Abstract : For nearly 60 years, the Department of Defense (DoD) has been engaged in a continuous process of self-assessment to identify and improve the way it acquires weapons systems. Frequent major acquisition reform initiatives have responded to concerns that acquisition costs are too high, that DoD is buying the wrong things, or that the process is too slow. The need to review the process and to institute change has become very obvious to the acquisition community. The House and Senate Fiscal Year 2006 Defense Authorization Committee Reports addressed concerns about the ability of DoD's Acquisition System to develop and deliver required capabilities when needed and at predictable costs. The reports further stated that addressing symptoms one program or one process at a time is unlikely to result in substantial improvement. Both Congress and DoD senior leadership have lost confidence in the capability of the Acquisition System to determine what needs to be procured, or to predict with any degree of accuracy what things will cost, when they will be delivered, or how they will perform. On June 7, 2005, then Acting Deputy Secretary of Defense Gordon England authorized a sweeping and integrated assessment to consider every aspect of acquisition, giving rise to the Defense Acquisition Performance Assessment Project. The centerpiece of this project is a panel governed by the tenets of the Federal Advisory Committee Act of 1972 (Public Law 92-463). The panel concluded that the problems are deeply imbedded in many of the acquisition management processes that are used in the DoD and not just the traditional procurement processes. DoD needs a radical approach to improvements in its Acquisition System, and it needs to adapt these improvements to the new security environment of the 21st century. The panel's acquisition performance assessment process and conclusions are outlined in this report.