Trump administration officials are removing the Pentagon’s top weapon buying negotiator
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Shay Assad, a senior Defense Department bureaucrat, is being reassigned to a post in Massachusetts, one unconnected to the contract negotiating team he has led for seven years, according to current and former defense officials familiar with the decision.
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Assad has been the Pentagon’s top contract negotiator for much of this decade. His office was created in 2011 under the Better Buying Power reforms created by Carter, the Pentagon acquisition chief who went on to become defense secretary. Assad became known as a hard-nosed negotiator; within five years, Politico dubbed him him “the most hated man in the Pentagon.”
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The move comes after Assad championed a plan to change how the Pentagon pays defense firms, by tying contractor payments to their performance instead of to production milestones.
Defense One
Gasp!
Assad had a special arrangement that allowed him to live in the Boston area and commute regularly to Washington, current and former defense officials said. Neither Ash Carter, then the Pentagon’s acquisition chief, nor his successor Frank Kendall objected to this arrangement, because they viewed Assad as unusually good at saving taxpayers’ money.
But the Defense Department spent $502,758 between 2012 and 2019 on Assad’s “transportation costs,” Lt. Col. Mike Andrews, a Pentagon spokesman, said in an email.
I hope during his tenure that he saved the DoD at least that much in contracts.
Current and former Pentagon officials describe Assad as a shrewd negotiator who has saved taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars by getting better deals with major defense contractors. He is credited with getting the Pentagon lower prices on F-35 fighter jets and with allowing SpaceX to compete for government rocket launches, lowering the cost of putting satellites in space.
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In 2016, the Pentagon credited Assad with saving taxpayers $500 million in his negotiating deals for C-17 transport planes, Apache attack helicopters and F/A-18 fighter jets.
About that F-35 contract...the manufacturer should have been required to pay the government to take them.
Much of the defense industry loathes negotiating with Assad, thanks in part to his demands for detailed documentation of the costs incurred while building weapons, several sources said. In March, Lockheed Martin’s CFO Bruce Tanner said that in recent years that negotiating with the Pentagon had become increasingly unpredictable — though he did not specifically mention Assad in his comments.
Then came the proposed rule that would have slowed payments to contractors, which sent defense firms into a frenzy. The three trade associations that represent aerospace and defense companies openly voiced their opposition — as shown by presentations at a September public meeting about the rule changes.
“The proposed rule will limit investment in more lethal and technologically superior capabilities,” the Aerospace Industries Association’s Steve Trautwein wrote in a PowerPoint brief. “The proposed rule undermines Secretary Mattis’s vision of ‘performance’ and will make defense products more expensive.”
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When Wall Street caught wind of the rule change, shares of defense firms slid, including those of Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Northrop Grumman, and General Dynamics.
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Then Congress got involved. Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., and Rep. Mac Thornberry, R-Texas, chairmen of the Senate and House Armed Services committees, wrote to Deputy Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan saying they had “significant reservations” about the proposed change in payments to contractors, calling the rule “fundamentally flawed.”
I bet they did.
It's looking pretty obvious that Assad is being removed from his position due to complaints from the "defense" industry. They liked being able to charge whatever the fuck they wanted to charge.
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.
