Equipment requests raise procurement integrity questions.

• Author: Erwin, Sandra I.
• Position: UPFRONT

The increasingly frequent practice of tagging combat equipment requests as "urgent" needs has resulted in widespread abuse of the system, military officials and congressional investigators said.

Because the Pentagon's acquisition bureaucracy can take months or years to develop, test and deploy new hardware, commanders in Iraq and Afghanistan often have resorted to "urgent needs" requests, which help bypass the cumbersome procurement process. In many cases, these pleas are legitimate, but there are also instances when requisitions that are labeled "urgent" are for items of questionable value, said Lt. Gen. Donald J. Hoffman, military deputy to the assistant secretary of the Air Force for acquisition.

"I've seen a lot of abuse in the requirements area," Hoffman said at a recent conference in Virginia Beach, Va., organized by the U.S. Naval Institute. "A lot of things get labeled 'urgent needs,' ... things they couldn't get through the regular process," Hoffman said.

The Defense Department should ensure there is "proper filtering of the requirements and understanding what's an urgent requirement," he said. "Wanting something bad is not the same as needing it bad."

The Defense Department created "express lanes" for military commanders to circumvent the ponderous acquisition process, but it also should have a better method of filtering requests, Hoffman said.

A senior Navy official who served in Iraq echoed Hoffman's assertions.

Pressing war requests not only are misused by military officials but also have become an expedient vehicle for contractors to push products, said Rear Adm. Jan Hamby, director of operations at the Naval Network Warfare Command.

"When I was in Baghdad, I saw urgent unfunded requirements spewing out just because someone--usually with stars on his collar--wanted a new toy he had heard about," Hamby said at the conference. The desired equipment was requested "with no thought about how it would fit within the framework of the existing systems," she added.

Hamby said she would like to see more integrity on the part of contractors. "We need to figure out which bells and whistles aren't adding anything," she said. Oftentimes, "someone has a product they want to pitch. They figure out how it might be useful, and then they market it to all their friends who are still in the service or used to work for them," she added. "They try to sell them on why this thing will win the war for us."

Hamby, who was overseeing computers and...