Leave the Air Force’s new acquisition proposal in the starting gate

In an attempt to continue development of new technologies even under a budget impasse, the US Air Force has sent a legislative proposal to Congress that would allow the Pentagon to start new programs without a completed fiscal budget. In the op-ed below, Bill Greenwalt and John Ferrari, two acquisition experts with the American Enterprise Institute, explain why they think the new idea isn’t a good one.

Last month, Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall announced that the Pentagon is seeking a faster way to start new acquisition programs, a seemingly positive step to breaking free from our sclerotic acquisition system. But, as with many ideas put forth to speed up how the Pentagon buys things, the devil is in the details — and the details of this proposal are concerning.

As part of the 2024 budget cycle, Kendall is advocating for legislation [PDF] that would “initiate new start development activities, up to a preliminary design review (PDR) level of maturity” pursuant to authorities in Title 10, Sec. 3601. That particular set of existing authorities is known collectively as Rapid Acquisition Authority (RAA), a flexible acquisition and funding mechanism first enacted in response to 9/11.

The proposed new authority could be used if a military department provided in writing to the Secretary of Defense that there is an urgent, “compelling national security need” that “cannot be delayed until the next submission of the budget of the President,” where the department has identified a funding offset in the current fiscal year. Funding for this new additional authority would be capped at $300 million for any fiscal year.

At its face, this seems a good idea: the Pentagon would have a workaround so that a potential continuing resolution (CR) would not keep new start programs from getting off the ground. But Kendall is mixing acquisition apples and oranges with this concept. In doing so, the Pentagon risks losing the RAA flexible authority already in its possession if Congress starts questioning its motives for the legislation.

There is a reason RAA exists, which is to enable DoD to start efforts in the year of budget execution for capabilities that can be delivered to the warfighter in timeframes shorter than the traditional acquisition system allows. This is done through either the rapid acquisition or middle tier of acquisition (MTA) pathway which delivers capability to the warfighter in one-to-five years.

The issue with the Air Force proposal is that it’s attempting to add traditional acquisition programs, like Major Defense Acquisition Programs (MDAPs), to these flexible authorities, even though these programs have been working through the current acquisition planning process for at least several years and will not be usable for another decade or more. Jamming such programs into RAA to avoid a few months delay from an impending CR will divert both money and attention away from programs which stand to benefit from rapid and flexible acquisition and budget authorities.

Moreover, adding MDAPs to this new authority demonstrates just how wedded the Air Force is to traditional acquisitions that are crowding out the use of better, faster, and cheaper ways of acquisition up front. The proposal’s PDR limitation is itself a gate for MDAPs, a sign that the Air Force is still thinking as it if it’s competing against the Soviet Union and has all the time in the world.

What Will Congress Do About It?

With this new proposal, what can we expect Congress to do and why? Initial thoughts are that it will be better received by the authorizers than the appropriators — but that’s probably a false assumption. Both authorizers and appropriators may find this proposal lacking. It’s true that the authorizing committees have in the past been more willing to give DoD additional acquisition authorities and flexibility than the appropriators. But these new authorities require funding flexibility that the appropriators have historically been less willing to grant.

What is remarkable about RAA is that for the last two decades, it has provided both acquisition and funding flexibility in a way that keeps both authorizers and appropriators informed of its use, avoiding controversy and delay. Under RAA, new start requirements are waived for urgent and compelling needs and limited funding is made available to kickstart these efforts upon notification and consultation with Congress. When it comes to the Air Force’s new legislation, the issue that Congress will want to review is whether programs embedded in the president’s budget request are really urgent and compelling. If they were, they would likely not have gone through the traditional acquisition process in the first place and would have been started in the MTA or rapid acquisition pathways.

As Congress sees it, there is a learned lack of trust in the executive branch. Robert Moses, the powerbroker who built roads in New York State, said that if he could build the first mile of a highway, nobody could stop it. Similarly, many of the restrictions put in place by Congress exist to prevent the services from starting new programs, and then daring Congress not to fund them. Thus, there is a real distinction between a traditional acquisition program that requires a decade’s long, open-ended, and unpredictable funding commitment by Congress versus a fixed period commitment for a rapid acquisition or an MTA effort.

The Problem With Continuing Resolutions And New Acquisition Programs

Despite its issues, the Air Force’ proposal takes aim at a real problem: continuing resolutions extend an already lengthy two-year long delay from when a service first proposes a new, traditional acquisition program to that program’s enactment by Congress.

For those unfamiliar with DoD’s rigid budgeting and planning process known as PPBE, the Air Force Secretary is currently assembling the new start proposals that are supposed to be made law in October 2025. But, if Congress operates under a series of continuing resolutions — largely expected as the presidential election nears — those likely will not go into effect until March 2026.

In seeking its new authority, the Air Force is attempting to circumvent this two-to-three-year lag in starting a traditional acquisition program, which is made ever slower given technology cycles that are measured in months. That matters heavily for smaller programs that are in development; it’s an open question whether these time lags make any difference in MDAPs, which last not years but decades.

One solution to address the start time issue, put forth by those who aren’t in favor of granting the secretary this new authority, is for DoD to request an “anomaly” to the continuing resolution process, which would allow a new start to begin despite a CR. As they say, this “briefs well” but in practice is nearly impossible because Congress and the White House tend to want to pass “clean” continuing resolutions to keep the pressure on defense advocates to enable a broader deal on domestic spending.

Still, as we face the likelihood of a year-long CR, this negotiating tactic may need to come under greater scrutiny. It would be much better for Congress to consider granting anomalies for some of DoD’s new start programs rather than give blanket authority to the department to start new, open-ended programs.

How The Air Force Can Speed Up Acquisition

If the Air Force was serious about going faster and becoming more agile, it would embrace new rapid acquisition, MTA, or Other Transaction Authority (OTA) prototype programs, and not put all of its bets on traditional acquisition programs that will be lucky to be deployed in the 2030s. The real threat is now and anything that cannot be delivered in the next two-to-four years is nice to have, but likely irrelevant to what will be needed in any conflict with China.

As the Air Force talks about this program to both the authorizers and the appropriators, it will have to explain why this flexibility is needed for new major defense programs and how it’s not about “building the first mile” of the highway. Rather than focusing on major acquisition programs, and granting an authority to the Pentagon focused on such programs, Congress should support non-traditional companies using the OTA, RAA, and MTA operational prototyping authorities already in existence. And, it should rigorously evaluate the outcome of those programs, enhancing and adding to them where necessary.

Despite the seeming utility of the Air Force’s proposed legislation, it may simply encourage the development of large acquisition programs that then become funneled into the Pentagon’s drawn out acquisition system. Instead of providing this new authority, Congress would be better off reexamining the lack of anomalies in continuing resolutions, and take advantage of existing acquisition authorities that will get equipment into the hands of our warfighters fast.

There’s no substitute for speed given the threats facing the United States, but when it comes to the Air Force’s new proposal, it would be best if it didn’t leave the starting gate.

William C. Greenwalt is a nonresident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and a former deputy undersecretary of defense for industrial policy.

Maj. Gen. John Ferrari, US Army (ret.), is a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and is the former director of program analysis and evaluation for the US Army.