OTAs have been around since the beginnings of NASA and the Advanced Research Project Agency. But it is the 2016 defense policy bill that allowed the widespread adoption of OTAs.
The proliferation of OTAs allowed the Defense Department and other agencies to buy products and services outside of the constraints of the cumbersome and lengthy Federal Acquisition Regulations, or FAR. After the passage of the 2016 defense legislation, the DoD started using OTAs to not just buy prototypes, but to move from prototype into production. More
