When military weapons projects struggle, our tendency is to blame the military.
We say they know they can count on an endless stream of taxpayer dollars and thus seem unaware or unconcerned about mistakes, miscalculations and misdeeds.
But the problem often lies not with the military but with the civilians who oversee it, and there’s no better example of this than the F-35 Joint Strike Force aircraft.
Conceived in the late-1990s as a way to save through interoperability, the F-35 has instead become the most costly system in the history of warfare and one of the least successful. It took 23 years to get a single F-35 into the air, and that was with the Pentagon operating under a “concurrency” strategy in which the plane would be deployed before testing was complete.
This is a fighter jet that can’t fly during a thunderstorm at all or at high speeds for any significant period of time and that has 3,200 documented deficiencies. In fact, every one of the 400 F-35s that have made it into service will have to be modified at some point to correct design deficiencies that resulted from the aircraft being deployed before testing was complete.
The dream of true interoperability — of the Navy, Air Force and Marines all using the same plane — never came close to reality as all three expressed different needs to be taken into account during the design process. The goal became 80 percent interoperability, and that has not been achieved either.
In fact, so much variation was introduced that a RAND study in 2013 found the F-35 project was more expensive than if the various branches of the military had built separate aircraft tailored to their own requirements.
The estimated price tag, originally $1.2 trillion but now expected to reach $1.7 trillion by the time it is projected to wind down in 20 more years, probably is several billion dollars low considering the system that is supposed to manage parts and repairs must be redone at a cost of $70 billion to taxpayers.
The fleet’s operating costs are 79 percent higher than the planes it replaced. Its per-hour flight costs of $32,500 is 30 percent higher than that for the F-16. Its budget needs over the next two years are $10 billion more than appropriated because of procurement problems and other mistakes.
The Air Force is ready to move on. Will Roper, its acquisition czar, has put forward the Next-Generation Air Dominance Program, which seeks to build new fighters every five to six years rather than the 20- and 30-year-long weapons programs we currently use.
The need, they say, is to develop aircraft on a far shorter timeline. A “notional” strategy would have the U.S. build 75 aircraft every five years based on computerized designs, called “digital twins.” from the big three vendors — Lockheed-Martin, Boeing and Northrop Grumman.
Critics say this approach would make it hard for the Air Force to modernize since it calls for only 50-100 planes to be built every six years or so, and the Air Force estimates it needs 72 new planes a year to stop erosion in the size and readiness of the force. It also would necessitate smaller and more expensive logistics and support costs.
But it would have the advantage of perhaps breaking the Department of Defense’s cautious — but often still ineffective — acquisition process, accelerate the development of new technology and better enable the U.S. to maintain strategic advantages over its top adversaries.
Like most new ideas in this arena, Roper’s strategy, called the Digital Century Series, has run into opposition from those who support the status quo. The F-35 support system is in disarray, but the disarray is spread over 1,300 supplies in 45 states and nine foreign countries.
That’s a lot of pressure to keep things as they are, and the Air Force’s $1.5 billion budget request for 2022 already has been reduced by $70 million in Senate committee markup, and cut in half by a House committee.
Certainly, some of the concerns are legitimate. But what also is legitimate is the move by the Air Force to start thinking beyond the F-35 program because it simply has not shown itself to be viable in the long term. And regardless where the F-35’s suppliers are located; this is an idea worth exploring.
2 thoughts on “Opinion: Pentagon Ready to Move on From Costly Military Program, but Civilian Overseers Not There Yet”
Mr. McNicoll does a good job of pointing out what is wrong with our Department of Defense weapon procurement systems in general and the F-35 Program in particular.
Mr. McNicoll points out that, “The F-35 support system is in disarray, but the disarray is spread over 1,300 suppliers in 45 states and nine foreign countries.” This is referred to as “Supplier Base” in the lingo of the weapons acquisition world. Why is this important and how does Supplier Base work hand-in-hand with pork barrel politics?
Weapon acquisition programs do more than supply hardware to the military; they are also job programs. By spreading the work (jobs and money) around to as many states and congressional districts as possible congressional support for these programs is also increased. This is basic pork barrel politics.
If a government supplier built a weapon system entirely in one district they would have exactly one member of the House of Representatives and two Senators supporting them. By spreading the taxpayer-provided bounty to as many districts as possible a large weapon acquisition program can buy the support of hundreds of members of Congress.
The F-35 Program takes this a step further by involving nine foreign countries in building and buying this weapon system. Having foreign partners puts the prestige of the United States on the line which, in turn, makes it difficult for Congress to cancel a struggling program so they continue to fund cost overruns and production delays.
President Eisenhower, in his farewell address, coined the term “military industrial complex.” This is usually a misnomer. While there are some instances where the military is too cozy with its civilian suppliers, the term “political industrial complex” is usually more appropriate. For large programs it is Congress, not the military, which decides which programs will be funded and, to a large extent, this also depends upon in which Congressional district the supplier is located. The Pentagon can request what weapons they want but, in the end, it is Congress that decides what they get and who will supply it.
Not mentioned in Mr. McNicoll’s article is how cost overruns in one Department of Defense program can adversely affect other programs. The Department of Defense budget is finite; overruns in one program will result in other programs being delayed, cut back, or cancelled. This can result in weak links in our overall National Defense.
Finally, don’t for one minute think that these problems are restricted to the Department of Defense; they are also found in other government programs where pork barrel politics and corruption are the order of the day. Congress holds the power of the purse and with this power comes the selfishness and greed that goes along with it.
The DOD should stop trying to make one size fit all services, this has been tried with the F-111, F-14 and now the F-35. The F-16 and A-10 programs are examples of what simplicity and good design can achieve. Even the complex F-15 has demonstrated great abilities after difficult development. One jet design has never worked. Time to move on.
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