{"id":26818,"date":"2017-12-11T17:01:21","date_gmt":"2017-12-11T17:01:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/federaltimes\/uncategorized\/2017\/12\/11\/policy-shift-dod-is-pushing-major-program-management-back-to-the-military\/"},"modified":"2026-08-07T22:50:33","modified_gmt":"2026-08-07T22:50:33","slug":"policy-shift-dod-is-pushing-major-program-management-back-to-the-military","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/federaltimes\/acquisition\/2017\/12\/11\/policy-shift-dod-is-pushing-major-program-management-back-to-the-military\/","title":{"rendered":"Policy shift: DoD is pushing major program management back to the military"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

WASHINGTON \u2014 The Pentagon has steadily been pushing milestone authority for major defense programs to the individual military services, but shifting personnel down from the Office of the Secretary of Defense will take longer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At a Dec. 7 hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Ellen Lord, undersecretary of defense for acquisition, logistics and technology, or AT&L, said her intention is to continue to hand off the day-to-day running of programs to the services, preferring her office serve as a kind of high-level group providing overall guidance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAT&L needs to be the strategic body with focus across the board, driving affordability and accountability, reducing timelines, and equipping the Services to execute their programs,\u201d Lord said in prepared testimony, adding that the Defense Department awards an average of 1,800 new contracts a day and 36,000 delivery\/task orders a day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In October, Lord said she intended to shift the \u201cbulk\u201d of major defense programs<\/a> from the Office of the Secretary of Defense, or OSD, down to the services, potentially alongside personnel. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the programs portion of that move, changes are already happening. Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson testified that her service has milestone decision authority over 39 of 51 Acquisition Category (ACAT) 1 programs, which is up from just 19 of 49 on Oct 1, 2016, when the fiscal 2016 National Defense Authorization Act went into place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Put another way, the Air Force a year ago had milestone authority over only 39 percent of its largest defense programs; it now has it over about 76 percent. And just since Nov. 30, eight major programs \u2015 including Family of Advanced Beyond Line-of-Sight Terminals; Three-Dimensional Expeditionary Long-Range Radar; GPS III; and the KC-46 tanker \u2015 have had milestone authority delegated down to the Air Force, Wilson said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The same is happening with the Navy. James Geurts, the newly confirmed service acquisition head, testified that the Navy currently has milestone decision authority for 40 ACAT 1 programs, including the future Guided Missile Frigate and the MQ-25 unmanned system, a change from before the 2016 NDAA. More importantly, the service is in charge of five of its 10 ACAT 1D programs, the biggest efforts that require the most oversight.<\/p>\n\n\n\t