Debate over who should have more sway over acquisition policy is a “classic turf fight in Pentagon” between uniformed and civilian officials, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), chairman of the Senate Armed Service Committee (SASC), said June 2.
Pentagon acquisition officials to include top weapons buyer Frank Kendall have balked at giving service chief legal authority over acquisition decisions, which is included in SASC’s version of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) being mulled on Capitol Hill.
“There has got to be some responsibility with the leaders of our armed services and we are trying to put them back into that process,” McCain said at the American Action Forum think tank in Washington, D.C.. “We’re not eliminating AT&L, but what I believe you are seeing right now is the classic turf fight in the Pentagon.”
McCain said his goal is to put the service chiefs–the Chief of Naval Operations, the Commandant of the Marine Corps and the chiefs of staff of the Army and Air Force–back into the acquisition process to “create new mechanisms to accountability for results.”
McCain said that about a year ago, he asked Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Jonathan Greenert who was responsible for the USS Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier being over budget. Greenert’s reply, according to McCain, was “I don’t know.”
Kendall said May 19 during a speech to the Northern Virginia Technology Council that he doesn’t think the service chiefs “should be doing decisions about what kind of contract to use.”
“I don’t think they should making judgments necessarily about what kind of risk mitigation to do when it comes to the products.”
Asked how McCain would defend SASC’s bill to acquisition officials who have voiced concerns over the NDAA’s language that “establishes performance agreements with service chiefs” and “creates new incentives for the services to deliver programs on time and on budget,” he had a ready answer.
“I’d say to them that I’d be glad to provide a long list of programs and the cost overruns associated with those programs, the absolutely outrageous overruns and the failures completely of various programs over the last 10 years,” McCain said.
McCain specifically called out the Army’s Future Combat Systems–an ambitious plan to develop an networked fleet of both manned and unmanned combat vehicles that gobbled up $1 billion before being summarily canceled without producing a single program of record.
He then turned to the Ford, the first in a new class of aircraft carriers being built. The ship, being built by Huntington Ingalls Industries [HII], has experienced a $2.4 billion cost overrun, he said.
“That overrun is not finished yet,” he added. “It’s hard for me t go back to Arizona and argue for more defense spending when we waste $2.4 billion on one weapons system, as important and vital as the carrier may be.
“Anybody who believes in [acquisitions, technology and logistics] that the status quo is satisfactory, they are not reflecting the concerns of the taxpayers of America,” he added.