Congress challenged to rethink costly weapons programs
Top Pentagon official aims to shift priorities
WASHINGTON - The Pentagon’s top weapons buyer, in a prelude to a showdown with Congress over the Obama administration’s plan to halt purchases of the F-22 fighter jet, directly challenged lawmakers yesterday to come up with funding and detailed justifications for any weapons programs they want to rescue from the Defense Department’s chopping block.
In his first interview since taking office, Ashton B. Carter urged members of Congress to rethink their efforts to revive costly weapon programs the Department of Defense wants to scale back or terminate as it tries to fix a broken procurement system and outfit troops with the right equipment.
“[To] anybody who wants to cherry-pick and change one piece of the defense program or another I would say, ‘You tell me what you want to cut in order to save something that the department has ended and why that choice is better for the warfighter than the choice we have made,’ ’’ Carter, the undersecretary of defense for acquisition, technology, and logistics, told the Globe in his Pentagon office.
“I think we have a good analytical basis for the decisions we make,’’ Carter said, “and that is the test that somebody should be put to who wants to change this piece or that piece because they have some particular program or issue that they favor.’’
Carter spoke as the Senate prepares to vote as early as today on a key early test of the reform effort - an amendment offered by Republican Senator John McCain to strip $1.7 billion for seven more F-22 Raptor fighter jets that was added to a defense spending bill despite the fierce objections of the Pentagon and the threat of a presidential veto.
The Pentagon wants to stop building the Lockheed Martin stealth plane - designed during the Cold War for air-to-air combat - and use the savings for other priorities.
But it is facing fierce resistance from Democrats and Republicans seeking to safeguard thousands of jobs in 44 states, including Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire.
Carter, a longtime professor at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and authority on defense policy, is now on the front lines of President Obama’s efforts to streamline the Pentagon acquisition system, reduce the nation’s stockpile of nuclear weapons, and better match weapons with overall strategy.
Because he did not have a career in the defense industry or government procurement, Carter’s appointment earlier this year was met with skepticism and even fear in some quarters of the defense industry that favor the status quo.
But Carter told the Globe yesterday he is seeking a healthy working relationship with the private sector.
“I am not a believer that industry is an enemy of the government,’’ said Carter, noting he had dinner last week with the CEOs of the nation’s top 15 defense firms.
“That’s how we arm ourselves in this country. We don’t have a government arms industry. We can’t do it without industry.’’
He said he told executives he hopes “we can align our interests so I get done what I need to do for the warfighter and the taxpayer and you get done what you need for your business. We can’t always do that, but we’re not always headed in opposite directions either.’’
In the interview he also described as “legitimate’’ industry concerns that the Pentagon’s so-called Quadrennial Defense Review now underway is not adequately addressing the future health of the defense industrial base.
The effect of Pentagon budget decisions on the industry “will be incorporated in the QDR to the maximum extent possible,’’ Carter maintained, though he argued that the effort shouldn’t “just become a discussion about jobs.’’
Still, Carter made it clear that he believes the Pentagon must make more choices that the industry won’t like, particularly when it comes to what he called “a lot of troubled programs’’ whose capabilities have been oversold, or are no longer needed.
First, he said the Pentagon and its contractors have “to start programs so that they are begun in a realistic manner, with eyes open’’ about the cost and technology.
Just as important, he continued, is “having the discipline to stop doing things that aren’t working or aren’t needed any longer. . . .
“That is what the taxpayer expects us to do with their money and that is what the warfighter expects.’’
Bryan Bender can be reached at bender@globe.com. 