Lawmaker seeks to set up Defense-industry procurement board

House Armed Services Chairman Ike Skelton, D-Mo., hopes to use the fiscal 2008 defense authorization bill to jumpstart a formal dialogue between government, military and defense industry officials on responding more rapidly to urgent battlefield needs.

As he prepares to mark up the sprawling annual defense bill next month, Skelton is hammering out the specifics on a provision that would create a Defense Readiness Production Board that would identify critical shortfalls in military equipment and streamline the purchase of needed gear.

The details on the board -- including its membership and its specific goals -- have not been finalized, a Skelton spokeswoman said Monday.

But the board would "definitely" review how to better take advantage of the country's industrial capacity, mobilize government and industry officials to resolve mounting readiness problems faster and identify future areas of concern, the spokeswoman said.

Skelton, who has long been concerned about the wear and tear of current operations in Iraq and Afghanistan on U.S. military forces, first publicly discussed creating the board during a speech last week at Westminster College in Fulton, Mo.

"Congress needs to put money [in] to fix and refill the stocks of equipment," Skelton said. "But we also need to mobilize this nation and its industrial base to make more capacity for repair and rebuilding available faster."

Doing so, he added, would require a "cross-cutting" board to come up with new approaches to solving an equipment deficit that has devastated the military's heavily used ground forces in particular.

"Bold action is needed, but American patriotism and ingenuity are equal to the task," Skelton said. "We must mobilize both to ensure that our military is reset to a place where it can confidently respond to any situation at low risk to those who serve."

Jeff Green, a former Republican committee aide who now manages his own lobbying firm, has been following development of the initiative and emphasized that the details still are being worked out. But the board ultimately could review how the Defense Department manages its equipment requirements, leverages industry to increase production and clears up logjams in the weapons-buying process to speed up the delivery of new gear, he said.

The board, Green added, also could investigate whether the Pentagon is reviewing the challenge of equipping the troops "holistically" to create a more efficient procurement process.

Skelton is now taking the lead on the issue, though his spokeswoman said the effort would likely gain bipartisan support. The goal is to set up the board as soon as possible.

"With the situation being as dire as it is right now, the sooner the better," the spokeswoman said.