After more than a year, Pentagon finally has a new acquisition czar in place

WASHINGTON: After more than a year in which the Pentagon’s top acquisition job sat officially vacant, former Air Force weapons buyer Bill LaPlante officially took over as the undersecretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment today.

In his new role, LaPlante will oversee hundreds of billions of dollars in procurement spending as the Pentagon’s acquisition enterprise, as well as a wide-ranging portfolio that includes the defense industrial base and supply chain, the sustainment of legacy equipment, logistics, installations and environment.

During his confirmation hearing in March, LaPlante said his “day one” priority would be to expedite the flow of equipment to Ukraine, while also keeping a watchful eye on the US weapons stockpile and increasing production of key munitions.

“I believe we need multiple hot production lines, whether that be munitions, [unmanned aerial systems] and the like,” he said. “They — up by themselves — are a deterrent, and we need to put much more focus on that across the board.”

While normally a low-stakes position, getting an acquisition executive confirmed has been a challenge for the Biden administration. The White House first intended to elevate Defense Innovation Board director Mike Brown to the A&S job, but Brown withdrew from consideration in July after news broke he was under investigation by the department’s inspector general. Now, LaPlante will take over from Andrew Hunter, the current assistant secretary for acquisition for the Air Force, who has been acting in the larger Pentagon acquisition role since February 2022.

The White House announced its nomination of LaPlante in November. Following his confirmation by the Senate on April 7, LaPlante was sworn in at the Pentagon earlier this morning.

LaPlante, who most recently worked as president and chief executive of Draper Laboratory, was previously the Air Force’s top acquisition official from 2014 to 2017.

He has also been a member of national security-related boards, such as the Defense Science Board, US Strategic Command Senior Advisory Board and the Section 809 panel, which was mandated by Congress in the fiscal 2016 defense bill to provide recommendations to streamline the acquisition process.