What is the current status of the army’s contracting system?
Two things had happened [to create the current contracting problems]. One is the post-Cold War defense budget plummeted, and as a result you took a lot of people out of the services. In order to maintain the “so called” fighting forces, they took most of the reductions out of the support areas, particularly in terms of the contracting and even the acquisition workforce. Then in the mid-90s, as the budget turned around and after 9/11, they did not replace those [contracting] people. So there was a big gap between the people who were doing the implementation of contracts and a huge increase in the number of contracts, a huge increase in the dollars of the contracts, but an actual reduction in the number of people who are doing the contracting. While these cutbacks were taking place [the Pentagon] actually eliminated what had been in the army in 1990 a five general officer [position]. Now, if you are military officer thinking about going to the contracting field, and you can get no promot
