Wire: Obama Plans 20,000 New Pentagon Jobs to Manage Arms-Buys

Off the Wire:

WASHINGTON, May 6, 2009 -- Newswires reported this morning that President Barack Obama plans to create 20,000 new Defense Department jobs to manage a series of changes aimed at improving the way the United States buys billions of dollars of weapons each year, the Pentagon's No. 2 official told Congress.

Reuters reported that the Pentagon plans to tie more contract fee structures to performance and will make sure that multi-year contracts are awarded only when "real, substantial" savings result to taxpayers, Deputy Defense Secretary William Lynn told the House of Representatives Armed Services Committee on Wednesday.

A former defense lobbyist before Obama's appointment, Lynn was a senior vice president of government operations at Raytheon Co., one of the military's top contractors, doing $18.3 billion in U.S. government business in 2007.

This is a developing story.

(Report from newswire sources.)

Source: Pentagon plans 20,000 new jobs to manage arms-buys

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