In August of 1994, Congress authorized the Pentagon to begin contracting for the Joint Advanced Strike Technology program, the military's new generation of strike fighters. Pentagon brass sold the program by stressing its affordability and timeliness, with Air Force Secretary Sheila Widnall telling the House Appropriations Committee that "the key focus of the program is affordability -- reducing the life-cycle costs of follow-on strike aircraft and production programs. We are committed, with the Navy, Marines, and our allies, to field this aircraft in a timely fashion."
Eleven years later, not a single Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) has taken flight. And thanks to large-scale, institutionalized inefficiencies, the supposedly budget-friendly program has ballooned, becoming the largest acquisition program in Pentagon history at a projected total cost of more than $244 billion.
The story of the JSF is one of dozens just like it from within the $70 billion Pentagon acquisitions budget. The Future Combat System, the Virginia-class nuclear submarine, the F/A-22 fighter plane, and many others have a similar plot: the Pentagon ramming unproven technology through an insufficient development period resulting in massive schedule delays and cost increases. Since 2000, 80 percent of Army procurement programs have performed at 50-percent reliability, and two-thirds of Air Force operational testing on programs has been stopped altogether. In a budgetary environment where programs are in a zero-sum game with one another, these sinkholes consume the scarce funds that other, perhaps more necessary, programs under the Pentagon's aegis desperately need.
From the beginning stages of development, several of the JSF's cost-saving methods wound up complicating the process and inflating the total price tag. The JSF's initial plan was rushed to approval in 1997 behind a wave of defense-industry cheerleading -- well before the innovative and supposedly affordable technological components were out of the drawing room, let alone tested or integrated with previously existing military technology. A Government Accountability Office (GAO) report issued in March noted this lack of foresight, concluding, “Many of the technologies needed for the [JSF's] full capabilities were demonstrated only in a lab environment or ground testing and not in the form, fit, or functionality needed for the intended product design.”
As costs rose nearly 80 percent and production dates were pushed back two years, the Navy and the Marines cut their orders nearly in half -- driving the Air Force's price per plane through the roof and ensuring that the $30 billion savings from the smaller order became a net loss for the Defense Department. Pressures to begin production of the design elements increased, making it impossible to test the stability of the system prior to the design review. In other words, the completed prototype will not even be tested until the final production of its components has begun.
These problems aren't entirely without solutions. The GAO report recommends that the Defense Department proceed with production of weapons systems only when they've been proven to be operational. This “evolutionary-based approach” to product acquisition would mean that the Pentagon shouldn't be footing the bill for contractors' mistakes by pulling the trigger on new technology before it's even close to being operational. What's needed, the report says, is a system in which product elements have meticulous testing regimes and all projects are properly planned to reduce overlap and to ensure compatibility and performance.
The Pentagon has made efforts to introduce this type of reform to the acquisitions process, hiring the Rand Corporation to issue a series of reports, instituting loosely defined “milestones” in the acquisition process, and even creating a separate office for analysis and guidance of procurement policy. But so far, the changes coming out of that office have primarily been reactions to the Boeing tanker scandal, like rooting out overcharges and favoritism -- admirable goals in themselves, but ones that will hardly achieve any large-scale improvement in efficiency.
A true evolutionary approach to acquisitions can only be achieved if two basic, commonsense reforms are made first, says Phillip Coyle, former director of the Defense Department's Operational Test and Evaluations office and senior adviser for the Center for Defense Information. According to Coyle, “Most major defense-acquisition programs should stay in [research and development] much longer than they do. But the incentives in [Defense Department] contracts are organized around getting into production. That's where defense contractors make money.” Coyle describes the ideal Pentagon procurement plan as one in which the Pentagon avoids high containment costs by investing heavily in the beginning of a program. These “first costs” include making research-and-development funds reimbursable and fully funding the testing regimes necessary to determine if a program is not only operational but sustainable and reliable as well.
Coyle adds, “Until the fall of the Berlin Wall a dozen years ago, development was allowed to be up to 90-percent cost-reimbursable. Today, development is discouraged, leading defense companies to want to get into production as soon as possible, whether they are ready or not.”
Slowing the rush to production is the first step, proper testing the second. To supplement the increases in initial research-and-development spending, Coyle says, the Pentagon should “get the testers involved early” by fully funding “the operational test agencies so that they have the people, equipment, and money to participate in acquisition programs from the very outset.” Smarter initial spending should mean less incurred spending down the road.
Judging by its proposed budget, the Pentagon is far from in agreement with Coyle. According to research done by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), Pentagon funding for weapons testing is being cut nearly in half for the fiscal year 2006 Defense Department budget, from $310 million in FY2005 to $168 million. That's $168 million to operationally test the entirety of a $70 billion procurement budget that grows more complex with every technological innovation -- an amount that the ASME believes falls short of “the level of funding required to ensure that the approximately $70 billion worth of weapon systems that the department is procuring are adequately tested and shown to be safe and effective.”
These cuts have done more than cripple the testing regime of the Pentagon; they've caused project managers to partially rely on contractor tests to determine the capabilities of a prototype, a practice that could seriously undermine the legitimacy of the term “operational.”
If proper research and testing were performed on the JSF program before the first production run began, it likely wouldn't need the $5 billion that President Bush's FY2006 defense budget promises in order to survive, it certainly wouldn't be the target of rumored cuts down the road under the Quadrennial Defense Review, and it wouldn't be fodder for military budget critics, either. Think of the JSF and the other over-budget weapons programs as tragedies -- victims of a system that promises efficiency but, in the absence of simple reform, is unable to deliver.
Jordan Kline is a Prospect intern and a Senior at Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington.
