Team Infidel
Forum Spin Doctor
Boston Globe
February 24, 2009
Weapons-buyer appointee has criticized stockpile
By Bryan Bender, Globe Staff
WASHINGTON - President Obama nominated yesterday Harvard professor Ashton B. Carter, a leading authority on arms control and a longtime academic, to serve as the Pentagon's chief weapons buyer.
The choice of Carter to run the office that oversees hundreds of billions of dollars for new weapons and research - and is the focus of intense lobbying by defense firms, retired generals, and members of Congress - sparked concern within the defense industry and parts of the Pentagon bureaucracy when it was first rumored last month.
But that may be exactly what Obama and Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates wanted.
Unlike most of his predecessors selected to be undersecretary of defense for acquisition, technology, and logistics, Carter has no professional ties to America's arms makers or manufacturing industry, nor has he spent his career in government procurement. Instead, from his perch at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, Carter has been criticizing the Pentagon for buying too much armament it does not need, decrying what he calls a lack of discipline and "failure to take account of cost growth in weapons systems and defense services."
Carter declined to be interviewed.
Advocates of Carter, who has a bachelor's degree in medieval history and a doctorate in theoretical physics, say he was chosen because of his combination of technical expertise and knowledge of defense strategy. He served in a senior Pentagon policy post from 1993 to 1996. But as a relative outsider, the 54-year-old Carter should be better positioned to make what Gates has said will be "difficult choices" about weapons programs.
"He is not being brought in to help the defense industry thrive," said Loren Thompson, president of the Lexington Institution, an Arlington, Va., think tank. "He is being brought in to decide what we need and what we can do without."
At a "fiscal responsibility summit" at the White House yesterday, the 2008 Republican presidential nominee John McCain suggested that cuts in certain weapons programs might be needed to bring government spending under control, despite the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Obama responded that "this is going to be one of our highest priorities."
But Carter is almost certainly going to have a fight on his hands. Almost immediately after rumors surfaced that Carter was being considered for the high-profile acquisition post, Pentagon contractors and military procurement officials began waging a whisper campaign against him. Some contended that Carter would require a waiver to hold the post, citing an obscure law that stipulates that a candidate should have acquisition experience.
One former Pentagon acquisition chief and industry executive said he believes such experience is crucial to doing an effective job. "Having been in a factory and understanding the development process is what we were looking for," said the former official, who asked not to be identified because he was criticizing a presidential appointee.
But former secretary of defense William Perry, who drew up the original qualifications for the post as a member of the so-called Packard Commission in the 1980s, believes the language is being misused by those who fear Carter will buck the status quo. The intent, he said, was to ensure the job was not filled by a political ally of the president with little or no experience in military matters, said Perry, who hired Carter for a top Pentagon policy position in the 1990s.
"Having held that job and supervised two different people who had that job, I think I am pretty qualified to say who is qualified," Perry said in an interview. "My judgment is that a waiver is not required for Ash."
If confirmed by the Senate, Carter will have a broad mandate from Gates, who has signaled to Congress that he is intent on undertaking a "strategic reshaping" of the Pentagon's investment strategy that jettisons some Cold War-era weapons systems in favor of ones deemed most relevant to 21st-century threats.
Gates has cited as possible targets some of the most prized weapons of the military branches and powerful members of Congress, including the Boeing F-22 Air Force fighter jet; the Lockheed Martin multiservice F-35 attack plane; the Boeing Future Combat System ground vehicles under development for the Army; and the Virginia-class attack submarine built by General Dynamics and Northrop Grumman.
In a recent article in a foreign policy journal, Carter said there is a widening gap between what the Pentagon is buying and what the military will need to confront threats as varied as conventional war, guerrilla conflicts, and terrorist groups seeking to obtain nuclear weapons. He said he believes that record defense spending in recent years to wage the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan has given the military branches and Congress the political cover to spend billions of dollars on high-priced weapons that have been in the pipeline for years without reevaluating whether they are still needed.
"After six years of rapid defense budget increases, the Pentagon has lost the practice of matching strategy and resources," Carter wrote in the winter issue of Orbis, journal of the Foreign Policy Research Institute. "The rapid increases in the budget have been beneficial in one way - adequate funding for defense - but in other ways, they have corroded the processes and discipline that ensure strategy and budgets align."
Carter called for a return to what he called "strategic clarity." In other words, he wrote, "what kind of military does the United States need and why?"
But such talk is not popular at defense companies that stand to lose out or among the top brass that wants to protect its prized weapons programs, said retired Army Colonel Andrew Krepinevich, director of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a Washington think tank.
February 24, 2009
Weapons-buyer appointee has criticized stockpile
By Bryan Bender, Globe Staff
WASHINGTON - President Obama nominated yesterday Harvard professor Ashton B. Carter, a leading authority on arms control and a longtime academic, to serve as the Pentagon's chief weapons buyer.
The choice of Carter to run the office that oversees hundreds of billions of dollars for new weapons and research - and is the focus of intense lobbying by defense firms, retired generals, and members of Congress - sparked concern within the defense industry and parts of the Pentagon bureaucracy when it was first rumored last month.
But that may be exactly what Obama and Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates wanted.
Unlike most of his predecessors selected to be undersecretary of defense for acquisition, technology, and logistics, Carter has no professional ties to America's arms makers or manufacturing industry, nor has he spent his career in government procurement. Instead, from his perch at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, Carter has been criticizing the Pentagon for buying too much armament it does not need, decrying what he calls a lack of discipline and "failure to take account of cost growth in weapons systems and defense services."
Carter declined to be interviewed.
Advocates of Carter, who has a bachelor's degree in medieval history and a doctorate in theoretical physics, say he was chosen because of his combination of technical expertise and knowledge of defense strategy. He served in a senior Pentagon policy post from 1993 to 1996. But as a relative outsider, the 54-year-old Carter should be better positioned to make what Gates has said will be "difficult choices" about weapons programs.
"He is not being brought in to help the defense industry thrive," said Loren Thompson, president of the Lexington Institution, an Arlington, Va., think tank. "He is being brought in to decide what we need and what we can do without."
At a "fiscal responsibility summit" at the White House yesterday, the 2008 Republican presidential nominee John McCain suggested that cuts in certain weapons programs might be needed to bring government spending under control, despite the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Obama responded that "this is going to be one of our highest priorities."
But Carter is almost certainly going to have a fight on his hands. Almost immediately after rumors surfaced that Carter was being considered for the high-profile acquisition post, Pentagon contractors and military procurement officials began waging a whisper campaign against him. Some contended that Carter would require a waiver to hold the post, citing an obscure law that stipulates that a candidate should have acquisition experience.
One former Pentagon acquisition chief and industry executive said he believes such experience is crucial to doing an effective job. "Having been in a factory and understanding the development process is what we were looking for," said the former official, who asked not to be identified because he was criticizing a presidential appointee.
But former secretary of defense William Perry, who drew up the original qualifications for the post as a member of the so-called Packard Commission in the 1980s, believes the language is being misused by those who fear Carter will buck the status quo. The intent, he said, was to ensure the job was not filled by a political ally of the president with little or no experience in military matters, said Perry, who hired Carter for a top Pentagon policy position in the 1990s.
"Having held that job and supervised two different people who had that job, I think I am pretty qualified to say who is qualified," Perry said in an interview. "My judgment is that a waiver is not required for Ash."
If confirmed by the Senate, Carter will have a broad mandate from Gates, who has signaled to Congress that he is intent on undertaking a "strategic reshaping" of the Pentagon's investment strategy that jettisons some Cold War-era weapons systems in favor of ones deemed most relevant to 21st-century threats.
Gates has cited as possible targets some of the most prized weapons of the military branches and powerful members of Congress, including the Boeing F-22 Air Force fighter jet; the Lockheed Martin multiservice F-35 attack plane; the Boeing Future Combat System ground vehicles under development for the Army; and the Virginia-class attack submarine built by General Dynamics and Northrop Grumman.
In a recent article in a foreign policy journal, Carter said there is a widening gap between what the Pentagon is buying and what the military will need to confront threats as varied as conventional war, guerrilla conflicts, and terrorist groups seeking to obtain nuclear weapons. He said he believes that record defense spending in recent years to wage the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan has given the military branches and Congress the political cover to spend billions of dollars on high-priced weapons that have been in the pipeline for years without reevaluating whether they are still needed.
"After six years of rapid defense budget increases, the Pentagon has lost the practice of matching strategy and resources," Carter wrote in the winter issue of Orbis, journal of the Foreign Policy Research Institute. "The rapid increases in the budget have been beneficial in one way - adequate funding for defense - but in other ways, they have corroded the processes and discipline that ensure strategy and budgets align."
Carter called for a return to what he called "strategic clarity." In other words, he wrote, "what kind of military does the United States need and why?"
But such talk is not popular at defense companies that stand to lose out or among the top brass that wants to protect its prized weapons programs, said retired Army Colonel Andrew Krepinevich, director of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a Washington think tank.