Acquisition chief kendall wants more innovation.

• Position: Form the National Defense Blog

The next installment of the Pentagon's "better buying power" procurement guidelines will take aim at a problem that A keeps Undersecretary of Defense Frank Kendall up at night: The U.S. military is on a path to lose its technological edge.

Kendall, who is the Defense Department's chief acquisition executive, will unveil later this year an updated version of the Pentagon's procurement play-book, known as better buying power. BBP 3.0 will be about "incentivizing productivity and innovation."

The first two versions of BBP focused on how to make the military acquisition process more efficient and minimize wasteful spending. Kendall now wants to tackle a more intractable problem, which will require a major education effort across the entire Defense Department's procurement...