The first 2020 edition of the award-winning Defense Acquisition Magazine is now available for your reading pleasure. As is regularly the case, it is chock-full of acquisition, sustainment, engineering and technology-related topics of interest to our product support and life cycle logistics community. Articles include:

• From the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment: Leaning Forward Into the New Year - Where we’ve come from, and where we are headed in 2020.
• Afghanistan Operations Reconstruction: Ten Nonpolitical Takeaways for DoD Program Managers - U.S.-based acquisition professionals must get involved in decision making earlier to ensure that we’re providing the right products and making those products as provably effective, robust, reliable and sustainable as possible.
• Creative Thinking Is the Cornerstone of Critical Thinking - What are your objectives? To solve a problem, rather than discover general information, ask specific questions and avoid being confined by bureaucratic stovepipes.
• Making the Most of Scientific Test and Analysis Techniques - Examine best practices in the areas of people, training, integration and external support. The most important attribute is a willingness to pro-actively learn, gain and implement a working knowledge of these techniques.
• Adaptive Acquisition: A Cure for Contract Inertia -The three steps in change management are: unfreeze (prepare for the desired change), change (implement the desired change), and refreeze (solidify the desired changes).
• A Portfolio Management-Based Acquisition Model? - The requirements and acquisition communities must collaborate and work in a more integrated manner. Acquisition expertise provides the technical, engineering and business knowhow; requirements managers provide the mission expertise.
• Reducing Barriers to Workforce Innovation - An organizational innovation framework improves the opportunity for maximizing positive change from ad hoc to a systematic approach for success. Innovative index probabilities provide an objective measure of an organization’s innovation culture.
• Squeezing More Value from Test - A program office practice could be elevated to the Configuration Steering Boards to help make better-informed decisions on verification program adjustments and squeeze more value out of test.
• Coast Guard Role in the Great Power Competition - The Coast Guard offers unique contributions to national security and must maximize its utility and ensure the viability of its long-term investments.
• 2019 Defense Acquisition Workforce Awards​
• 2019 Packard Awards for Acquisition Excellence​