How the Pentagon Can Be Best Buy

How the Pentagon Can Be Best Buy The U. In today's topsy-turvy Washington, there is little that the military can do to run this gauntlet without getting bruised and beaten. It remains to be seen what Washington will spend to give the men and women of the U. The military, however, does not have to wait to get its own act together. The Pentagon, however, does not have to wait on the rest of Washington to get its act together. Acquisition—the process of developing and buying new systems—has been chronically under-funded for decades. The only real relief is to adequately fund realistic defense requirements. vital interests worldwide. The Pentagon cannot keep the President and Congress from playing politics with the budget, but it can adopt practices that make it harder for politicians to make military procurement the scapegoat for the bloated federal budget by showing that the Armed Forces are good consumers. President Obama is not just slowing the growth of defense; he is cutting defense spending. can best potential adversaries. There are other steps that Congress and the Administration could take to make defense procurement more effective, including legislative reforms that allow the Pentagon to adopt auditing best practices, procurement reforms that allow the services to undertake efficiencies instead of just layering on bureaucracy, and passing an adequate defense budget on time. military what they need to defend the nation. Nevertheless, they would stem the dangerous erosion in the capabilities that are needed to defend U. The military can lay the groundwork for a renaissance in defense investment by creating trust and confidence to wisely use the resources allocated by Congress. S. That creates a real challenge for replacing equipment worn out by operations in Iraq and Afghanistan as aged systems that remain in the field long past their expected service life—as well as buying "next generation" systems that would ensure that the U. The Heritage Foundation is the nation's most broadly supported public policy research institute, with nearly 700,000 individual, foundation and corporate donors. Conversely, both the proposals submitted by the House Budget Committee and the Republican Study Committee call for sustained levels of defense investment. How the Pentagon Can Be Best Buy Trade News selected by Local Linkup on 03/04/2012