Tech Insider blogger Robert Charette has written an article for the November issue of IEEE Spectrum magazine on the Defense Department's deeply troubled process for buying weapons systems, most of which include advanced technology. Here are some facts, figures and quotes culled from the Charette's in-depth - and disconcerting -- look at what has become an acquisition system that some say is unsustainable:
--In 2007, the GAO estimated that current programs in development were experiencing an average delay of 21 months, with a few programs nearly a decade behind schedule.
--$21 million: Amount the Pentagon spends per hour to procure new Defense systems.
--Defense programs are now "so massive and so fanciful we don't know how to get there," says Katherine Schinasi, the GAO's managing director of acquisitions and sourcing management.
--It takes more than 110 months on average for a major military program, once funded, to wend its way through [the acquisition] process, while . . . the defense strategy that gave rise to it moves on, in response to new threats, shifting geopolitics, and changing imperatives.
--"The [U.S.] military has been living in a rich man's world," says Jacques Gansler, a former undersecretary of defense for acquisition, technology, and logistics. "Very little attention has been paid to cost. We're coming up against a very serious fiscal crisis."
--In many of its programs, the Pentagon now has one private contractor for every full-time civilian employee. In some cases, the DOD has admitted, contractors are doing jobs that should be performed only by federal employees, such as weapons procurement and contract preparation.
--A "major" program in the DOD realm is any acquisitions effort whose research, development, testing, and evaluation costs exceed $365 million or whose procurement costs exceed $2.19 billion, in FY 2000 constant dollars. There are now roughly 95 such programs on the books.
--The total projected development costs for the 95 or so major weapons systems currently in the pipeline have more than doubled in the last seven years, from $790 billion in 2000 to $1.6 trillion in 2007.
--The fiscal 2009 defense budget of $488 billion is the largest in real terms since World War II and 6 percent higher than this year's budget.
--DOD and military service chiefs, as well as some members of Congress, advocate setting aside an amount equal to at least 4 percent of the annual U.S. gross domestic product for defense. At the current GDP of about $16 trillion, that would mean an annual defense budget of $640 billion.
--Seven years ago, the Air Force awarded a $3.9 billion contract to Boeing to outfit its C-130 cargo aircraft with digital cockpits, which are equipped with monitor screens rather than analog gauges. By last year, the program had gone so far over budget that it triggered a congressionally mandated review. The Air Force's response was not to cancel the program but rather to cut the number of planes getting the upgrade from 519 to 222, thereby "saving" a projected $560 million. Nevertheless, the total program still came in $1.4 billion over budget.
--The design for the Army's Crusader howitzer relied on 16 "critical" technologies, including advanced armaments, ammunition handling, and mobility. But only six of those technologies had ever been demonstrated outside the laboratory when the Crusader entered development in 1994. Subsequent problems with those untested technologies contributed to the doubling of the program's development cost -- and ultimately to its cancellation in 2002.
--If Defense were to implement three recommendations from the 2005 Defense Acquisition Performance Assessment -- funding only those programs that it deemed to have an 80 percent chance of succeeding, could deliver operational capability in five years, and could be developed incrementally -- it would effectively cut the number of new programs by up to 25 percent.
COMMENTS
Let us be realistic here and count all defense related expenditure that are defense related! So, in addition to the $488B defense budget we need to add CIA, NSA, DIA etc to include all 12 approved inteligence services budgets. We can strip the military security police and MPs budgets from DOD's but they still ought to count towards DOD budget. There are probably many other organizations budgets that are purely DOD related but not accounted for as DOD budgets. A true measure of DOD budget is when you account for all defense related budgets and not just DOD budget.
AKSQNH 02/23/09 11:49 am ET
"--The fiscal 2009 defense budget of $488 billion is the largest in real terms since World War II and 6 percent higher than this year’s budget."
What a misleading factoid! At $488 B the defense budget is less than 5% of GDP, even in our recession. And we have cycled around that 5% rate (+/- about 1%) since the mid 70s. In WWII it peaked at over 35%, during the Korean conflict nearly 15%, and during Viet Nam about 10%.
That said, I fully agree that we still MUST do a better job at spending the limited resources more wisely.
NextGov Reader 11/10/08 12:34 pm ET
Eisehhower was right! DoD's budget for unproven systems will be reduced, and Bush's buddies will be losing billions.
Richard, Tulsa Ok 11/10/08 08:28 am ET
Having, over the years, read the same Congressional bellyachs over DOD overruns I am convinced that if truthful estimating were presented most projects would never be funded.
It is not that engineering designers and manufacturing employees are not striving to do a good job, it is that companies and DOD evaluators either by ignorance or design present faulty proposals for funding.
Samuel H. Cohen, DCMA NY 11/10/08 08:10 am ET
Hopefully they won't cut my funding. I have a DeLorean that can travel through time. I'm just having trouble getting a lightning bolt to hit the clock tower.
A J Weishar 11/10/08 06:21 am ET
This report raises a bunch of issues, especially in the bullets at the end. On the C-130 Cockpit Ugrade the Air Force bought what they could afford. They just took the funding available and divided by the cost to get the number of aircraft they could upgrade.
Crusader was an example of a program that might have benefited from incremental development. Unfortunately the requirements people prefer to have everything at once. Crusader costs (and weight) spiraled ever upward due to requirements. In the last thirty years programs have had unrealistic initial requirements and then have had more added during testing. This leads to cost and schedule growth.
As Watson-Watt used to say "Better tomorrow is the enemy of good enough today". DoD has never been believers, especially for large systems, of good enough today. They also don't want any US soldier to get hurt.
That takes money.
Dag Potter
http://www.defenseprocurementnews.com
Dagpotter 11/07/08 04:35 pm ET