The service chiefs should have more authority in the acquisition process to better manage the defining of requirements and to speed up the fielding of high priority systems, the top Navy and Marine Corps officers say.
Chief of Naval Operaitons Adm. Jonathan Greenert and Marine Commandant Gen. James Amos said at the Navy League’s Sea Air Space exposition yesterday that there are too many people involved in determining requirements, resulting in the slower development of systems.
“There are too many people touching requirements that ultimately are not accountable for it,” Greenert said at the event just outside Washington.
“I, as a service chief, would like to have more authority and more accountability in the acquisition system,” he said.
Amos called the acquisition process “constipated,” and noted that Congress appropriates money to the services–not to the program managers.
“It’s our money. These are our programs,” he said. “The service chiefs need to get back in…to bring down this requirements growth, bring down all the different things we are being told we have to do or the testing we have to have.”
Greenert also added that in an era of fiscal austerity and as continuing spending resolutions constantly loom, the service needs more flexibility to reprogram accounts.
“We need to be able to program and reprogram quickly,” he said.