February 17, 2026 at 9:00 AM
The Greatest Threat to Acquisition Transformation Is Fear
The Department of Defense’s acquisition and sustainment culture is pathologically risk-averse. The greatest threat to acquisition transformation is not the Federal Acquisition Regulation. It is not congressional...
The Department of Defense’s acquisition and sustainment culture is pathologically risk-averse. The greatest threat to acquisition transformation is not the Federal Acquisition Regulation. It is not congressional oversight, statutory constraints, insufficient training, or an absence of strategy.The greatest threat is fear.
Not fear as emotion, but fear as architecture.The defense acquisition system is not broken. It is functioning precisely as designed. It produces compliance.