Pentagon's reform plans puzzle experts: Contractors, program managers await release of new acquisition guidelines.

• Author: Erwin, Sandra I.
• Position: Analysis

Senior Pentagon officials said they intend to launch yet another set of regulatory reforms to the weapons-acquisition policies. In their opinion, previous attempts at making defense procurement regulations less cumbersome have not gone far enough, because they have not addressed adequately the need for more innovation and efficiency.

Defense officials are expected to unveil details of the plan during the next several months. In the meantime, defense contractors and procurement experts seem baffled as to what the changes really mean and how they will affect weapon programs.

The latest round of acquisition reforms is designed to make the procurement regulations less "restrictive" and to expedite the development of weapon systems.

Critics of the reforms, meanwhile, caution that liberalizing the acquisition rules could result in the production of unsafe weapon systems that could jeopardize the lives of U.S. troops.

The changes proposed by the Bush administration involve the possible cancellation or sweeping overhaul of the so-called 5000 series of policy directives, which provide detailed guidance on how weapon systems should be developed, procured and managed.

An unsigned memorandum from the office of the defense secretary--which was distributed among defense contractors and reporters via electronic mail in early September--said that the current regulations "are overly prescriptive and do not constitute an acquisition policy environment that fosters efficiency, creativity and innovation." As a result, said the memo, the 5000 series, which includes versions 5000.1 and 5000.2, would be "cancelled ... effective immediately."

To replace the canceled policies, the Pentagon would issue "interim guidance," the memo said.

Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics Edward C. "Pete" Aldridge Jr. directed his staff to prepare revised documents within 120 days from the day the memo was issued--or approximately by early January 2003.

The possibility that the 5000 series would be discarded and replaced by a new policy sent shock-waves through the community of defense program managers, which regards the documents as the acquisition bible.

Seeking to avoid mass panic in the procurement world, Pentagon officials subsequently clarified that the plan was not necessarily to cancel the 5000 series, but to revise the policies.

Richard K. Sylvester, the Pentagon's deputy director for acquisition initiatives and systems acquisition, wrote in a September 10 memo to program managers and defense industry representatives that "no such cancellation has taken place."

In the meantime, he said, "we are working on a streamlined DoD 5000 series that will remove prescriptive requirements and focus on outcomes."

The overhauling of the acquisition system is not an unusual event at the Pentagon, observers pointed out. The 5000 series has gone through several rewrites during the past two decades. Less than four years ago, the department...