Former Pentagon officials offer advice on acquisition reform

Four veterans of attempts to fix the Pentagon's chronically troubled acquisition process Thursday generally endorsed reform efforts but warned the House Armed Services Committee that the challenges were immense.

David Berteau, who has been involved in acquisition reform efforts for decades, both inside the Pentagon and on outside commissions and studies, said the political climate on defense procurement "is as poisonous as I've seen it in 30 years."

Berteau agreed with the main thrust of a bill introduced by the committee's bipartisan leadership, noting that it echoed previous proposals, beginning with the David Packard commission in the 1980s. "If these are such good ideas," he cautioned, "why are they so hard to implement?"

"There is substantial agreement that it is time to do something," Berteau said, but he warned that the expected drop in defense spending would make acquisition reform even more difficult.

The bill's focus on imposing more rigorous cost assessment, technology maturity and requirement restraint early in a weapon program's development also garnered support from Rudy de Leon and David Chu, both former top Pentagon officials, and Paul Francis, Government Accountability Office's top acquisition analyst.

The four witnesses offered different ideas on the most effective way to limit cost overruns, missed schedules and technology flaws. But all agreed that the Pentagon must rebuild a cadre of experienced acquisition professionals, get cost estimates independent of the project's sponsors, stop the constant changes in requirements and ensure that the technology and cost are reasonable before moving toward production.

De Leon, a former deputy defense secretary, advocated giving the four service chiefs more say in weapons programs, which was restricted by the Goldwater-Nichols defense reform act. Chu, a former assistant secretary, said program budgets should be set at the "most likely cost," to prevent chronic underbidding, and should be procured at the most efficient rate, instead of being stretched out, which adds to unit cost. Francis noted that the current acquisition process results in the military buying half as many some systems as planned because of cost increases and urged tougher controls to prevent programs to advance before the technology is ready and the total cost is understood. Defense procurement officials, he said, "are not very good at saying 'no' when no is necessary."

The bill introduced by House Armed Services Committee Chairman Ike Skelton, D-Mo., and ranking member John McHugh, R-N.Y., would create an independent cost estimator, require what Skelton called "intensive care for sick programs," and focus greater discipline on programs before they reach the "Milestone B" production decision, at which point 75 percent of a program's cost is fixed. A somewhat different reform bill was introduced by Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin, D-Mich., and ranking member John McCain, R-Ariz. House Budget Committee Chairman John Spratt, D-S.C., and House Armed Services Strategic Forces Subcommittee Chairwoman Ellen Tauscher, D-Calif., introduced a House version.