Complexity in an Unexpected Place: Quantities in Selected Acquisition Reports
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Conclusions While the default assumption for any acquisition program is that all of the units it produces are identical and interchangeable, this is seldom true. Consider asking an F-35A to land on a ship. Any analysis that assumes interchangeable units is making an unwarranted assumption that can lead to mistaken conclusions. The importance of these mistakes will vary, both with the details of the programand the nature of the analysis. We hope that thiswork can lead to two kinds of changes: one for analysts using acquisition data, and a second for policy makers defning reporting requirements for programs. For analysts, the primary message is “Beware.” It is not uncommon for invisible diferences between units to be important to an analysis. Without additional data from non-SAR (and sometimes non-PB) sources, it is often impossible to understand the relationships among price, cost, and quantity in many programs. Such additional data are, unfortunately, not always available. Analysts need to know the limits of what can be inferred from the existing data. For policy makers, opportunities abound to improve data-reporting requirements and guidance, and these come in three varieties. First, there ought to be explicit acknowledgment that not all units are identical, and some efort should bemade to quantify unit-by-unit or lot-by-lot diferences for analysis and oversight. Second, the rules need to encourage the desired behaviors. The current N-M rules are an excellent example of how rules incentivize behavior in ways that may be
counterproductive. For example, IDECM’s unit costs could be reduced by purchasingmore towed decoys than needed. When designing new reporting requirements, policy makers need to keep
this inmind. Finally, the quality assurance processes applied to ofcial data ought to be studied and improved. While some accidents are inevitable, the system today probably lets through more than it should. SARs are much like custom manufactured pa r ts. Each
one is unique, but good processes cou ld st i l l make themmore uniform and useful.
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Defense ARJ, January 2020, Vol. 27No. 1 : 28-59
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