10 U.S.C. § 2228 — Office of Corrosion Policy and Oversight

(a) Office and Director. (1) The Office of Corrosion Policy and Oversight exists within the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment. (2) The Under Secretary assigns a qualified civilian Defense Department employee as Director. The Director is responsible within the Department, under the Secretary of Defense after the Under Secretary, for preventing and reducing corrosion of Defense military equipment and infrastructure. (3) The person must have management expertise and professional experience implementing corrosion projects and policies, including their effects on infrastructure, research and development, testing and evaluation, and maintenance; and must understand Defense budget preparation and execution, policy preparation, planning, and program requirements. (4) The Secretary of Defense must designate the position as a critical acquisition position under section 1731.
(b) Duties. (1) The Director oversees and coordinates Department-wide efforts to prevent and reduce corrosion of military equipment and infrastructure, including the duties in paragraphs (2) through (5). (2) The Director develops and recommends corrosion-prevention and mitigation policy guidance for the Secretary. (3) During the annual internal budget review, the Director reviews each military department Secretary’s proposed corrosion programs and funding and recommends changes to the Secretary of Defense. (4) The Director oversees and coordinates corrosion efforts during equipment design, acquisition, and maintenance, and infrastructure design, construction, and maintenance. (5) The Director monitors acquisition practices to ensure corrosion technologies and treatments are fully considered during research and development and, when appropriate for each program, included, especially in engineering and design. (6) The Director must ensure Defense contractors doing this work use a substantial number of people who completed or are enrolled in a qualified training program.
(c) Additional authorities. The Director may develop, update, and coordinate corrosion training with the Defense Acquisition University; participate in developing relevant Defense directives and instructions; communicate directly with industry, trade associations, other government agencies, academic and scientific organizations involved in corrosion prevention, including the National Academy of Sciences; and require Defense military and civilian personnel training or professional development to occur under a qualified program that trains and certifies people to meet industry-wide corrosion-control standards.
(d) Long-term strategy. (1) The Secretary must develop and carry out a long-term strategy to reduce corrosion and its effects on Defense equipment and infrastructure. (2) It must expand corrosion prevention and mitigation to infrastructure; apply uniform requirements and criteria for testing and certifying new technologies for similarly characterized equipment and infrastructure; create programs and databases to collect, review, validate, and distribute information on proven relevant methods and products; and create coordinated research and development for new and existing equipment and infrastructure, with a plan to move technologies into operational systems through memoranda, joint funding, public-private partnerships, university centers, and other cooperative agreements. (3) For those matters, the strategy must include policy guidance, performance measures and milestones, and an assessment of needed personnel and funding.
(e) Reports. (1) With each fiscal-year budget from fiscal year 2009 through fiscal year 2022, the Secretary must submit a report with defense budget materials covering strategy funding needs; estimated combined return on investment documented in completed-project assessments; current and prior-year requested funds compared with needs; reasons and readiness, logistics, and safety effects if full funding was not requested; prior-year funding requested for each strategy project compared with its need; and the specific prior-year funds used for military corrosion projects, the Technical Corrosion Collaboration program, and other corrosion activities. (2)(A) Each report must have an annex summarizing the latest report required by (B). (B) By December 31 each year through December 31, 2020, each military department’s corrosion-control and prevention executive must report to the Director recommendations for that department’s program and needed funding. The report must summarize accomplishments, goals, and objectives and identify the performance measures used to ensure they were achieved.
(f) Definitions. “Corrosion” means deterioration of a material or its properties because it reacts with its chemical environment. “Military equipment” includes all Defense weapon systems, platforms, vehicles, munitions, and their components. “Infrastructure” includes buildings, structures, airfields, ports, surface and underground utilities, heating and cooling systems, fuel tanks, pavements, and bridges. “Budget” means the President’s fiscal-year budget submitted under section 1105(a) of title 31. “Defense budget materials” means materials the Defense Secretary submits supporting that budget. “Qualified training program” means corrosion-control, mitigation, and prevention training offered or accredited by an organization that sets industry corrosion standards, or an industrial-coatings-applicator program registered under the National Apprenticeship Act. This section does not define other terms it uses.