Total Package Procurement (TPP or alternatively TPPC) was a major systems acquisition policy introduced in the

United States Department of Defense The United States Department of Defense (DoD, USDOD or DOD) is an executive branch department of the federal government charged with coordinating and supervising all agencies and functions of the government directly related to national secu ...

in the mid-1960s by

Secretary of Defense A defence minister or minister of defence is a cabinet official position in charge of a ministry of defense, which regulates the armed forces in sovereign states. The role of a defence minister varies considerably from country to country; in som ...

Robert MacNamara Robert Strange McNamara (; June 9, 1916 – July 6, 2009) was an American business executive and the eighth United States Secretary of Defense, serving from 1961 to 1968 under Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson. He remains the lo ...

. It was conceived by

Assistant Secretary of Defense Assistant Secretary of Defense is a title used for many high-level executive positions in the Office of the Secretary of Defense within the U.S. Department of Defense. The Assistant Secretary of Defense title is junior to Under Secretary of Defens ...

for Installations and Logistics, Robert H. Charles. TPP involves combining as a single package for the procurement a number of related requirements including the design, development, production and support of major systems. This concept was a "pendulum reaction" to the prior cost reimbursement policies in major weapon systems. Total Package Procurement was not successful and was abandoned shortly after MacNamara left office.

Description

TPP is a method of procuring at the outset of the acquisition phase under a single contract containing price, performance and schedule commitments, the maximum practical amount of design, development, production and support needed to introduce and sustain a system or component in the inventory. The purpose of TPP was to procure under the influence of competition as much of the total design, development, production and support requirements for a system or component as may be practicable thereby: * Providing firmer 5-year force structure program package planning information concerning performance cost and schedules. * Discouraging contractors from buying in on the design and development effort with the intention of recovering on the subsequent production program. * Permitting program decision and source selection based on binding performance price and schedule commitments by contractors for the total program or major part of it. * Providing a firmer basis for projecting total acquisition and operational costs for use in source selection and in the determination of appropriate contractual incentives. * Motivating contractors to design initially for economical production and support of operational hardware which may not receive sufficient emphasis in the absence of productions commitments. * Requiring contractors to assume more responsibility for program success thereby permitting the Government to monitor programs more in terms of surveillance and less in terms of detailed management.

Results

Total Package Procurement did not succeed. The unique complexity of shipbuilding made Total Package Procurement particularly inappropriate for these programs. Notable programs that encountered major problems with the TPP approach were the Air Force's

Lockheed C-5 Galaxy The Lockheed C-5 Galaxy is a large military transport aircraft designed and built by Lockheed, and now maintained and upgraded by its successor, Lockheed Martin. It provides the United States Air Force (USAF) with a heavy intercontinental-rang ...

and

AGM-69 SRAM The Boeing AGM-69 SRAM (Short-Range Attack Missile) was a nuclear weapon, nuclear air-to-surface missile. It had a range of up to , and was intended to allow US Air Force strategic bombers to penetrate Soviet airspace by neutralizing surface-t ...

, the Army's

Lockheed AH-56 Cheyenne The Lockheed AH-56 Cheyenne was an attack helicopter developed by Lockheed for the United States Army. It rose from the Army's Advanced Aerial Fire Support System (AAFSS) program to field the service's first dedicated attack helicopter. Lock ...

, the

Tarawa-class amphibious assault ship The ''Tarawa'' class is a ship class of Landing Helicopter Assault (LHA) type amphibious assault ships operated by the United States Navy (USN). Five ships were built by Ingalls Shipbuilding between 1971 and 1980; another four ships were planne ...

s (LHA), and the

Spruance-class destroyer The ''Spruance''-class destroyer was developed by the United States to replace the many World War II–built - and s, and was the primary destroyer built for the U.S. Navy during the 1970s and 1980s. It was named in honor of United States Navy A ...

Elimination

Upon taking office as

Deputy Secretary of Defense The deputy secretary of defense (acronym: DepSecDef) is a statutory office () and the second-highest-ranking official in the Department of Defense of the United States of America. The deputy secretary is the principal civilian deputy to the se ...

in 1970,

David Packard David Packard ( ; September 7, 1912 – March 26, 1996) was an American electrical engineer and co-founder, with Bill Hewlett, of Hewlett-Packard (1939), serving as president (1947–64), CEO (1964–68), and chairman of the board (1964–6 ...

issued a May 28, 1970 memorandum that contained a number of major reforms designed to address "the real mess we have on our hands." A key reform was elimination of TPP except in rare situations.

References

{{reflist Procurement United States defense procurement United States Department of Defense