The top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee plans to oppose a bill introduced by the Republican chairman that would encourage businesses to work with the Pentagon and speed up weapons purchases.
Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash., will not sponsor the legislation introduced Tuesday by Rep. Mac Thornberry, R-Texas, over concerns that it would actually increase bureaucracy and drive companies away from the defense business.
“While I agree with Chairman Thornberry’s reform intentions, I chose to not cosponsor his stand-alone bill this year based on specific concerns I have with the legislation,” Smith said in a statement to the Washington Examiner. “I favor less micromanagement of DOD requirements, less bureaucracy, and more flexibility for DoD and military service leaders to make acquisition decisions.”
Thornberry’s proposal seeks to enable quicker technology updates through “open architecture,” which allows up-to-date parts to be swapped in quickly for aging components on weapons or other machinery.
“Hopefully that increases competition, it increases access to small- and medium-sized businesses and I’ll even go so far as to say I hope it reduces protests,” Thornberry said during a Tuesday event at the Brookings Institution. “When you’ve got a chance to upgrade and be a part of a component, you’re not missing out on an opportunity for the next 10 or 20 years.”
The minority argues that putting a one-size-fits-all mandate into law is counterproductive, since there are some exceptions to this practice the Pentagon already often uses. For example, a Democratic staffer said the Pentagon may not want to use open architectures in the case of a space satellite launch, where the equipment will never be upgraded or a classified communications system where commercial connections aren’t secure.
“Mr. Smith would rather not put in statute a specific design approach,” the staffer said. “Let the Defense Department determine the best way on their own with congressional oversight. Mr. Smith favors a one-by-one approach rather than a blanket, one-size-fits-all in statute.”
The staffer spoke on background to talk about sensitive discussions on the bill, which was just introduced on Tuesday.
The staffer said that while the intent of the law is to increase openness and flexibility, something Smith agrees with, the actual language that would become law if it’s passed will add layers of bureaucracy to an already slow system.
Thornberry argues that the bill will make it easier for the military to experiment and design prototypes by allowing this sort of innovation without tying it to a specific program.
The staffer, however, said that how the Pentagon does prototyping now is “fairly loose” and adding more restrictions, like cost or time limits and additional oversight bodies, only makes innovation more difficult.
“Mr. Smith understands that the chairman is intending to be encouraging, but the language as it stands now restricts the Pentagon,” the staffer said.
The staffer also said that giving the defense secretary expanded authority to approve long-term cost, per-unit cost and schedule timelines undoes much of the decentralization included in last year’s bill that gave more buying power to the services.
Defense officials “objected strongly” to this particular part of the bill, the staffer said.
Thornberry said Tuesday that the plan is a draft and that he’s seeking input from other lawmakers, industry and the Defense Department before wrapping final language into his chairman’s mark of the fiscal 2017 National Defense Authorization Act that will be released next month.
