The Defense Department’s chief weapons buyer on Tuesday urged Congress and uniformed military officials to rein in their acquisition reform offensive, insisting that slow, consistent change is better than a revolutionary shift in how the Pentagon spends money.
Frank Kendall, undersecretary of defense for acquisition, technology and logistics hit back at lawmakers and military service chiefs that have attempted to wrest some spending decision-making power from his office. Service chiefs were given a greater role in acquisition under the 2016 National Defense Authorization Act while the congressional defense committees this year are proposing more sweeping changes.
Kendall on Tuesday at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, ran through explanations of his successive Better Buying Power initiatives that have culminated in the current BBP 3.0, which he described as “evolutionary,” gradual steps toward acquisition reform. Kendall considers himself an evolutionary rather than a revolutionary leader, because “continuous change on the margins is the right way to gain ground.”
“If you do that long enough and consistently enough, you have done a revolution,” he said.
Attempts at dramatically overhauling defense acquisition have met with failure in the past and Kendall said the current cycle is unnerving through the lens of history. The course of such a complex and unique system as U.S. defense acquisition cannot be corrected by a single law, he said.
“I feel that Congress, which keeps trying to do acquisition reform cycle after cycle, has some very fundamental limitations on the tool of legislation, on what you can accomplish with that tool,” Kendall said. “It’s very hard to make people better managers and leaders, which is really what we need, or better engineers and scientists, by writing a law.”
Kendall said he worked closely with House Armed Services Committee Chairman Mac Thornberry (R-Texas) on the committee’s version of the 2017 National Defense Authorization Act that includes several provisions on weapon-buying reform.
“The original version of it was very rigid in some of its prescriptions and I’m delighted to say that he listened to my comments…and gave us more flexibility that the original bill had,” Kendall said. “You have to have flexibility. Rigid rules always end up being the wrong thing to do in certain situations. Our world is just too complicated.”
Kendall’s reservations about the draft NDAA were chiefly about requiring future weapon systems to be designed with modular, open systems architecture (MOSA). Kendall’s BBP 3.0 emphasizes the importance of MOSA in some systems, but does not require it as some programs better incorporate MOSA than others, he said.
“I’m OK with the guidance as a general practice, but there are some designs where you just don’t have the freedom,” he said.
Regarding the Senate’s version of the NDAA, which is being marked up behind closed doors on Capitol Hill, Kendall would only say he and his staff were awaiting the outcome. It was against Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain (R.-Ariz) that Kendall fought to keep acquisition milestone authority out of the hands of service chiefs.
Of the four chiefs, Army Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Milley has most enthusiastically taken up the mantle of acquisition official. Kendall struck back at Milley, who has publicly mocked certain acquisition restrictions that call for excessive testing and bureaucracy.
“He has asked for some authorities in this report to Congress that go further than I feel comfortable with,” Kendall said of Milley.
Kendall said he welcomes input from service chiefs to generate requirements for new technologies and to provide performance reviews throughout the process. “This is an area where we’re happy with their increased involvement,” he said.
He objects to the service chiefs taking over acquisition in part because they do not have technical backgrounds to oversee specific aspects of engineering and development programs. While operational experience is valuable on the requirements side, it does not make generals into engineers in most cases, Kendall said.
“An operational background is helpful. A technical background is critical,” he said. “Engineers should run development programs because you can’t supervise engineering if you aren’t one,” he said. “You can’t supervise brain surgery if you are not a surgeon. You can’t supervise trial lawyer if you are not a lawyer…If you are supervising a defense acquisition system, you really ought to have a technical background.”