10 U.S.C. § 3604 — Program to accelerate the procurement and fielding of innovative technologies

(a) Program .— Subject to the availability of appropriations, the Secretary of Defense must establish a competitive, merit-based program to speed up the buying and deployment of innovative technologies by— (1) reducing acquisition^* or life-cycle costs; (2) addressing technical risks; (3) improving the timeliness and thoroughness of test and evaluation results; and (4) rapidly putting these technologies into use to directly support defense missions. (b) Guidelines.— (1) In general .— The Secretary must issue guidelines for operating the program established under this section. (2) Contents .— At a minimum, the guidelines required under paragraph (1) must provide for the following: (A) The Department of Defense must issue one or more requests for proposals to support the program. The guidelines must give priority to technologies developed by "small business concerns," as defined under section 3 of the Small Business Act (15 U.S.C. 632), or by "nontraditional defense contractors," as defined under section 3014 of this title. This section does not define those terms. (B) Each fiscal year, the Department of Defense may issue no more than two requests for proposals under the program for innovative technologies from entities that, during the one-year period before the request was issued, did not perform contracts or subcontracts for the Department under which the Departmentu0027s total obligations to that entity during that period exceeded $400,000,000. (C) The guidelines must establish a process for— (i) the Secretary of Defense and each Secretary of a military department to review proposals submitted in response to a request for proposals issued under subparagraph (A); (ii) choosing, based on merit, the most promising proposals that are cost-effective; and (iii) buying the goods or services offered by such a proposal through contracts, cooperative agreements, "other transaction authority," or another appropriate process. This section does not define "other transaction authority." (c) Amount .— The total funding provided for any proposal selected for an award under the program must be at least $10,000,000 and no more than $50,000,000, unless the Secretary or the Secretaryu0027s designee approves a larger amount. (d) Data Collection.— (1) Plan required before implementation .— The Secretary of Defense may not provide funding under this section until the Secretary— (A) completes a plan for carrying out the data collection required under paragraph (2); and (B) submits the plan to the congressional defense committees^*. (2) Data collection required .— The Secretary of Defense must collect and analyze data about the program for the following purposes: (A) developing and sharing best practices for achieving the programu0027s objectives; (B) providing information about how the program is implemented and about related policy issues; and (C) reporting to the congressional defense committees as required under subsection (e). (e) Biannual Report .— Beginning after the date this section was enacted, the Secretary of Defense must submit a report about the program to the "congressional defense committees" no later than March 1 and September 1 of each year. This section does not define "congressional defense committees." (f) Congressional Notification .— The Secretary of Defense must notify the congressional defense committees within 30 days after funding is provided for a proposal selected for an award under the program. This section does not define "congressional defense committees."