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TITLE VIII--ACQUISITION POLICY, ACQUISITION MANAGEMENT, AND RELATED MATTERS

Subtitle D--Provisions Relating to the Acquisition System

P. L. 116-92

House Conference Report 116-333

(a) Guidance for Program Capabilities Development and Acquisition Weapon System Design.--Section 2446b of title 10, United States Code, is amended by adding at the end the following new subsection:

``(f) Implementation Guidance.--The Secretaries of the military departments shall issue guidance to implement the requirements of this section.''.

(b) Guidance for Major System Interfaces.--Section 2446c of title 10, United States Code, is amended--

(1) in paragraph (4), by striking ``and'' at the end;

(2) in paragraph (5), by striking the period at the end and adding ``; and''; and

(3) by adding at the end the following new paragraph:
``(6) issue guidance to implement the requirements of this section.''.

The House amendment contained a provision (sec. 861(c)) that would require the Secretary of Defense, acting through the Director of Cost Assessment and Performance Evaluation, to submit to the congressional defense committees a report that includes the study guidance required under section 2446b(b) of title 10, United States Code, and would limit funding available if the report is not provided by the end of 2019. The provision would also modify section 2446c of title 10, United States Code, to require a policy on the support for the acquisition for modular open system approaches (MOSA).

The Senate bill contained no similar provision.

The Senate recedes with an amendment that would instead modify section 2446b of title 10, United States Code, to direct the Secretaries of the military departments to develop implementing guidance for the requirements to address MOSA, and as well would amend section 2446c of title 10, United States Code, to direct the Secretaries of the military departments to develop policies relating to the availability of major system
interfaces and support for MOSA.

The conferees note the importance of policies in implementing MOSA to the fullest extent. Therefore, the conferees direct the Secretaries of the military departments to
submit a report to the congressional defense committee by March 15, 2020, that includes the implementation guidance required under section 2446b of title 10 and section 2446c of title 10.

Furthermore, the conferees note that MOSA should go beyond the ability to exchange information broadly through the adoption of standards. Therefore, the conferees direct the Secretaries of the military departments to include in their policy a description of the goals and anticipated benefits of MOSA, with respect to maintaining and enhancing competition across the life-cycle of systems and programs; enabling systems to be more easily upgraded over their lifetimes; more easily modifying or replacing components and modules without the risk of adversely affecting software or the functioning of other components and modules; achieving interoperability among a wide range of systems, and thereby enabling the creation of novel cross-domain and cross-service kill chains.