Have irregularities marked the success of weapons programs in years past?

Jerry McGinn: … the Department of Defense is stuck with the ’60s approaches which requires three years to really plan and then program and then execute on a system which doesn’t really match well, without the needs of the department today.

 

Tom Temin: Well, just to play devil’s advocate some of the enduring systems that are still being used, still reliable F-15, F-16, F-18, a lot of these platforms were developed in that old PPBE process. Although if you’ve read the detailed history of them, they were all late, they were all over budget, they were all destined to failure and but nevertheless, they somehow got to fruition. But that’s not good enough now.

 

Jerry McGinn: No, I don’t think it is. Because with those programs, they sort of proved the point is that if you’re trying to set requirements for things that you need in five or six years, defining those unlocking those in five years in advance of the earliest prototypes is kind of silly.

That was from an excellent interview with Mason GovCon’s Jerry McGinn on the Federal News Network. I’ll add some points about those aircraft, because one of the main points of PPBE is that it does incremental change to old systems pretty well, but can barely be credited with successful, novel systems. In some ways, these aircraft — the F-15, F-16 and F-18 — are incremental advances, but still their success can be credited with irregularities.

On the F-15, in Croam’s book on John Boyd there’s a story where Boyd’s at a congressional hearing and they are asking whether the F-X concept was a fixed or swing-wing fighter. Boyd leans over to the general next to him at a congressional hearing, and says something to the effect of, “I think the weight reduction of the fixed wing aircraft will more than make up for the swing-wing’s benefits, and if we go with a swing-wing they’ll force us into a joint program with the Navy.” The general confidently responds, “fixed wing” and the matter was set. That looks nothing like a rigorous, multi-year A0A — but in fact it was! It was integrated into John Boyd’s head over many years of experience and study of energy-maneuverability theory.

And so even the F-15, which was first conceived as a bigger-faster-farther fighter due to the missteps in the F-111, could have gone much further along that axis if the personality of Boyd did not interfere. Boyd constantly fought to reduce weight.

The F-16 and F-18 were certainly irregular programs. DepSecDef David Packard went to congress in September 1971 for a supplemental appropriation to support new prototypes — including the Lightweight Fighter Program. Again you have peculiar personalities led to this. The Air Force never planned to inventory the F-16, it was for international sales (where exquisite fighters were too expensive). But in both the F-16 and the F-18, when they went into full-scale development, the acquisition system bore down on them. Luckily, they had a sound, competitive base from which to work. But the “F-XX” was not planned, programmed, budgeted for until there was personal intervention from first DepSecDef Packard for supplemental funds and then again by SecDef Schlesinger for the program of record.

Here’s more from the interview:

Tom Temin: Do you see, say, the possibility of dual systems because some things you can plan in advance, manpower for example. Planners know the cost of manpower, they know what the direct and indirect costs of that are going to be actuarily, pretty accurately way into the future. Whereas development of a new platform, for example, can go any of a million ways. So could it be that they need a dual system? And some part of the budget is set aside under a different planning system than the PPBE?

 

Jerry McGinn: Yeah, that’s a great point, Tom, and I think this is gonna have to be done through iteration and piloting. They’re gonna have to figure out where do we need this kind of push because there are some things where you don’t need this kind of flexibility that is very dynamic… And one of the important things about this is this has to be done in a transparent way. This is not something so the Pentagon gets their pot of money and they can go do what they want. It’s got to change how we do reporting, because Congress needs oversight, right? And that’s very appropriate. And we have very clear reporting ways to do it now into the PPBE, how does that impact it? So that’s an important part of this commission, a critical part because otherwise you’re not going to get buy-in on Capitol Hill and the executive branch.