By Marina Malenic
The Defense Department’s top acquisition official said this week that he plans to issue 16 guidelines this fall aimed at implementing the department’s strategy to cut waste and overhead in the Pentagon’s bloated system.
“I will issue guidance based upon consultations with industry in those 16 areas” in early September, said Ashton Carter, the undersecretary of defense for acquisition, technology and logistics. Carter was speaking to U.S.-based reporters at the Farnborough Airshow on July 19.
“I’ll be expecting our program managers…to be reporting to me on how they are implementing that guidance,” he added.
Defense officials said last month that the military services will each have to identify $2 billion in annual overhead and “lower-priority” programs in their five-year spending blueprints. The department is ultimately looking to divert $100 billion to current forces and modernization priorities. The armed services, Pentagon agencies and combatant commands are expected to submit cut proposals by the end of this month (Defense Daily, June 7).
Carter recently told reporters he is initiating a review of Pentagon acquisition and contracting, which will be run by a “value task force.” The review is expected to wrap up at the end of the summer and will culminate with the new guidance in September on purchasing practices.
The plan is also expected to provide the Pentagon’s contractors with expectations on cost savings Defense Secretary Robert Gates began discussing in May. During a speech at the Eisenhower Library in Abilene, Kan., Gates said that the “gusher” of defense spending opened at the outset of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan “has been turned off, and will stay off for a good period of time” (Defense Daily, May 11).
Carter said this week that the department plans to pursue more fixed-price contracts, restore affordability to programs that are consistently over budget and make affordability a top requirement for all new-start programs.
He listed several new programs that are expected to feature the affordability requirement at the outset of their development: the Navy’s Ohio-class submarine replacement effort; the Navy’s presidential helicopter replacement program; the follow-on program to the Air Force’s now-defunct next-generation bomber program; and the Army’s Ground Combat Vehicle program.