UP FRONT.

AuthorMagnuson, Stew

The Navy Has a 'Secret Weapon'

* Secretary of the Navy Richard Spencer revealed to an audience at a Washington, D.C. think tank its new means for speeding up acquisition. "Inside the building my biggest secret weapon that I got to unveil in October was 'Hondo' Geurts, our head of acquisition," he said.

James Geurts for the majority of his career worked the acquisition regime at Special Operations Command, where he was known for speeding up equipment procurement. The Navy needs to get new weapons to its sailors and Marines quicker, Spencer said. That includes taking advantage of other transaction authorities, a contract vehicle that allows program managers to skirt the cumbersome Federal Acquisition Regulation.

"We have not been as rapid in grasping them... as the Air Force has, but the Navy is really going tooth and nail after OTAs," he said. Read more about how other transaction authorities are being used on pages 7, 16 and 36.

Fail Fast? Forget it

* Former Secretary of the Air Force Deborah Lee James said despite the rhetoric coming out of the Defense Department that program managers should be allowed to "fail fast, and move on," the fear factor is still there. "They are still jittery about this."

If a program does not achieve its goals, its leaders are still brought into their bosses' office and taken to task, she said at an event at the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency. "Your small failure is their big failure," she said. Worse yet is being called before Congress where they are put on the hot seat, something she experienced more than a few times. "It is most unpleasant," she added.

Thanks for the Scoop

* Companies that sell imagery of Earth from space to the public are proliferating, but the thinking of the Defense Department and intelligence community is sometimes stuck in the 1960s when the...

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