Senior Lawmakers Seek Answers on ECSS

In a letter to Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, the Senate Armed Services Committee leadership took the Air Force to task for scrapping the Expeditionary Combat Support System and asked for answers on how this acquisition effort failed in the manner that it did. “We believe that the public and the taxpayers deserve a clear explanation of how the Air Force came to spend more than $1 billion without receiving any significant military capability,” wrote SASC Chairman Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) and SASC Ranking Member Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) in their Dec. 5 missive. “From what we know to date, this case appears to be one of the most egregious examples of mismanagement in recent memory,” they added. Levin and McCain called on Panetta to provide answers as to why the flawed procurement was allowed to continue for so long, why restructuring efforts failed, who would be held accountable, and what steps the Defense Department is taking to ensure something like this would not happen again. The Air Force notified Congress in November that it was stepping away from ECSS, a supply chain management tool meant to transform the Air Force’s logistics enterprise.