House Armed Services Committee Chairman Mac Thornberry (R-Texas) plans to introduce a bill that seeks to reform the Defense Department‘s processes for acquisitions of weapons systems, Defense News reported Tuesday.Joe Gould writes Thornberry will likely integrate the proposed legislation with the 2017 National Defense Authorization Act that he plans to introduce in April.
That bill would provide service branch chiefs more authority on procurement processes, establish intellectual property rights for certain military purchases and support the development of mature technology platforms through incentives.
Katherine Blakeley of Breaking Defense reported that Thornberry’s proposed bill also aims to build components of major defense systems based on open systems architecture in order to facilitate upgrades and promote competition for such upgrades.
Blakeley writes the proposed measure would also require service branches to execute high-priority projects through an agile approach to rapid prototyping and experimentation, as well as facilitate the use of unobligated procurement funds to support low-rate initial production of prototypes of weapons systems.
