Hill To Griffin: No Moving The SCO; Shifts It to DepSecDef Norquist

WASHINGTON: Congress has brushed aside a strong push by Research and Engineering czar Mike Griffin to demote the Strategic Capabilities Office (SCO).

The 2020 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) transfers the SCO from his purview to that of Deputy Defense Secretary David Norquist, sending an unmistakable signal to the former NASA administrator that he was wrong to try and shift the SCO to DARPA. Congress clearly wants to maintain the SCO’s authority to harness advanced technologies and get new capabilities into the hands of troops within two to five years.

If it had been moved to DARPA, congressional supporters worried, the SCO’s ability to act fast would be stymied by layers of bureaucratic approval required for any decisions. Under DARPA, the SCO would have been bumped four reporting levels down from its original status when then-Secretary of Defense Ash Carter ordered it to directly report to him when he created the organization in 2012.

“This is sort of going back to its origins,” the congressional staffer said, “when Will Roper was head of SCO.” Roper was the founding director of SCO, and currently serves as Air Force Acquisition czar. Following his departure from SCO in February 2018, the office was moved under Griffin’s shop.

A congressional staffer told Breaking D yesterday that the language is a mixture of House and Senate Armed Services Committee language. Both committees had opposed the move in their separate versions of the 2020 NDAA. The bill also “establishes a cross-functional team to improve the efficiency and effectiveness” of the SCO, according to a SASC summary of conference bill. The latter provision reflects the concerns in the Republican-led Senate, as expressed in its June version of the NDAA, that SCO had drifted away from its original purpose and “undertaken projects with questionable technical merit and operational utility.”

After reaching agreement on conference language Dec. 9, the House passed the 2020 NDAA on Dec. 11; the Senate invoked cloture on the conference language last night and, according to a Senate staffer, is expected to pass the bill today.

“We do not comment on pending legislation,” the Pentagon spokesman told Breaking D today, noting that until the bill becomes law DoD cannot respond to questions about the NDAA provisions.

As Colin first reported in July, Griffin’s decision to move SCO to DARPA prompted the abrupt resignation of his hand-picked SCO director Chris Shank, and created a flood of pushback from military operators. The Joint Staff, Special Operations Command, Indo-Pacific Command and European Command all sent memos to Griffin to that effect when first informed of the proposed move in May.

As reported by colleague Aaron Mehta, speaking to reporters during the 2019 Space and Missile Defense Symposium in Huntsville on Aug. 7, Griffin argued that the overseeing SCO’s $1.4 billion portfolio was simply too burdensome on himself and his deputy Lisa Porter as they were essentially serving as “peer reviewers” of all the office’s proposed projects. He said that DARPA, which Griffin’s shop also oversees, was better organized to provide SCO projects with the attention they required.

Before the Democrats took over the House in the 2018 election cycle, the Republican-led HASC was not so convinced of SCO’s viability. The 2019 NDAA that DoD undertake a study on completely eliminating the office.