The chairman of the House Armed Services Committee will introduce a bill on Tuesday to speed up how the Pentagon buys its weapons, including giving services more power in the buying process.
The bill represents the second wave of changes from Rep. Mac Thornberry, R-Texas, who has promised to chip away at the Pentagon’s bloated, slow acquisition process each year he leads the committee.
Under the legislation, whenever a program involves more than one service, such as the F-35 joint strike fighter for the Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps, or the joint light tactical vehicle for the Army and Marines, one of the services would be tapped as the lead agent, according to a House Armed Services Committee staffer who spoke ahead of the bill’s introduction.
Perhaps Rep. Thornberry should study the arms procurement procedures of the US Postal Service, the Social Security Administration, the Dept. of Agriculture and the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration. They get the weapons they need quickly and efficiently.
Weapons acquisition has always been a source of graft and corruption. At least since the days of Cyrus the Great.
Part of the process centers around questions of reliability. How long did it take the Garand to be approved? The Sherman? The B-17? The B-29? The 1911? The payola starts at the corporate/political level and descends to the generals and colonels and probably to the sergeants performing the actual inspections and tests.
We probably don’t want the process streamlined to the point that we’re getting unreliable weapons systems – and using tried-and-true weapons systems always keeps us behind the (innovation) curve.