Acquisition Reform

The NDIA Policy Division commenced the Acquisition Reform Initiative in 2014. Under the leadership of Jon Etherton, NDIA Senior Fellow for Acquisition Reform, NDIA has provided comprehensive legislative recommendations and input to support efforts by the House and Senate Armed Services Committees to improve the defense acquisition system.

Budget

NDIA has long advocated for sufficient defense spending to meet present and future national security needs. The new Congress and Administration should roll back the devastating, arbitrary cuts to domestic and defense spending under the Budget Control Act of 2011, and install a new budget framework that provides for domestic and national security needs, while achieving sustainable deficit reduction.

CMMC

The Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC) program is a new set of cybersecurity standards developed by the Department of Defense (DoD) to protect defense contractors from cyber attacks.

Cyber

In recent years, the cyber threat has proliferated, with substantial consequences and costs for defense industry as a component of critical infrastructure, vendors to the federal government, and as a provider of defense systems that are potential targets. Moving forward, cybersecurity legislation and regulation should properly balance cost, risk, and flexibility to properly align with the nature of the cyber threat.

Defense Innovation

Maintaining technological superiority has been a critical component of U.S. military strategy for decades. Moving forward in a resource-constrained environment, our technological superiority will be at increasing risk, as near-peer competitors have invested substantially in asymmetric strategies, and leveraged civil-military integration.

Industrial Base Development

In the coming years, the Department of Defense will increasingly purchase from what NDIA has coined the “Millennial Industrial Base.” As defense budgets flatten or even decrease, our industrial base will become more global, more commercial, and more financially complex, and it will be marked moving forward more by its disposability than its continuity of service. The Department of Defense must adapt itself to acquire goods and services from this new and different supplier base if it is to reap the rewards of private and commercial investments.

International

Driven by a strong manufacturing and defense industrial base, U.S. trade in defense systems and services is the cornerstone of the U.S. military’s international engagement with allied and at-risk partners to balance the influence of competing countries. While the U.S. is the largest exporter of aerospace and defense (A&D) products, trends in the global marketplace are seen as limiting, to a certain degree, the dominance of American defense companies.

NDIA stands strong to keep SBIR in the picture

Small businesses are a critical component of the U.S. economy, serving as a catalyst for economic development, providing employment opportunities, and as the engine of new ideas and innovations.

Section 889 of the 2019 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) restricts U.S. executive agencies from purchasing certain products and services from some Chinese telecommunications companies (including Huawei and ZTE) and also from working with contractors that use such products. Part A went into effect via an Interim Rule in August 2019, prohibiting contractors from selling covered products and services to the government. Part B will go into effect in August 2020 and contains a much broader prohibition relating to the use of covered products and services - even if unrelated to federal business.