RAND Project AIR FORCE (PAF) examined the causes of the shortages in the active-duty, non-rated line officer force, a broad set of diverse career fields that make up almost 50 percent of the officer corps.
The Adaptive Acquisition Framework is intended to improve defense acquisition performance by designing pathways to accommodate the diversity of systems and services that the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) acquires. The authors of this report identify initial metrics that DoD can use to assess whether the pathways are achieving their goals. The authors also identify challenges to identifying metrics, both within and across pathways.
Abstract : Members of Congress and other policymakers have been seeking ways to ensure (or monitor) the health and effective management of the defense supplier base. In response, the Department of Defense (DoD) launched a Sector-by-Sector, Tier-by-Tier assessment to better understand and quantify the defense industrial base. One part of this initiative includes extensive surveys of about 5,000 companies that provide defense goods and services. Given the time and expense of such surveys, as well as diminishing budgets, DoD could benefit from faster and cheaper ways to learn about the industrial base from existing data, which are more comprehensive than that in a survey sample and are continually collected to enable tracking of trends. This report explores how DoD can gain information on its industrial base by combining data that the federal government already collects. It demonstrates through sample analyses that such data could answer questions that policymakers may have on DoD-wide suppliers, contractors, industries, weapon systems, and supply-chain risks.
This appendix to The Army's Local Economic Effects provides descriptions of the overall economic effects for each state, details by fiscal year from 2012–2014, and a parsing of the data by congressional district for Alabama through Minnesota.
Participants in the federal 8(a) Business Development Program can receive low-value procurement contracts without competitive bidding; certain firms can receive contracts of any size. Concern over these firms' advantage led Congress to require a justification and approval process for contracts over $20 million. The effect is still emerging, but it may delay large contracts more than reduce the number awarded because the underlying need remains.
In FY 2003, the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) spent nearly $7 billion on transportation, travel, and relocation services from commercial enterprises. This analysis of combined individual contracting action report and PowerTrack data indicates that DoD has additional opportunities to leverage transportation spending, particularly where it uses tenders to purchase transportation services.
The United States Air Force’s Medical Corps has declined in size in recent years. Although the medical corps’ attrition rate has been near historic lows, the trend in medical corps accessions dating back to the early 1990s has been negative. Multiyear special pay (MSP) provides supplemental annual payments to qualifying physicians who make 2-, 3-, or 4-year commitments to additional service. Our analysis shows the majority of eligible physicians have refused MSP, but there have been increases in MSP acceptance rates as MSP levels have increased. Physicians who receive residency training at military medical centers are much more likely to accept MSP than those who receive residency training at civilian medical centers. While further MSP increases might yet further reduce medical corps attrition, the corps will grow increasingly senior unless accessions are increased.
Abstract : Purchases of weapon systems and other goods and services constitute a large portion of the Army s budget. Purchases surpassed 50 percent of the Army s total budget in fiscal year (FY) 2003 and reached 65 percent in FY 2007. As a result, improving the Army s performance and reducing costs rests in large part on improving its approach to supplier relationship management (SRM). SRM is the process by which an organization works with its suppliers to accomplish common goals or objectives. Recent research identifies several means through which enterprises accomplish SRM, particularly to improve supplier performance and reduce total costs.
