Adaptive Acquisition Framework

DoDI 5000.02

Focusing on the Warfighter and Winning Wars

Department of Defense Instruction 5000.02 was recently re-drafted to include the Adaptive Acquisition Framework, a new guide for reducing the time required to acquire weapons at the speed of technological innovation. The Department of Defense issued this updated guidance in recognition of how the culture of the Defense Department and the focus on meeting traditional acquisition milestone requirements detracts from the needs of the warfighter and winning wars. The Department of Defense is a bureaucracy. In any bureaucracy, change is hard. To change culture in a bureaucracy, the policy that governs the bureaucracy needs to change. Policy is a tool to change the culture of a bureaucracy but the culture of a bureaucracy will not simply change because you change the policy. If the culture is to change, the outcome or end state desired by the policy change must be known. The current culture of the Department of Defense is slow, limits efficiency, and creates barriers to innovation. Defense acquisition policy must focus on the warfighter and winning wars. Technology is improving warfighting capabilities of The United States’ adversaries and in order to continue winning wars, United States’ defense acquisition policy must be drafted to support reducing the time it takes to acquire weapons needed to win wars, support collaboration with industry to take advantage of commercial systems to improve efficiency in the acquisition process, and improve how the…