LINKAGE OF NATIONAL MILITARY STRATEGY AND WEAPON ACQUISITION PROGRAMS

SEC. 732. LINKAGE OF NATIONAL MILITARY STRATEGY AND WEAPON ACQUISITION PROGRAMS (a) Findings.—Congress makes the following findings: (1) The Final Report to the President by the President’s Blue Ribbon Commission on Defense Management (the “Packard Commission”), the Defense Acquisition Study of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and the Report of the Commission on Integrated Long-Term Strategy (referred to as “Discriminate Deterrence”) have separately identified significant deficiencies in the integration of weapon acquisition programs of the Department of Defense with national military strategy. (2) There is no established process involving the Office of the Secretary of Defense and the Joint Staff in which strategy, policy, operational concepts, and resource constraints are fully debated, coordinated, and translated into weapon acquisition programs. The dominant role of setting requirements for new weapon systems remains with the headquarters staffs of the military departments, and the requirements developed by those departments often do not appear to have been rigorously evaluated in terms of their overall contribution to national military strategy. (3) The requirements and planning process of the Department of Defense is not constrained by realistic projections of future defense budgets. Consequently, the process is fiscally unrealistic and, therefore, largely ignored in the subsequent planning and budgeting process. This process often results in disparate plans that do not optimize the potential contribution of the acquisition programs of each military department to the objectives of national military strategy. (b) Sense of Congress.—In light of the findings in subsection (a), it is the sense of Congress that— (1) to ensure that the United States develops and acquires the proper mix of weapon systems to support national military strategy most effectively and efficiently, the Office of the Secretary of Defense and the Joint Staff should better define the links between national military strategy and specific acquisition programs; 102 STAT. 2005 (2) the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the Joint Staff, and the headquarters of the unified and specified combatant commands should more clearly define the necessary operational capabilities and concepts of operations as part of the requirements process and should explicitly consider alternative acquisition programs based on probable levels of resources likely to be approved by Congress and trade-offs among the acquisition programs of the military departments; (3) the Secretary of Defense should ensure that resulting acquisition programs clearly reflect the objectives of national military strategy; and (4) the Secretary of Defense should commission an independent study to assess the degree to which the development and acquisition of weapon systems is currently linked to and determined by the national military strategy and to recommend improvements where necessary or desirable.