IEEE Spectrum November, 2008 - 25

HIGH FLYER: The F-22 is without question the world's

meeting its cost and schedule objectives, it drained off funding from other
worthwhile programs. "the warfighter
expects to have a platform capable of
supporting his mission and the mission
of the Department of Defense," hirsch
said in an interview shortly before his
death last year. "If that program is so
costly as to jeopardize all other platforms, you can't consider it to be an
outstanding success."
Even Defense Secretary Robert
Gates has questioned the plane's
necessity, pointing out that "the F-22
has not performed a single mission"
in either Iraq or Afghanistan.
the F-22's troubled procurement
hasn't stopped the Air Force from
planning for a "sixth generation" aircraft to be built in the 2020s.
-R.N.C.

most advanced fighter. But multiple technical problems during
development delayed its deployment, drove up costs, and forced
the Pentagon to cut the number of planes it could field. The U.S. Air
Force plans to field 183 F-22s, at US $137 million per plane,
or more than $300 million apiece when
research and testing are factored in.

1980s: F-22 conceived as
a counter to two hypothetical Soviet fighters. Lockheed
Martin wins contract for 750
F-22s, at $35 million per plane.

1991: Collapse of the
Soviet Union.

2003: Order cut to
276 planes.

2006: Pentagon announces
it will purchase only 183 F-22s.

1994: F-22 order cut
again, to 442 planes.

2004: Operational
testing completed.

1990: Pentagon cuts order
to 648 F-22s, citing rising
development costs.

1997: Order cut to 339.

2005: First F-22 officially
fielded, 10 years late.

2008: U.S. Defense
Secretary Robert Gates tells
Congress "the F-22 has not
performed a single mission"
in Iraq or Afghanistan.

civilian employee. In some cases, the DOD
has admitted, contractors are doing jobs
that should be performed only by federal
employees, such as weapons procurement
and contract preparation. The DOD has
also outsourced the systems integration
and management of some of its most critical programs, including the FCS.
The Pentagon believes outsourcing saves money, but the practice has
depleted the ranks of technical, managerial, and contractual personnel who can
provide effective oversight of the department's defense acquisitions. As Norman
Augustine, former chairman of Lockheed
Martin, told me, "If you're not smarter
than your suppliers, you can't manage
them effectively."
The situation will only get worse.
This year alone, nearly one-fourth of the
United States' 637 000 aerospace workers are eligible to retire. Both Northrop
Grumman and Lockheed Martin, two
of the biggest U.S. defense contractors,
report that well over half of their workers
will reach retirement age within the next
five to 10 years. The same is true of DOD
federal employees. Younger workers are
not rushing in to replace them. Many stu-

Definition

u.s. air force

Next-war-itis n: The creation of complex and expensive machinery for possible
future conflicts while ignoring the present
need for affordable weapons.
www.spectrum.ieee.org

dents who pursue scientific and technical
disciplines don't want careers in defenserelated work. The implications for the
DOD are grim.

hough personnel skilled in the arts
of managing acquisition programs are
on the wane, the programs themselves
are on the rise, along with the Pentagon's
budget. The FY 2009 defense budget of
$488 billion is the largest in real terms since
World War II and 6 percent higher than
this year's budget. Meanwhile, the total
projected development costs for the 95 or
so major weapons systems currently in the
pipeline have more than doubled in the last
seven years, from $790 billion in 2000 to
$1.6 trillion in 2007.
There are no quick or easy solutions to
labor shortages and escalating costs, but
the standard response in the private sector is to lean more heavily on automation
and information technologies. But the
DOD seems not to have benefited from
technological advances that would make
development less expensive. "One might
have thought that more efficient production methods, including computer-aided
design and manufacturing, microminiaturization of components, and the employment of greater computing power, all
would have reduced costs or at least held
them level," former DOD comptroller Dov
Zakheim told a Washington, D.C., audience in January 2005. The fact that they
haven't, he said, is "not easy to fathom."
Ironically, the solution supported by

the DOD and military service chiefs, as
well as some members of Congress, is
not to make acquisitions more efficient
but to spend even more money. They
advocate setting aside an amount equal
to at least 4 percent of the annual U.S.
gross domestic product for defense. At
the current GDP of about $16 trillion,
that would mean an annual defense budget of $640 billion.
Would even that much be enough?
The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have
revealed that U.S. military strategy still
focuses on winning conventional forceon-force wars and that it lacks the systems to fight asymmetrical or irregular
wars against, for example, insurgents and
militias. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates
has criticized his own agency for what he
calls "next-war-itis." The military services
and defense contractors, he says, are too
focused on creating complex and expensive machinery for possible conflicts far
into the future and not sufficiently attentive to providing affordable weapons that
the military can use right now.
So, given the fast-changing military
imperatives of these times, what constitutes a successful acquisition program?
There is no straightforward answer to
that question, partly because in the realm
of military acquisitions, there is no universally agreed upon definition of a "successful" program. Jacques Gansler, now a
professor of public policy at the University
of Maryland, has a definition that seems
as good as any other: one that "satisfies
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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Spectrum November, 2008