By Emelie Rutherford

The top U.S. military officer told lawmakers additional reforms to Pentagon weapons-development processes are being considered, and called for a requirements-setting board to focus more on combatant commanders’ needs.

Adm. Michael Mullen appears poised to be quickly approved by Congress for another stint as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff after his uncontroversial reappointment hearing yesterday before the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC).

Mullen, in written responses to advance-policy questions from the panel, applauded the Weapon Systems Acquisition Reform Act of 2009, which President Obama signed into law on May 22. Still, Mullen said “the list of problems” with the weapons-acquisition process “remains long” and includes requirements creep, unrealistically low cost estimates, and the adoption of unproven high-tech solutions.

The Joint Capabilities Integration and Development System (JCIDS) for crafting defense programs’ requirements across the military services “is much too complex and needs to be revised,” he wrote.

DoD is “reviewing a realignment” of the roles the chairman and vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff play in requirements determination to “best manage requirements in the future, and to better balance the inputs of all stakeholders,” he said.

The vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff chairs the all-powerful Joint Requirements Oversight Council (JROC) that validates requirements for weapons systems.

Asked his assessment of the “effectiveness” of the JROC in Pentagon acquisition process, Mullen replied in writing the “results of our acquisition systems speak for themselves.”

“A more credible and more empowered JROC can help control requirements growth and certify systems which fail Nunn-McCurdy requirements” for controlling systems’ cost growth, he wrote. “We must better involve all with a stake in determining the necessary tradeoffs between cost, schedule and performance.”

The JROC, he said, should “place more priority on focusing on Combatant Commander needs, carefully managing the requirements of systems in development, and ensuring new systems have adequate requirements definition and trade space.”

He called for increasing the “authority, responsibility, and accountability” of uniformed military exercises over the requirements-determining process, and the participation of uniformed military members through the entire acquisition lifecycle. He also highlighted in writing the need for stronger oversight of defense contractors and a “deeper understanding” of the incentives in different contract types.

SASC Ranking Member John McCain (R-Ariz.) said yesterday during the hearing that the new acquisition-reform law he helped author was intended to bring about more fixed-priced contracts. The law doesn’t specifically require them.

“We have a long way to go” to improve the defense acquisition process, McCain said.

Mullen told the SASC he is “very supportive” of programmatic changes in the Pentagon’s FY ’10 budget proposal, and called the new acquisition-reform law “very powerful.”

“Now we need to get at that, we need to execute it, we need to make hard decisions,” Mullen said. “I don’t need the 100 percent solution each and every time that I’m developing something. I need some high-end stuff, there’s no question about that, and it’s very expensive.”

Lawmakers didn’t delve far into Pentagon procurement questions during the hearing dominated by talk of U.S. troops in Afghanistan.

In the advance-policy questions, Mullen said he supports the Army’s efforts to field a new ground-combat vehicle, as part of a nascent effort, in five to seven years. He said this timeline, considered aggressive by some observers, is “reasonable” and will allow the inclusion of lessons from the current fight.

He said the Joint Staff is supporting the Army’s evaluation of requirements for a new ground-combat vehicle and a new Brigade Combat Team modernization strategy, and the service plans to “outline its requirements way ahead” to the JROC this fall.

On missile defense, Mullen wrote he agrees there are a number of possible options for a setup in Europe, including using land-and-sea based Standard Missile-3 interceptors accompanied with necessary sensors and ground-and-space warning.

He said he sees benefits in exploring cooperative missile-defense opportunities with Russia, and spoke favorably about using the Russian Garbarla radar in Azerbaijan and the Armavir radar in southern Russia.