The U.S. Army has awarded more enterprise-level contracts this year than ever before as it overhauls its acquisition process to accelerate procurement and manage capabilities across entire portfolios, a senior Army official said Tuesday.
Speaking at the Association of the United States Army Annual Meeting on Oct. 13, Brent Ingraham, assistant secretary of the Army for acquisition, logistics, and technology, said the service has seen a significant reduction in its procurement timeline recently.
“We’ve done more enterprise-level contracts this year than the Army has ever done before, because we’re looking across the portfolio,” Ingraham said.
“We’re ensuring that when we think about things like software or components or missile systems, that we have the ability to go across the enterprise and lay those out,” he added.
The shift is part of the Army’s broader acquisition reform effort, which established six portfolio acquisition executives (PAEs) to oversee capabilities across mission areas rather than individual programs. The Army gradually began implementing the PAE model in October.
Ingraham said the Army has delegated greater contracting authority to PAEs, giving them dedicated contracting officials and the ability to make procurement decisions across their portfolios.
He added that Army Contracting Command executed more than 100,000 contracts this year, which he said is “more than we’ve done across the Army ever.”
The reforms are also changing how the Army develops requirements. Rather than issuing lengthy, highly detailed specifications, the service is increasingly using shorter statements of need that allow industry to propose solutions.
“We’re not trying to tell industry exactly how to build it, what all the tech specs are,” Ingraham said. “We’re telling you what problem we’re trying to solve.”
He explained that requirements decisions that previously took months can now be completed in days, with some decisions occurring within hours.
Lt. Gen. Frank Lozano, the Army’s portfolio acquisition executive for fires, said the new structure has also accelerated contracting for emerging capabilities.
During Operation Epic Fury, Lozano said his team awarded other transaction agreements (OTAs) for new capabilities within a week of identifying an operational need.
“We literally were awarding OTAs for new capabilities inside of seven days,” Lozano said. “That meant that on day one, when we were hearing about a need, I was already meeting with my collective team.”