At one time, the federal government and the DoD dominated research and development (R&D)spending. For example, in 1964, the federal government provided 67% of R&D funding and served as the driver of innovation in the economy. Today, the private sector provides over 60%of U.S. R&D funding and accounts for over 70% of its performance advances. As the trend toward private sector R&D intensified in the 1980s and 1990s, defense policy-makers began to focus on how to access this emerging commercial source of innovation, especially as commercial products began to prove cheaper and, often, more reliable. The result was a monumental acquisition reform effort in the early 1990s that paved the way for the incorporation of these commercial technologies and business practices into DoD systems. The introduction of commercial advances from the information technology industry enabled the 1990s net-centric revolution in military affairs and military advances to be on the cusp of an unmanned vehicle and robotics revolution that is based on many of these same commercial technologies.
Despite these efforts and the many other successful transitions of commercial technologies into DoD systems, many commercial, non-traditional contractors who are at the cutting edge of technological research and product creation still do not see the DoD as an attractive marketplace.