During a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing last week, Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) spoke about how the Pentagon can improve its contracting and acquisitions program.
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00:00Next we have Senator Tuberville.
00:04Thank you Senator Ernst. Good morning.
00:08Mr. Obadal, thank you for your service, first of all.
00:12You're coming from Andriel Industries, is that correct?
00:18Is that how you pronounce it?
00:20Andriel, Senator, yes.
00:22Yeah, one of our newer defense contractors.
00:24Obviously has taken a novel approach to supporting a warfighter.
00:28You know, newer companies like this have become successful, partly because newer defense contracting authorities and organizations such as the RCCTO,
00:37which is headquartered in Redstone, Arsenal, in my state of Alabama, you know, we're making progress.
00:44So how can the Army continue to improve our acquisition systems based on the lessons learned from the RCCTO?
00:54Senator, thank you for the question as this is a critical part of Army transformation.
01:00And I believe that the RCCTO really showed us that we can rapidly understand the problem, innovate solutions with industry,
01:10and then field them rapidly in a number of different ways.
01:13My experience in commercial industry and specifically in the defense technology industry gave me a wide exposure to a number of different companies dealing with the acquisition core.
01:26And having been on both sides of the table and having overseen acquisitions in my government service, I came to the conclusion that the Army needs to be a better customer.
01:38And we need to do that through streamlining our requirements, through predictability of requirements, and not changing them and moving the goalposts on the defense industry.
01:49With that said, we always have to have agile requirements, which requires modularity, both software and hardware.
01:57So if confirmed, when I look at the entire acquisition core, I believe the people are, we have fantastic people in our acquisition core who have given us the world's strongest Army.
02:10It is our processes that we have to fix.
02:13So if confirmed, Senator, I would work diligently on that.
02:17Yeah.
02:19You know, as Senator Ernst said earlier, last week the Army announced the ATI initiative headed in a different direction in some areas.
02:28I understand that being an old football coach.
02:30You can't keep doing the same thing over and over.
02:32You've got to change along with your adversary, and we need to obviously need to do that.
02:37You know, part of this change last week, canceling of multiple programs, you know, one of these contracts, the Future Tactical Uncrewed Aircraft System, was won by a small family business in Alabama, my home state, named Griffin Aerospace.
02:54On Friday they were notified that the thousands of man hours and millions of dollars that they had spent and invested in good faith were basically wasted.
03:04It's hard to understand that, you know, from their perspective.
03:07You know, I'd like to suggest to you that the Army restore faith with these type of businesses, because we need the smaller businesses.
03:13This is not, this is not Lockheed.
03:16This is not Boeing, who could really absorb this.
03:20This is going to devastate this country.
03:23And at the end of the day, they need more than an oops.
03:26You know, we made them, we want to, we want to change here.
03:29Do you agree with that?
03:32Senator, I wholeheartedly agree that the Army needs to take care of small business as best it can.
03:39And I believe there are a number of different ways that we can do that, because small business, in my experience, is where most of the innovation comes from.
03:49And, and obviously large companies, like you mentioned, build us exquisite weapon systems and we need them.
03:55But we have to make sure that we're cultivating a robust, small and medium sized business ecosystem.
04:00Yeah.
04:02You know, in my state, in Huntsville, we have six to six, probably six to eight hundred small defense contractors.
04:07We can't lose them.
04:08You know, they get bought out, obviously, regularly, but we need to make sure that, you know, for future innovation, they're as important as anybody.
04:15So, thank you for that.
04:16Mr. O'Keefe, my role as chairman of the Subcommittee on Personnel.
04:21We held our first hearing, as you well know, with our supervisors of our academies in 30 years.
04:28First one in 30 years.
04:30Not only are you a graduate, you were involved in that.
04:33One of the things we eliminated during that hearing is that permanent military professors at the academies require Senate confirmation, which is very understandable.
04:42While civilian tenured faculty are not.
04:45Making them, as far as I can tell, the only lifetime government employees not subject to advice and consent.
04:52How do you feel about that?
04:55Senator, it's, it's, it is an interesting dynamic.
04:59When the permanent professors were set up decades ago, they were, the majority of the faculty was all military at the service academies.
05:07Um, I, I suppose the concern anytime you're, uh, discussing, uh, whether to make more civilian positions, uh, Senate confirmed is, is perhaps extended vacancies.
05:19Um, um, I, I do think that there's some room to evaluate the administrative, uh, faculty authority.
05:27You know, they, they have a slightly nuanced, uh, statutory scheme that applies to civilian faculty.
05:33Uh, they didn't always have tenure, for instance.
05:36Um, so, uh, so I think that is, that is something that should be evaluated, uh, which I think could, could improve the, uh, sort of the effectiveness of, of the, of the workforce, of the faculty mix there.
05:48Um, without, uh, without, uh, without perhaps causing some, some of the, the vacancies that, that I think might result, uh, with Senate confirmation.
05:56But, but I do think that's an area to take a look at.
05:59I know the secretary has, uh, has mentioned that that's something he wants to take a look at as well.
06:04And when confirmed, I have some suggestions, and as the supervisors do, about transforming, you know, our military academies.
06:10Make them better.
06:11We don't want to do something just to do it, but we need to make them better and, and grow with the times.
06:15And so, look forward to visiting with you on that and working with you.
06:18Absolutely, sir.
06:20Thank you, Senator.
06:21Thank you, Senator Tuberville.