Pre-Planned Product Improvement: A Better Way of Weapon System Acquisition

摘要

The object of this thesis was to evaluate the acquisition approach called pre-planned product improvement or P3I and the benefits it offers. First a comparison of P3I and a similar concept called Evolutionary Acquisition or EA, was made to improve understanding of P3I and how it relates to EA. It was concluded that EA, as defined, is a Command and Control (C2) specific P3I application. Then, to see if the theorized benefits of P3I actually come about, the cost and schedule performance of a P3I program was compared to that of non-P3I programs. Acquisition lengths were also compared. Ths comparison found that P3I may indeed lessen acquisition times and enhance cost and schedule performance.