William LaPlante, assistant secretary for acquisition of the U.S. Air Force, has said transparency, communication and agility are among the focus areas of the service’s acquisition strategies.
LaPlante outlined the service’s top acquisition priorities during an Air Force Association symposium in Orlando, Florida, the Air Force said Monday.
The Air Force intends to keep high priority programs on track, enhance transparency with stakeholders, own the technical program baseline, support small businesses and incorporate resiliency into plans in order to achieve acquisition program goals, he said.
“We have really put effort into trying to make ourselves more transparent,†LaPlante said.
“The chief and the secretary both instinctively realized that we’re not going to make progress together on bringing prices down, bringing costs down and innovating, if we in the Air Force do not have regular, meaningful conversations with industry,†he added.
The Air Force says the 2014 Bending the Cost Curve initiative is also one of the programs the service has initiated to help reduce weapon costs and development times by negotiating with industry partners, expanding industry competition and streamlining acquisition processes.
