Leveraging international cooperation acquisition opportunities for the Department of Defense

Abstract

Leveraging current and future International Cooperation opportunities, such as Foreign Military Sales and Cooperative Programs throughout the entire Department of Defense System Acquisition Framework could contribute to and enhance the systems acquired domestically and create additional Foreign Military Sales opportunities. Historically, International Cooperation is not considered in the acquisition process until sometime around initial operational capability or full operational capability. Considering International Cooperation earlier in the acquisition process may prove beneficial to the domestic side if Department of Defense systems can be developed and acquired to accommodate our foreign partner’s interoperability requirements and releaseability restrictions. The overall outcome of this study will be to identify the various entry points in the acquisition framework for International Cooperation and how that will benefit or deter the domestic program offices system acquisition efforts. Our research and analysis will focus on examples of various levels of effort that have been required to go back and retrofit a system to make it available to Foreign Military Sales and then identify where it could have been done more efficiently if considered earlier in the framework.