Who does the acquisition work in a Foreign Military Sale?

The program manager is responsible for formulating the acquisition strategy and executing approved acquisition plans. The program manager typically performs these functions with the assistance of a multidisciplinary support team. Collectively, the program manager, with the respective support team, constitute the program office.

If the U.S. agrees to sell the system through FMS, the FMS acquisition will be accomplished with support by the same program management office that is managing the system for the DOD. The system program management office may acquire the FMS requirements either as separate individual procurements or by consolidating the FMS requirements with DOD requirements on the same U.S. contract.

The DOD also uses the term “acquisition” to refer to multiple functional career field areas. In fact, the Defense Acquisition University (DAU) offers a number of courses for personnel within these various career fields that support the DAS. Acquisition career fields include the following: life cycle logistics, auditing, cost estimating, financial management, contracting, engineering, facilities engineering, industrial/contract property management, information technology, science and technology management, program management, purchasing, production/quality/manufacturing, and test and evaluation. All of these various functional acquisition disciplines are utilized in the DAS process.

The International Acquisition Career Path (IACP) creates a construct to develop and train international competencies within the DOD acquisition workforce. The origins of the IACP can be traced to the Defense Acquisition Workforce Improvement Act (DAWIA) of 1990. DAWIA initially identified eleven acquisition functional areas as containing acquisition related positions. DAWIA recognized international acquisition by citing “joint development and production with other government agencies and foreign countries” as one of the eleven functional areas.

Creating a standalone international acquisition functional area proved problematic. In practice, international acquisition is not an autonomous career field. International acquisition is typically performed within the context of other core acquisition functional areas such as program management, systems development, contracting, logistics, manufacturing, and financial management.

As a result, the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition & Sustainment directed the development of an international acquisition career path within the existing acquisition-related career fields. The IACP was initially associated with only the program management career field. The IACP was expanded in 2014 to all acquisition career fields that support international acquisition.

The IACP is an important development not only to the acquisition community but also to the security cooperation community. Successful execution of security cooperation programs, in particular FMS, relies heavily on the DOD’s acquisition manpower, processes, and infrastructure.