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 "I am optimistic," Andrew Hunter, a former congressional aide who
helped draft many of those laws before joining the Pentagon four
years ago, told reporters on Thursday. He said he saw emerging
consensus among industry, lawmakers and defense officials about the
need for changes.
Hunter, who runs the Pentagon's joint rapid acquisition initiative,
has also led a drive to simplify current laws, which U.S. arms buyer
Frank Kendall has said put "an extraordinary and unnecessarily
complex burden on our program managers and staff."
U.S. defense officials have been in talks with congressional
committees in both the House of Representatives and the Senate, and
hope to submit some reform legislation as part of the fiscal 2016
budget process, said Hunter, who is moving to a job with the Center
for Strategic and International Studies next month.
 "We've come up with some proposals that we hope will be favorably
received," he said. Hunter said the goal was to build on some key
legislation already in place while giving program managers more
flexibility to focus on the main issues.
The Pentagon initiative dovetails with fresh efforts by the House
and Senate armed services committees to reform the slow, cumbersome
U.S. military acquisition process and reverse years of schedule
delays, cost overruns and other challenges.
Big weapons makers like Lockheed Martin Corp, Boeing Co and Northrop
Grumman Corp, are keeping a close eye on efforts to reform a system
at a time when the industry is grappling with a downturn in military
spending.
Hunter said the idea was to tailor the acquisition process to focus
on key priorities and move away from a compliance mindset.
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The Defense Department's rapid acquisition effort has responded to
about 500 joint service requests over the past decade, plus another
500 handled by individual military services.
About 30 requests were still in the works, he said, citing continued
demand for intelligence and surveillance equipment, biometrics and
systems to combat roadside bombs.
He said the Pentagon's work to outfit the Navy ship MV Cape Ray with
special equipment to use for destruction of Syrian chemical agents
took months, not years, and was an "exemplar" of how to quickly meet
the military's urgent battlefield needs.
The biggest hurdle to reaching agreement on making current laws more
flexible would be winning the trust of lawmakers concerned about a
repeat of multibillion-dollar acquisition failures such as the
Army's Future Combat Systems and the Marine Corps' Expeditionary
Fighting Vehicle program, Hunter said.
"I see that that's an obstacle," he said. "When you’re arguing for
flexibility, you’re basically saying 'Trust me.' And then the issue
is: 'But what about the time you screwed up.'"
(Reporting by Andrea Shalal; editing by Gunna Dickson)
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