The White House announced a key supply chain-focused nomination at the Pentagon Tuesday morning.
President Joe Biden tapped William LaPlante to serve as the next undersecretary for acquisition and sustainment at the Department of Defense, a position that has been vacant since Jan. 19, 2021, when Ellen Lord stepped down from the post.
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At the time, she suggested that not filling her vacancy would complicate supply chain issues wrought by the pandemic, but the position was just one of roughly a dozen vacant supply chain-focused roles at the Pentagon.
“Without someone in the office, there isn’t the guidance and perhaps the follow-up and the accountability that you might have if a political [appointee] was there,” Lord said in an interview. “That’s not an indictment at all of the civilian workforce — they’re great. However, just by the virtue of the governance and the organizational structure, there is only so much they can drive.”
“There are a lot of priorities in the [deputy secretary of defense’s] office, and it worries me that one human being, regardless of how great a staff they have in their front office, can only focus on so many things,” she continued. “The defense industrial base has a big challenge to do business, just given steady state, and I believe they really need someone in the [acquisition and sustainment] office who understands what’s going on inside of government, as well as how industry works.”
LaPlante serves as president and CEO of Draper Laboratory and was former President Barack Obama’s assistant secretary of the Air Force for acquisition, technology, and logistics, a Senate-confirmed position, for three years.
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White House officials noted that in his Obama administration role, LaPlante “forged a path forward on critical Air Force acquisition programs such as the B-21 long range strike bomber, while realizing nearly $6 billion in ‘should-cost’ savings in other Air Force programs.”
