Bad Idea: Relying on Bad Schedule Estimates to Promote Agile Programs

December 14, 2018

A group of reformers in both Congress and the executive branch have a common diagnosis of the Department of Defense’s (DoD) weapon system acquisition process: it is too slow and rigid. The DoD News coverage of Undersecretary for Research and Engineering Mike Griffin’s comments this past April succinctly summarize this concern.

“The Chinese love our acquisition system, they are the biggest fans of our acquisition system that there could possibly be; they certainly don’t want us to change it,” Michael D. Griffin said at the ninth Defense Programs conference, hosted by McAleese and Associates and Credit Suisse.

Gregory Sanders is deputy director and fellow with the Defense-Industrial Initiatives Group at CSIS.