Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain is pursuing a proposal that would strip the Pentagon of its authority for acquiring new weapons and put power directly in the hands of the military branches,
Politico reported.
The plan is already incorporated into the National Defense Authorization Act that was approved by the committee last week. It would create a streamlined acquisition process aimed at dispatching weapons in just two to five years, a response to years of delays in weapons programs with huge cost overruns.
The bill would also prioritize contracts that place the burden of cost increases on the contractor, Politico said.
The move is expected to shake up the Pentagon and the extensive network of Beltway contractors.
"Any time you kind of start to rejigger the Pentagon's internal processes, that causes a lot of controversy inside the Pentagon," acquisition expert Andrew Hunter, at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told Politico. "The provisions they talk about — decentralizing, devolving more to the services — I think are likely to be very controversial."
The proposal also goes up against one put forward by McCain's Republican House counterpart, Rep. Mac Thornberry of Texas, which would only modify the existing structure, making a central Pentagon acquisition official in charge of overseeing new weapons.
The McCain plan would give the Army, Navy and Air Force power to manage their own acquisition programs for the first time since 1986, when authority became centralized.
"Decision authority for acquisition would reside in the service acquisition executive, who reports to the service secretary," an Armed Services committee aide said of the proposal, according to Politico.
The new powers, however, would put in place significant accountability checks. The services would have to pay a 3 percent fee for programs that experience cost overruns.
"The incentive is for the services not to overrun," an Armed Services aide said of the new plan, according to Politico. The aide said that, under the existing rules, cost overruns often simply result in more money being appropriated. "The incentive is for them to do things [to avoid cost increases] in the front end."
The plan is also meant to counteract what has become a much-criticized system in the Pentagon that often sees the development and deployment of major weapons take 15 years or more.
The new proposal will create a "streamlined acquisition and requirements approach" designed to field weapons quickly, Politico said.
"They do prototyping, they bring out Phase One and they test it, they use it, and then they go on to the next level," said a committee aide. "It's a spiral type of development."
Another aide said McCain believes such changes are "an urgent national security issue because if we don't do something to address the broken acquisition system, that system in and of itself could become the biggest threat to our military technological advantage," Politico reported.
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