How Does the Political Nature of the Defense Acquisition Process Affect Cost Growth

<p>Many of the major procurement activities and programs of the Department of Defense (DoD) are experiencing cost growth costing the United States (U.S) government money. The purpose of this research was to develop an empirical model in order to explain cost overruns in the DoD major procurement activities and programs.Specifically this thesis sought to discover relationships between cost overruns inweapon systems programs and factors that the DoD cannot control factors that originatefrom the political nature of the defense acquisition process. The model describes how thepolitical and legislative balances of power between the parties of the Congress thechange of the purchase habits of the DoD from production contracts to service contractsand the spreading of defense manufacturing capacity across the states of the U.S arerelated to cost overruns in defense programs.This research effort studied 193 major weapon system programs from 1970 to2002 using Ordinary Least Square regression techniques. Results show that a DemocraticPresident leads to a reduction in cost growth while control of both houses of Congress byone party or control of the Senate and the office of the President by one party causes costincreases.</p><p>This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore you will see the original copyright references library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world) and other notations in the work.</p><p>This work is in the public domain in the United States of America and possibly other nations. Within the United States you may freely copy and distribute this work as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.</p><p>As a reproduction of a historical artifact this work may contain missing or blurred pages poor pictures errant marks etc. Scholars believe and we concur that this work is important enough to be preserved reproduced and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.</p><br>