Top Pentagon Aide, in Report, Assails Arms Acquisition Process

The senior Pentagon official in charge of weapons procurement, in a controversial internal report, has sharply criticized the Defense Department’s weapons acquisition process, the quality of the weapons it buys and the qualifications of the people who buy them.

The document, circulating in the Pentagon and among some members of Congress, offers perhaps the frankest critique of military procurement operations to leak out from the top levels of the department during the Reagan Administration.

‘Good Quality’ Lacking

“We must recognize that our present system is not achieving the desired effect of good quality,” wrote James P. Wade Jr., assistant secretary of defense for acquisitions and logistics.

Wade suggested as one possible remedy the creation of a single Acquisition Corps to take charge of the department’s entire annual $90-billion, 15-million-item procurement operation. That proposal is certain to meet strenuous opposition from the individual military services, which want to maintain control over their weapons purchases.

Wade’s report was made available Thursday by the Project on Military Procurement, a private organization that often serves as a conduit for Pentagon employees seeking to publicize departmental mismanagement.

Views on Proposed Changes

In a prepared statement, Glenn Flood, a Pentagon spokesman, said that the 42-page “white paper” represented Wade’s “views of Department of Defense endeavors to revamp and streamline the acquisition and procurement processes. The paper is under internal consideration, as the Department of Defense reviews various acquisition reform proposals.”

Wade did not return a telephone call to his office.

Wade, a career Pentagon official, physicist and graduate of the U.S. Military Academy who has worked for five administrations, has a reputation as a team player. He was named the Pentagon’s “procurement czar” earlier this year.

But Flood confirmed that Wade’s responsibilities as the final authority on major procurement matters, including most weapons purchases and policy statements, have been turned over to Deputy Defense Secretary William Howard Taft IV. Flood said he had been assured that the shift was unrelated to the report--a view confirmed by a congressional source who asked not to be named.

Action Called ‘Controversial’

The congressional source said that while Wade’s proposals were not particularly new, he is the highest-ranking Pentagon official to have made them. “For him to write that at the Department of Defense is controversial,” the source said.

In the report, Wade said that the “horror stories” of overpriced hammers, coffee pots and spare military parts “are not indicative of our current acquisition system as a whole.”

But although he praised the Pentagon work force, he said:”We do not need more people--but we do need superior, better qualified people. We lack a cadre of seasoned, well-rounded, technically oriented acquisition professionals. These people are the key to improving the DOD systems acquisition process.”

Wade said that Pentagon “initiatives developed to improve the acquisition process are often implemented in a fragmented and inconsistent manner.” And, reflecting criticism often raised by Pentagon observers, he said that “interservice rivalries and competition among the military departments for limited resources” have impeded the best use of new military technology.

Audit Teams Urged

While saying that the Pentagon’s use of “the latest technology and manufacturing systems in defense contracting is paying off,” his recommendations included “stringent, enforceable warranties,” the use of “elite audit teams” to monitor contractor performance and higher pay for members of the Acquisition Corps.