'How Do We Make This Better?': Warren Davidson Presses DoD Official On Improving Acquisitions System

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During a House Financial Services Committee hearing on Wednesday, Rep. Warren Davidson (R-OH) questioned acting Director of the Materials and Manufacturing Directorate within the Air Force Research Laboratory, Charles Ormsby, about improving the defense acquisitions process.

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00:00And so I'll recognize, or second round, not the second panel, second round for this panel, to be more precise.

00:07So I recognize myself for five minutes.

00:09And talking about flight, you know, they do have some beautiful real estate in North Carolina.

00:15But we do have the engineers here in Ohio.

00:19I knew it was going to go there, Mr. Chairman, but I did start.

00:23It's here in the birthplace of aviation.

00:26Now, the dialogue with Mr. Huizenga, really, I think, highlights, you know, the coordination necessary across multiple federal agencies.

00:38And, of course, on 7, Article 7, or Title 7, when you're looking at CFIUS, for example, threat assessments, things like that, it's important.

00:50In Title 1, I think Chairman Hill highlighted that, you know, if you've got 100 priorities, you really have zero priorities.

00:57But as picking up with the dialogue with Mr. Ormsi, how's the collaboration across agencies going within Title 3?

01:04And when you think about multiple federal agencies, there are times where FEMA is really the lead coordinator.

01:08So what's the overall office doing to kind of coordinate kind of across agencies?

01:17Mr. Frankson.

01:18All right.

01:18Thank you very much for the question.

01:20Thank you very much.

01:50Thank you very much.

02:20turn that quick ourselves and they're turning it back to even quicker to us. So it is a really,

02:24really strong relationship. Yeah, thank you. And I guess it also highlights the importance of how

02:29Congress appropriates money. And, you know, Dr. Ormsby, you highlighted several buckets that

02:33you're actively managing. When you think about not just the appropriations and the status quo

02:39that we have, not just in DPA, but in the procurement, one of the things that DPA does

02:44at times is, you know, sort of bridge the gap between status quo thinking. And a lot of times

02:50the supply chain functions at least adequately for the status quo. The real question is when you

02:56have those moments of crisis where you have to surge, how resilient is the supply chain? How

03:01important is it to maybe use some of what we're learning from DPA to look at the rest of the

03:05procurement process or be able to waive even our own procurement process? And I think just to

03:10illustrate, you know, SpaceX out there, you know, gave us deep space launch capability that we were

03:17for a while, depending on Russia, you know, Atlas is still under development using status quo,

03:22traditional procurement operations. So at a certain level, the supply chain arbitrage was really part of

03:28the success story there. So, you know, how do we how do we make this better? Yes, Chairman Davidson,

03:34thank you for the question. Um, I, I, I think you're hitting on a key issue that that we have

03:41right now. Um, these authorities can, can really help us to, um, address supply chain issues. But I

03:49believe Mr. Frankston said earlier, what we really need to get to, and to your point earlier, if you go

03:54to war with the supply chain you have, we need to be more proactive and looking forward, right? Um,

04:00because we've already identified a number of strategic, um, problems in our supply chain where,

04:07where we need to address those issues. These authorities have been very helpful to us in doing

04:13that. Uh, I think they're just part of the puzzle to be honest with you. Um, there are a number of

04:18other tools that we have also from our, our science and technology portfolios to other investment

04:25opportunities. Um, but I, I believe we need a whole of nation approach, honestly, that looks at

04:30everything that we have, um, to be able to start to proactively prepare for a surge. What we saw during

04:37COVID, um, as, as the, the fund, um, jumped up significantly in importance and, uh, number of

04:46projects, uh, number of dollars and invested, et cetera. Um, we mobilized very quickly. It was an

04:52all hands on deck kind of effort. Um, and we have a number of, of lessons learned in, in how we've

04:59organized now that we've continued, um, to, to try to be more effective and efficient, uh, in, in

05:06identifying issues and setting priorities. Uh, but I, I believe we have to keep that going

05:11into the future. Yeah. Thank you both. Um, I now, my time's expired and I now recognize

05:15the, uh, Chairman Hill for five minutes.

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