Congressman: JROC chief should OK weapon specs By John T. Bennett Defense News April 1, 2009 With Washington buzzing about shaking up the Pentagon's procurement process, Rep. Joseph Sestak, D-Pa., wants to give a single military official final say over weapon specs. Sestak, a former Navy vice admiral, floated April 1 the idea of making the chairman of the Joint Oversight Requirements Council (JROC) the gatekeeper for new weapon requirements. Created to ensure that new systems would fulfill combatant commanders' needs, the JROC is composed of uniformed vice chairmen of each military service. It is chaired by the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, currently Marine Corps Gen. James Cartwright. But members of the influential Defense Business Board and others say the council has not been the hard-nosed arbiter it was meant to be. Some former defense officials have said council members seem unwilling to ax proposals, fearing retribution down the road. Sestak floated the idea during the initial meeting of a seven-member panel on defense acquisition reform created in March by Reps. Ike Skelton, D-Mo., and John McHugh, R-N.Y., chairman and ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee. The panel will meet regularly to hear testimony about defense acquisition ailments and propose legislative remedies. Sestak pointed to the 1986 Goldwater-Nichols Act, a landmark law that strengthened the Joint Chiefs chairman, as an example of the kind of dramatic legislation that might be needed. "When the chairman walked into the room with the Joint Chiefs after Goldwater-Nichols, the chiefs stood," Sestak said. "Before, they didn't stand - they were a body of equals." "It might be time for a Goldwater-Nichols II" focused on Pentagon weapons buying, said Sestak, who earlier this decade headed the Navy's Deep Blue shop for then-Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Vern Clark. Several defense acquisition reform studies completed by think tanks and DoD study groups have called for overhauling the JROC's membership. Last October, the Business Board proposed that the military's combatant commanders handle the task of validating weapons requirements. A board study said those commanders are "in the best position to define joint capability requirements to ensure we remain within the enemy's decision cycle." The study said services' main job should be to organize, train and equip fighting units for the combatant commanders. Members of the House panel echoed one DBB recommendation, saying weapons purchases should be based on a joint requirement on what multiple combatant commanders need, not what services say they need. They also echoed the DBB's concern about the perception that military requirements writers and Pentagon purchasing and budgeting officials conduct their business in isolation from one another. Mike Sullivan, director of acquisitions and sourcing management at the Government Accountability Office, told the panel "there is jointness in operations but not in acquisitions." Bolstered CAIG? Rep. Mike Conaway, R-Texas, the special committee's ranking member, said program cost estimates compiled by the Cost Analysis Improvement Group (CAIG) are often ignored by service and DoD officials who decide whether to allow a program to continue. That was a key finding included in a March 30 GAO report on the state of major Pentagon acquisition programs. GAO concluded that actual program costs typically come in closer to the CAIG's estimates than those drawn up by the program office or sponsoring service. Sullivan proposed making the CAIG director "independent," similar to the charter of the Pentagon's director of defense research and engineering (DDR&E). David Ahern, director of portfolio systems acquisitions in the Pentagon acquisition chief's office, disagreed that a beefed-up DDR&E is needed. Instead, he said what is needed is to give the CAIG "better information" to inform its cost estimates. "What is needed is more information on products before product development," Ahern said. "Otherwise, the CAIG is using old data. ... To improve the CAIG estimates, we need to give them better information." 'Early Warning' SARs Rep. Rob Andrews, D-N.Y., chairman of the special panel, floated his own change, asking Sullivan to study the notion of creating "an early warning" tool about weapons program cost growth. Andrews' idea is to mimic the Selected Acquisition Reports (SARs), which the Pentagon must deliver to Congress each quarter to inform lawmakers that programs have exceeded cost projections by at least 15 percent or are delayed by at least six months. The problem with those reports, delivered annually and in quarterly updates, Andrews said, "is they do not begin until after milestone B." That is the point when Pentagon weapon programs typically move into the hardcore development phase - the point when, in Sullivan's words, "the Pentagon starts spending big money on a program." Andrews is toying with the idea of a new reporting requirement on program costs prior to milestone B. Such a mechanism, he said, would allow lawmakers to put the kibosh on new initiatives that they deem too costly before those programs reach the costly system development and production phases.   (Archives)