New House Armed Services Committee (HASC) Chairman Mac Thornberry (R-Texas) laid out his agenda Tuesday morning at the American Enterprise Institute, saying that acquisition reform and saving important platforms, industrial base capabilities and military facilities from sequestration-related cuts would be top priorities for his first year in charge.
Thornberry began his policy speech by defending Congress’s right to go against the administration when it comes to deciding military spending and policy. Congress has always had a constitutional responsibility “to build a military capable of defending the country,” and sometimes that means saying no to the president’s and the military chiefs’ requests.
Citing the decision to begin refurbishing the Army’s M1 Abrams tanks now rather than waiting until 2019 as the Army requested, Thornberry said, “we made a judgment call. There’s one plant in the country left that makes tanks. The Army said that foreign sales would be able to keep that plant occupied until 2019 when they needed it to refurbish our own tanks. So the House and Senate appropriations committees, the House and Senate armed services committees went through all of their arguments and believe that their math doesn’t add up. So we decided to start upgrading our tanks earlier than the Army had planned to make sure that the plant stayed open, to make sure the trained workforce stayed engaged and tanks would get fielded sooner.”
The chairman added that world events proved Congress right: the Army sent 100 tanks to Europe last year in response to Russia invading Ukraine.
Thornberry made clear that Congress would not back down from its stances on forbidding the Defense Department from cutting the Global Hawk or U2 planes, allowing the aircraft carrier USS George Washington (CVN-73) to leave the fleet early, authorizing another round of Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) and more contentious issues they debated last year–which the Pentagon has said are likely to be included in the upcoming fiscal year 2016 budget request as well (Defense Daily, Nov. 19, 2014).
“I think those are some of the hardest issues we face and will face,” he said of the services wanting to cut platforms or facilities to absorb sequestration right now, while Congress wants to preserve those assets for long-term benefits. “I mentioned the tank example; what if we decided that it was just not worth the money to put into that plant because we didn’t really need it today, and it closed? We lose the capability, we’ve got to pay a lot more to reconstitute it, or else we’ve got to go buy it from foreign sources. And, unfortunately, we’re facing that sort of situation in a lot of different areas where we’ve got to decide whether to put money into something that we may not need right now just to preserve the capability of having it domestically. And I think those are going to present some of the most difficult decisions for us, for the country, going forward.”
Allowing for higher levels of defense spending is out of Thornberry’s jurisdiction, but spending available money as efficiently as possible is among his top priorities. Thornberry was tapped by his predecessor, retired Rep. Buck McKeon (R-Calif.), to begin working on acquisition reform more than a year ago, and the FY ’16 defense authorization bill will begin to show the fruits of his labor.
“In the spring I’ll probably put some proposals out there and ask for people’s feedback, and then the idea is maybe they would be incorporated into this year’s [National Defense Authorization Act]. But a really important point is, to me, there’s not going to be a 2,000-page bill that solves acquisition–it does not exist, nobody’s that smart. What we will do is first try to do no harm, secondly try to make some things a little better, and then next year try to make some more things better and the next year try to make some more things better, and keep after it, as I say, as long as I have this job.”
Thornberry said he has the right team in place to get this done. He has been working with Pentagon acquisition chief Frank Kendall since the inception of this effort. Kendall’s predecessor, Ashton Carter, is likely to be confirmed as the new defense secretary next month. And new chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), is just as passionate about reforming defense acquisition as Thornberry is.
“Secretary Kendall has been working with us to identify duplicative, overlapping regulations that either he can thin out or working together we can thin out,” the chairman said. “So that process is going well and is pretty far along. And then taking some additional steps will require us acting to change or repeal some laws. I don’t know how far we can go until we see what the market can bear–that’s part of the reason we’re not just going to throw out an acquisition package and try to get it through the committee in a short time.”
Thornberry said the process wouldn’t be quick or easy, but it was necessary to support the men and women who risk their lives to defend this country.
“This system is so gummed up it’s a wonder sometimes that anything ever comes out the other end,” Thornberry said of the current acquisition system. “But to have a military that’s both strong and agile, it means that we can’t tolerate the delays and cost-overruns that have plagued the procurement system.”