Four senior DOD nominees face Senate panel next week

The Senate Armed Services Committee has scheduled a Wednesday hearing to consider nominees for four senior Pentagon posts.

The nominees include David Trachtenberg to be principal deputy under secretary of defense for policy; Owen West to be assistant secretary of defense for special operations and low-intensity conflict; Ryan McCarthy to be under secretary of the Army; and Charles Stimson to be Navy general counsel.

Trachtenberg was most recently chief executive of national security consulting firm Shortwaver Consulting. He previously was head of the strategic analysis division at CACI International.

West most recently served as a partner and head of global natural gas trading and co-head of global power trading at Goldman Sachs.

McCarthy most recently worked for Lockheed Martin as vice president of the F-35 sustainment program. He has also served as a special assistant to former Defense Secretary Robert Gates.

Stimson is a senior legal fellow and manager of the National Security Law Program at the Heritage Foundation. He previously served as the deputy assistant secretary of defense for detainee affairs in the George W. Bush administration and also was an assistant U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia.

The nominees with extensive defense industry experience, especially McCarthy, who comes from Lockheed, could face tough questioning next week from Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain (R-AZ). McCain recently grilled Patrick Shanahan, the nominee to become deputy defense secretary, about his three-decade run as an executive at Boeing.

"I am concerned 90 percent of defense spending is in the hands of five corporations, of which you represent one," McCain said at Shanahan's June 20 confirmation hearing. "I have to have confidence that the fox is not going to be put back into the hen house. That's not what our founding fathers had in mind."

McCain ultimately supported Shanahan, who now awaits full confirmation by the Senate.