Decision Intelligence

Graduate School of Defense Management at the Naval Postgraduate School.

E: arp@nps.edu www.acquisitionresearch.net Copies of Symposium Proceedings and Presentations; and Acquisition Sponsored Faculty and

Innovation Repository at https://dair.nps.edu/.

Contracting Officer and acquisition innovator. He holds multiple advanced degrees, including two MBAs, a master’s degree in Strategic Purchasing, and a master’s degree in Project Management, and is DAWIA III Contracting certified. A published author and speaker, Ryan created the Challenge-Based Acquisition Handbook and taught innovative acquisition approaches to 800+ professionals across government, industry, and MITRE. He has led strategic programs like iCAMS, held an unlimited CO warrant, and completed executive programs at Oxford and Yale. As MITRE’s Acquisition Innovation Center Lead for AI in Acquisition, he drives AI strategies, tools, and prototypes to transform federal procurement under the ACQAIRE Portfolio. [rnovak@mitre.org] Adam Bouffard—is a Group Leader and Principal Decision Analyst for MITRE. He has over 20 years of experience in acquisition and contracts supporting multiple DOW and Civilian Government Agencies.

Office of Naval Research. He has a master’s degree in Systems Engineering from George Washington University and has multiple contracts certifications. [abouffard@mitre.org] Wilson Miles—is an Associate Research Fellow at ETI. Miles’s research and analysis portfolio focuses on emerging technology supply chains, acquisition policy, artificial intelligence, workforce issues, and other modernization technology policy issues. Miles previously held internships at multiple nonprofit organizations including CRDF Global, the Hudson Institute, and the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. He received his master’s degree in International Affairs: U.S. Foreign Policy and National Security from American University’s School of International Service and his bachelor’s degree in International Relations from Linfield University. [wmiles@ndia.org] Stephen W. Roe—is a Managing Director at MITRE, leading Veterans and Military Health Modernization and supporting VA, VACO, and VHA since 2020. With over 20 years of experience driving cross-agency innovation, he has delivered measurable outcomes across healthcare, acquisition reform, and data-driven policy. His achievements include the Whole Health Recognition Framework (2+ million Veterans), PolicyNet (40% reduction, $55 million savings), and GenHub (2,000+ studies, 1,500 publications). He has shaped major VA priorities such as the PACT Act, EHR modernization, and community care reform, impacting $100+ billion in procurement while advancing AI-enabled patient safety and connected care. He holds degrees from Virginia Tech, Johns Hopkins, and UVA Darden. [sroe@mitre.org]

sound defense acquisition. Yet within the Department of War's warfighting acquisition workforce, it has become a compliance exercise rather than a decision-making instrument. Administrative burdens consume the time acquisition professionals should spend analyzing market signals, refining requirements, and shaping acquisition strategy.

lifecycle, from RFI analysis and open-source aggregation to multi-source synthesis and report generation. Drawing on subject matter expert interviews and industry demonstrations during a webinar co-hosted by NDIA ETI and MITRE, the paper identifies structural weaknesses in current market research practices, including fragmented data ecosystems, workforce time constraints, and limited analytical tooling. It then presents case studies illustrating how AI can compress analytical timelines, improve defensibility, and elevate strategic reasoning while preserving human oversight.

frameworks, data-sharing arrangements, outcome-based metrics, sandbox experimentation, and standardized analytical prompts. Responsible adoption requires explainability, audit traceability,

and human validation at every stage. The goal is not automated procurement, but analytics- enabled decision intelligence that equips acquisition professionals to make faster, better- informed, and more defensible acquisition decisions.

The Department of War (DOW) operates in an acquisition environment defined by technological complexity, legal scrutiny, and a rapidly evolving commercial market and industrial base. The foundation of every comprehensive acquisition strategy hinges on a fundamental prerequisite: market research. Yet, despite its statutory importance, market research has often been treated as a compliance obligation rather than the strategic instrument it is designed to be.

market can provide, including products, services, market capabilities, pricing, and contract vehicles, to choose the smartest path toward a contract. Using AI can enable contracting officers to better understand the landscape, including the identification of capabilities and offerings across a broad and fragmented market. The ideal outcome of AI-enhanced market research is one that promotes competition, delivers results that ensure competitive pricing and innovation, mitigates risks to reduce cost overruns, and can potentially accelerate time to capability fielding. AI allows acquisition teams to move from information gathering to decision- making faster, compressing timelines and enabling earlier alignment of requirements, acquisition strategies, and available solutions.

the warfighting acquisition workforce (WAW). This helps, as historical challenges within the warfighting WAW combined with recent DOW workforce reductions are likely to continue to strain an already overburdened workforce. Moreover, in many acquisition efforts, the documentation becomes the focus rather than the insight. Acquisition teams spend substantial time assembling screenshots, summaries, and regulatory language. This often leads to insufficient time analyzing what the market data actually means. Traditional RFIs and industry days frequently produce predictable, compliance-oriented responses. If acquisition teams want genuinely useful market signals, they must create engagement environments that incentivize candor over compliance. When market research is reduced to “a paperwork exercise,” it loses its strategic value. It becomes backward-looking, generic, and disconnected from technical and acquisition decisions. That repetitive approach not only weakens the acquisition strategy but also increases protest vulnerability due to thin analytic lineage.