Jeff White, principal deputy to the assistant secretary of the U.S. Army for acquisition, logistics and technology, said the service is keen to use other transaction authorities to accelerate the acquisition process but wants to exercise caution when using OTA agreements, National Defense reported Wednesday.
During the Tactical Wheeled Vehicles Conference in California, White said that he considers OTA a “highly effective business tool†for the service’s prototyping, research and production initiatives. He noted that the service should not rely on OTAs for every program, especially when it comes to single-source contracts for prototyping and production work that could affect industry competition.
“We like the authority. We want to use it. But … in the Army we are dead serious that we’re not going to abuse it. We’re going to make sure that nobody points at us and says, ‘You messed that up and we’re taking the authority away from you,’†he said at the National Defense Industrial Association-hosted event.