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.

Defense Acquisition Trends 2021 is the latest in an annual series of CSIS reports examining trends in what the DoD is buying, how the DoD is buying it, and from whom the DoD is buying using data from the Federal Procurement Data System (FPDS). 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. It provides critical insights into understanding the current trends in the defense-industrial base and the implications of those trends on acquisition policy.

This study examines contracting trends at the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD). It relies on empirical analysis of DoD contracting transaction data from the open-source Federal Procurement Data System (FPDS). The authors seek to identify and study emergent trends in the contracting data and marry that analysis with discussion of changing goals and methods for the larger acquisition system.

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.

Defence Planning as Strategic Fact provides and elaborates on an "upstream" focus on the variegated organizational, political and conceptual practices of military, civilian administrative and political leaderships involved in defence planning, offering an important security and strategic studies supplement to the traditional "downstream" focus on the use of force. The book enables the reader to engage with the role of ideas in defence planning, of organizational processes and biases, path dependencies and administrative dynamics under the pressures of continuously changing domestic and international constraints. The chapters show how defence planning must be seen as a constitutive element of defence and strategic studies – that it is a strategic fact of its own which merits particular practical and scholarly attention. As defence planning creates the conditions behind every peace upheld or broken and every war won or lost, Defence Planning as Strategic Fact will be of great use to scholars of defence studies, strategic studies, and military studies. This book was originally published as a special issue of Defence Studies.

The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) aims to improve mission effectiveness and efficiency. In support of this effort, the Office of the Secretary of Defense asked the National Defense Research Institute (NDRI), a federally funded research and development center operated by the RAND Corporation, to construct a baseline of the DoD's government acquisition and procurement functions, including a functional decomposition and estimate of the cost of executing the government portion of the DoD's acquisition enterprise. NDRI researchers estimated these costs at between $29 billion and $38 billion in fiscal year 2017 dollars. To gain perspective on these costs, NDRI researchers identified commercial benchmarks for the amount of program management levels. As a percentage of DoD contracting obligations, NDRI researchers estimated the DoD's program management portion of these costs at about 1.5 percent in the last few years, which is below industry benchmarks of 2-15 percent.

China’s emergence as a global economic superpower, and as a major regional military power in Asia and the Pacific, has had a major impact on its relations with the United States and its neighbors. China was the driving factor in the new strategy the United States announced in 2012 that called for a “rebalance” of U.S. forces to the Asia-Pacific region. At the same time, China’s actions on its borders, in the East China Sea, and in the South China Sea have shown that it is steadily expanding its geopolitical role in the Pacific and having a steadily increasing impact on the strategy and military developments in other Asian powers.