GAO Says Army on Road to Ruin

[bigpoppanils]

GAO Says Army on Road to Ruin

By Noah Shachtman

02:00 AM Apr. 05, 2004 PT

It's been called the most ambitious military effort since the Manhattan Project, and the centerpiece of Donald Rumsfeld's plans to overhaul America's armed forces: a $92 billion push to change almost everything about the Army by 2010, from the guns GIs carry, to the officers they salute, to the tanks they drive.

A new congressional report is alleging that the Future Combat Systems program is poised for major delays and a financial train wreck. Worst of all, the report claims, the Army knew this was going to happen all along.

"Army officials acknowledge that (2010) is an ambitious date and that the program was not really ready for system development and demonstration when it was approved. However, the officials believe it was necessary to create 'irreversible momentum' for the program," reads the report (PDF) from the General Accounting Office, Congress' investigational arm. "FCS is at significant risk for not delivering required capability within budgeted resources."

The Army and Boeing, one of Future Combat Systems' two main contractors, both say the sprawling project is on track. They assert the congressional report is off-base.

"We have a good plan in place to address the concerns over technology maturity," said one Army source close to the project. Congress was "fully briefed up front" about the risks and pace of FCS' development.

But outside military analysts and former Pentagon officials are inclined to agree with the GAO's take on the Army effort. And they see it as the latest case of the military pouring countless billions into weapons systems before they're ready to go.

"For years, the GAO has been trying to explain in kindergarten-simple terms to the Pentagon that you should make something and test it before you buy it. But year after year, the process goes on. And the situation is getting worse," said Marcus Corbin, with the Center for Defense Information.

The Pentagon brass wants a military that's lighter, quicker and more deadly -- one that can be fighting anywhere in the world within 96 hours, instead of the weeks and months it can currently take to lug gear and personnel around the globe.

Future Combat Systems is the Defense Department's strategy for meeting that goal. Getting there is going to be beyond hard -- the "greatest technology and integration challenge the Army has ever undertaken," according to the Army. And it has to do it quickly: FCS, officially launched last May, has initial production decisions due in 2008.

In that 5.5-year stretch, the Army wants 18 major systems designed -- including new sensors and munitions, as well as replacements for the Abrams tank and the Bradley fighting vehicle, staples of American armored power for decades.

Over 100 defense contractors have been marshaled for the effort. They'll be responsible for constructing 53 critical technologies and 157 complementary systems -- as well as writing 34 million lines of code -- according to the GAO report. That's five times as big as the military's next-largest software project.

But despite the project's leviathan size and watchmaker intricacy, there's almost no margin for error.

"The first prototypes of FCS will not be delivered until just before the (2008) production decision. Full demonstration of FCS' ability to work as an overarching system will not occur until after production has begun," the GAO notes. "This demonstration assumes complete success -- including delivery and integration of numerous complementary systems that are not inherently a part of FCS but are essential for FCS to work as a whole."

"It's one thing to strive for transformation, but another thing to expect a near-miracle. That's what we're talking about here, nothing short of a miracle," Eric Miller, a defense analyst at the watchdog group Project on Government Oversight, said in an e-mail.

The military sees it differently. Yes, some of the FCS projects are tough to tackle. But the Defense Department has built in "technology 'off-ramps' or 'tollgates' -- specific decision points and criteria where decisions would potentially be made to use alternate, less risky" technologies, according to an Army official.

But FCS is about more than new gear. It's also a remix of the traditional way the Army arranges its forces. Separate armored or infantry groups are gone. In its place: the 5,000-person "Unit of Action," or UA, which blends grunts, tanks, flying drones and robots designed for on-the-ground combat.

he idea, according to the Army's Maj. Gary Tallman, is to have a UA anywhere in the world within four days. Currently, a few of the Army's more mobile units -- like the 82nd Airborne -- can travel that quickly. But they don't have the tanks and heavy personnel carriers needed to sustain a long fight, Tallman explains.

The UA will be speedier, in theory, because its armor will be a whole lot lighter than the current crop. Instead of a 70-ton M1 Abrams tank, for example, the FCS equivalent will weigh a svelte 20 tons.

But some wonder whether slender is such a good idea. In Iraq, after all, U.S. troops are dying because their Humvees are roaming around Baghdad and Fallujah armorless.

"Lighter and smaller also means you're more vulnerable," said Jim Lewis, an analyst with the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

The Army wants to make up for the lack of brawn with precision and speed. That's why every soldier, every drone and every tank replacement is supposed to be joined together in a wireless network for combat.

This could prove to be the toughest FCS task of all, the GAO believes. Imagine how hard it would be to set up a cell-phone system -- under fire, without any towers. Even if it works, all the chatter would eat bandwidth quicker than you can say "Homer Simpson."

"An internal study revealed that FCS bandwidth demand was 10 times greater than what was actually available," the congressional report alleges.

Nevertheless, Lt. Gen. Joseph Yakovac told a subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee on Thursday that the Army is committed to "an FCS program that is in control, within reasonable risk and on schedule for a 2010 fielding."

Maria McCullough, a Boeing spokesperson, added, "We are definitely on cost, and on target."

But if all of FCS' systems are kept intact, the $92 billion budget is almost certain to be blown wide open. After all, that figure only accounts for 14 of FCS' 18 major programs, the GAO notes. There are still four more to go.

Big deal, argues Lewis.

"To sell a program, you set your costs and faster deadlines than you're able to meet," he said. "It's a fairly standard trick."

But by repeating the trick over and over again -- and by paying for equipment that doesn't work as advertised -- troops in harm's way wind up suffering, replies Philip Coyle, a former assistant secretary of defense.

Coyle wrote in an e-mail, "The victims here -- besides U.S. taxpayers -- are our soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines who too often get equipment that doesn't work, and have to struggle in the field with inferior gear."

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[jamiroguy1]

I think we should listen up when the GAO say this.