Throughout its history, the United States has struggled to maintain a work force of professionals dedicated to procuring the equipment and weapons required to fight the nation's wars. The Revolutionary and Civil wars offered plenty of examples of waste, fraud and abuse in military contracting. Current problems facing defense acquisition are much the same, yet the scale has changed as weapon systems have become more complex, more expensive and more scrutinized.
Today, problems that a robust defense acquisition and oversight corps might prevent are festering because there are not enough hands on deck, and the hands that are on deck all too often are attached to private industry. Since all signs point toward elevated levels of defense expenditures for the next five years and beyond, it is finally time for Congress and the Pentagon to strengthen the largely forgotten defense acquisition work force.
With too few acquisition employees in place because of Clinton and Bush administration downsizing, the Pentagon ran into problems as soon as the United States initiated military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Procurement, research and development, and contracting outlays skyrocketed, but the acquisition work force and key oversight agencies did not increase proportionally.
In fact, investment outlays increased six times faster and contract outlays increased 10 times faster, on average, than the defense acquisition work force each year.
The resulting dynamic - less oversight of more money - has resulted in major structural deficiencies. To try to compensate for the shedding of acquisition professionals, the Defense Department has outsourced an increasing percentage of its oversight operations to the defense industry. In many instances, private contractors now help develop requirements, design products and estimate costs - functions central to a program's business case and thus representative of a clear conflict of interest.
In 2009, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) reported that out of 66 program offices assessed, well over one-third (37 percent) of the personnel currently performing acquisition-related functions were contractors from private industry.
The consequences of an underfunded, understaffed and over-outsourced DoD oversight corps have become abundantly clear. Under President George W. Bush, DoD investigators referred 76 percent fewer fraud and corruption cases to the Justice Department for potential prosecution than were referred under President Bill Clinton. The GAO reported in March 2009 that 96 major defense acquisition programs were a combined $296 billion over budget in FY 2008. In contrast, 75 major programs were only $43 billion over budget in FY 2000. Total cost overruns have therefore increased by 588 percent in eight years.
Several initiatives underway would help alleviate the stresses being placed on today's acquisition work force. To take immediate action, the Obama administration plans to hire 3,669 new defense acquisition employees and in-source 2,500 acquisition jobs to DoD that are currently performed by private contractors.
Under Obama's plan, 19,200 new defense acquisition work force employees will be hired by FY 2015, bringing the combined civilian and military defense acquisition work force above 145,000, a level not seen since the Cold War but entirely appropriate given defense spending levels that are higher than during the Cold War.
Increasing the size of the work force is not a panacea and will not single-handedly eliminate budget overruns on major defense acquisition programs. For instance, more oversight will not stop DoD from committing major procurement sins such as changing requirements during system development, initiating more programs than the future years defense plan can possibly sustain, and approving weapon systems that offer the best technology possible as opposed to approving systems that fulfill operational requirements at the lowest possible price.
Infighting over budgetary resources by the services and high-tech fetishism on the policy and planning staffs will not go away just because the Pentagon hires more workers.
Yet growing the defense acquisition work force is a policy that deserves support and should be undertaken with much thought and care. A larger work force will allow the Pentagon to put more "cops on the beat." With more workers available to oversee contract awards and program development, DoD will reduce the cost growth and schedule slippages that have become all too pervasive in weapon procurement.
It took more than six years to recognize that if defense spending was going to continue at elevated levels, the defense acquisition work force had to be enlarged to ensure proper oversight. This can be labeled nothing other than a total failure that wasted taxpayer dollars, delayed the procurement of needed equipment and undermined America's trust in DoD.
The wars of the 21st century cannot be waged on the cheap. If the U.S. government is not prepared to invest in the type of acquisition work force required to successfully prosecute armed conflict, military operations should not be undertaken in the first place. ■
Travis Sharp is a military policy analyst at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation in Washington.
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