DoD USD "all hands": Under Secretary Aldridge asks, "what's on your mind?" - AT&L

Program Manager, Sept-Oct, 2002

Congress has attacked it and Senator [Carl] Levin kind of beat up all around it. As far as how that's now working relative to the decision process in the building, we've got a missile defense support group working to bring the entities within OSD involved in missile defense together, rather than each one working separately and individually gathering data on the missile defense program. That still probably needs to be worked a little bit, particularly how we protect the rights of the individual OSD offices relative to missile defense, and assure their access to data.

Making all that happen together is probably still being worked. We'll see how that turns out. It's got to work. We've now got now an organization where the bonds have been removed. Now missile defense can go do anything it wants to. There are no treaty constraints. It can do whatever testing it wants. They can bring in the allies now to be part of their programs if the allies want to participate.

We even talked about doing things like the Joint Strike Fighter and having varying levels of participation in missile defense; or, if they can't spend any money, they can provide a piece of ground to put a radar on, maybe very optimally located. So we've opened up that door; all that's now brewing. Fiscal year 2004, as it goes through this budget process, is going to be the first year that the missile defense program can just do what it wants to do. We can make those decisions that are in the best interest of missile defense rather than in 03. I think it's going to work out pretty well, but is still to be determined.

Q: Do you anticipate a further downsizing of the AT&L workforce or are we finally at a point where we can start to stabilize?

A: We know we have the Congressional directive criteria of a 15 percent reduction. It will not be taken 15 percent "peanut butter spread." That's part of the reengineering process. If we can look at this and see where we are and see we're at the 15 percent target and see what the reengineering's going to do, I would hope that we could stabilize. But we do have the 15 percent directive -- a directive that applies to all the OSD offices as a matter of fact. But I think if we can do this job right, we can do it without having to go through all the painful RIFs [reductions in force] and other measures. We can do it by reengineering and moving things around rather than people.

Q: What is your perspective on the AT&L role for homeland defense as we stand up organizations like Northern Command?

A: I think there are different parts to our role. One is the homeland defense associated with more of the domestic side. I mean we still have homeland defense from the point of view of protecting military forces and things of that nature, as well as supporting the new homeland defense agency. I think a lot of our role has to do with weapons of mass destruction, where we have quite a bit of say so in in terms of the expertise that we can provide there.

We certainly know about a lot of the capabilities such as aircraft and AWACS [Airborne Warning and Control System] that we have to support the defense of the United States; and certain kinds of weapon systems and other technologies that might be applicable to homeland defense [and are]--from a civilian point of view--a derivative of our military