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Friday, the undersecretary of defense for acquisition canceled the
Navy Area Ballistic Missile Defense program intended to shoot down
short-range ballistic missiles, allegedly because it had gone almost
60 percent over budget and had fallen more than two years behind
schedule. This was a shortsighted decision, to say the least.
In his August
16, 2001, letter to the undersecretary, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs
General Richard B. Meyers certified that this program, which
was scheduled to begin tests in February 2002, is "essential
to national security." General Meyers wrote that this "critical
force enabler" could protect coastal sea and airports of entry,
providing "assured access to troubled regions allowing a smooth
flow of follow-on troops and air forces." The chairman also
informed the undersecretary that the chief of naval operations and
the commandant of the Marine Corps considered Navy Area to be "the
number one priority among theater missile defense systems."
Why were these
senior military leaders overruled on the eve of initial testing
of this important system?
Navy Area research-and-development
costs have grown from about $2 billion in 1999 to over $3 billion,
while the anticipated initial deployment date has slipped two-three
years. This performance is certainly not good, and the Navy and
its contractor team should be held accountable. But why cancel the
program on the eve of its initial tests when we urgently need missile
protection for our carrier battle groups, Marines, and other forward-deployed
elements?
To continue
this program, in which the American taxpayers have invested over
$2 billion during the past decade, senior Pentagon officials had
to give Congress a special accounting, or certification, on the
program's merits, because the cost growth and schedule slip exceeded
so-called "Nunn-McCurdy" congressional thresholds.
Although so
certifying should not have been a problem, senior Pentagon officials
apparently decided against continuing this Navy program, which was
within two-three years of reaching an initial operational capability,
for an additional billion dollars. They probably wished to use the
money thus freed to pay for overruns in other more popular programs.
Understand
that there should be no technical problem in getting the Navy Area
system to work — it employs on a ship the same technology used
by the Patriot ten years ago in the Gulf War, and by the Israeli
Arrow program that became operational last year. The delays and
cost growth has to be traced to failures in engineering discipline
— and that problem clearly needs to be fixed. But the recent
ill-advised decision throws out the baby with the bath water.
Regrettably,
this problem is not without precedent in developing missile defenses
— it has been all too frequent. It probably reflects the last
decade's erosion of our industrial base — as programs ended,
companies merged and seasoned engineers retired without training
successors. But one does not fix this problem by canceling otherwise-sound
programs.
Indeed, last
week's decision was inconsistent with how the Pentagon — and
Congress — successfully dealt with similar difficulties in
other key missile-defense programs that suffered delays and cost
growth, yet were continued and now seem to be on track.
For example,
the cost estimate in 1992 for developing the Army's Theater High
Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) was about $4 billion, with an initial
capability anticipated as early as in 1996. Since 1992, development
cost estimates have more than doubled to over $10 billion, and the
initial operational capability date has slipped to 2007.
But instead
of canceling THAAD when it ran into a flurry of five or so test
failures in a row, Congress insisted this important program continue
and threatened major penalties (in profits) to provide an incentive
for the prime contractor to get its "first team" on the
job and get it right — which they did.
The same thing
needs to be done with the Navy Area Defense, because we need to
get it operational as soon as possible. Furthermore, it should be
understood that, in any case, engineers have to fix the major problems
having to do with assuring ship-based targeting computers work well
enough with the Aegis air-defense radar systems. And they must make
operational the cooperative engagement concept whereby ship-based
command and control use data from many sensors, including on satellites,
airplanes, and other ships.
Needed are
soundly managed and executed programs to build effective sea-based
defense as soon as possible. Recommended is a management approach
patterned after the Polaris program office of the 1950s, which accomplished
an even more difficult engineering task by deploying our first sea-based
strategic-missile system in under four years.
Pentagon officials
have stated they still intend to develop sea-based defenses against
ballistic missiles — and that's good. But Congress should demand
an accounting of why this cancellation is likely to lead to a sea-based
capability sooner than just following the THAAD precedent and insisting
that the Navy and its contractors get their act together. And if
no good answer quickly emerges, Congress should direct that the
program be restored.
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