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Members of the House Armed Services Committee vowed Wednesday to continue pushing for major changes in the Pentagon's outdated and bureaucratic weapons-buying procedures as they consider the fiscal 2007 defense authorization bill.

During a hearing, lawmakers acknowledged that the committee's previous attempts at an overhaul had not stemmed the rising costs and schedule delays common to many of the military's most expensive programs. Armed Services Readiness Subcommittee Chairman Joel Hefley, R-Colo., said, "Year after year, we face the same problems: rampant cost growth, an unconstrained requirements process which delays fielding of new systems, and assurances from the Department of Defense that these problems will be corrected."

House Armed Services ranking member Ike Skelton, D-Mo., criticized the Pentagon's failure to recruit and train the "right mix" of acquisition officials, as well as the department's disregard for the "time-honored policies and practices" that led to developing successful programs in the past. "Our acquisition system has gotten seriously off track," he said.

Skelton estimated that the price tag for Pentagon's top five procurement programs grew 46 percent over the last four years. "The budget for procurement grew hardly at all," he added. "As a result, we buy less, and what we have keeps getting older."

The issue has percolated in recent years as Capitol Hill grappled with a major procurement scandal surrounding Air Force plans to lease a fleet of aerial refueling tankers from Boeing. Lawmakers have also become increasingly concerned about the military's ability to respond to emerging equipment needs in the field, as well as significant delays to weapons development programs.

"It is kind of smelling like the early 1980s," when the last comprehensive attempt at acquisition improvement was made, said Pierre Chao, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

The committee heard testimony from Chao and three other acquisition experts during the hearing, receiving recommendations on everything from restructuring the Pentagon's chief acquisition office to providing better training for program managers.

"The existing system, however flawed, has produced the most capable, best equipped and most effective military in the history of the world," said retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Ronald Kadish, who recently chaired a panel that assessed the department's acquisition practices. "We have met the effectiveness test in the past. Now we must adapt to a different security environment."

The Cold War acquisition system, he added, must become more flexible and agile to react to "more dynamic security environments and rapidly changing needs."

COMMENTS

• Congress continues to blame the DoD for spending far too much on weapons and states that they have tried to stem the flow. Bull! Congress -- just say no! Taxpayer Posted April 5, 2006 8:10 AM
• In typical fashion, a dissenter, a dissenter who does not even have the courage to use his or her own name, responds to a substantive charge of misuse of the federal hiring process to achieve near 100 percent levels of inbreeding with an attack on the person, including childish name-calling, instead of addressing the underlying substance of the charge. In any event, and irrespective of the shill and incessant whining of the dissenter, it is awfully hard to defend any organization that has a pattern and practice of routinely concocting sham recruitments, including purported external recruitments, that maintain outcomes whereby only and merely current or prior DoD staff are ever competitively (yeah, right) hired. And that de facto “we take care of our own (at the expense to the U.S. taxpayer)” adulteration of the merit systems principles is impossible to defend in a public institution. But it is this: The utter dregs of public administrative management! Michael J. Smith Posted April 4, 2006 11:07 AM
• Our leaders spend an obscene amount of money for weapons that are often not as reliable as, or any more effective than, the simpler weapons of our aggressors. We seem to win because we have more overpriced weapons than our enemies have cheap ones. But, wasting resources while our social programs go wanting is not exactly a winning situation. We may win the battle. But, we are losing the war. Other countries are raising their overall standard of living while our government makes excuses for a failing educational system, unaffordable health care and crime ridden cities. Does anyone really believe that Pentagon representatives wouldn't lie through their teeth to justify their programs? Robert M. Posted March 30, 2006 9:21 PM