15 April 2015

New Pentagon Plan Emphasizes Buying Adaptive Weapons

April 9th, 2015 

The Defense Department’s top weapons buyer said future systems must take advantage of rapidly evolving commercial technology.

Designing modular systems with more open architectures will not only help control costs and speed development, it will also help the U.S. military maintains a technological superiority over potential adversaries, according to Frank Kendall, undersecretary of defense for acquisition, technology and logistics.

“Technological superiority is not assured,” he said, echoing a warning he has made in the past. “It is not something that we should take for granted.”

Kendall and Deputy Defense Secretary Bob Work held a press conference Thursday at the Pentagon to unveil the Pentagon’s new buying strategy, dubbed Better Buying Power 3.0, which seeks to improve how the Defense Department acquires weapons.

The 35-page document calls for removing “barriers to commercial technology utilization” in acquisition programs, among other recommendations.

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