If confirmed, Frank Kendall — who oversaw the program during the Obama administration as the Defense Department’s acquisition executive — will become the Air Force’s top civilian at a time when the service grapples with the decision of how many F-35 aircraft to buy, both in the near term and over the lifespan of the program.

But despite repeated questions from members of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Kendall said little to tip his hand on how he might further shape the program.

“The F-35 is the best tactical aircraft of its type in the world and will be so for quite some time. It’s a complex, expensive weapon, unfortunately. But it is a dominant weapon when it goes up against earlier generation aircraft,” Kendall told lawmakers when asked on his views on the aircraft.

“But the concern I have is that the complaints still come,” said Oklahoma Sen. Jim Inhofe, SASC’s top Republican.

The Air Force is evaluating its tactical aviation fleet, including whether to go through with a planned buy of 1,763 F-35As. Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Charles “CQ” Brown has said that the service may seek out a low-cost, clean-sheet multirole fighter to replace its oldest F-16s — one of the platforms originally slated to be succeeded by the F-35.

Meanwhile, CNN reported earlier this month that Will Roper, the Air Force’s top acquisition official during the Trump administration, had sought to cut the Air Force’s F-35 buy to about 800 jets, further inciting worries about the program’s future.

During the hearing, Inhofe spoke about the Air Force’s 2009 decision to curb F-22 procurement from 750 to 187 aircraft. That cut has contributed to the F-22′s high operations and sustainment costs, which are endemic to small aircraft fleets.

“We watched this happen,” Inhofe said. “My concern right now is, what kind of actions could we take to make sure we’re fielding the number of F-35s needed to fight against Russia and China? It’s a different game all together now, we all understand that. But we are going to have to be dealing with the numbers.”

Kendall’s response fell short of promising to support the current program of record.

“We have to get to an affordable mix that meets our needs as driven by the national defense strategy. That’s what should guide those investments,” he said.

However, if sustainment costs are a concern, it will be important for the Air Force to continue buying F-35s in numbers that will allow the fleet size to grow and operations costs to become more economical, he said.

“If there is one thing that I think would drive costs down overall, it’s continuing to buy,” Kendall said.

“I know there’s an issue with the total number that’s been on the table for some years, what the requirement is. My own view at this point in time is that we’re well short of that number, and that [what] we should be working on most is getting the cost down and keeping the procurement at a rate that makes sense.”

Although the Air Force plans to continue buying 48 F-35As as part of its fiscal 2022 budget request, it intends downsize its buy to 43 aircraft a year from FY23 through FY26, according to Air Force talking points reported by Air Force Magazine.

It’s difficult to gauge whether Kendall will lead the Air Force in a different direction with regards to the program.

As former undersecretary of defense for acquisition, technology and logistics, Kendall was sometimes highly critical of the F-35, which was facing high production costs and numerous serious technical flaws. But by the end of his tenure in 2016, he spoke frequently about how the program had turned a corner.

Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., said the Air Force “should be very assertive” during the fiscal 2023 budget cycle in asking for the number of F-35s it needs to drive down the unit cost of each aircraft.

“I share the sentiments of a number of my colleagues that the F-35 should be advanced,” he said.

During the hearing, senators also considered the nominations of Susanna Blume as director of the Pentagon’s Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation office and Heidi Shyu, who is tapped for undersecretary of defense for research and engineering.

Both nominees faced little opposition during the hearing, signaling that they — along with Kendall — will cruise toward an easy confirmation.

Shyu, the Army’s acquisition executive during the Obama administration, said one of her goals would be to reorient spending on defense technologies toward developing new capabilities.

“Today, sustainment makes up 70% of total weapon system cost, with development and procurement making up 30%. DoD should strive to flip this ratio and invest more in the development of new technologies than it does in the sustainment of legacy system,” she said in written testimony.

To do that, the department should spend more money on advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence, hypersonic weapons and synthetic biology, she said. It should also make investments in advanced materials that would help the services decrease their logistics footprint and cut their fuel use.

Blume, who was previously deputy chief of staff for programs and plans, stated that her goal as CAPE director would be to ensure the department aligned its financial resources with the priorities laid out in the national defense strategy, as well as to provide rigorous independent cost estimates of major weapons systems to Congress.

In particular, CAPE should increase the Pentagon’s collection of data related to operations and sustainment, software, and middle-tier acquisition programs in order to improve the accuracy of future cost assessments, she wrote in response to lawmakers’ advance policy questions.

With Kahl’s confirmation, the former national security adviser to then-Vice President Biden will assume the No. 3 civilian job at the Pentagon, overseeing strategy, nuclear deterrence, missile defense, international cooperation, and plans and policies.

Unlike a procedural vote last week, GOP absences Tuesday meant there was no dramatic tie for Vice President Kamala Harris to break.

Among several lawmakers who did not vote, Republican Sens. Kevin Cramer and Richard Shelby were out of Washington, D.C. due to family emergencies. Shelby returned to Alabama on Tuesday morning, and Cramer announced he would be away all week after his mother died.

“I do not plan to be in Washington, D.C., this week as I attend to family matters. Over the weekend, my Mother Clarice Cramer peacefully passed away after having lived with Alzheimer’s Disease,” Cramer said in a statement.

“Our family appreciates the messages of comfort and support we have already received. We are grateful we were able to spend time with our mom during her last days on earth before she went home to be reunited with her husband and the Lord.”

Senate Republicans have been unified in their opposition to Kahl, who was a vocal supporter of the hot-button Iran nuclear deal. They seized on his history of tweets attacking Republican lawmakers to argue he lacks the judgment and temperament for the job.

But Democrats accused Republicans of waging a partisan proxy fight over the deal and Biden’s plan to rejoin it. Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Jack Reed, D-R.I., has said Kahl was subjected to a “smear campaign.”

Last month included a sometimes tense confirmation hearing and the evenly divided Senate Armed Services Committee deadlock on Kahl’s nomination. That led to a Senate vote last week to advance Kahl’s nomination, where Harris cast a tie-breaking vote―and it seemed then like she would have to again this week.

But the absences made it unnecessary. On Tuesday, the Senate voted 49-44 to close debate on Kahl’s nomination before the final vote a few hours later. Six Republicans and one Democrat missed that vote.

Absent for the confirmation vote were Democratic Sen. Maria Cantwell, and Republican Sens. Roy Blunt, Rand Paul and Mike Rounds ― with Cramer and Shelby.

The Senate Armed Services Committee’s ranking member, Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., said in a floor speech earlier in the day that nominees for key Department of Defense roles typically receive strong bipartisan support in the Senate and blamed Biden for his divisive pick.

“I can’t recall a single nominee for the top DoD position in the past 40 years who didn’t garner at least one vote from the other party,” Inhofe said. “We need nominees who will work with members on both sides of the aisle; those members have to trust that person in return.”

Earlier in the day, the National Republican Senatorial Committee painted Kahl as “just another product of Joe Biden’s conveyor belt of radical, unqualified nominees.” Senate Armed Services Committee member Rick Scott, R-Fla., chairs the NRSC.

When Biden announced he was picking Kahl, who also served as deputy assistant to President Barack Obama, Biden said that Kahl and now-Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks would be trusted partners “as we work to restore responsible American leadership on the world stage.”

WASHINGTON — The Biden administration has officially nominated Frank Kendall to serve as secretary of the Air Force and Gina Ortiz Jones for undersecretary of the Air Force.

The announcement, made by the White House on Tuesday afternoon, confirmed reporting by Defense News earlier that morning.

Kendall is best known as the Pentagon’s top acquisition official during the Obama administration from 2012 to 2016. As undersecretary of defense for acquisition, technology and logistics, he wrote a series of “Better Buying Power” initiatives aimed at reforming the acquisition process to make it more agile.

Throughout his career, Kendall held many positions within the Defense Department, including principal deputy undersecretary from 2010 to 2012. He also held roles in the defense industry, including as Raytheon’s vice president of engineering during the mid-1990s.

An Army veteran and human rights attorney, Kendall served as one of the earliest advisers to the Biden team on defense issues, and was long rumored to be a contender for a senior Defense Department or service secretary position.

Although Kendall served in the Army, much of his work as the Pentagon’s top weapons buyer centered on Air Force and aerospace programs. He was sharply critical of the Lockheed Martin-made F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, which was going through a troubled development period, famously calling the decision to put it into production “acquisition malpractice.” He also oversaw the restructuring of the Air Force’s OCX program, which builds modern ground stations for next-generation GPS satellites.

Jones, while a relative newcomer to the Pentagon, brings a wide variety of experience from other government agencies. She served in the Air Force from 2003 to 2006 as an intelligence officer, and she deployed to Iraq. In 2008, she moved to the Defense Intelligence Agency as an adviser. She then held multiple positions in the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative.

Jones ran for Congress in 2018 and 2020, becoming the Democratic Party’s nominee for Texas’ 23rd congressional district, but lost to the Republican contenders both times.

A Filipino American, Jones has in the past talked about the challenges of being gay while serving under the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” military policy. If confirmed, she would become the first woman of color to become the undersecretary of the Air Force.

Both civilians would lead the Air Force during a critical moment. Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. C.Q. Brown hopes to bring about a transformation of the service, optimizing it to be able to take on advanced Russian and Chinese threats. However, he has acknowledged these changes can only occur if cuts are made — both to ongoing programs that are no longer relevant as well as to the existing aircraft fleet.

The Air Force has historically struggled to get its message to Congress. Kendall and Jones would likely play a key role in helping to convey the service’s strategic aims to lawmakers.

After the nominations were made official, House Armed Services Committee chairman Adam Smith, (D-Wash.), issued a statement declaring his support for both nominees.

““Frank Kendall is exactly the kind of public servant we need at the helm of the Air Force at a time when the service is navigating so many unique challenges, including effective acquisition to meet our nation’s future threats,” he said. “With more than 40 years of experience in defense and national security, and with a particular focus on acquisition policy during his tenure in the Obama administration, I cannot think of a better, more equipped leader to tackle these issues head on.”

Smith also praised Jones’ experiences as an Air Force veteran and stated that her nomination shows the Biden administration’s commitment “to building a diverse Department of Defense that reflects the American population.”

Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Jack Reed, D-R.I., also expressed support for Kendall’s nomination. The two graduated from West Point together in 1971.

“Frank is a proven, effective leader.  He’s got the skill, experience, integrity, and temperament you want from the top civilian leader of the Air Force,” Reed said in a statement.

Aaron Mehta in Washington contributed to this story.

If confirmed, Karlin would take the lead role in developing the next National Defense Strategy, a guiding document for the Defense Department’s future plans.

Karlin currently serves as the acting assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs; Melissa Dalton, a defense expert most recently of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, has been serving as the acting assistant secretary of defense for strategy.

Before joining the Biden administration, Karlin was director of strategic studies at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies. She previously served at the Defense Department under both the George W. Bush and Obama administrations, ending her previous government service as deputy assistant secretary of defense for strategy and force development.

After a three-month period without any Pentagon nominees named, Karlin’s nomination represents the seventh nominee announced in the last two weeks.

On April 2, the White House announced Michael Brown, the head of the Defense Innovation Unit, as the nominee for undersecretary for acquisition and sustainment, the Pentagon’s top weapons buyer; Ronald Moultrie for the job of undersecretary for intelligence and security, the top civilian intelligence role at the Pentagon; and Mike McCord as the Defense Department’s top financial official. McCord’s nomination was first reported by Defense News.

Then on Monday, the White House announced Christine Wormuth for Army secretary, the first time a woman has been nominated for that role. Gil Cisneros was nominated to be undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness, while Susanna Blume was tapped to head the Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation office, known as CAPE.

The NNSA is a semiautonomous agency located within the Department of Energy. It has oversight on the technical development and production of America’s nuclear warheads.

A mechanical engineer by trade, Hruby worked at the Sandia National Laboratories in 1983, retiring in 2017 as the director. After retirement, she served as the Sam Nunn distinguished fellow at the Nuclear Threat Initiative from 2018 to 2019 and joined its board in 2019.

She also served as a member of the Defense Science Board, the NNSA’s Defense Programs Advisory Committee, and the National Academy of Sciences’ Committee on International Security and Arms Control. If confirmed, Hruby would become the second woman to lead the NNSA, directly following Lisa Gordon-Hagerty.

Her nomination was first reported by the Exchange Monitor. Charles Verdon, a longtime NNSA official who was appointed to a top job during the Trump administration, has been serving as acting administrator.

The NNSA spent most of 2020 at the center of a internal fight in the DOE over its budget, which eventually led to Gordon-Hagerty being pushed out of the agency and Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., declaring the department’s leadership was “trying to undermine” nuclear weapons modernization.

Hruby would also take charge of NNSA at a time when the agency is starting work on an ambitious modernization plan, which the Biden administration may look to alter or scale back.

In a statement, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm called Hruby “one of DOE’s very best success stories” and “a brilliant leader, a model public servant, and an inspiration to engineers and rising stars everywhere.”

Former Energy Secretary Ernst Moniz, retired Sen. Sam Nunn, and NTI President and Chief Operating Office Joan Rohlfing issued a statement endorsing the pick of Hruby.

“With her unparalleled leadership experience and technical knowledge, Jill has helped guide NTI’s global nuclear threat reduction work, including the development and release of the first comprehensive, open-source analysis of Russia’s new nuclear weapon delivery systems,” they wrote. “With a remarkable combination of technical understanding, analytic skills, and vision, Jill has been an indispensable resource for us and our Board, as well as a mentor to our experienced staff. She would be an outstanding leader of NNSA.”

While the situation can change until the official announcement — which could come as soon as Friday evening — a trio of sources say that McCord appears a lock for the nomination. If confirmed, it would be the second stint for McCord at the comptroller’s office, as he held the job from June 2014 until the end of the Obama administration, which concluded in January 2017.

The comptroller serves as the chief financial officer for the Department of Defense, with oversight of the more than $700 billion defense budget. It also comes with the responsibility of managing the department’s annual audit, an effort that began under McCord’s successor, David Norquist.

McCord, who also spent time as the deputy comptroller, was part of Biden’s transition landing team at the department. Since leaving government, he has held a number of different roles, including as director for civil-military programs at the Stennis Center for Public Service and on the board of trustees for the Aerospace Corporation.

Biden is also considering Michael Brown, the current head of the Defense Innovation Unit, either as the undersecretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment or as the undersecretary for research and engineering, the sources said.

Brown, the former CEO of Symantec, joined the DoD in September 2018 to lead DIU, a small office dedicated to increasing ties between the department and commercial technology firms. He has gained a reputation in Congress as a China hawk thanks to his co-authorship of a departmental report about Chinese influence in American tech companies.

Politico previously reported that Brown and Alan Estevez, a former assistant secretary of defense for logistics and materiel readiness, were finalists for the A&S role.

The last Senate-confirmable nominees announced for the department came on Dec. 30. While Colin Kahl, the nominee to be undersecretary of defense for policy, faced united opposition from Republicans on the Senate Armed Services Committee, that may not be an issue with either candidate here. Comptroller is generally seen as a non-partisan position, and McCord is a known commodity to members of the committee. Brown, meanwhile, actually joined the department as an appointee during the Trump administration.

Colin Kahl, who would serve as the undersecretary of defense for policy if confirmed, is reportedly facing GOP resistance over his support for the Iran nuclear deal and other aspects of his record in working on Middle East policy in the Obama administration.

“The committee hearing will be absolutely critical and crucial because he’ll have an opportunity to explain his positions, and then my colleagues will make a judgement based on his testimony, based on their perceptions,” Reed, D-R.I., told the Defense Writers Group on Wednesday. “I think he’ll get a fair shot at the hearing, frankly.”

Kahl ― who served as an action officer in the policy shop early in his career, and was deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Middle East from 2009 to 2011 ― received praise from Reed for his knowledge, experience and ties to Biden.

“He’s had a long relationship with the president and I think that’ll help the [Defense] Department in terms of working more closely with the White House,” Reed said. “We have the process, we’ll have the hearing, and I hope that his positions come clear and he gets the support he needs.”

Politico broke the news that Kahl’s nomination faced headwinds, with Senate Armed Services Committee ranking member Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., saying he had “serious concerns.” Still, staff for Inhofe ― an influential member of the panel ― stopped short of saying he opposed Kahl, and signaled that he remains undecided.

“Sen. Inhofe is still reviewing Mr. Kahl’s nomination closely and looks forward to hearing from him on these issues in the coming weeks,” a spokesperson said in a statement Tuesday. “He has serious concerns with some of the policy positions that Mr. Kahl has taken in the past.”

The Biden administration and Reed each has cited the rocky presidential transition to explain why Biden hasn’t made any Defense Department nominations beyond Lloyd Austin as defense secretary, Kathleen Hicks as deputy defense secretary and Kahl. Austin and Hicks have been confirmed.

On Wednesday, Reed blamed the delays on then-President Donald Trump’s refusal to concede the election, which obstructed transition activities at the Pentagon.

“Unlike previous transitions where they really began seriously Nov. 5, 6 or 7, they weren’t allowed sometimes even in the building for a long time,” Reed said of the Biden transition team. “So that’s one of the reason’s it’s delayed.

“But despite that, we’ve got the obligation mutually. They have to send the nominees up, and then we have to move aggressively, and we will,” Reed said. “With the Department of Defense, [Republicans and Democrats] have recognized that regardless of how do you feel about the nominee, we should try to expedite the nominations, get them to the [Senate] floor, get them passed.”

Pointing to the Trump administration’s lax approach to filling key Pentagon jobs with Senate-confirmed nominees, Reed said he has pressed the Biden administration to do better. There are roughly 60 nominations to pursue, he said.

“We’ve made the point that we need the nominees as quickly as possible,” Reed said. “Particularly after the last several years of the Trump administration with the department really in disarray with acting secretaries … we’ve got to get back to stability, and I’ve made that point repeatedly to the White House and to others.”

Aaron Mehta contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON — A month after the inauguration of Joe Biden as president, nominations for dozens of top Pentagon jobs have yet to be announced — and it may be quite some time before those roles are filled with confirmed individuals.

Of the 61 Senate-confirmed roles at the Department of Department — known officially as presidential appointments requiring Senate confirmation jobs, or PAS — only three nominations have been put forth. All three came in December, weeks before the Jan. 20 inauguration.

Lloyd Austin was announced as the pick for defense secretary on Dec. 8, and his nomination was sent to the Senate Armed Services Committee on Jan. 19. He was confirmed Jan. 22. Kathleen Hicks was announced as the pick for deputy defense secretary on Dec. 30, and her nomination was sent to the committee on Jan. 20. She was confirmed Feb. 8.

Colin Kahl, announced alongside Hicks on Dec. 30 to be the undersecretary of defense for policy, had his nomination sent to the committee on Jan. 20. Kahl will have a confirmation hearing in the coming weeks, according to sources, but he may face headwinds from Republicans on the committee. On Tuesday night, a spokesman for SASC ranking member Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., warned that Inhofe has “serious concerns with some of the policy positions” Kahl has taken in the past.

Otherwise, there has been silence on nominees, both at the DoD and at other national security agencies such as the National Nuclear Security Administration, located within the Energy Department.

“Given the speed with which they announced the top tier, I was expecting them to fill out the rest of the roster more quickly,” said Kori Schake, a former national security official in the George W. Bush administration who now works at the American Enterprise Institute.

Speaking on background, a senior administration official told Defense News that the delay in confirming Biden’s electoral win, formally known as ascertainment, has set the administration behind on the process.

“Because of the delay in ascertainment and other factors, the FBI was been delayed for over a month in conducting background investigations for our nominees, which is a prerequisite before SASC will full process nominations,” the official said.

‘It’s hardly a normal working environment’

While Austin and Hicks were able to receive quick confirmations, the months delay for Kahl may be a sign that the overall nomination process for future nominees will get pushed farther down the road than is usually the case. That, in turn, may lead the Biden team to delay nominations on smaller DoD roles while focusing on nominees for other top jobs across the government.

Across the entire Biden administration, 58 individuals have been nominated for the roughly 1,250 Senate-confirmed spots as tracked by the Partnership for Public Service, according to Loren DeJonge Schulman, a former defense official who is now vice president of research and evaluation with the organization. That’s more nominations than the previous four presidents have had 34 days after taking the oath of office, she said.

So far, only 10 nominees across the government are confirmed — two of whom were confirmed on Tuesday — which lags significantly behind the previous four administrations, something Schulman attributes to the unique circumstances facing the start of the administration.

Among those challenges: the ascertainment issue as highlighted by the senior official; the Jan. 5 runoffs in Georgia, which secured a 50-50 split in the Senate and required a long organizing period for committee leadership, meant some subcommittees were still sorting out their leadership rules into last week; the COVID-19 pandemic hangs over everything; and the second impeachment of former President Donald Trump, which absorbed precious time on Capitol Hill.

“Historical comparisons to prior transitions deserve context, and the Biden administration and Senate are both experiencing some really challenging circumstances.” Schulman said. “It’s hardly a normal working environment.”

Another factor identified by Schulman is that the Biden team prioritized its early focus on lining up a core of appointees below the PAS threshold in order to immediately take on major portfolios like the budget or the pandemic. To this point, more than 70 officials — deputy assistant secretaries, special assistants to Austin and other key roles — have been announced for the Pentagon.

But a focus on non-Senate confirmed roles means individuals get pushed into acting or temporary positions, which has potential drawbacks, particularly when dealing with the uniformed staff.

Schake said there are two main risks for not having nominees in as quickly as possible: “Not having people committed to the president’s priorities making early decisions that will set the tone of the administration, and not having their civilian appointees in place will require them to rely more on military staffs, undercutting the administration’s avowed commitment to rebalance civil-military relations.”

Those concerns are compounded by a hangover effect from the Trump administration, which struggled to keep confirmed officials in a number of top spots. By the time the administration flipped, 40 percent of the Senate-confirmed jobs were being filled by acting officials.

Schake identified the other undersecretaries of defense — intelligence; personnel and readiness; research and engineering; and acquisition and sustainment — as the priority roles for the Biden administration to nominate.

Joe Gould in Washington contributed to this report.

On that list:

• Reevaluate the department’s cybersecurity approach, which has come under question after a major federal government hack.
• Potentially decide whether to take a new tact with cloud services for the DoD, if a plan for an enterprise-wide cloud doesn’t survive a court challenge.
• Change how employees think about data, securing acceptance for stricter controls to keep it safe and the pushing them to view it as a strategic resource.

Those all tie back to a 2019 digital modernization strategy outlining how the Pentagon will optimize its IT environment for future wars. Implementation must be the priority for the CIO that President Joe Biden will choose, or the DoD risks being unprepared for fights against near-peer adversaries, experts told C4ISRNET.

“That strategy … needs to be our North Star because I know we got it right, in terms of the areas we laid out. But we must get to the nitty gritty of implementation and get it right,” said acting CIO John Sherman, who served three years as intelligence community CIO before jumping last summer to Pentagon deputy CIO.

Under the strategy, the department would save money it could reinvest in emerging capabilities to make war fighters more effective. Still, the CIO — the defense secretary’s senior adviser on IT issues — must ensure the Pentagon stays flexible while enacting the plan, Sherman said.

“We must capitalize on opportunities as they arise or make shifts where they’re necessary,” he said in an interview with C4ISRNET. “If we find a better way to do something, or we tried something that didn’t quite work as we thought, being ready to pivot and call that audible.”

The next CIO, who must win Senate confirmation, needs to shift the organization’s culture to embrace more advanced cybersecurity and software development practices, Sherman added. A top challenge “is keeping the enterprise in sync,” he said.

The DoD is “a very large enterprise with our colleague CIOs in the services and working with the combatant commands and all the DoD agencies in sync on areas like cybersecurity standards, on things like basic architecture, and our left and right limits on how we’re going to do things like Office 365. And how we’re going to do things like software development, but also still enabling agile execution of a broad plan.”

While an updated National Defense Strategy is expected under the new administration, Sherman said not to expect a completely new digital modernization strategy, but a few intermittent updates to some areas, such as software modernization.

One outstanding question for the CIO is what the cloud computing environment should look like. For more than three years, the department has struggled to procure an enterprise-wide cloud environment. The Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure, a single-vendor contract potentially worth $10 billion, is delayed by court cases and political controversy.

Sentiment may be turning against JEDI, according to a DoD memo to Congress that said the department will reassess the project’s future if a court rules against the Pentagon in an upcoming procedural motion.

“Cloud is going to remain a priority. Although I think what we’re going to see is instead of focusing on large cloud acquisitions, we’re going to see the department focus on how it’s actually going to best leverage the cloud … for cost savings, increased cybersecurity and increased efficiency,” said David Mihelcic, former chief technology officer at the Defense information Systems Agency and a consultant at technology market insights firm DMMI.

The DoD has long maintained that an enterprise cloud environment is vital for data storage and artificial intelligence development. The department has come to view data as a strategic asset, releasing a data strategy and hiring a chief data officer this year. The CDO position is just seven months old and critically important to setting data governance policies, particularly as the services move toward joint war fighting and rely more on shared battlefield data.

“Given the importance of data to key department initiatives (such as JADC2), priority should be placed on advancing the CDO build out,” said Blake Moore, former chief of staff to Dana Deasy, the last Pentagon CIO, and vice president of strategy and operations for Wickr, a secure collaboration platform.

That valuable data needs adequate protection. The CIO will face a cybersecurity crisis after hackers, suspected to be Russian, compromised a major IT contractor’s platform to infiltrate “fewer than 10” U.S. government agencies, according to government officials’ count. The Pentagon has not stated that it was compromised, though a Cyber Command spokesperson recently told C4ISRNET that “parts of our software supply chain source have disclosed a vulnerability within their systems.”

The future of DoD cybersecurity is a zero-trust architecture, requiring users to constantly verify their identities for access, Sherman and outside experts said.

Changing cybersecurity practices is “going to be incredibly difficult,” Mihelcic said. “This is going to have to be an ongoing conversation about how you use only commercial vendors who you believe have a high level of cyber hygiene.”

The next CIO must address basic cyber hygiene for suppliers, increase visibility into their networks, and promote sharing between components and industry on cyber protections, said Vimesh Patel, former IT official at the National Counterterrorism Center and chief technology adviser for World Wide Technology.

To accomplish those tasks, the department needs common IT tools, platforms and practices.

“How can we create efficiencies by doing these things that we have in common and then doing them better?” Patel said.

The CIO will inherit a department plagued by sustaining decades-old IT systems that burn through cash.

The biggest network reform underway is consolidating networks of the fourth estate agencies that don’t fit squarely underneath the military services. It’s part of an effort under previous defense secretaries to use savings from modernization for shipbuilding or technologies to fight China and Russia.

“The DoD is going to need to look for other consolidation initiatives that can help them save costs,” Mihelcic said. “They can reinvest those savings into mission IT — things that help the DoD be more lethal against their adversaries — as well as cybersecurity.”

While the official announcement has yet to be made, Boyer is expected to fill the job, which serves as something of a point person for NATO nations. He is expected to take office Feb. 22, after the conclusion of this week’s NATO defense ministers conference.

Since July 2020, the job has been filled in an acting capacity by Andrew Winternitz, who also served as acting deputy assistant secretary of defense from November 2018 to October 2019.

While the Biden team has only announced three nominees for Senate-confirmed jobs at the Pentagon — with Defense Security Lloyd Austin and his deputy, Kathleen Hicks, having been confirmed — it has moved quickly to fill important jobs at the lower levels. Boyer joins more than 70 political appointees who have been announced as joining the Pentagon since Jan. 20.

Boyer has European expertise, although he does not appear to have much direct experience with the Defense Department. He served as deputy assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs from 2009 to 2011, and as national intelligence officer for Europe on the National Intelligence Council from 2014 to 2017.

Since leaving the Obama administration, he has held a number of positions, including a senior fellow at the University of Pennsylvania’s Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement alongside Colin Kahl, the nominee for undersecretary of defense for policy; if Kahl is confirmed, he will be Boyer’s boss. Boyer’s biography also cites ties to the Center for American Progress; the Center for Transatlantic Relations at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies; the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars; and the Brookings Institution.

Boyer most recently served as the Washington head of the Brennan Center for Justice. Michael Waldman, the center’s president, described Boyer as “very talented, a real leader in our organization, a very skilled lawyer and policy activist.”

“He has deep ties within President [Joe] Biden’s foreign policy world, which I think will help in a job like this because people in Europe will know he is speaking for the administration in a meaningful way,” Waldman added. “We’re sad for the Brennan Center, and very glad for the country.”

Boyer’s Twitter feed contains retweets of concerns about politicization of the military under then-President Donald Trump, criticisms of the plan to withdraw troops from Germany and a focus on fighting disinformation. The latter was the focus of an April 2020 op-ed he authored in Foreign Policy, and is something that Waldman expects will be a major focus for Boyer in his new role.