Hammer Time

No, not this one – more like this…

Item: Navy ship $840 million over budget and still unfinished (h/t Phibian) — The highly touted  nerve center of the new, $1.8 billion amphibious ship San Antonio is fraught with computer hardware crashes that could cripple operations.  The ship lacks basic safety equipment, such as hand rails and reliable guns to battle close-in attacks.  In all, Navy inspectors found 30 major flaws aboard the San Antonio, according to an internal report obtained by The Virginian-Pilot. Despite the deficiencies, the Navy has earmarked $13 billion to purchase nine amphibious ships in the San Antonio class.

Item:  LM Must Fix JASSM This Month —  Lockheed Martin has until the end of June to negotiate a get-well plan with the U.S. Air Force for its $5.8 billion stealthy cruise missile program or face full termination.

Item:  Showdown Ends in Cancellation U.S. Navy Scraps LCS 3 After Dispute With Lockheed — The decision capped a month of negotiations in which the Navy sought to change the contract for LCS 3, the second Lockheed ship, from a cost-plus to a fixed-cost-plus-incentive model. On March 15, Winter declared that unless a “meeting of the minds” on a new contract could be reached, the Navy would cancel construction. On April 12, he made good on that threat.

Item:  Army’s Future Combat System Budget Woes Continue —  At $161 billion, the Future Combat Systems is the Pentagon’s second-most-costly program, behind the $276 billion Joint Strike Fighter.   Since fiscal 2003, the program’s research and development phase has slipped five years and the final fielding date by seven years.

…and the list goes on…

As has been pointed out and advocated elsewhere, the time has long since come and passed when the sacrificial O-6 PIM was unceremoniously tossed off the pyramid after having his heart removed.  It has passed even for the very public execution of one- or twos-stars.  No, the time is now for the very public firing of senior government civilians.  It is also time to fire industry as well, and dare it be said, buy foreign.  Yes, you read that right, the time has come to buy foreign.

It has become painfully obvious that the post-Cold War "consolidation" of the defense industry has not served the best interests of the country in terms of efficiency or stated mission – providing for the common defense.  Instead, virtual monopolies exist with a "whattaya gonna do, go overseas to buy ‘X’ capability?" attitude.  How else does one explain the enduring morass that is the American shipbuilding industry.  The same industry that just lost out to a Spanish shipbuilder for Australia’s new AEGIS-based destroyer because of cost.  The same one that has totally hosed the LCS (not that that program was the brightest one to begin with) and of course, the current poster child for yard-work ineptitude and gross malfeasance, LPD-17. 

And over on the aviation side?  Besides the A-12 turkey, there are a legion of developmentally delayed, over-budget programs.  Even something as straightforward as an air-launched cruise missile can’t seem to make it in under budget (shoot, even on budget and on time) despite the fact that GPS and reliable cruise missile technologies and fuzing have been around for a long time now.

The American public was faced with a similar set of circumstances in the mid-70s and for a decade, the American automobile industry just did not "get it."  Dollars flowed to Toyota, Honda, Mazda and Datsun instead of Ford, GM, Dodge and American.  Some disappeared from the landscape and the remainder continue in the fight of their corporate lives in what remains a very tenuous existence.

Now, your ‘umble correspondent is sanguine enough to realize that with most all of the Legislative and a healthy portion of the Executive branches in their pockets, the defense industry won’t find itself in the same straits as their civilian counterparts up in Detroit.  But, you know, maybe they need to be notched down a couple of steps.  Maybe JASSM should be canceled and SecDef announce that we are buying EADS’ Storm Shadow or Bofors’ TAURUS instead because we seem incapable of producing a reliable air-launched tactical cruise missile.  Maybe SecNav scraps the LCS idea and says we are buying an entire class of corvettes because our ship-building industry is incapable of designing and producing a new class of reduced signature combatants for a brown water mission.  Maybe, well, you get the picture.

Of course the likelihood of something like this coming to pass is nil, but one can still dream…