Coursework

Joint-Force Acquisition Reforms Student Name University Course Professor Name Date Joint-Force Acquisition Reforms The article “The Case for Joint Force Acquisition Reform” by McInerney et al. (2018) presents arguments supporting the reforms in the joint force acquisition initiated by Congress. The authors claim that if the reforms are successful, they will deliver warfighting capability more quickly and cheaply and solve the fundamental flaw in defense acquisitions. Such flaws are endemic to the Goldwater-Nicholas Department of Defense Reorganization Act of 1986, which imposed the jointness on the command structure of the military services. In other words, the military services became force providers responsible for manning, organizing, training, and equipping units employed by warfighting combatant commanders as a joint force. It means that the services fundamentally control the acquisition process, which creates a principle-agent problem characterized by misaligned incentives. History has presented adequate evidence that the services are often motivated by parochial incentives, which leads to the consistent development of material solutions not optimized for joint warfighting. The article addresses how authorities can reform joint-focused defense acquisitions to help align the combatant commanders’ desire for joint capability with the services’ acquisition actions. McInerney et al. (2018) propose that the DOD can ach...