As gut-wrenching as today’s Times story on runaway Pentagon spending is, the article doesn’t touch on what’s quickly becoming the biggest defense contracting boondoggle of them all.
Reporter Leslie Wayne pulls out some great factoids in her piece today.
For instance, contractors on the Joint Strike Fighter, a next-generation fighter jet, received their full bonus award of $494 million from 1999 to 2003, even though the program was $10 billion over budget and 11 months behind schedule.
Contractors in the F-22A fighter jet program, over the same time period, received 91 percent of their performance bonus, or $849 million, even though the current phase of the program was $10 billion over budget and two years late.
And a handy chart shows that the per-unit cost of the F-22 was 189 percent higher than originally expected.
But that same chart shows the Army’s massive Future Combat Systems modernization program costing a mere $127 billion — up a paltry 54 percent since it was introduced.
Which was true a couple of days ago.
Now, however, the Office of the Secretary of Defense has a new estimate: $300 billion, to revamp about a third of the Army’s gear.
And remember, these costs are soaring in the earliest days of the program, before Future Combat’s major hardware purchases are set. The new-fangled tanks, the family of ground robots, the fighting vehicle replacements — in other words, the collective heart of the program — are still enormous question marks. How much do you figure the price of FCS will go up, once those projects are set?
That’s one of the reasons why Sen. John McCain — one of Congress’ few truly good guys on this issue — has been pushing the Pentagon to adopt “fixed price” contracts for weapons R&D, instead of the insane “cost-plus” agreements, which give defense firms huge bonuses, even when their projects spin out of control.
But, of course, spinning projects out of control has become a contractor business strategy. Just look at what’s happening with the F-22 and JSF. So the Lockheeds and Boeings of the world are fighting McCain’s provisions, hard. If they win, how much do you think Future Combat will cost next year?
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Army’s Out-of-Control “Future”
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Good Morning Folks,
I can’t really disagree with anything said by aglover. What we are seeing are the fruits of consolidation in the defense industry and the maturing of a corrupt political system.
It is doubtful that any of the $trillion+ worth of systems mentioned above will contribute significally to winning the on going GWOT. Of course left out is the Navyy’s CVN-21, DD-21 and Latorial Combat ships that could easly double those $Trillion numbers.
It appears that the Terroristes unlike the Admirals and generals running the “Imperial American” war machine have read a little history. The best way to beat a superpower is to brake the treasury. Be it Athens in the 5th. Cent B.C., Rome in 300 A.D., Spain 1588 or Britian in the 19th. Century. All the bad guys have to do is keep them spending their future.
In today’s WSJ the answer to yesterdays poll question of how to keep the military up to strenght was higher pay and benifits, al Qaeda couldn’t agree more.
Already when you consider Veterans bennies through this century from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan alone the bill could easly topple $2 Trillion by centuries end.
There is no answer with in the current contex of the Government/Industry we now have in the United States, the voters in 2004 gave this structure a firm mandate that the politicians are more then happy to execute.
Maybe a start might be where many of the states went, “Term Limits” for elected politicans, and that would be only a START.
ALLONS,
Byron Skinner
I think the reason their figures on FCS are outdated is that their whole graphic is pretty much lifted verbatim from this GAO report:
http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d06585t.pdf
which came out in April. For those with the patience to slog through bureaucratese, the GAO report says everything the Times piece says, but much more damningly.
I dream of the day when DefenseTech stops reading Times…But Since they eat it all up, and love every bite.….I dont see this day comming any time soon.
Contracting is contracting.…research is research. When you want a new gadget that nobody else makes ya gotta pay for it! Do you people seriously think that Defense contractors would even accept a project on a fixed cost basis?? Ever think about that? No reason to do it — I wouldn’t do it. How about you working for 50k per year NO MATTER HOW MANY HOURS IT TAKES TO GET YOUR JOB DONE! Wouldn’t do it would ya! Seriously, the day contractors would accept less for their work is the same day professors and university researchers should give up grants and government “subsidy” of their so called “research”.
Oh, by the way Byron, I have a great solution to the terrorist concept of “breaking the US treasury” — it’s called “Nuking the enemy” and it only costs a few bombs,easily affordable, yet it earns a “world” of respect! It happened before, remember? Once the US gets tired of swatting the flies of the earth, we will eventually use a flyswatter. Think of it like a Lion training a cub…it’s natural, one could possibly even consider it “environmentally friendly”.
FCS is so messed up it is hard to even describe it. The GAO reports for years have been screaming to shut it down but the Army has no “Plan B” so it rolls on. Billions have been spent and there are only outdated cartoon images of the new vehicles and a FREE war game you can download to show for the billions spent — what a JOKE! In May, almost 4 years after the program started, the FCS Manned Ground Vehicle had a internal requirements review and there are still dozens of critical requirements, like the vehicle weight, which are not resolved. That is UNACCEPTABLE!! The MGV preliminary design review is not scheduled until 2008 and that will likely slip a year or more like all prior milestones have on this horribly wasteful program. Another calamity is the computer system. The contractor does not yet know what processor chip they will use or how many chips it will take to do the job on each vehicle. They also plan to use chilled liquid cooling for the computer which has never been done on a ground vehicle, as well as optical advanced-switching networks, a technology that is not mature enough to use in commercial computers let alone in a dirty military ground vehicle. It sounds sexy on paper but it is “Engineers run a-muck” throwing technology at problems they don’t really understand completely.
The GAO needs to get legal authority to shut down programs that are turning into trainwrecks like FCS. They do a good report on quantifying the problem but nothing ever changes. I know Boeing brags about how many congressional districts are touched by FCS, a tactic to make it hard for our spineless congressmen to shut it down. What a scam.
Good day,
Keep in mind the United States economy has always been based on defence spending. Since the Country’s inception this spendind actually contributes to the M-3 and M-4 flow of our G.N.P .
I know it is difficult to remember back to Macro-Econ., but try to. Heck, we are still paying interest on railroad ties laid during the Civil War!
Of course their goal is to destroy our economy nationally and globally. Do you think the world would allow this?
A total Economic collapse caused by a small ideology followed by such a miniscule percentage of the population?
Just a thought,
Covertsurf
k
instead of developing the fcs, maybe we could have all your childeren jion the army. the fcs will help soldiers on the front line stay alive. whats the price tag on that