Commonality in Military Equipment

A Framework to Improve Acquisition Decisions

Thomas Held, Bruce Newsome, Matthew W. Lewis

ResearchPublished Nov 23, 2008

Increasingly, the U.S. Army and the Department of Defense as a whole are developing families of systems built around common components. To inform the Army's decisionmaking process surrounding commonality, RAND Arroyo Center was asked to assess the advantages and disadvantages of commonality and how to best manage their trade-offs. To do so, this report uses historical analysis, literature analyses, and case studies of commercial and military efforts to exploit commonality. It presents analyses of the effects of commonality on costs, capabilities, and training and offers a decisionmaking aid that designers, developers, and procurers, in particular, could use to inform their decisions about commonality. It concludes with recommendations for the Army.

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Document Details

  • Copyright: RAND Corporation
  • Availability: Web Only
  • Year: 2008
  • Pages: 92
  • Document Number: MG-719-A

Citation

Chicago Manual of Style

Held, Thomas, Bruce Newsome, and Matthew W. Lewis, Commonality in Military Equipment: A Framework to Improve Acquisition Decisions. Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2008. https://www.rand.org/pubs/monographs/MG719.html.
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The research described in this report was sponsored by the United States Army and conducted by the RAND Arroyo Center.

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