By Emelie Rutherford
The House Armed Services Committee (HASC) will not support the Pentagon’s proposed efficiency initiatives until the defense secretary shares more data with the panel, Chairman Ike Skelton (D-Mo.) recently told Defense Secretary Robert Gates.
Skelton stopped short of subpoenaing Gates for the data behind his proposal to close U.S. Joint Forces Command (JFCOM), as a bipartisan group of 37 House members from Virginia and beyond asked HASC leaders to do (Defense Daily, Oct. 7).
Gates proposed closing JFCOM when he unveiled a raft of efficiency reforms for the Pentagon on Aug. 9. Obama has not yet agreed with Gates’ proposals, which both the HASC and Senate Armed Services Committee scrutinized in recent weeks.
Skelton said, in an Oct. 7 letter to Gates that the HASC released to the press yesterday, that his panel will not support requests for funding and legislative authority to implement the efficiency proposals, including those to disestablish the Pentagon’s Business Transformation Agency and Office of Network and Information Integration, until the Pentagon shares more documentation of the rationale behind them.
Skelton said while the HASC received some information from the Pentagon, “notably absent from the package provided to the committee was any analysis justifying the decision to disestablish the U.S. Joint Forces Command, the Business Transformation Agency, and the Office of Network and Information Integration, or any guidance specific to the disestablishment of such organizations.”
“The (Defense) Department also has not provided the committee with information about the existence and availability of such guidance and analysis,” Skelton wrote.
The HASC received “from sources outside of the Department of Defense” a Sept. 1 memo to senior Pentagon officials about a Joint Forces Command Disestablishment Working Group, he said in the letter.
“Needless to say, the committee is deeply disappointed that it had to obtain this document from sources outside the Department. Furthermore, over the course of the (HASC’s Sept. 29) hearing, it became clear that much of the information the committee requested is still being formulated, such as: the business case analysis for the disestablishment of the U.S. Joint Forces Command and the designation of a successor organization for the mission of developing joint operating concepts, writing joint doctrine, and performing joint experimentation.”
A similar review regarding the Business Transformation Agency and the Office of Network and Information Integration is “also lacking,” Skelton said. Thus, the HASC does not know what additional information related to its request to the Pentagon has not been shared, he said.
“It is important to note that a number of elements of the efficiency initiative will require changes to statute, the creation of or modification of legal authorities, and funding,” the HASC chairman concluded. “The committee will be unable to support any request for legislation or funding resulting from the efficiency initiative until the committee’s requests for information have been satisfied.”