The theme for this edition of Defense Acquisition Research Journal is “Harnessing Innovative Procedures under an Administration in Transition.” Fiscal Year 2017 will see many changes, not only in a new administration, but also under the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). Under this NDAA, by February 2018 the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics (USD[AT&L]) office will be disestablished, and its duties divided between two separate offices. The first office, the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering (USD[R&E]), will carry out the mission of defense technological innovation. The second office, the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment (USD[A&S]), will ensure that sustainment issues are integrated during the acquisition process. The articles in this issue show some of the innovative ways that acquisition can be tailored to these new paradigms. The first article is “Using Analytical Hierarchy and Analytical Network Processes to Create Cyber Security Metrics” by George C. Wilamowski, Jason R. Dever, and Steven M. F. Stuban. It was the recipient (from among strong competition) of the DAU Alumni Association (DAUAA) 2017 Edward Hirsch Acquisition and Writing Award, given annually for research papers that best meet the criteria of significance, impact, and readability. The authors discuss cybersecurity controls and a use case involving decision theory to develop a benchmarking framework that identifies key performance drivers in local area network, wide area network, and remote user communities. Next, the updated and corrected article by Shelley M. Cazares, “The Threat Detection System That Cried Wolf: Reconciling Developers with Operators,” points out that some threat detection systems that perform well in testing can generate many false alarms (“cry wolf”) in operation. One way to mitigate this problem may be to use these
systems as part of a tiered system that, overall, exhibits better performance than each individual system alone. The next article, “Army Aviation: Quantifying the Peacetime and Wartime Maintenance Man-Hour Gaps” by William Bland, Donald L. Washabaugh Jr., and Mel Adams, describes the development of a Maintenance Man- Hour Gap Calculator tool that confirmed and quantified a large, persistent gap in Army aviation maintenance. Following this is “Complex Acquisition Requirements Analysis Using a Systems Engineering Approach” by Richard M. Stuckey, Shahram Sarkani, and Thomas A. Mazzuchi. The authors examine prioritized requirement attributes to account for program complexities, and provide a guide to establishing effective requirements needed for informed
trade-off decisions. The results indicate that the key attribute for unconstrained systems is "achievable." Then, Gregory E. Brown and Edward D. White, in their article “An Investigation of Nonparametric Data Mining Techniques for Acquisition Cost Estimating,” use a meta-analysis to argue that nonparametric data mining techniques may improve the accuracy of future DoD cost estimates. The online-only article, “Critical Success Factors for Crowdsourcing with Virtual Environments to Unlock Innovation” by Glenn E. Romanczuk, Christopher Willy, and John E. Bischoff, explains how to use virtual environments to crowdsource systems design using warfighters and the engineering staff to decrease the cycle time required to produce advanced innovative systems tailored to meet warfighter needs.
This issue inaugurates a new addition to the Defense Acquisition Research Journal, “New Research in Defense Acquisition.” Here, we bring to the attention of the defense acquisition community a selection of current research that may prove of further interest. These selections are curated by the DAU Research Center and the
Knowledge Repository, and in these pages we provide the summaries and links that will allow interested readers to access the full works. The featured book in this issue’s Defense Acquisition Professional Reading List is Getting Defense Acquisition Right by former Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics Frank Kendall.
Finally, the entire production and publishing staff of the Defense ARJ now bids a fond farewell to Diane Fleischer, who has been our Graphic Specialist/Lead Designer for this journal since our January 2012 Issue 61, Vol. 19 No. 1. She has also been with the DAU Press for more than 5 years, and has been instrumental in the Defense ARJ team winning two APEX awards for One-of-a-Kind Publications— Government in both 2015 and 2016. Diane is retiring, and she and her family are relocating to Greenville, South Carolina. Diane, we all wish you “fair winds and following seas.”
Biography
Ms. Diane Fleischer has been employed as a Visual Information Specialist in graphic design at the Defense Acquisition University (DAU) since
November 2011. Prior to her arrival at DAU as a contractor with the Schatz Publishing Group, she worked in a wide variety of commercial graphic
positions, both print and web-based. Diane’s graphic arts experience spans more than 38 years, and she holds a BA in Fine Arts from Asbury University in Wilmore, Kentucky.
