The head of the Pentagon’s acquisition office said Tuesday that lawmakers on Capitol Hill often do more harm than good in their efforts to streamline how the Pentagon buys weapons and services.
In his final public remarks on the job, Frank Kendall, the outgoing undersecretary of defense for acquisition, technology and logistics, said that bills passed by Congress serve as a “blunt instrument” to speed up and simplify the acquisition process.
“It is not a good instrument to achieve the result that I think the Hill is after, but they keep trying. To be honest, I believe that as often as not what they do doesn’t help. In some cases, it has the opposite effect,” Kendall said at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “What it does do almost inevitably is create more bureaucracy and create more regulation.”
Reforming the acquisition system and cutting bureaucracy has been a top priority for both Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and Rep. Mac Thornberry, R-Texas, his counterpart in the House.
Recent defense authorization bills have included multiple reforms to this aspect of the Pentagon, including the creation of a chief operating officer and the elimination of Kendall’s position in the fiscal 2017 version of the bill.
The fiscal 2017 National Defense Authorization Act split the acquisition, technology and logistics job into two roles: an undersecretary for acquisition and sustainment and a new undersecretary for research and engineering.
