Jane Edwards
Some defense industry executives have said the Trump administration’s current process of finding leaders to fill senior-level roles at the Defense Department has resulted in uncertainty and slow pace of contract awards, Reuters reported Saturday.
“The still-high number of unfilled leadership appointments and the approaching government physical year-end continue to serve as headwinds,” Leidos CEO Roger Krone told analysts at an Aug. 3 call.
Krone, an inductee into Executive Mosaic‘s Wash100 for 2017, said he expects the slowdown due to unfilled DoD posts would lead to a one-year delay in the awarding of a potential $3.5 billion program – NMCI NextGen – that seeks to update the intranet of the U.S. Navy and the U.S. Marine Corps.
Other executives that have cited a slowdown in contracting activity include General Dynamics CEO Phebe Novakovic and Ralph D’Ambrosio, chief financial officer at L3 Technologies.
The Pentagon said it has 42 unfilled senior-level positions and 29 of those lack nominees, according to the report.
