NDIA recommends changes to Thornberry legislation

The National Defense Industrial Association last week suggested changes to the defense acquisition legislation released by Rep. Mac Thornberry (R-TX).

In a June 7 letter, NDIA officials said they made line-in and line-out changes "based on a preliminary review." The recommendations are not the official positions of all NDIA members and may change over time, according to the letter, which includes about 80 pages of recommendations.

In one section, for instance, NDIA notes that commercial-off-the-shelf items purchased by the Pentagon and provided to contractors as government-furnished property "could cause unacceptable supply chain risk and increased compliance cost."

Thornberry's legislation would authorize the Pentagon to use online marketplaces to buy commercial items.

NDIA writes in its recommendations that "DOD prime contractors . . . have invested significant resources to conduct increased vetting and surveillance of their suppliers. By contrast, the suppliers of COTS items on the online marketplaces are not subject to these defense-unique requirements."

"Defense prime contractors have no ability to vet or monitor these online marketplace suppliers," the association continues. "If the government required the defense prime contractors to accept these COTS items as GFP and integrate them into defense-unique end items, assemblies or sub-assemblies, this GFP would defeat the supply chain security measure put in place by the primes or require additional costly testing and inspection."