The newly-published July-August 2021 edition of the Defense Acquisition Magazine is now available online – for your reading pleasure, your professional development, and of course for most of us, for both! This new issue is chock full of interesting, engaging, and timely articles, including:

• Creating Incentivized Agile Contracts - Contracting officers can use Agile terms and available acquisition flexibilities to take advantage of Agile’s time, schedule, and cost benefits.
• The Four C’s for Successful Other Transactions - Other Transactions are booming in the Department of Defense, especially for science, technology, and research and development. Modernized contracting instruments facilitate engagement with industry and response to emerging threats.
• Resolving Data-Rights Markings—A Legal Battlefield - Issues often arise about nonconforming data-rights markings. Examples include guidance on making corrections and where to get more help.
• Toward a Performance- and Quality-Based Adaptive Acquisition Framework—AAF Meets International Standards - Under the Adaptive Acquisition Framework, DoD tells contractors what capability it wants, and lets them determine how to provide it. Challenges remain in policing the contracts and creating quality products.
• Model-Based Engineering for Product Support - Weapon systems are largely designed (or modified) using Model-Based Engineering. Therefore, three-dimension models should help significantly improve availability and reliability.
• Be Strategic! Leverage Technology Insertion and Refreshment on DMSMS Issues - Planned system modifications to improve performance, reliability, maintainability, or supportability can resolve problems of diminishing manufacturing sources and material shortages.
• Additive Manufacturing—The Advantages and the Challenges - Additive manufacturing facilitates rapid fabrication of complex components when and where needed. It also can consolidate assemblies, reduce mass, and create intricate geometries for enhanced fluid flow or heat transfer.
• Modern Collaborative Schedule Management for Everyone - Program managers need a tool to formalize all program-scheduling aspects. Current techniques are prone to configuration errors, are not collaborative or scalable, and often foster stovepipes and use of gatekeepers.
• MDAP/MAIS Program Manager Changes

While all are timely, interesting and relevant, encourage life cycle logisticians and product support managers to take a look at four of these articles in particular: Model-Based Engineering for Product Support, Be Strategic! Leverage Technology Insertion and Refreshment on DMSMS Issues, Additive Manufacturing—The Advantages and the Challenges, and Resolving Data-Rights Markings—A Legal Battlefield.