The ‘Shrinking’ Defense Industrial Base
contractor contact information is no longer available in the current live system. This meant that points of contact could only be matched to roughly 60% of the presumed exiting contractors, skewed toward the fiscal years closer to the download date. This is unfortunate as it may have introduced systematic bias into the study, even though older contractors are more likely to be unreachable or fail to respond. Second, the survey instrument did not include a set of definitions for certain concepts like “bureaucracy,” and therefore, some words or phrases in response choices were possibly interpreted differently by different respondents. This possible ambiguity may have introduced some inconsistency into the results, even though the authors believe this has not majorly impacted the overall utility of the study. Finally, although the characteristics of survey respondents seem to approximate that of the overall DIB quite well, and no statistically significant association was noted between contractor size and reason for DIB departure, it is still worth considering that nearly half of the responses (46% of the sample) were from the smallest business segment (less than $500k annual revenue). These contractors’ experiences may differ dramatically from larger, even albeit technically small businesses (e.g., they are likely to be more financially precarious) and, thus, some of the prime contractor issues noted here may be unique to their relative size. Of course, if the perceived or real costs of pursuing contracts as a prime contractor are enough to dissuade contractor participation at that level, this should be a concern for DoD policy makers regardless of the size of the contractor experiencing the issue. Future Research Several areas appear promising for future research based on the raw data from this study as well as other follow-on efforts. First, from the present study, a lot of relatively unexamined information is embedded in the survey's open-ended Final Comments. For example, at a glance, many specific mentions are small business issues, especially from those contractors that became only subcontractors. Also, numerous email-only responses from recipients of the survey invitations should be closely examined. The number of undeliverable survey invitations, for example, might paint a more realistic picture of how many contractors have ceased operations altogether, which would explain why they exited the DIB. Finally, 352 respondents to the survey indicated that they were willing
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Defense ARJ, Summer 2025, Vol. 32 No. 2: 194—223
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