CAPITOL HILL: Nunn-McCurdy notifications to Congress of gross cost growth in a weapons system’s costs strike fear in the hearts of top Pentagon acquisition officials, and something like them may become law for a new set of costs — operations and support.

“They should be the next frontier for acquisition reform,” former DoD Comptroller Bob Hale, now at Booz Allen, suggested to the House Armed Services Committee during a House Armed Services Committee hearing on acquisition reform today. Chairman Mac Thornberry made it clear he liked the idea. Hale noted that such costs comprise more than half the total costs of weapons and they have grown substantially even though the military’s force structure has gotten smaller.

The other idea that attracted Thornberry’s interest was a review of whether classified programs offer lessons that can be made into acquisition policy for the unclassified world.

The discussion about classified programs split the witnesses, as well as committee staff I spoke with later. Former Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. James “Sandy” Winnefeld, clearly thought the classified world offered good lessons for normal programs, noting that they are often fielded more rapidly.

“They have fewer critics that have visibility into them that can slow things down,” and, he said “they seem to be fairly successful.”

But Christine Fox, former director of the powerful Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation office, was clearly skeptical and noted that “there have been some pretty impressive failures in that realm as well.” In a conversation after the hearing, a committee staff member made clear that skepticism was shared.

There was little discussion of cost in all this, since those figures are classified, but Thornberry made it clear he was interested in taking a look at the issue.

As someone who has covered classified space programs for some time, it’s worth noting that they are often given management reserves of 50 percent ore more to allow managers to keep moving through unanticipated technical challenges. This is one of the key reasons behind their ability to field systems more quickly, along with the fact that no one is writing about them and few people can criticize the programs because so few people know about them. Given the Pentagon’s efforts to control risk and keep costs down it will be very interesting to hear from the HASC whether it sees lessons it can adopt from the black world.

Services, which are actually worth more than the weapons the Pentagon buys, were brought up by Thornberry near the end of the hearing when he asked Hale if he thought cost goals could be set for them. “That’s a good question, but not one I’ve thought a lot about,” said Hale, clearly caught off guard. I’m sure we’ll hear more about this issue from the HASC.