Radical Reform: Should the Pentagon Outsource its Management Functions?

Dan Goure

Defense Reform, United States

How about outsourcing the management and support half of AT&L?

Without question this is already a busy year for Defense Secretary Carter and his department. In terms of external challenges, there is the ever-expanding fight against ISIS, now about to include the deployment of U.S. forces to Libya. Then there is the intensifying confrontation with China over that country’s attempt to turn the South China Sea into Xi Jinping’s private lake. Add to this the decision to return U.S. ground forces to Europe to deter a more threatening Kremlin and the upcoming NATO summit in Warsaw that will refocus the Alliance on its collective defense obligations. North Korea and Iran continue to behave provocatively.  Almost daily there are signs that the international security environment is becoming less conducive to American interests and more threatening to the homeland, friends and allies.

Within the Pentagon issues such as the food fight between the Army and the National Guard or the possibility of drafting women have dominated what attention the media provides to military matters. Senior officials are busy defending budgets and force postures clearly inadequate to the nation’s needs or even its professed defense strategy.

All of these subjects have provided fodder for what little official defense media exists and among the defense blogs. Yet, what is potentially the biggest story of the year has received relatively little attention and virtually no serious scrutiny. I am referring to the proposal by the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Senator John McCain, to do away with the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Logistics and Technology (AT&L), splitting this massive Pentagon bureaucracy into two positions: An Under Secretary for Management and Support and an Under Secretary for Research and Engineering. In the chairman’s view, the requirements levied on the AT&L office to, at one and the same time, be highly inventive and agile on acquisition while managing the ongoing procurement annually of almost $200 billion in goods and services is too much for any one organization.