Defense Focus: Year in review -- Part 1
Published: Jan. 4, 2008 at 12:58 PM
UPI Senior News Analyst
WASHINGTON, Jan. 4 (UPI) -- The year 2007 was a year when some sobering chickens starting coming to roost for U.S. defense planners and procurement policymakers.
The feckless defense cuts of the Clinton administration while extending U.S. military commitments around the world had been followed by seven "fat" years of booming defense budgets under Republican President George W. Bush that soared to record levels after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. But Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's obsession with science-fiction type long-term strategic systems like the Future Intelligence Architecture and the Future Combat Systems program led him to ignore basic maintenance, infrastructure and replacement programs for the U.S. armed forces.
In 2007, therefore, the U.S. Army had to focus on replacement and maintenance contracts for its ground forces heavy equipment, which continued to get used up at a serious rate in Iraq. The secretary of the Navy pulled the plug on the latest Littoral Combat Ship, whose cost overruns continued to soar exponentially.
Even the sound and exceptionally reliable airframe design of the venerable Lockheed Martin C-130 Hercules transport aircraft workhorse could not prevent costs of the "J" version of the plane from soaring, largely because of the complexity and sensitivity of the overly ambitious electronics that were being added to it.
The year ended with 450 F-15 Eagle interceptors grounded for an indefinite period after one had crashed in Missouri, revealing serious structural wear to its fuselage's metal skeleton. There was nothing wrong with the design of one of the most successful U.S. combat aircraft of modern times, but the F-15 has been a Mach 2 super-fighter and fighter-bomber for more than three decades, and that kind of wear and tear takes its toll on even the most wonderfully designed and superlatively maintained aircraft.
It was a year when a sober, cautious and responsible new team headed by Defense Secretary Robert Gates took over the Pentagon from Rumsfeld and his visionary dreamers. The Army remained committed to its Future Combat System. But with the opposition Democrats taking over control of both houses of Congress, prioritization on immediate needs and fiscal responsibility finally became the order of the day. Hundreds of millions of dollars were trimmed from the FCS programs, but the Army top brass ended the year still committed to it.
Many things did not change. The first Ohio-class nuclear submarines reconfigured to carry non-nuclear missiles to use against terrorists or local and regional adversaries started to enter service. Work continued on developing the F-22 and F-35 Lightning II combat aircraft despite growing concerns about cost overruns and eventual unit costs.
What didn't happen in the U.S. military procurement community during 2007 was arguably more significant than what did. Unlike the fruitful late 1970s and early 1980s, there was no serious questioning at the highest policymaking level of the way planning and business had been done for so long.
The Bush administration continued as its predecessors had done to accept the ingrained way the U.S. armed forces' senior officers chose their weapons systems. The emphasis remained on quality rather than quantity, on trusting cutting-edge technologies and superlative space-based reconnaissance and communications systems, rather than seeking to increase the scale of production runs and keep weapons simpler, and more affordable and easier to produce.
It was also a year when the challenge of foreign defense contractors, especially Russian ones, to the long dominant U.S. contractors significantly grew.
The feckless defense cuts of the Clinton administration while extending U.S. military commitments around the world had been followed by seven "fat" years of booming defense budgets under Republican President George W. Bush that soared to record levels after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. But Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's obsession with science-fiction type long-term strategic systems like the Future Intelligence Architecture and the Future Combat Systems program led him to ignore basic maintenance, infrastructure and replacement programs for the U.S. armed forces.
In 2007, therefore, the U.S. Army had to focus on replacement and maintenance contracts for its ground forces heavy equipment, which continued to get used up at a serious rate in Iraq. The secretary of the Navy pulled the plug on the latest Littoral Combat Ship, whose cost overruns continued to soar exponentially.
Even the sound and exceptionally reliable airframe design of the venerable Lockheed Martin C-130 Hercules transport aircraft workhorse could not prevent costs of the "J" version of the plane from soaring, largely because of the complexity and sensitivity of the overly ambitious electronics that were being added to it.
The year ended with 450 F-15 Eagle interceptors grounded for an indefinite period after one had crashed in Missouri, revealing serious structural wear to its fuselage's metal skeleton. There was nothing wrong with the design of one of the most successful U.S. combat aircraft of modern times, but the F-15 has been a Mach 2 super-fighter and fighter-bomber for more than three decades, and that kind of wear and tear takes its toll on even the most wonderfully designed and superlatively maintained aircraft.
It was a year when a sober, cautious and responsible new team headed by Defense Secretary Robert Gates took over the Pentagon from Rumsfeld and his visionary dreamers. The Army remained committed to its Future Combat System. But with the opposition Democrats taking over control of both houses of Congress, prioritization on immediate needs and fiscal responsibility finally became the order of the day. Hundreds of millions of dollars were trimmed from the FCS programs, but the Army top brass ended the year still committed to it.
Many things did not change. The first Ohio-class nuclear submarines reconfigured to carry non-nuclear missiles to use against terrorists or local and regional adversaries started to enter service. Work continued on developing the F-22 and F-35 Lightning II combat aircraft despite growing concerns about cost overruns and eventual unit costs.
What didn't happen in the U.S. military procurement community during 2007 was arguably more significant than what did. Unlike the fruitful late 1970s and early 1980s, there was no serious questioning at the highest policymaking level of the way planning and business had been done for so long.
The Bush administration continued as its predecessors had done to accept the ingrained way the U.S. armed forces' senior officers chose their weapons systems. The emphasis remained on quality rather than quantity, on trusting cutting-edge technologies and superlative space-based reconnaissance and communications systems, rather than seeking to increase the scale of production runs and keep weapons simpler, and more affordable and easier to produce.
It was also a year when the challenge of foreign defense contractors, especially Russian ones, to the long dominant U.S. contractors significantly grew.
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