduation rates of small businesses consistently decrease.

This report analyzes the current state of affairs in defense acquisition by combining detailed policy and data analysis to provide a comprehensive overview of the current and future outlook for defense acquisition. This analysis will provide critical insights into what DoD is buying, how DoD is buying it, from whom is DoD buying, and what are the defense components buying using data from the Federal Procurement Data System (FPDS). This analysis provides critical insights into understanding the current trends in the defense industrial base and the implications of those trends on acquisition policy.