This report analyzes contracting for products, services, and research & development (R&D) by the Department of Defense (DoD) and its key components. In provides an in-depth look at trends in DoD contracting since 2000, and provides an initial picture of the impact that sequestration has had on DoD contracting and the supporting industrial base. This fourth edition of the DoD report updates reports from previous years and provides greater breadth of analysis. The report examines trends in DoD contracting, breaking down DoD contract spending by a variety of contract and vendor characteristics. The report then uses this data to address key policy questions related to DoD contracting.

In a time of austerity, the U.S. Department of Defense has drawn budgetary savings primarily from reductions in private-sector contracting. The 2000-2012 edition of this report by National Security Program for Industry and Resources (NSPIR) at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) examines this trend as well as its broader implications for defense industrial policy. The report analyzes contracting for products, services, and research and development by the U.S. Department of Defense overall and by key components. The 2000-2012 report investigates seven key facets of the defense industrial base and provides detailed answers to pressing acquisition policy questions.

The presence of a technologically superior defense industrial base has been a foundation of U.S. strategy since 1945. While the implementation of the budget cuts in the Budget Control Act of 2011 has caused concerns for the industrial base, the resulting debate has been lacking in empirical analysis. The purpose of this research is to measure the impact of the current defense drawdown across all the tiers of the industrial base. This report analyzes prime and subprime Defense Department contract data to measures the impacts of the drawdown by sector to better understand how prime and subprime contractors have responded to this external market shock.

Military and defense organizations are a vital component to any nation. In order to maintain the standards of these sectors, new procedures and practices must be implemented. Emerging Strategies in Defense Acquisitions and Military Procurement is a pivotal reference source for the latest scholarly research on the present state of defense organizations, examining reforms and solutions necessary to overcome current limitations and make vast improvements to their infrastructure. Highlighting methodologies and theoretical foundations that promote more effective practices in defense acquisition, this book is ideally designed for academicians, practitioners, researchers, upper-level students, and professionals engaged in defense industries.

As the current U.S. defense budget drawdown has progressed, numerous analysts have expressed concern about the ability of the United States to retain technological superiority, particularly given how research and development (R&D) contracting appears to be in serious decline. To examine what has happened within the federal R&D contracting portfolio, CSIS has analyzed trends in federal contracting. Using federal contract data from the publicly available Federal Procurement Data System, this study explains what has happened to federal R&D contracting and the industrial base that supports it.

Technological innovation and the military have always been in a state of constant interaction, fostered especially during the post-Cold War period. In this context, the present study focuses on the relationship of Italian, American, British, French and German Armed Forces with Information Communication Technology (ICT). The aim is to analyse in a Euro-Atlantic perspective the path undertaken by the Italian Army to develop Network Enabled Capabilities (NEC) through the “Forza NEC” Program. The acronym NEC refers to the interconnection of different elements of the Armed Forces in a single broad network, making them interact in order to achieve a strategic superiority. The book is composed of three chapters, which offer respectively an analysis of the American case, an overview of recent developments in France, Germany and the UK, and a discussion of the situation in Italy. The volume – which comes four years after the IAI publication The Transformation of Armed Forces: The Forza NEC Program – aims at analysing state of the art of the evolving relationship between technological innovation and the Armed Forces. This evolution is hindered by the fact that efforts to digitize and interconnect land forces and their equipment by using ICT sometimes clash with both operational difficulties and budget constraints. Such a clash poses challenges and roadblocks on the way towards NEC undertaken by the Armed Forces of the countries discussed in this book.