The much-derided Leviathan of Pentagon acquisitions is due for a revamp, the presumptive next vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff told lawmakers on Thursday, and he is ready to lead the way.
The Joint Requirements Oversight Council is supposed to spend a maximum of 100 days validating proposed requirements for new procurement programs, but a 2021 Government Accountability Report found it can take as many as 800 to finalize approval—precious time lost when changing technology quickly renders requirements obsolete.
With that in mind, Marine Gen. Christopher Mahoney, currently his service’s assistant commandant, said during his confirmation hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee that he is ready to pick up the ball and run with it.
“The JROC—the concept—I think, is completely valid. We have to get rid of some of the bureaucracy, and [current vice chairman] Adm. [Christopher] Grady has started down that road,” Mahoney said. “We have to make the process less burdened by paperwork and more sensitive to speed and product.”
There is language in the Senate markup of next year’s defense authorization bill that would remove JROC’s approval authority, speeding up the process of formalizing requirements.
The change “seeks to move the focus of the JROC from reviewing paperwork to designing [the] future force,” SASC Chairman Roger Wicker said during the hearing.
“With technology and threats moving quickly, we can no longer spend years debating what the perfect solution will look like five or 10 years into the future,” he added.
The 800-day hold-ups were coming from another process nested inside the JROC, the GAO found, the now-defunct Joint Capabilities Integration and Development System, which Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered shut down in an Aug. 20 memo.
That memo started a four-month clock to send requirements validation authority back to the military components and re-focus the JROC on identifying and ranking capability gaps. They would then deliver those to a newly formed Requirements and Resourcing Alignment Board, which will make recommendations for funding and programs to fill those gaps.
Grady, the current vice chairman, is due to relinquish responsibility just as that deadline arrives: Dec. 20 will mark the completion of four years in his role.
Mahoney is also looking at recommendations from a Pentagon report sent to Congress in July, which calls for more budget authority that would allow the Pentagon to shift funding as priorities shift, rather than be locked into specific programs laid out in budget line items.
That would include the ability to reprogram bigger chunks of an account, Mahoney said. Current law only lets the Pentagon move $15 million of its procurement budget into a new program.
“I think what I’ve seen in the generation of the NDAA this year, and the report that we’ve just got done with the NDAA last year, we’re on the road to real reform,” he said.
