A lot of people believe that the military has a blank check when it comes to purchasing equipment, but there is a very careful and deliberate process called “RDA” or “Research Development Acquisition.”
Oops, I misspoke which happens sometimes when you do videos and don’t notice it. Eisenhower farewell address was in 1961, not 1963. My bad.
If you are a free subscriber, the video is available on YouTube below:
The “R” and the “D” is the easiest part of the RDA process to understand. But people get hung up on the “A.”
Military equipment needs to meet certain criteria. Yes, you can buy a hammer from Home Depot, but will that hammer survive a supply drop by parachute?
Can the hammer be decontaminated if subject to chemical attack?
Will that hammer shatter in the arctic?
And is that hammer made with materials from an adversarial foreign nation? Production temporarily halted on the F-35 in 2022 due to the discovery of rare earth metals sourced from China inside of a magnetic component of the F-35.
In order to understand procurement, you have to understand what procurement means. The Congressional Research office has a document on this below:
There are three decision support systems:
Joint Capability Integration and Development (JCIDS) - which provides requirements. Charter of the JCIDS below:
Defense Acquisition Management - which supervises the formal process of each acquisition phase through milestones. Introduction below:
Planning, Programming, Budgeting, and Execution (PPBE) - which provides resources, such as funding. Congressional Research Service article below:
So how is the money actually spent? The spreadsheet with the data is on my Website or below as a PDF:
So the real question here is have we gone too far? This essay from Charles J. Dunlap below has some answers:
