The Department of Defense plans to brief lawmakers in the coming days on how it intends to implement a congressional mandate to split the undersecretary for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics (AT&L) into two separate positions, a senior Pentagon official said May 3.
“We just briefed [Defense] Secretary [Jim] Mattis on our initial plan to make the split,” Deputy Defense Secretary Bob Work told the Senate Appropriations Committee’s defense panel. “He has given us permission now to come forward. We will start to interact with Congress in both chambers and will tell them what we’re thinking.”
The fiscal year 2017 defense authorization act, which President Obama signed into law in December, directs DoD to replace the undersecretary for AT&L with an undersecretary for Research and Engineering and an undersecretary for Acquisition and Sustainment. The split is designed to increase DoD’s focus on innovation at a time when potential adversaries are quickly advancing their capabilities.
The research and engineering person will be DoD’s chief technology officer. That individual will “look across the entire portfolio and make sure that we have a coherent [science and technology] program and really focus a lot on rapid prototyping,” Work testified. “We’re going to start engaging with the Congress here within the next 10 days and saying how we intend to do this.”
Work said DoD expects to complete the split before the Feb. 1, 2018, deadline. “We’re excited about it,” he told the committee.
Also at the hearing, Work indicated that DoD is on track to complete a new national defense strategy review this fall. Responding to Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), who expressed concern about “defense gaps” in the Arctic, Work said the overall defense strategy will “inform” the department’s approach to the increasingly busy region.
Another witness, Steven Walker, acting director of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), noted that a DARPA program is developing sensors to monitor the Arctic above and below the ice. While that program is slated to end this year, the agency is looking at potential next steps, Walker testified.
On another topic, Work said DoD stood up an “algorithmic warfare cross-functional team” last month to look at how advances in automation can help the department more efficiently analyze the vast amounts of imagery it gathers from sensors.
Analysts today are “faced with the labor-intensive task of sifting through the sheer volume of data collected,” Work said. Providing those “analysts with advanced machine-learning tools will improve our ability to observe, orient and, when necessary, decide and act better and faster than our adversaries.”