Biden picks first woman deputy defence secretary

WASHINGTON • US President-elect Joe Biden will nominate former Pentagon official Kathleen Hicks to serve as the first female deputy defence secretary, saying he wanted someone who knows the department "inside and out" to help restore order to an agency he says was cast into disarray by President Donald Trump.

Dr Colin Kahl, who served as his national security adviser when he was vice-president, will be nominated for undersecretary of defence for policy.

The additions to Mr Biden's national security team, announced on Wednesday, signal a return to experienced hands after Mr Trump has run through a number of defence leaders, including two confirmed secretaries and three acting secretaries of defence. Mr Biden complained on Monday that key security posts have been "hollowed out" in personnel, capacity and morale.

Ms Hicks and Dr Kahl would report to Mr Lloyd Austin, the retired four-star Army general and Raytheon Technologies Corp board member who Mr Biden has tapped to be secretary of defence.

Mr Austin's nomination faces an additional hurdle in that both chambers of Congress would have to approve a waiver to a law prohibiting recently retired military officers to fill the top civilian job at the department. Neither Ms Hicks nor Dr Kahl have served in the military.

Ms Hicks, who heads Mr Biden's Pentagon transition team, is a think-tank expert on national security at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies and is on the board of Aerospace Corporation. She served as deputy undersecretary of defence for strategy, plans and forces from 2009-2012 and as principal deputy undersecretary of defence for policy from 2012-2013.

She would have the No. 2 job at the Pentagon, which directs day-to-day management of the largest federal bureaucracy. Mr Biden has also said he wants the department to take on bigger roles in vaccine distribution and climate policy.

Ms Kori Schake, director of national security programmes for the conservative American Enterprise Institute, praised Ms Hicks as "serious-minded and experienced." She cited the role Ms Hicks played in developing two major defence policy blueprints in the Obama administration and on a congressionally mandated advisory panel that analysed the 2018 National Defence Strategy, which has driven defence department spending.

Dr Kahl, a professor at Stanford University, has served in Pentagon roles, most recently as deputy assistant secretary of defence for the Middle East at the beginning of the Obama administration.

BLOOMBERG