The Defense Department must better train and empower its acquisition workforce if it hopes to buy and develop critical capabilities more rapidly, the candidate for a key Pentagon leadership position said this week.
“Acquisition is not something that someone can walk in off the street and do well,” Alan Shaffer, nominated in June to become deputy undersecretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment, during his confirmation hearing Tuesday before the Senate Armed Service Committee (SASC). “I think it’s an imperative that we do everything we can, we use all of the various tools that the Congress has given us over the last couple of years to accelerate fielding of capabilities.”
If confimed, Shaffer would serve as deputy to Ellen Lord, undersecretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment and chair of the Nuclear Weapons Council: a joint Department of Energy-Pentagon body that also includes the administrator of DOE’s semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration. The council coordinates DOE’s programs to refurbish aging nuclear weapons with Defense Department procurement of new nuclear-capable delivery vehicles such as missiles, aircraft, and submarines.
Shaffer previously served as the director of NATO science and technology at the NATO Collaboration Support Office. He also served at the Pentagon as the principal deputy assistant secretary of defense for research and engineering and as the acting assistant secretary for three years. He served in the Air Force for 27 years.
Vivienne Machi, staff reporter for Nuclear Security & Deterrence Monitor sister publication Defense Daily, contributed to this report from Washington.
