Defense Technology International - May 2008 - (Page 50)

INSIGHT EDITORIAL D TI’s Ares blog is promoting the Cleopatra award for programs that seem to be terminally snake-bitten, unable to catch a break whatever happens. It is a rich time for nominees. The U.K. Parliament moots the idea of canceling the long-delayed, much-overrun Nimrod MRA4 program. A U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) review of major programs makes depressing reading. In the middle of a routine press conference, the Marines’ V-22 project director casually mentions that the tiltrotor aircraft might need a new engine. Snakes On A Plane The status of the biggest project of all, the Joint Strike Fighter, is more debatable, with project bosses insisting all is well, even though major challenges remain: a compressed ﬂight-test schedule; critical and difficult Stovl tests; and prototypes costing more to build. The invariable role of Congress and the media is to sound the alarm too late, like a smoke detector that goes off just after ﬂames block the last exit. The GAO lectures the Pentagon sternly about excessive concurrency—starting production before development is ﬁnished—but in fact, some concurrency is essential. Whatever the cause, the effect of chronic delays and overruns on new programs is massive. There’s never enough money to carry projects forward at their intended (economic) rates, so unit costs are higher than necessary. Compromises are struck and delays are accepted, but because time really is money, this year’s deferred expense must be repaid many times over. Meanwhile, operators make do with old equipment and pay more and more to upgrade and maintain it. So, how can we avoid this mess? The ﬁrst step is to acknowledge reality. The worst cases in procurement start with over-promising. When the V-22 began, proponents said economies of scale would permit delivery near the cost of a conventional helicopter and with much greater performance. The MRA4 was going to be a simple rework of an existing airframe. Why do people over-promise? Because they are rewarded for doing so. Industry program managers get promoted when they win contracts, and they win contracts by promising more than the 50 DEFENSE TECHNOLOGY INTERNATIONAL MAY 2008 competition. Military program managers get promoted if their projects are approved, so they have an incentive to promise the earth. There are two cures for this: Don’t buy promises and make sure people are accountable for delivering what they guarantee (not promise) to do. You can’t do the second without compressing the timeline. And if you think that can’t be done, remember that the F-16 took eight years from prototype contract to IOC (initial operational capability) and it turned out ﬁne. The people who originally foisted the V-22 on taxpayers are either no longer with us or playing golf. So why not set a limit? No program will be approved unless it has a realistic plan to get from the start of systems development and demonstration (SDD) to IOC in less than seven years. That does not rule out doing difficult things. But it means that more technology demonstration—competitive, aggressive and multi-tracked technology work—is done before the start of SDD, before the customer commits to a single focused solution, before it starts to get ruinously expensive to change course. That should also restrain customers from doing something stupid, like inventing technology to a schedule during SDD—inventing to a schedule supposedly worked for black-world breakthrough programs like the A-12 Blackbird and the F-117. But both were logistical and support nightmares, due in large part to some of those inventions. Inventing technology should be done all the time. Compressing SDD also makes it possible to deliver capability to the user in reasonable time, with the right amount of concurrency: i.e., enough to ensure that people don’t design things that can’t be built economically, but not so much that the user ends up with hundreds of nonstandard products that don’t reﬂect what was learned in development. Short SDD times have a human effect, too: You’ll be there to finish what you started. If it goes right, it will be very satisfying. If it doesn’t, you can’t blame the guy in the golf cart. And that’s simply healthy for all concerned. We can’t afford Cleopatras. ■ —Bill Sweetman Read Sweetman’s posts on DTI's weblog, Ares, updated daily: AviationWeek.com/ares AviationWeek.com/dti http://AviationWeek.com/ares http://AviationWeek.com/dti

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Defense Technology International - May 2008

Defense Technology International - May 2008 Contents Around the World Science Watch Tech Watch Learn and Live Think Again Vive la Difference En Route Out of the Box Package Deal On Watch Inside Job Programs Update The Net Back to the Future Busy Signal Mighty Mites Hull of an Idea Tough Enough Cutting Edge First Person In Review Insight

Defense Technology International - May 2008

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