Pentagon aims to accelerate acquisition of new tech through software-contracting change

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The Pentagon must default to rapid acquisition processes when buying software, from business systems to weapons components, the defense secretary said in a Thursday memo. The move is a “big deal,” one expert told Defense One, because it will push the Defense Department to stop spending considerable money and time trying to build its own software and instead go to the marketplace for products that might already exist.

“While the commercial industry has rapidly adjusted to a software-defined product reality, DoD has struggled to reframe our acquisition process from a hardware-centric to a software-centric approach,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth wrote in the March 6 memo. “Software is at the core of every weapon and supporting system we field to remain the strongest, most lethal fighting force in the world.”

The Pentagon must prioritize the Software Acquisition Pathway when buying software, the memo said—a set of guidelines the Defense Department rolled out to streamline the purchase of software, guided in part by the experience of the special operations community. But its implementation was slow across the Department, at least as of July 2023, according to a GAO report from that time. Contract officers weren’t sure how to apply it to current programs and worried about doing so incorrectly, undermining regulations and requirements.

Under that “pathway,” DOD buyers must default to using acquisition approaches called Commercial Solutions Openings, which allow the department to purchase commercially available tech, and Other Transaction Authority, which allow contracts outside of the formal federal acquisition regulations. Both tools enable faster procurement and easier work with non-traditional defense contractors.

The Defense Innovation Unit, or DIU, relies almost exclusively on OTAs and CSOs to bring commercial tech into the Defense Department. Since 2016, the unit has awarded more than 500 OTAs using the CSO process, a defense official told reporters Friday. Some 88 percent of those contracts went to vendors that were not traditional defense contractors, and 68 percent have gone to small businesses.


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