Killing the Messenger: The Place of Systems Acquisition in the National Security Planning and Management Systems

Abstract : Because of the nature of their responsibilities, in acquisition, in resource planning and programming, in threat analysis and strategy development, and in operational planning, senior DoD officials tend to focus on their particular piece of the whole at the expense of understanding its place in the totality of Departmental and related national security management efforts. Reform proposals typically focus on fixing a problem in one or two areas: The Packard Commission on acquisition and strategy development, Goldwater-Nichols on organizational and operational planning responsibilities, and so on. Can the acquisition process be reformed in any significant way without corresponding changes in the other elements of DoD management systems? What are the limits of reform efforts that focus exclusively on the acquisition process itself? This paper is an attempt to set the stage for answering these questions by mapping out the major components of the DoD management system and suggesting their relationship to each other, and specifically to the acquisition subsystem.