Navy Creating Special Corps for Purchasing

The Navy, frustrated by sending career military officers into business combat against “slicks from industry,” announced Thursday that it is creating a professional purchasing corps to buy everything from the sparest of spare parts to the largest of aircraft carriers from private defense contractors.

Navy Secretary John F. Lehman Jr. said the new approach, “the most far-reaching change in Navy personnel policies in 100 years,” is intended to correct what Adm. James D. Watkins, chief of naval operations, called a “tragically flawed” procurement system and to improve the caliber of the officers who oversee the Navy’s $100-billion budget.

Lehman and Watkins unveiled the program at a Pentagon news conference.

Navy promotion policies now favor those with command experience at sea over those with management jobs. But under the new plan, 100 of the Navy’s 250 slots for admirals--40% of the most senior positions in the force--will be allocated to officers with the designation “materiel professional.”

The Navy hopes that one result will be that procurement officers will have an incentive to stay in the service rather than rush through the “revolving door” to go to work for defense contractors. Lehman denied that the Navy will simply end up training a business elite for corporate jobs.

However, the program does not include new benefits to discourage officers from retiring later than they might otherwise leave the service--often by age 45--and taking positions in private industry.

‘Maybe Not That Bad’

Paul Hoven, a member of the staff of the Project on Military Procurement and a frequent critic of Pentagon spending policies, said the plan is “maybe not that bad,” but A. Ernest Fitzgerald, a longtime Air Force “whistle blower,” predicted that it will accomplish little.

Both Hoven and Fitzgerald said they favor civilians for the purchasing jobs.

The system resembles the one employed in France, in which young military officers are assigned early in their careers to roles in the purchasing corps, with promotions readily available to them despite their lack of command experience.

However, in the Navy’s program, officers will probably not be selected for the “materiel professional” designation until they have completed about 16 years in the service and are nearing the point at which they would be considered for higher-level jobs.

Watkins said the officers expected to negotiate with defense contractors come head to head with a modern business world for which they were not sufficiently trained.

“We were simply naive,” he said. “We were subjected to slicks from industry.”

Special Training Program

Now, Lehman said, officers will be offered a special training program. He held out the possibility that some could study at such institutions as the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania or Harvard’s Graduate School of Business Administration in preparation for their assignments.

In addition to overseeing their own purchases, the Navy and the Army handle most Marine Corps procurement.

The Air Force, while conducting a special training program for procurement officers, maintains a less formal procurement structure than that envisioned by the Navy.

“We don’t look at it as a separate career field,” said Col. Michael McRaney, an Air Force spokesman.

The Army has long maintained specialized procurement branches, including its Quartermaster Corps.