As America marks 250 years of constitutional government, the DoD overdue for its own founding document. One that protects the rights of warfighters, acquisition professionals, and industry from the bureaucratic tyranny they face daily.
James Madison understood something too many defense leaders have forgotten. Power left unchecked consolidates upward. Bureaucracies left unreformed accumulate process. And people closest to the problem, denied the authority to act, stop trying.
Certain corners of the Pentagon spent decades doing exactly what Madison warned against: accumulating authority, adding oversight layers, and leaving program managers, contracting officers, portfolio executives, and warfighters with few and defined powers to act.
The current reform wave is promising. PAEs with real budget authority, commercial-first mandates, and streamlined pathways are steps in the right direction. But structural reform without protected rights is just another policy memo. Reforms can be reversed by the next administration, chilled by an overzealous IG or GAO, or eroded by protests.
We need something more durable, modeled after the Bill of Rights.
As America turns 250, we propose: A Defense Acquisition Bill of Rights.
Ten amendments to protect the people who buy and field our nation’s defenses from the system they are supposed to operate.
Preamble
We hold these truths to be self-evident: that acquisition professionals are endowed with statutory authority to do their jobs; that these authorities have been buried under layers of policy, guidance, and institutional fear; and that the time has come to restore them.
Norman Augustine knew this. His Laws, published in 1983, documented with dark humor what practitioners knew in their bones: that defense programs cost more than planned, take longer than scheduled, and perform less than promised. His most quoted law projected that by 2054, the entire defense budget would purchase exactly one aircraft. He wrote in wit what the system produced in waste.
We write in the spirit of Madison and Augustine both: clear-eyed about failure, committed to something better.
Amendment I: Freedom of Acquisition Approach
Congress shall make no law, and DoD shall issue no policy, that establishes commercial acquisition as anything less than the default pathway. The right of program managers to use FAR Part 12, OT Authority, and simplified acquisition procedures shall not be abridged. The government shall not compel the use of cost-type contracts for capabilities that commercial markets have already solved.
The modern battlefield runs on commercial technology. GPS, the internet, and drone revolution are commercial. And yet the default instinct in government acquisition is still to write a specification, issue a full-and-open solicitation, and wonder why the result is obsolete before it fields.
Commercial first is not a preference. It is a mandate. Treat it like one. Use CSOs, OTs, BAAs, prizes to maximize competition, speed, and flexibility to acquire solutions. Acquisition enterprises should measure speed to capability, percentage of budgets going towards commercial solutions, and competitive landscape.
Amendment II: The Right to Rapidly Acquire Capability
A well-equipped fighting force being necessary to the security of a free nation, the right of the military Services to field, sustain, and modernize arms shall not be infringed, delayed by 14-month contracting timelines, or held hostage to a program of record that no longer reflects the threat.
Augustine’s Law I observed that although development time for military aircraft has held steady at roughly eleven years, the underlying technology doubles every seven. By the time the program delivers, the threat has lapped it twice. If the warfighter needs it, the system shall not prevent them from getting it. Use the Middle Tier of Acquisition and Software Acquisition Pathways to rapidly prototype, produce, and iteratively acquire software with active warfighter feedback and involvement. Prioritize time to deliver capabilities, iterative fielding, and modular upgrades.
Amendment III: Protection Against Obsolete System Quartering
No Service shall be held hostage to the sustainment of a legacy system whose time has passed. Every major defense program beyond its originally planned service life shall be subject to a formal sunset review, conducted by the PAE with authority to recommend termination, replacement, or reallocation of sustainment funding to new capabilities.
Augustine’s Law II is undefeated: the last 10 to 20% of system performance consumes one-third of the cost and two-thirds of the schedule. Keeping obsolete platforms alive past their useful life doesn’t preserve capability, it consumes the budget that would fund the replacement. We cannot build a 355-ship fleet, Golden Dome, F-47s, B-21s, a modern nuclear arsenal, and drone dominance while sustaining 50-year-old legacy systems in parallel. The ancient systems exposed in Epic Fury will not be enough in the Indo-Pacific.
Sunset reviews are not a threat to programs that still earn their place. They are the mechanism by which warfighters get the resources currently quartered in systems that no longer serve them.
Amendment IV: Protection Against Unreasonable Cost Accounting Searches
The right of defense industry to be secure in their records and business systems against unreasonable audit demands and cascading Cost Accounting Standards requirements shall not be violated. No cost accounting standard shall be applied to a commercial item or commercial service.
The result of current practice: nontraditional companies and small businesses refuse to enter defense markets because compliance burden exceeds contract value. Primes face no incentive to flow work to smaller suppliers who lack the compliance infrastructure to absorb it, and technical data rights locked into proprietary architectures foreclose competition long after it was achievable. Reserve cost accounting and DCAA scrutiny for major programs where it can actually influence cost. Do not impose it on a $2M firm-fixed-price software contract with a startup.
Amendment V: No Acquisition Professional Shall Be Compelled to Testify Against Themselves
No acquisition professional shall be held to answer for a good-faith acquisition decision made in accordance with applicable law and regulation, unless upon presentment or indictment of actual wrongdoing. Nor shall any person face career consequences for exercising delegated authority in support of mission outcomes, so long as they acted with transparency and documented judgment.
Fear is the dominant operating logic of the acquisition system. The contracting officer who knows the faster path hesitates because justification invites scrutiny, and scrutiny hurts or ends careers. So they choose the slower, more expensive, safer option. The warfighter waits and assumes the risk. Leaders who demand speed while punishing judgment are not reformers. This amendment protects the people who try.
Amendment VI: The Right to a Speedy Resolution
In all acquisition disputes, the accused contractor shall enjoy the right to a speedy bid protest decision. No protest shall exceed 100 days without cause. No program shall be stopped for longer than is required to resolve the protest.
The protest process has become a form of prolonged detention: programs stopped, awards delayed, warfighters waiting while lawyers argue over evaluation criteria. The protest has become a business strategy, not a legal remedy. Frivolous protests shall be dismissed with prejudice and assessed costs.
Amendment VII: The Right to Informed Review
In all program reviews, source selections, and milestone decisions, authorities shall have access to advisors with direct program management, contracting, or fielding experience.
Program reviews have a documented pattern. Decisions at higher headquarters often reflect risk aversion rather than mission analysis. The program manager closest to the contractor, the technology, and the warfighter requirement frequently has the most accurate picture. This amendment does not challenge senior decision-makers’ authority. It asks that their decisions be informed by practitioner knowledge. Delegate decision authorities to the lowest practical level, the PAEs (or lower). Replace oversight boards with peer reviews. Good oversight is not less oversight. It is better-informed oversight.
Amendment VIII: No Excessive Requirements, No Cruel and Unusual Specifications
Excessive requirements documents shall not be imposed. Specs written around a single vendor’s solution or a platform already obsolete at time of publication shall not be enforced. The acquisition system shall not impose performance requirements that tech cannot meet in the desired timeframe, and then penalize the program when it fails.
Define the operational problem. Let industry define and provide the solution. Evaluate on outcomes. Drive Modular Open Systems Approach (MOSA) and interface standards to ensure multi-vendor competition, composabiliy, and contribution to mission capabilities, instead of vendor-locked proprietary solutions.
Amendment IX: Retained Rights of the Acquisition Workforce
The enumeration in law and regulation of certain acquisition authorities shall not be construed to deny or disparage other tools, pathways, and approaches retained by the acquisition workforce. A program manager and contracting officer who find a legal, ethical, faster path shall be presumed to be acting correctly, until evidence of wrongdoing is established.
The FAR, DFARS, and the statutes underneath them are floors, not ceilings. OTA authority, BAAs, Prize competition, CSO, MTA, and SWP exist. None requires a waiver, they are law. The acquisition workforce that uses them deserves credit, not suspicion.
Amendment X: Reserved Powers of the Portfolio Acquisition Executive
The authorities not granted to OSD by Congress are reserved to the Services, the PAEs, the program managers, and ultimately the warfighters they serve.
Unity of command applied to the business of defense. The PAE system now being built across the Services is the most Madison-aligned reform in a generation: a single executive accountable for requirements, budget, acquisition strategy, and mission outcomes, with authority to make real-time trades. The reform will succeed if the powers delegated to PAEs are real, documented, and protected. It will fail, as every prior reform has failed, if OSD reclaims authority every time a decision is made that someone at the Pentagon dislikes. Let's empower the PAEs and enable them with the experts, tools, and resources to execute their mission.
The Work Ahead
The founders did not write the Bill of Rights because they believed government was inherently evil. They wrote it because good institutions, left without structural safeguards, drift toward self-preservation over mission.
The reforms underway are the right reforms. This is the most aligned DoD leadership has been on acquisition transformation in decades. But reforms without protected rights are executive orders waiting to be reversed. The next administration, the next IG cycle, the next protest attorney will test every reform. Without institutional backing, acquisition professionals will calculate the risk and choose the safe path. They have done it before.
What Madison asked for in 1791 applies here: Trust the people closest to the problem with the authority to solve it, protect them from the system when they try, and measure them on outcomes rather than compliance.
The nation turns 250 this year. The defense acquisition system has spent most of those years getting in its own way.
Time to amend that.
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