U.S. Air Force plans to expand use of portfolio acquisition executives over the next year
The Air Force’s new acquisition approach will eventually result in about 18 portfolio acquisition executives, Secretary Troy Meink said Monday.
The service announced in January it would move from relying on program executive officers to instead using portfolio acquisition executives, as part of efforts to implement the Pentagon’s acquisition overhaul.
The difference between the previous PEO structure and new PAE structure is that the latter will “have all the contracting, finance” personnel directly under their authority, Meink said during a Monday keynote at the Air & Space Forces Association’s annual Warfare Symposium.
“We’re also expanding the scope of the PAEs” to include support functions, such as sustainment of their fielded systems, he said. The rationale is that “when you have to worry about sustainment when you’re doing the development, there’s spent a lot of time — more time — making sure that those things are sustainable.”
The Air Force last month detailed the first five PAEs; Meink said Monday the service expects to eventually have about 18. The Space Force, which identified two in January, anticipates having about nine, he said.
“We want to kind of let it run through one budget cycle a little bit before we instantiate it across the entire service,” Meink said. The portfolios have already been identified, and he said he expects the new structure to be fully implemented “within the next year or so,” and up to “18 months at the very longest.”
Gen. B. Chance Saltzman, Space Force’s chief of space operations, said in a separate speech at the conference that Space Force has “retooled how we develop and deliver space capabilities by establishing our [portfolio] acquisition executives.”
“These portfolio owners will have the authority to manage risk and resources at their level, making trades to keep their programs agile and deliver on urgent capability needs,” he said. “Our PAEs will also help identify, categorize program complexity, characterize risk and work with external stakeholders to ensure expectations are met.”
Saltzman also said the Space Force’s “test and evaluation enterprise is evolving to an integrated testing mindset rather than separate and serial developmental and then operational test.”
“Under this new framework, new weapon systems [will] have been rigorously vetted by the very operators who will depend on them in the fight,” he added.
