Bolstering the role of service chiefs in acquisition would help make procurement more effective, the Army Chief of Staff told the House Armed Services Committee (HASC).
“I’d like to see an increased role for the service chiefs, which was significantly reduced in 1986 with Goldwater-Nichols,” Army Chief of Staff Gen. Ray Odierno told the committee hearing March 17 on the FY ’16 DoD budget.
The Goldwater-Nichols Act created the position of Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition Technology and Logistics. This came during a period of procurement scandals such as the $600 toilet seat. Before the Act, the services were responsible for procurement with the Pentagon mainly involved in science and technology.
Odierno said, “I think it’s important to have their (service chiefs’) experience as we’re going through this, with some authority. The number of people who can say no to our systems is significant.”
That means systems can take longer to reach the field.
The Army does have a lot of small programs, Odierno said.
“I would like to see the limit raised from $1 billion to $10 billion those (programs) that require specific DoD oversight,” he said. “In a program under $10 billion, I’d like to see the Army have the responsibility and have the accountability to ensure that those programs are capable.”
With that authority, processes could be accelerated, he said. Odierno was responding to Rep. Robert Wittman (R-Va.), who wanted to know about obstacles to acquisition authority.
Army Secretary John McHugh put some numbers behind the acquisition complexities, using the Paladin PIM howitzer program as an example.
“The milestone C decision was reached by the Army in October 2013,” McHugh said. “That one milestone required 3,185 pages of primary documentation and took 1,742 calendar days just to develop the documents and to get through the process. It took 1,800 days to approve it. Not all of that is bad. Some is necessary, but there’s overlap. But I think we could save a lot of time–which in acquisition means money–without giving up the kinds of assurances that all of us, I think, believe are really important.”
Marine Commandant Joseph Dunford associated himself with Odierno.
“Today we’re actually responsible for requirements and resources and not outcomes,” he said. “I think that’s where I’d zero in on–the service chiefs responsibility for outcomes as well.”
Vice Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Michelle Howard said, “besides simplification, there’s also a sense of agility to all of this, so as time unfolds and programs change and requirements change in terms of cost and scheduling and then what’s appropriate to keep, what’s appropriate to enhance, I think the service chiefs would appreciate an opportunity to have a voice in that process.”
Wittman said fixing and reforming acquisition and procurement to make it efficient was vital in today’s global environment.
Navy Secretary Ray Mabus held up a colorful and content-crammed chart for the committee, showing what it takes to procure a major weapon system. “It takes forever, it’s costly–the thing you could do for us is cut out a lot of this.”
Mabus said he thinks all the services agree that the current acquisition system of “requirement after requirement after requirement,” many of which don’t add anything to the end value of the weapon, needs to be radically pruned.
Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee Jones agreed with trying to streamline some of the requirements, reporting requirements and some of the processes.
“I know the tendency when things go wrong is to put more processes and more oversight in place, but actually again from a business perspective, the less in this case, the better, James said. “Trust people and hold them accountable when things go wrong.”