The Senate Armed Services Committee released the report for the FY2012 National Defense Authorization Act on Friday, and though it will take a while to get through all 348 pages of it, some items immediately caught our eye. As you may know, the defense authorization bill contains annual acquisition reforms which, due to the size and scope of the Defense Department, are frequently extended to other federal agencies. The bill is always worth perusing to see how Congress wrangles with an operation that buys more than $1 billion of goods and services every day, two thirds of all government purchases.

This year, the committee is particularly concerned about services contracting. DOD now spends more on services like IT and management support than goods: Weapons account for only 20 percent of spending. A House Armed Services panel last year found the services acquisition process “ad hoc,” and the House followed with the IMPROVE Acquisition Act, which claimed to potentially save taxpayers $153 billion—a very optimistic figure, as we pointed out . The Senate did not embrace the bill at the time, but it looks like they may have finally gotten the message.

On page 86 of the Senate bill report, the committee points out that DOD now spends over $150.0 billion a year on services contracts in its base budget—more than double the $72.0 billion spent on services a decade ago. The report quotes DOD acquisition chief Ashton Carter as saying “the low-hanging fruit really is [in contract services]. They have grown faster than everything else.” The committee slashes $1 billion from the military’s operation and maintenance account, the amount by which spending on services other than weapons maintenance has grown in the past year. Several pages later, the committee requests a GAO report on lack of competition in services contracting and instructs DOD to implement recommendations from the Defense Business Board, which found DOD’s services contracting process opaque and deficient in auditing and oversight.

There’s a lot more interesting stuff that we’ll track on our web site. We have also put together a primer on defense contracting that we hope to have on our site next week, so keep checking back.