Obstacles To Defense Spending Cuts

This post was amputated from "Did NY Times Op-Ed Force Pentagon's Hand?"

The first obstacle faced in cutting defense spending: Defense cuts equal job cuts.

The second, bigger obstacle is Congress. Natch. The NYT gets to the nub of the issue:

Congress will need to develop a lot more realism and restraint. Lobbyists pushing costly and unneeded weapons systems find ready allies in lawmakers looking to create or protect federally financed jobs in their districts. Big contractors like Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon and General Dynamics have become masters at spreading those jobs around to assemble broad Congressional voting blocs. Work on the F-22 has been parceled out to subcontractors in 44 states.

This is going to be one of the great tests of the Obama administration. Can our new president work with the Democratic Congressional majority and the Pentagon to see beyond the jobs military contractors provide on massively expensive, wasteful DOD projects and reign in runaway spending? Will our government be able to replace any defense industry jobs lost with comparable positions elsewhere? Is it possible to do so and win re-election?

The third obstacle is the defense industry itself.* If Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon and General Dynamics are smart, they'd realize the best thing for our country and their business would be to finally face forward. These military-industrial giants would be wise to partner with the Obama administration and Congress to focus their efforts on developing new sustainable biofuels, alternative energy sources and creating a new national energy infrastructure. By so doing, new jobs would be created, energy problems could be solved and taxpayer dollars would be spent on ensuring our future rather than building outrageously expensive weapons designed to fight the wars of our past.

Until that time, as General Dynamics' "whopping $14 billion contract" to build super subs we don't need proves, it's business as usual.

-AF
*Note: Sloppy I know but somehow this sentence was clipped in the "amputation."

Did NYT Op-Ed Force Pentagon's Hand?

Yesterday, I blogged about a NY Times Op-Ed calling for billions of dollars in defense cuts through eliminating wasteful military programs inappropriate for 21st century warfare.

Among those programs on the Times' hit list:

Halt production of the Virginia class sub. Ten of these unneeded attack submarines — modeled on the cold-war-era Seawolf, whose mission was to counter Soviet attack and nuclear launch submarines — have already been built. The program is little more than a public works project to keep the Newport News, Va., and Groton, Conn., naval shipyards in business.

Good call but it looks like it comes too late. Per today's Boston Globe Political Intelligence blog:

The US Navy this afternoon is expected to award a whopping $14 billion contract to General Dynamics to build eight new attack submarines, providing a stable workload for at least the next decade at the company's Electric Boat shipyard in Groton, Conn., and a key manufacturing facility on Narragansset Bay in Quonset Point, R.I., according to several knowledgeable sources.

The contract for Virginia class submarines "guarantees work on the New England waterfront at least through 2019," said a company official who asked not to be identified before the official announcement from the Department of Defense, which is expected at 5 pm.

General Dynamics employs about 10,500 people between its shipyard in Groton and hull-fabrication plant in Rhode Island.

The timing of this multi-billion dollar sub deal is curious. It comes on the first business day after "How to Pay for a 21st-Century Military" is published. The Navy leaks the announcement of this $14 billion dollar contract award to General Dynamic at a time, three days before Christmas, in which it is likely to receive little scrutiny. More importantly, the contract is announced a month before Obama's inauguration.

The Bush administration certainly wasn't going to say no to General Dynamics at this late juncture. President-elect Obama couldn't block it if he wanted to. Once sworn-in, President Obama will be powerfully disinclined to cut 10000+ jobs. (Especially as they are all centered in one region). Not with the state of the US economy. No way. No how.

Which begs this question: Did NYT's call to halt Virginia class subs construction instead have the unintended consequence of ensuring the program's continuation?

-AF

**12/26/08: Edited for clarity forming a separate post here.

NYT Offers Defense Budget Tips. Shoots Self In Foot.

Although I'm no military expert, I am a keen student of military history. I follow US weapons program development pretty closely out of curiosity and because of their penchant for fraud and waste.

The NY Times editorial board lays out their plan to cut the US Defense budget. Their research comes off as shaky. NYT heralds the troubled, most expensive program ever as cost saving.

Kicking off their list:

End production of the Air Force’s F-22. The F-22 was designed to ensure victory in air-to-air dogfights with the kind of futuristic fighters that the Soviet Union did not last long enough to build. The Air Force should instead rely on its version of the new high-performance F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, which comes into production in 2012 and like the F-22 uses stealth technology to elude enemy radar.

Until then, it can use upgraded versions of the F-16, which can outperform anything now flown by any potential foe. The F-35 will provide a still larger margin of superiority. The net annual savings: about $3 billion.

The NYT needs to check their facts and their math. The F-22 was a colossal mistake but the F-35 is neither a fix nor a bargain. Not even our allies are sold on the F-35. Sept. 14, 2008's Sydney Morning Herald called the "$151m Planes 'A Disaster'":

Fresh doubts have been thrown on Australia's most costly military project in history after aviation experts slammed the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter as a "disaster" that lacks power and punch.

An article in Janes Defence Weekly last week said the F-35 was "overweight and underpowered", lacked manoeuvrability, could not carry enough bombs, was too delicate to withstand ground fire and was overpriced.

Sure doesn't sound like this plane is the answer. It's not just the F-35 performance that's in question, It's price is no bargain whatever the cost. And I do mean whatever the cost.

Earlier this year, the Pentagon touted a $1 billion drop (or about $400,000 per) on the price tag for the 2500 F-35s ordered for the Navy, Air Force & Marines. However, at the same time Bloomberg News noted GAO auditors had a vastly different read:

The cost of Lockheed Martin's Joint Strike Fighter, already the most expensive weapons program ever, is projected to increase as much as $38 billion, congressional auditors said yesterday.

That would bring the price of 2,458 F-35s to $337 billion, 45 percent more than estimated when the program began in October 2001.

"Midway through development, the program is over cost and behind schedule," Michael J. Sullivan, director of acquisition and sourcing management for the Government Accountability Office, told two panels of the House Armed Services Committee that oversee military spending.

Personally, I trust GAO accounting over the Pentagon's balance sheet every single time. Bloomberg continues:

The 12-year development of the fighter jet is entering its most challenging phase, including test flights, completing the software, finishing design of the three F-35 models and refining manufacturing processes at Lockheed and its subcontractors.

Sullivan said the Pentagon has identified billions of dollars in unfunded requirements, continued delays and "substantial" production inefficiency by Lockheed and engine-maker Pratt & Whitney that will increase costs.

At $337 billion, the Joint Strike Fighter's price would be more than twice that of the Pentagon's second-most expensive weapons program, the $160 billion Future Combat System.

As expensive and wasteful as the F-35 project has been over the past 12 years, we still don't really don't know how this turkey will fly. It wasn't until last month, on it's 69th test flight, that the F-35 finally flew supersonic -- for eight minutes. If Lockheed Martin is to be believed, this fighter won't be delivered until 2012.

Conceived over a decade ago, both the F-22 & the F-35 are ill-suited to 21st century warfare. Both programs should be scrapped. We should start over incorporating the best technology of the F-22 & the F-35 in a new design. As the Times pointed out, "upgraded" versions of the F-16 are plenty adequate for now.

Will Obama and the Pentagon have the courage to admit the F-22 & F-35 programs are a mistake and start over?

-AF

This Does Not Surprise Me

What happens when we pay an airplane maker to build a boat...for the first time? Massive cost overruns, unbelievable delays and a fabulous fightin' ferry boat. Yesterday's NY Times offers a Lesson On How Not To Build A Navy Ship:

A project heralded as the dawning of an innovative, low-cost era in Navy shipbuilding has turned into a case study of how not to build a combat ship. The bill for the ship, being built by Lockheed Martin, has soared to $531 million, more than double the original, and by some calculations could be $100 million more. With an alternate General Dynamics prototype similarly struggling at an Alabama shipyard, the Navy last year temporarily suspended the entire program.

The program’s tribulations speak to what military experts say are profound shortcomings in the Pentagon’s acquisitions system. Even as spending on new projects has risen to its highest point since the Reagan years, being over budget and behind schedule have become the norm: a recent Government Accountability Office audit found that 95 projects — warships, helicopters and satellites — were delayed 21 months on average and cost 26 percent more than initially projected, a bill of $295 billion.

In a narrow sense, the troubled birth of the coastal ships was rooted in the Navy’s misbegotten faith in a feat of maritime alchemy: building a hardened warship by adapting the design of a high-speed commercial ferry. As Representative Gene Taylor, the Mississippi Democrat who leads the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Seapower and Expeditionary Forces, put it, “Thinking these ships could be built to commercial specs was a dumb move.”

Behind the numbers in the Accountability Office study, experts say, is a dynamic of mutually re-enforcing deficiencies: ever-changing Pentagon design requirements; unrealistic cost estimates and production schedules abetted by companies eager to win contracts, and a fondness for commercial technologies that often, as with the ferry concept, prove unsuitable for specialized military projects.

A totally predictable outcome. Fer crissakes the Navy asked a new boat builder to build a new boat in a new way. Fast:

In their haste to get the ships into the water, the Navy and contractors redesigned and built them at the same time — akin to building an office tower while reworking the blueprints. To meet its deadline, Lockheed abandoned the normal sequence of shipbuilding steps: instead of largely finishing sections and then assembling the ship, much of the work was left to be done after the ship was welded together. That slowed construction and vastly drove up costs.

“It’s not good to be building as you’re designing,” said Vice Adm. Paul E. Sullivan, commander of the Navy branch that supervises shipbuilding.

No shit Admiral.

Despite the problems, the Navy secretary, Donald C. Winter, and other top Navy officials say they remain committed to building 55 of the ships, once a steady, fixed-price production run can be assured. Even at about $500 million apiece, Navy officials add, the coastal ships would be a bargain compared with most Navy combat vessels.

“Bargain” is such a relative concept. In this case it's like calling a $200 Neiman-Marcus hairbrush a bargain 'cuz everything else in the store is so damn expensive. Lockheed is a major military contractor so it should be a cinch for them to build a boat. Except:

Lockheed had virtually no shipbuilding experience. But in keeping with a Pentagon policy that called for letting big military contractors run complex projects with minimal government supervision, the Navy made the companies primarily responsible for all phases of development — from concept studies to detailed design and construction.

In theory, the contractors’ business and technological acumen would save taxpayer dollars. But the Navy agreed to reimburse the companies for cost overruns rather than setting a fixed price, leaving little incentive to hold down costs.

Fixed prices? Who needs fixed prices? It's no surprise how much military contractors love this type of deal. Since fixed prices emerged in the ‘70s, they’ve been whining how it doesn’t “work” for them. Here’s what we’re supposedly getting for our money:

The Lockheed proposal called for a steel single-hull ship 378 feet long and 57 feet wide. It would have a spacious flight deck and space for two helicopters, a stern ramp and side door near the waterline for launching and recovering small boats, and large interior compartments that could be quickly reconfigured for different weapons systems. But as Lockheed and the Navy were completing contract negotiations in 2004, the rules changed drastically. Commercial ferry standards, the Navy determined, would not do.

The underlying principle behind the decision, Admiral Sullivan said, was that the new ships had to be able to “hang tough in a storm and take some battle damage and still survive long enough” for the crew to be rescued.

Dunno. Regardless of context the phrase “’still survive long enough’ for the crew to be rescued” doesn't exactly fill me with confidence. This should be of paramount importance to the Navy's central concept in building any ship let alone turning a high-speed civilian ferry into a warship. (Kinda reminds me of the ole SNL sketch: "New Shimmer is both a floor wax and a dessert topping!")

In a show of supreme stupidity, the Navy thought they'd somehow save money this way. It's equivalent to trying to turn a DC-10 into a warplane:

“They were eager to take advantage of commercial practices and the lower cost of buying off the shelf, but they did a lousy job of understanding the war-fighting requirements,” said the military expert, who asked not be named because he was involved with the program. “It was like, ‘You mean you want to put wheels on that car?’ ”

Ugh. More like do you wants wheels, seats, an engine and a roof with that car? How the hell could the Navy start building anything without "understanding the war-fighting requirements?" That is insane. They are the fucking Navy! It gets worse:

Ultimately, there were nearly 600 significant engineering changes affecting nearly all parts of the ship, according to the Navy.

600 goddamn major engineering changes = completely fucking different boat. While the Navy may have felt rushed, Lockheed was in an even bigger hurry to get this boat built:

At Lockheed, executives say they feared that slowing down construction would put them at a disadvantage in their battle to win the contract over General Dynamics.

Now we get to the crux of the problem. But surely the Navy’s own oversight could save the day, right? Wrong. So very, very wrong:

Yet if the project was troubled, the Navy’s oversight at Marinette was less than robust. Because of staffing reductions, the Navy office responsible for supervising shipbuilding initially dispatched no one full time to Wisconsin. Even after a team arrived, it failed to appreciate the severity of problems.

“We had very junior people on site,” Admiral Sullivan said.

This project was a major priority for the Navy. When they eventually sent supervisory staff to the boatyard, for some reason the Navy chose “very junior people.” Heckuva job, Sully.

What could be worse than one plane builder working on their first boat? Two plane builders working on the same boat. Lockheed brought G .E. Aviation along for the ride with absolute disastrous results:

The most wrenching setback came in autumn 2005, when a key gear for the propulsion system was cut incorrectly, forcing a 27-week delay in ship construction. Rick Kennedy, a spokesman for G.E. Aviation, the General Electric division that produced the gear, said a machinist had misread a drawing; G.E. absorbed the additional cost.

Shipbuilders usually start with the engine space, which contains the most machinery, then build around it. Because of the gear problem, Mr. McCreary said, “We did just the opposite.”

A 27-week delay over one gear? You have to be fucking kidding me. Even I know that you measure twice and cut once. If my master shipbuilder great-uncle Warren was still alive, this would make his head explode. And still the program soldiers on.

Once the Navy evaluates the two prototypes, it can select one or order a mixed fleet. While it could opt for a different approach, military experts say that seems unlikely, given the need for the new ships and the money and effort already expended.

Yes, like a fool losing big on one slot machine, the Navy won’t change it’s game because it has already lost too much money on its current course. They're betting sooner or later it's gonna payoff. Sooner or later either Lockheed or General Dynamics will work it out:

The Navy recently restarted the program, inviting the two companies to submit fixed-price proposals for three additional ships. Lockheed, still hoping to win the entire prize, said the problems encountered with the Freedom would not be repeated, now that the company has a finished design.

“It will be great, the next time around,” said Mr. North, the program manager. “Lead ships are truly hard.”

I bet they are. Especially when you’re building a ship for the first fucking time. The problem with these DOD development projects is with the decade or so it takes to get it right, if they get it right, we may no longer need it. That's if we really needed it to begin with. Either way the end product is inevitably incredibly more expensive than ever anticipated.

If you can stomach it, read the full Times story here.

-AF
+Note: All emphasis in the Times article is mine.