Last Wednesday morning, I attended a House Armed Services Subcommittee hearing convened by the recently formed Defense Acquisition Reform Panel. The three witnesses – Gordon R. England, a two-time Secretary of the Navy and former Deputy Secretary of Defense, Edmund P. Giambastiani, Jr., a retired Navy admiral and former Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Ronald T. Kadish, a retired Air Force Lieutenant General – all emphasized the same abstract fix and provided little, if any, concrete guidance.

Yesterday, the conference committee assembled to hash out a final weapons acquisition reform bill released the new legislation and a summary report after the two sides came to agreement on Tuesday over the few issues of contention. We are currently going through the language of the bill to assess the final product, but it looks as though the conferees did not strengthen the potentially disastrous Murray amendment, and chose an independent cost analyst reporting to the Secretary of Defense over just an assistant to the secretary. If we catch anything appalling, we will post it, or, if you read through and see anything, please post your comments.

Yesterday, Congress took an imperfect step forward with overhauling the Defense Department's major weapons acquisition process. The House Armed Services Committee moved their reform bill, H.R. 2101, the Weapons Acquisition System Reform Through Enhancing Technical Knowledge and Oversight (WASTE TKO) Act, through mark-up by a 59-0 margin. A similar acquisition reform bill introduced by Senator Carl Levin (D-MI) unanimously passed the full Senate. Before passage of the bill, however, senators agreed to an amendment that, if strengthened in conference, would essentially nullify the purpose of acquisition review.