MCCAIN 1, ARMY 0

That didn’t take long. Less than a month ago, Sen. John McCain started rais­ing a stink about the Army’s see-​​no-​​evil over­sight of Future Combat Systems, its mam­moth, $127 bil­lion plus mod­ern­iza­tion project. Today, the Senator got what he wanted. Army Secretary Francis Harvey agreed to start treat­ing the biggest tech­nol­ogy devel­op­ment pro­gram in Army his­tory like a real defense con­tract — and less like the pur­chase of a cou­ple of off-​​the-​​shelf PCs.
For rea­sons that remain unclear (but sure smell fishy) the Army made a deal with FCS’ lead con­trac­tors, Boeing and SAIC, under Federal Acquisition Regulation 12. That rule lets the gov­ern­ment buy every­day items, like commercially-​​available soft­ware, with­out hav­ing to fill out a pile of forms.
But it also means that con­trac­tors “are relieved of the oblig­a­tion to [give] cost and pur­chas­ing data to mil­i­tary audi­tors,” McCain told Harvey at a Senate Armed Service Committee hear­ing last March. In a pro­gram as mas­sive as FCS — and as cru­cial to the Army’s next gen­er­a­tion — that kind of over­sight can’t be optional, McCain said.
“Now, Harvey and Army Chief of Staff Gen. Peter Schoomaker will review the pro­gram at least three times each year,” Inside Defense says. And the FCS con­tract will be rene­go­ti­ated under more stan­dard terms, which will include items like “the Truth in Negotiation Act; the Procurement Integrity Act; Cost Accountability Standards; and an orga­ni­za­tional conflicts-​​of-​​interest clause. These reg­u­la­tions were not part of the cur­rent agree­ment,” accord­ing to the Seattle Times.
Hopefully, now that Harvey’s giv­ing him­self the power to super­vise FCS like it should, he’ll take the oppor­tu­nity to ask Boeing and SAIC execs a ques­tion or two about the program’s sky­rock­et­ing costs, missed dead­lines, and shift­ing pri­or­i­ties.
“We’ll prob­a­bly, with­out get­ting into the details, give the LSI (Boeing) some more incen­tives to con­trol costs,” Harvey tells Reuters.
Since the bill for FCS has grown from $92 bil­lion to a pos­si­ble $450 bil­lion in less than a year, those incen­tives should prob­a­bly a brick. Or a cou­ple of two-​​by-​​fours.

April 6th, 2005 | FCS Watch | Comments Off Both comments and pings are currently closed.