Air Force testing new industry incentive strategy to expedite acquisition process.

* The Air Force is implementing a new strategy that it hopes will incentivize industry to deliver weapons systems faster, the secretary of the Air Force said.

"Our ultimate goal in acquisitions should be to deliver capability to the warfighter more rapidly, but unfortunately today it takes too long to develop and field our systems," said Deborah Lee James. The service hopes its new strategy dubbed "should-schedule" will change that trend. The approach will work in a similar manner to an acquisition management tool the service has been using called "should-cost," James said.

"Under the should-cost approach, we challenge our program offices and we challenge our industry partners to beat the independent cost estimate once the program is underway," she said. "Program offices and industry then employ a multitude of techniques to drive the cost down."

After the savings are realized and validated the service can use those additional funds and pump them back into its portfolio, James said. She pointed to increased numbers of air-to-air and air-to-ground weapons in the Air Force's inventory as an example of the benefits of should-cost.

"We now have hundreds more...