Pentagon backs off acquisition approach for missile defense

HUNTSVILLE, Ala.-A White House-backed "new model" for acquisitions is posing problems for U.S. missile defense development and complicating congressional support for missile defense, a top Defense Department acquisition official said Tuesday.

As a result, said Kent Stansberry, "For the time being, we're going to set aside our [new] acquisition model." Stansberry is deputy director for defense systems in the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics.

The new approach, which involves assigning responsibility for different aspects of the missile defense program to different agencies, "gives rise to a number of problems," Stansberry said at the Space and Missile Defense Conference here.

In an approach championed in recent years by President Bush and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, the Missile Defense Agency is to have responsibility for research, development, testing and evaluation of missile defense technology, while the various armed services would be responsible for deploying and operating the final missile defense systems.

"Moving things from MDA into a service" in this way, though, means giving the service responsibility for systems it did not develop or test, Stansberry said. Ideally, he said, programs would experience a "birth-to-death" shepherding by a single agency through all stages of their existence.

"This is an area that has been an increasing challenge, a challenge to take our theory of the acquisition process and put it into practice," said Stansberry.

So far, the model of migration from the Missile Defense Agency to a service applies only to one example, the combining of the Patriot Advanced Capability-3 and the Medium Extended Air Defense System programs, which is being taken over by the Army. Stansberry said the move has fed congressional confusion about, and opposition to, the new model, with various congressional authorization and appropriations measures calling for responsibilities to be divvied up in a host of different ways.

Meanwhile, the United States is planning to deploy a number of elements in coming months that will serve both operational and testing purposes, a situation that further complicates implementation of the new acquisitions model.

Among other problems in missile defense acquisitions, Stansberry cited increasing technical complexity as the Defense Department tries "to integrate things in a scope and depth that are unprecedented," as well as an uncertain and shifting threat landscape.

He also blamed "political baggage" for slowing the process, saying "there were hardly any neutral people on the subject" during the Cold War, and that much current opposition to missile defense stems from that period.

"People begin to believe shortsighted views about limitations and restrictions, and they get repeated so often that they become conventional wisdom. … I see it diminishing every day, but it is still a part of the landscape that we have to deal with," he said.