Fall 2023

How do software and hardware acquisitions differ in terms of funding allocation, media visibility, and congressional attention within the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD), and what impact do these differences have on budget proportions? This question explores the dynamics of software and hardware acquisitions in the DoD, focusing on funding, media, and political attention, in the context of modern warfare and military capabilities. This study will employ a mixed-method approach, integrating qualitative data from media content analysis and quantitative data from USAspending.gov and Defense Acquisitions University. I seek to combine publicly available funding data for Middle Tier (MTA) and Software (SWP) acquisitions, review of unclassified congressional hearings, large-scale web scraping from defense blogs, online publications and contractor press releases since the Adaptive Acquisition Framework’s adoption in 2020. This approach constructs an original data set allowing for a comprehensive analysis of covariates affecting these acquisition pathways.