John Young Is Trying To Implement Defense Spending Reform NOW

While there is a lot of talk about changes the new administration will make, it's important to note that there are some positive changes happening now, largely due to John Young, the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics. When he first came into office, he sensibly advocated competitive prototyping to reduce technical risk and procuring systems based on immature technology. We've recently praised him on our blog for criticizing the Navy's LPD-17 San Antonio, and in the press for refusing to be bullied by Lockheed Martin threatening to charge taxpayers $147 million for stopping F-22 production--a tactic Lockheed has had success with before to prevent the cancellation of the C-130J.

Now Young is really irking the defense industry by questioning the "desperate" need for the Air Force's Combat Search and Rescue helicopter, the CSAR-X--a program that we have raised concerns about. From Inside Defense (subscription service):

“We have a lot of assets that can be used in rescue missions with planning, so I don't necessarily just automatically rubber-stamp the CSAR-X mission requirement,” he [Young] said during a Nov. 20 breakfast with reporters.

These days, everyone is looking for places to cut costs, and if Young is right that this is not an urgently needed program, delaying or cancelling this $15 billion search-and-rescue helicopter contract may be something to seriously consider.

But, of course, the problem is much larger than a few programs.  Inside Defense reported that Young pointed to Darleen Druyun, the Air Force's former chief acquisitions official sentenced to jail in 2004 for her overly cozy relationship with industry, as creating a culture where "people became culturally attuned to the [fact] that the Air Force practice is to evaluate proposals, but not provide judgments and recommendations about proposals."  For the CSAR-X, Young said, this meant that the Air Force's review process included no recommendations or analysis.  

-- Mandy Smithberger

Comments

[Posted on: Dec 07, 2008 at 06:58 PM]

Oooh, competitive prototyping. That didn't help much in the ATF competition where the worst of the two between the YF-23 and YF-22 was chosen. Even on JSF, Boeing was never going to get that pig to hover, even if they did finally pull enough crap off the X-32B to get it to do the trick once - light on gas and carrying no weapons. Great, right. You can't go anywhere or shoot anyone, but it will take off vertically. Of course, competitive prototyping could have been a real boon to both programs if the contractors had something to lose had the prototypes showed, as the X-32B did, that the contractor was lying. The competitive prototype for the ATF competition didn't fix the fact that the USAF had no concept for how they were going to use stealth.

Why they needed thrust vectoring for a stealth fighter is still beyond me. If you're not going anywhere and making a lot of noise and heat, you're not stealthy, you're a target. Any pilot stupid enough to use thrust vectoring in a real fight will be a dead pilot. Ironically, the F-35 guys are busy making that point to the USAF right now. That from the same people who gave you the F-22. Both aircraft are aerodynamic pigs and the F-35 will never come in a less than $100 million a copy. The US taxpayer will be screwed with either airplane.