Central to the plan is paying for it all [Michele] Flournoy identifies “over-investing in legacy platforms and weapon systems” as the impediment. Candidate Biden, likely not coincidently, stated he would shift investments from “legacy systems that won’t be relevant” to “smart investments in technologies and innovations—including in cyber, space, unmanned systems and artificial intelligence.”
… But the math won’t work. All the available data shows that the newer (more complex by design) systems are more expensive to operate than older ones. Air Force data show the F-22 to be twice as costly to operate as the elderly F-15C and D; the B-2 is twice the cost to maintain as the ancient B-52. The new, ultra-complex B-21 bomber, which Clinton and others strongly support, promises to be yet another step up in operating cost. One does not save money by replacing a lower cost with a higher cost.
That was Pierre Sprey and Winslow Wheeler writing at POGO, Should Michèle Flournoy Be Secretary of Defense? Read the whole thing, an interesting view throughout.
I hold the two authors in high regard, but I must admit that I disagree with quite a bit. Perhaps that’s indicative of my own emersion into defense-insider groupthink. But I think the above quote shows the authors to be at least a bit unjust.
Sure, the B-21 will be an expensive platform. But that program really got started back in 2006. It’s not indicative of the type of thinking that drives newer programs in unmanned naval vessels, battle networking, mosaic warfare, etc. If you look at the Next Generation Air Dominance program, they put out a demonstrator aircraft in less than a year.
In Will Roper’s There is no Spoon paper, he argues that modern development methods can bring down the cost of operations and support by 45 percent. There is no law of nature that 70% of weapon systems costs should be in sustainment. And there’s no law of nature that a new weapon system will be more expensive than the last. Look at how the Predator drone and later models were able to drastically cut cost per flying hour and provide an enormous boost to military productivity.
This also caught my eye:
Five years later, she [Flournoy] co-founded the second-most heavily contractor-funded think tank in Washington, the highly influential Center for a New American Security (CNAS). That became a stepping stone to her role as under secretary of defense for policy in the Obama administration. From there she rotated to the Boston Consulting Group, after which the firm’s military contracts expanded from $1.6 million to $32 million in three years.
I wanted to check on those figures. USA Spending, which the article links to, shows Boston Consulting Group to have received the following revenues from the federal government:
FY 2011: $4.85M
FY 2012: $1.2M
FY 2013: $3.5M
FY 2014: $1.8M
FY 2015: $5.5M
FY 2016: $43.5M
Michele came in at the end of FY 2012. I can’t find the exact date, but she left sometime around 2016. In that last year, Boston Consulting Group did grow federal revenues, but looking into that, $23 million went to the defense commissary agency. I doubt Michele’s time as USD Policy gave her inside access to consulting contracts for commissary work. The rest of DoD funding, $8 million, came from the Washington Headquarters Service. There was $2.9 million from USAID, which could be a plausible link to Michele.
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