The Pentagon's Strategic Capabilities Office (SCO) Takes Center Stage
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Ash Carter's final act?
Dave Majumdar [2]
In one of his final acts as Secretary of Defense, Ashton Carter [3] is implementing plans to integrate the Strategic Capabilities Office (SCO) [4] permanently into the Pentagon bureaucracy. Earlier this week, Carter signed a memo that would turn the fledgling office into a permanent structure.
In many ways, the SCO is central to Carter’s goal of fostering innovation within the Pentagon’s ponderous and bloated procurement processes—which often deliver capabilities late and over budget. “The SCO, so-called, is one of the ways that—but only one, but a very important one—that we're trying to continue to be the most technologically innovative military in the world,” Carter told reporters at Joint Base San Antonio-Randolph in Texas earlier today. “That's important. We've always had the technological edge. I already said our people is what make our military the greatest, and next to the people is our technology.”
Under President Barack Obama’s final budget, the Pentagon is making investments to retain its technological edge and recapture its ability to fight against near-peer great power threats [5]. “We're making big investments. We have made those in the budget that is before Congress now and that we hope finally gets passed,” Carter said. “And we're preparing a budget for fiscal year '18, which we'll obviously hand off to the new team there. But again, that has that same emphasis.”
Source URL (retrieved on November 18, 2016):
http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/the-pentagons-strategic-capabilities-office-sco-takes-center-18435
