No EW Executive Agent

The Pentagon is standing up a new electronic warfare council, but the need for harmonization of service efforts in EW doesn’t mean that any one branch will be made EW executive agent, said acquisition, technology, and logistics chief Frank Kendall Tuesday. “We need to have some Department-wide focus, we need to look for synergies, we need to make sure we‘re making the right technology investments and have the right pipeline of programs,” Kendall said of the EW council. He was speaking at a McAleese Associates/Credit Suisse symposium in Washington, D.C., at which Deputy Defense Secretary Robert Work announced the council’s formation. Kendall said he doesn’t think executive agency—in which one service would lead the efforts of the others—is the right approach. “We need platforms in the services that are appropriate for their mission areas,” he said, “so I do not see” a reason to create an executive agent. “I think each service is going to have to do some things that are unique and some that are shared, and what we’re going to do with that council is be as effective at that as we can be.” He might consider executive status for one service “if, at some point, it looks like it might make more sense” to do that. He noted that “each service” has some part of the EA-6B Prowler and EA-18G Growler jamming aircraft mission.