Defense procurement

Reform panel warns Congress to overhaul Pentagon acquisitions, or lose technological edge

For the United States to maintain its technological edge against Chinaand other competitors, Congress must radically simplify the way Pentagon acquisitions work with companies outside the beltway, according to an influential advisory group established by Congress.

The Section 809 Panel on Tuesday released its third and final volume of recommendations to streamline the Defense Department’s lumbering acquisition bureaucracy. In 500-plus pages, it emphasized changes to revamp the way the military buys commercial products, information technology and major weapons programs, among other far-reaching ideas.

When panel members on the hunt for ways to make the acquisition process more accessible visited one Silicon Valley firm flying under the Pentagon’s radar, the members were alarmed to learn a Chinese delegation had visited only a week before, offering to buy the company’s production capability, if not the company itself.

“These are companies that the United States I guess knows about at some level, but the Department of Defense didn’t know existed, they weren’t interested and wouldn’t know how to do business with them,” Section 809 Panel Chair David Drabkin, a former General Services Administration official, said at Tuesday’s rollout event.