By Jen DiMascio
The administration is considering the nomination of a Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) staff member to manage the Navy’s weapons-buying shop at a time when key shipbuilding and rotorcraft programs like the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) and the VH-71 presidential helicopter are recovering from mammoth cost overruns and schedule delays.
According to informed sources, Sean Stackley is the White House’s first choice to replace Delores Etter as the Navy’s assistant secretary for research, development and acquisition, who resigned at the end of last year and resumed her former job as a professor at the U.S. Naval Academy. The nomination is awaiting final concurrence, sources said.
Stackley graduated from the United States Naval Academy in 1979 and received a master’s degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1986, according to a Navy spokesman.
As a Navy captain, Stackley had a hand in several shipbuilding programs. He managed the LPD-17 program starting in 2001, a Northrop Grumman [NOC] employee publication reported in 2001. He also served as a test officer for the DDG-51 in Bath, Maine, the publication said.
Stackley retired from the service in 2005 after 25 years and has worked since on the Republican staff of SASC. That position is expected to give the lame-duck nomination an easy approval process.
Though the administration has less than a year in office, the Navy continues to juggle a number of struggling acquisition programs including the LCS, the LPD-17, the VH-71 and the Marine Corps Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle.