Army Overhauls Contracting, Puts Generals in Charge The Army will stand up a new Contracting Command on March 13, but its structure and organization remain a work in progress. Army Secretary Pete Geren announced the reorganization following reports of fraud and abuse in procurements in Iraq and Kuwait. He said as many as 1,400 additional contracting personnel will be added over the next several years. The new command will absorb the duties and most of the personnel of the Army Contracting Agency. It will be headed by a two-star general and staffed with more uniformed service members. That was a key recommendation of a commission headed by former undersecretary of defense Jacques Gansler. (SAA, 11/9/07) Putting more military personnel into contracting positions “was the whole intent behind it,” said Lt. Col. Martin Downie, an Army spokesman. The Contracting Command, under the Army Material Command, will have two subordinate units, each headed by a one-star general. The Installation Contracting Command will handle procurement of installation-level services and supplies and common-use IT hardware, software and services. The Expeditionary Contracting Command will support troops deployed in combat zones. Many details have not yet been settled, including where the new command will be based. “The final structure is very much under debate and discussion,” Downie said in an interview. The Gansler commission and another task force examined Army contracting last year, as criminal investigators were pursuing nearly 100 cases of bribery and other corruption in its Kuwait and Iraq contracting operations. The Gansler commission described Army contracting personnel as “understaffed, overworked, under-trained, under-supported, and, most important, under-valued.” It pointed out that the Army had no generals assigned to procurement. Because opportunities for promotion were limited, the commission said, procurement was not a popular career path for officers. “The whole idea is that the next time we go into a fight, we’ll be prepared,” said Jeffrey Parsons, director of contracting for the Materiel Command, according to the Army News Service. “One of the things we’re learning in Iraq and Afghanistan, especially with doing reconstruction and stabilization work, is that contracting is a lot more complex than just buying gravel,” he said. “We need to get the contracting people to have much deeper analytical skills and contracting skills. That’s one of the reasons we’re looking at bringing this into Army Materiel Command, because the complexity of contracting we do in AMC associated with weapons, large services, even some large installation-type services, will give these military new training opportunities.” At a Feb. 29 briefing, Army officials said the command will set up contingency contracting teams consisting of two officers and two enlisted soldiers who will be ready to deploy into combat zones. But they said training the military personnel and fully staffing the new command will take several years.