The Senate Armed Services Committee voted on Thursday to get rid of the Pentagon’s top acquisition chief and split the job between two newly-created positions to facilitate better technological innovation.
The Senate committee’s version of the fiscal 2017 National Defense Authorization Act would get rid of the undersecretary of defense for acquisition, technology and logistics, a job currently held by Frank Kendall, and divide those duties between the undersecretary of management and support as well as a new position, the under secretary of defense for research and engineering.
The primary responsibility of the research and engineering leader would be “restoring, elevating, and enhancing the mission of defense technological innovation,” according to a statement from the Senate Armed Services Committee.
The position previously existed during the Cold War to lead the development of stealthy, precision-guided munitions, but has since disappeared. John Hamre argued in a Defense One op-ed last month that bringing back the position was a good idea.
“The committee expects that just as previous USD(R&E) incumbents led the ‘Second Offset’ strategy, which successfully enabled the United States to leap ahead of the Soviet Union in terms of military technology, the new USD(R&E) would be tasked with driving the key technologies that must encompass what defense leaders are now calling a ‘Third Offset’ strategy: cyber and space capabilities, unmanned systems, directed energy, undersea warfare, hypersonics, and robotics, among others,” a committee release said.
A Senate Armed Services Committee aide stressed that the move was not a critique of how Kendall was performing in the role, noting that he is doing a “very good” job leading the acquisition, technology and logistics office.
“This is not about the job he’s doing, it’s about the job he has,” the aide said.
The aide added that the move is intended to split the duties to allow the new research and engineering undersecretary to focus on innovation to ensure the U.S. keeps pace technologically with peer competitors, like Russia.
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the Strategic Capabilities Office, the Defense Threat Reduction Agency and the Missile Defense Agency would all report directly to the new undersecretary.
An assistant secretary of defense for acquisition policy and oversight position would be created under the research and engineering undersecretary post to focus on defense-wide acquisition.
The Senate wrapped up its mark up of the fiscal 2017 defense policy bill in a closed session on Thursday, which passed the committee with broad bipartisan support. Only three senators voted against it. It still needs to be approved by the full Senate as early as this month.
The bill would also make several changes to the military’s organization through reforms to the 30-year-old Goldwater-Nichols law.
For example, it would cap the size of the National Security Council at 150 permanently assigned professional staff. Rep. Mac Thornberry, R-Texas, has introduced an amendment to limit the president’s advisory board to 100 personnel.
The NSC currently has about 400 staff, according to a release from the committee.
The bill also addresses the fact that the military’s command structure is divided into geographic combatant commands, but many threats today are multi-regional and multi-domain. It would require the defense secretary to conduct a pilot program at one combatant command to replace the service component commands with joint task forces. It would also create a Combatant Commands Council so the leaders could meet with other top officials at the Pentagon to facilitate better integration across regions.
The committee’s plan would also reduce the number of four-star officers from 41 to 27, since the number of general officers has become “out of balance with the size of the force it leads,” a release from the committee says.
It would also make major changes within the leadership of the Pentagon. The next defense secretary would be tasked with creating “mission teams” to support him or her in work on a specific mission area, like Russia or cybersecurity. It would also establish a new position for an assistant secretary of defense for information who would oversee space and cyber activities, which can often touch pieces of different areas.
