Improving Intelligence Support to the Future Warfighter Acquisition for the Contested Environment

Asked by the Air Force Materiel Command to determine whether the efficacy of existing and future acquisition programs and strategies could be improved, RAND’s Project AIR FORCE engaged a team of experts to analyze U.S. Air Force intelligence support to the acquisition community. The main challenge they found is in ensuring the ability of the acquisition community to deliver capabilities that meet a threat as it exists when capabilities are delivered, not as it was when requirements were set. Doing so requires understanding the distinct cultures, resource constraints and incentives, and goals of the acquisition and intelligence enterprises themselves, all of which have been shaped during decades when the U.S. military dominated and its weaponry had no peer. Thus, the authors provide an overview of the acquisition enterprise ecosystem, which includes the Department of Defense and the Intelligence Community, as well as Congress and other stakeholders. Focusing on interactions between acquisition and intelligence processes and personnel, including current disincentives to interacting, and taking into account resource constraints, they point to ways to enhance information sharing and workforce development in order to ensure that U.S. Air Force acquisition is adequately informed by intelligence in an environment of increasingly sophisticated threats from peer and near-peer adversaries.