Improving the DoW’s Ability to Leverage Allied and Partner Capabilities for Burden Sharing

Abstract

The paper will present and begin to unpack opportunities for working in new and innovative ways with key allies and partners that are linked to the recent changes per the new Acquisition Transformation Strategy (ATS; Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment, 2025), including ways to build resilience in U.S. supply chains (Executive Order No. 14017, 2021) and opportunities for importing innovative ideas, technologies, and capabilities from key allies. It will also point to ways to operationalize burden sharing that drive Foreign Military Sales (FMS) and cooperative development opportunities that enable allies and partners to contribute directly to broader resilience and deterrence national security objectives. The objective of this short paper and presentation is to, first, present a collection of tangible options to further burden sharing with allies, drawing upon completed RAND research and ideas flowing from the results of those research projects that could fit within the new ATS. The second objective is to solicit feedback from acquisition and security cooperation experts on these ideas to highlight the best options, which could be further studied. The paper begins with a statement of the problem and background relevant to the problem to set the context. The background draws on RAND’s research that relates to trends we are seeing in the way allies and partners desire to work with the U.S. and how this is relevant to the new ATS, as implementation is evolving. Then, the paper briefly identifies six options that are meant to help inform the implementation of the ATS. Each option is presented with a short set of researchable questions.