New DSCA chief plans to work closely on FMS policy

The new head of the Defense Security Cooperation Agency says he's been charged to be more involved in discussions about foreign military sales policy.

Army Lt. Gen. Charles Hooper, who took over the top position at DSCA last month, said Defense Secretary Jim Mattis has told him to work closely with Pentagon officials on policy related to his work overseeing the execution of FMS cases.

"The secretary has brought DSCA and myself as the director more deeply involved in the inception of the policy formulation process, which allows us to analyze the process of forming the policy and determine whether it's within the realm of the possible in order to provide capabilities for our partners," Hooper said during the Sept. 6 ComDef forum in Washington. "That's very exciting for us to be involved in the process."

Mattis also wants DSCA to work more closely with the geographic combatant commands, with industry and with foreign partners, according to Hooper. The three-star has 16 years of security cooperation experience, having worked in a range of international assignments during his career and most recently serving as the chief of the Office of Military Cooperation in Egypt.

FMS have reached record highs in recent years, but the process has still been criticized by some in Congress and industry for being too slow. The House's fiscal year 2018 defense policy bill would require the Pentagon to set "specific milestones and standard time lines" for FMS cases.

Asked if he thought such a requirement would be the right mechanism for expediting sales, Hooper said he has not yet seen the House language. But he said DSCA already has reporting milestones as part of its process and suggested transmitting such information to Congress would not be a problem.

"I don't see a need to create a new system," Hooper said. "It's merely to take the information that we already have and to transmit it to Congress.

"But I do know that everybody in this room who works in security cooperation works on time lines and milestones that we try to keep," he continued. "We work very hard to compress those time lines as quickly as possible and we have objective measures by which we measure the work that we do. So if Congress is looking for us to transmit those, I don't see any problem."