New No. 2

The Senate Armed Services Committee plans to hold a hearing to consider Pentagon acquisition chief Ashton Carter's nomination to become deputy defense secretary on Sept. 13, according to a panel statement issued this morning.

The hearing will be held at 9:30 a.m. in room 106 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building, the statement reads.

Carter has recently sought to dispel "understandable confusion" among Defense Department procurement officials about how and when to implement two policies central to the Obama administration's efforts to wring inefficiency and new savings from DOD's procurement process -- "should-cost" targets and  "affordability as a requirement."

In a two-page, Aug. 24 memo to DOD's acquisition community, Carter provides a brief tutorial on how -- particularly early in a program's life cycle -- to calibrate the two policies, both of which are designed to keep the focus on program costs. As InsideDefense.com reported last week:

"The two are compatible, but they must be balanced differently across the product life cycle," Carter writes. "The emphasis prior to milestone B [engineering and manufacturing development] should be on defining and achieving affordability targets. Past this point, the emphasis shifts to defining and achieving should-cost estimates."

The acquisition executive notes that these two policies "have come into conflict early in programs," particularly when affordability requirements are formulated to be in accord with service budget plans, yet when the program is not yet mature enough to clearly define should-cost estimates for future production.

Carter directs that during the early stages of product development, the priority should be on establishing affordability constraints. Should-cost policies, during that early phase, "should not keep us from making sound investments in product affordability," he directs.