OSD Creates New Electronic Warfare Office

ALEXANDRIA: The executive committee on electronic warfare that Deputy Secretary Bob Work created last year is already reshaping the Pentagon bureaucracy. While the four-star officers and top civilians who make up the “EXCOM” itself have only met three times, executive committee co-chair Frank Kendall, undersecretary of acquisition, technology, and logistics, has created a new EW office and chosen a Senior Executive Service (SES) official—the civilian equivalent of a general—to run it.
The executive committee has hardly had time to make any significant impact on the 2017 budget due out next week, but it is getting institutional traction for 2018. While the EXCOM”s high-level leaders may come and go, especially with a new administration, a new staff office in the bureaucracy can endure forever.
“From an organizational standpoint, we are making changes, [but] they”re nascent, they”re very new,” Jay Kistler, the Pentagon”s director of Electronic Warfare & Countermeasures (EW&C), told reporters this morning. “The selection for the SES, Bill Conley”—formerly of DARPA—”happened about early December, maybe. It took a while to get the people.”