The Bunker: Testing the Limits of Stupidity

The Bunker, delivered to our subscribers Wednesdays at 7 a.m., is a newsletter from the desk of National Security Analyst Mark Thompson. Sign up here to receive it first thing, or check back Wednesday afternoon for the online version.

This week in The Bunker: Pentagon to cut its testing oversight force in half; Army plans to shortcut testing of its new tiltrotor; decrepit U.S. military barracks on Guam highlight challenges associated with missile defense; and more (FOR YOUR EYES ONLY: The Bunker is taking next week off).

DEFENSE DEPARTMENT UNDERSIGHT

Cutting the Pentagon’s testing office is nuts

Pentagon weapons are pretty much perfect, which is why Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is slashing the Defense Department’s independent testing office in half.

Just kidding!

Sure, the Pentagon chief issued a memo (PDF) May 27 gutting the place. But unfortunately, with a kennelful of dogs like the multi-service F-35 fighter, the Navy’s Constellation-class frigate, the Marines’ V-22 tilt-rotor, and the Army’s hypersonic Dark Eagle drone, the Pentagon needs more oversight and rigorous testing, not less.

Hegseth said the move would save more than $300 million annually; the office had a $446 million budget (PDF) in fiscal year 2023. Talk about penny-wise and pound-foolish: The 94 employees in the Pentagon’s Office of the Director of Operational Test and Evaluation (to be cut to 45) represent about 0.003% of the Defense Department’s roughly 3.3 million employees.

DOT&E is charged with overseeing the testing done by the military services, which tends to be performed with kid gloves. The Project On Government Oversight has been pushing for more thorough weapons testing even before DOT&E’s creation in 1983.

Hegseth has declared war on DEI, but it’s not like these uber-testers are pushing the diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts denounced by the administration (unless you’re talking about diversity of expertise when it comes to testing multi-billion-dollar weapons, taxpayer equity in what they’re buying, and including professionally skeptical outsiders to ensure the biggest bang for the buck).

DOT&E’s annual report is one of the few independent sources of information available on the arcane — but vital — topic. “Hegseth’s memo highlights a key misunderstanding — or rejection — of why Congress created an independent testing office in the first place,” Greg Williams, The Bunker’s boss here at the Project On Government Oversight, said. “The law tries to make sure weapons are evaluated outside the chain of command that develops and promotes them.”

Let’s face it: The Trump administration doesn’t like oversight, whether it’s from universities, law firms, or the press. Last week it challenged the century-old Government Accountability Office, whose solid reports have been a bracing tonic to Pentagon privilege for years.

What’s now unfolding before taxpayers’ green eyeshades is nothing less than internal accountability self-destruction.

AND SPEAKING OF TESTING…

Army prematurely pushes platform into production

The U.S. military is always racing to get ahead of … well, something that the fog of future war hides. But the Army is willing to cut corners to get the replacement for its UH-60 Black Hawk to the troops sooner rather than later, even if it means accepting greater risk that it won’t perform as promised.

Basically, the service wants to begin building its new aircraft before prototype flight tests are completed on its recently named MV-75 tiltrotor (previously known as the V-280, and the Future Long Range Assault Aircraft). Improved modeling, MV-75 backers say, will lead to prototypes that will closely match the final design. That means they won’t have to wait, cooling their rotors, for pesky test-pilot reports on what needs fixing before production begins. The Army incredibly predicts this will cut the MV-75’s testing schedule from the typical four to 10 years, to two.

We’ve seen this movie before. It doesn’t end well. Tilt-rotors — well, the Pentagon’s own V-22 (PDF) is the only model in production — are notoriously unreliable and, therefore, costly to maintain. Like the V-22, the Pentagon’s F-35 (PDF) is flown by three services — the Air Force, the Navy, and the Marines. It too has been plagued by cost overruns and delayed deliveries, due in no small part because the Pentagon rushed it into production.

The MV-75 program could end up costing $70 billion. Its accelerated fielding is already making the Army rethink its speed and range “requirements,” which are roughly double those of the Black Hawk. “Rather than pursue perfect, we are pursuing an aircraft that is close to being what we asked for,” Colonel Jeffrey Poquette, the MV-75 program manager says. The Army brass, he adds, would rather get the MV-75 sooner rather than “design yourself to death.”

HOME SWEET GOLDEN DOME

Missile defense’s red flag on Guam

René Kladzyk here at the Project On Government Oversight had a grim story May 29 about lousy U.S. military barracks on the Pacific island of Guam. In fact, Navy Secretary John Phelan told POGO he was “appalled” and “very upset” after touring them on a recent visit. Alas, it’s only the tip of the iceberg for conditions on the U.S. territory. That’s also where the Pentagon is building an $8 billion missile shield to defend it and Guam’s extensive U.S. military assets against attacks from China and/or North Korea.

President Trump recently declared how good, fast, and cheap “The Golden (née Iron) Dome for America” continental aerial (i.e., more than mere missiles) shield will be. Two days later, the Government Accountability Office told a much different story about the much smaller Guam Defense System (GDS) — including its lack of decent housing. “Guam already faces a housing shortage for military personnel,” the GAO said. The U.S. military population there is projected to grow from 10,000 now to 20,000 in 2033. “GDS planners have expressed doubts about their ability to build housing on time.”

Beyond housing, the watchdog agency tallied a list of what’s missing from Guam to support the personnel who will be needed to tend to its expanded missile-defense system. They range from schools, to medical facilities, to commissaries, to drinking water. In fact, the U.S. is having trouble maintaining the simple missile defense shield currently in place. The Army had to scramble to secure its launchers and radars from a 2023 typhoon, and is leaving “spare parts unprotected outside” leading to “corrosion of spare parts.”

The GAO interviewed Pentagon officials about Guam’s missile defense before Trump unveiled his Golden Dome initiative. They said Guam’s modest missile defense system “will be the department’s largest and most complicated, presenting communication and planning challenges among the various DOD stakeholders.”

They ain’t seen nothin’ yet.

WHAT WE’RE READING

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

→ Military-industrial-complexity costs

The price of maintaining military aircraft is likely to spike as the world’s air forces buy ever more complicated warplanes, Defense News’ Stephen Losey reported May 23.

→ “Get rid of all the endless, useless crap”

Small-to-medium companies remain leery of doing business with the Defense Department despite years of effort and legislation designed to expand its industrial base, John A. Tirpak reported May 26 in Air & Space Forces Magazine.

→ Stop the press!

Jamie McIntyre, CNN’s Pentagon correspondent from 1992 to 2008, wrote May 30 of the war now underway between the Pentagon and the reporters who cover it for the Washington Examiner, where he is now a columnist.

Once again, The Bunker is taking next week off. We’ll be back June 18. Kindly consider forwarding this on to colleagues so they can subscribe here.

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