WASHINGTON — Secretary of Defense Secretary Ash Carter will use a Tuesday speech to unveil new details of his plan to reform the Goldwater-Nichols law legislation that guides the Pentagon, according to a senior defense official.
Carter will use his speech at the Center for strategic and International Studies to outline his vision on how to update the landmark legislation, which provides the current structure for the Defense Department.
The reforms will take aim at revamping the language of the 1986 Goldwater-Nichols Act, which reoriented the balance of power in the Pentagon. While the system worked well for a time, both members of Congress and Pentagon leaders have expressed a belief that the system needs to be reworked for the modern battlefield.
The event, which begins at 1:00 PM p.m. EDT eastern, will be streamed at CSIS.org.
Carter told reporters last month in early March that an initial concept would be coming from his office in a matter of “weeks,” but said suggested reforms would come in waves.
“We won’t necessarily do them all at once,” he told reporters in early March. “We’ll do them as we conclude the studies underlining them. But very shortly, we’ll begin to do that.”
“We’ll propose things as we conclude our studies of them,” he added. “Some of these things will require legislation and therefore we will be asking the Congress to consider them. I hope they will be persuasive, and therefore accepted by the Congress. In other cases they will be things that don’t require legislation at all.”
Email: amehta@defensenews.com
Twitter: @AaronMehta
