The Bunker: Sloppy Pentagon shopping

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This week in The Bunker: why the costs of complex weapons rise as those for complicated consumer items fall; another 80% target for Pentagon readiness; an environmentally-friendly nuclear bomber; and more.

MORE BANG FOR THE BUCK

Assuming you’re not the Pentagon

Five years ago, The Bunker splurged and bought himself a state-of-the-art, 65-inch 4K OLED (don’t ask) television for $4,000. You know, to watch Defense Department briefings on C-SPAN, and things like that. My son just bought a bigger, better set made by the same company for less than $2,000. How come this never happens when the Pentagon goes shopping?

Basically, because the Pentagon is a risk-averse bureaucracy — except when it comes to taking risks promising higher-tech weapons. Then, all bets are off. It is in the Pentagon’s peculiar DNA to reach — and pay for — the stars yet settle for Pluto. It is a chronic condition, and one that won’t be cured until its civilian overlords slice open its corpulent procurement process and cut out the metastasizing tumor that has eluded decades of fist-pounding congressional chemotherapy and bloviating blue-ribbon radiation (PDF).

This is hardly a new problem, as a pair of Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) scholars noted last month. Some argue that the skyrocketing cost of new weapons “is a result of the incredible complexity required to deliver the exquisite performance of modern weapons systems,” Gregory C. Allen and Isaac Goldston said. “Yet, a 2009 Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) study found high complexity technology areas like the automotive industry and integrated circuits achieved extraordinary performance improvements with practically zero cost growth.” They cite a shrinking defense industry, too many cost-plus contracts, and the Pentagon’s requirements process (PDF) as key drivers of this costly insanity.

“Our traditional defense industrial base, built on fossilized systems and entrenched processes, is ill-equipped to respond to modern threats,” Michael Bloomberg, chair of the Defense Innovation Board, and retired Marine Commandant David Berger, wrote January 14 in the Washington Post. But they refreshingly refrained from the traditional fix: “Throwing new money at an old problem is not the answer.” Money now being spent on costly legacy weapons, they argue, should be diverted into cheap next-generation arms.

Easier said than done. In 1979, defense industrialist Norman Augustine famously said that the cost of fighter aircraft had increased 10-fold every 20 years since 1910. “In the year 2054, the entire defense budget will purchase just one aircraft,” he predicted. “The aircraft will have to be shared by the Air Force and Navy [three and a half] days each per week except for leap year, when it will be made available to the Marines for the extra day.”

The Defense Department’s new uncrewed Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) (PDF) program is supposed to harness new ways to develop cheaper weapons. But early returns are not encouraging. The Pentagon wants the CCA to be 10% the cost of the piloted fighter it will accompany (not replace!) into battle. That would give it a price tag of about $30 million. But “the initial goal of the Low-Cost Attritable Aircraft Program (LCAAT), a direct ancestor of CCA, was to create a vehicle with a unit cost of $3 million,” the CSIS paper says. “In other words, the projected price point of a ‘low-cost’ autonomous fighter aircraft has jumped an order of magnitude” — there’s that 10-fold increase again — “in the last eight years.”

Augustine, in a puckish 2015 essay (PDF) on his now-infamous fighter-plane financial forecast, conceded things aren’t getting better. That led him to conclude with his newest (and truest) maxim: “If you send money to the management of a project that is in trouble, they will remember you the next time they need money.”

80 PERCENT 2.0

Stop The Bunker if you’ve heard this one before

On January 13, the Navy rolled out its plan to have 80% of its fleet ready for war by 2027, well above recent readiness rates as ships have languished while waiting for repairs. “These are stretch goals, but I am confident we're going to work hard to get after them,” Admiral Lisa Franchetti, chief of naval operations, said when she set the target. “And if we don't make exactly 80%, we’re going to be further along the road than we would be if I hadn't set such an ambitious goal.”

Let’s face it: 80% is a good number. Rates a “B” in class, and it means you got four of every five answers right. Not necessarily honor-roll status, but not too shabby. Yet it’s tougher to achieve when you’re talking about having four of every five complex warships ready to sail.

Let’s hope the Navy has more luck with its ships than the Air Force had with its planes. Back in 2018, then-Defense Secretary Jim Mattis ordered the services to boost the readiness rate of their key fighters to that same 80% level, well above the usual 40-to-50% rates.

Unlike the Navy, the Air Force failed to meet that goal in 2019. So it junked it in 2020, after Mattis left the Pentagon and his 80% target evaporated. The three Air Force fighters Mattis wanted ready 80% of the time were the F-16 (69% ready in 2023), the F-22 (52% ready in 2023), and the F-35A (51% ready in 2023). Meanwhile, the Navy’s F-18 continues to hit that 80% mark. A toast if they can do it with their ships, too.

“F-35 ‘ER UP!”

A modern-war contradiction

Last year, the Pentagon certified its F-35 fighter to carry nuclear bombs. Last week, F-35 builder Lockheed approved flying those bombs to their targets using synthetic fuel. There’s something bemusing about brandishing the world’s most devastating weapons in an environmentally-friendly way.

Lockheed said the F-35 can now be powered by a 50-50 mixture of regular jet fuel and “synthetic aviation turbine fuel” brewed from waste oils, agricultural residues, “other non-fossil-based sources,” as well as coal and natural gas. “The new fuel sources will improve readiness by reducing reliance on the extended supply chain,” Lockheed said. Given that the F-35A was ready to fly only 51% of the time in 2023, anything that can fuel improvement will be a welcome change.

WHAT WE’RE READING

Here’s what has caught The Bunker’s eye recently

→ Just like “Star Wars”

A top Navy admiral says the service should be “embarrassed” that it hasn’t been able to deploy lasers across the fleet given that it has been exploring the technology since the Reagan administration, Justin Katz at Breaking Defense reported January 15.

→ Budget bump

Just before leaving the Pentagon as President Biden’s defense secretary, Lloyd Austin told his White House overseers that next year’s defense budget should be $55 billion more than the $877 billion originally proposed, formally topping $1 trillion in 2028, Bloomberg’s Tony Capaccio reported January 13.

→ Presumption gumption?

With Trump fund-raiser John Phelan tapped to become Navy secretary — the official who names Navy ships (PDF) — there’s already talk about naming a new aircraft carrier the USS Donald J. Trump, Richard Thomas said January 14 at Naval Technology.

Thanks for coming aboard The Bunker this week. Feel free to forward this on to fellow ne’er-do-wells so they can subscribe here.

Pulitzer Prize-winner Mark Thompson has been covering the Pentagon for more than 45 years.