The Pentagon Violates Its Own Acquisition Policies

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has released yet another report (pdf) on the dismal state of major weapons acquisition programs, which the Defense Department plans on spending $1.3 trillion between 2005 and 2009.  As you can see in the table below, cost overruns for some of our government's largest programs--the Army's Future Combat Systems and the service-wide Joint Strike Fighter--have had double digit percentage growth in their price tags.  And the C-130 Avionics Modernization and Global Hawk programs have ballooned well over 100% from their original estimates.

Despite "reforms" over the past five years, the Defense Department has "not eliminated cost and schedule problems for major weapons development programs."  GAO says the main problem is that too often the Defense Department begins weapons acquisition programs that embrace "revolutionary" technologies that are immature and fraught with high risk leading to poor initial estimates of their true cost and time to complete. 

In fact, the DoD is not even following its own policy guidance which eschews "revolutionary" leaps in technology in favor of evolutionary or incremental changes, the GAO points out.  Furthermore, there is a lack of effective controls which ensure that DoD is following its own policies and a lack of specific criteria, allowing decisionmakers "to make decisions on the basis of subjective judgment."  For example:

Nearly 80 percent of the programs we [GAO] assessed were permitted to bypass the policy’s initial major decision review and the associated systems-engineering process that are intended to ensure that a system’s requirements match available resources and that a sound business case is developed prior to starting system development.

Because key processes which are supposed to take place are constantly allowed to be skipped, transparency and accountability are weakened, which as GAO and numerous others tell us, leads to less bang for the buck.

Comments

[T Street Buddy]

Nick,

Sitting in the church w my buds, I really enjoyed your weaseled explanation about comments. "You can't handle the truth" from a great movie comes to mind. It is a weakness of POGO.

I think you are afraid of the fatal attraction that some rightwing, religious dimwits have for POGO. Maybe it's the acronymn itself.

Don't just try blogging for corruption (???), try blogging for the Lord, blessed be HE.

TSB

[Nick at POGO]

Anonymous said:

"What's wrong with this blog? Why can't you leave comments on some of the articles? Is this a technical problem or is POGO afraid of what people have to say about some issues?"

Simply put, we're revisiting our comments policy. Many blogs run by organizations or individuals have their blog comments turned off or moderate their comments. While we've learned quite a bit from some comments, given the large number of, in my opinion, worthless comments and spam comments, we're not sure if we should still allow unmoderated comments or public comments at all. Even if POGO rules out comments directly on our blog, we still want people to send us their opinions and we will find ways to facilitate that.

One consideration that is factoring into our reasoning is how POGO as an organization looks when someone reads the comments. Although it should be clear that POGO is not responsible for comments, many superficially assume guilt by association.

And as to the question, "is POGO afraid of what people have to say about some issues?"--POGO is not afraid. In fact, I personally have welcomed questions and criticism, even though it is, frankly, annoying sometimes. As I've stated in other places on the blog, the only kind of comments I delete fall into two categories: obscenity (my tolerance is quite high in this regard) and spam (of which my tolerance is very low).

Nick Schwellenbach
POGO Blog Editor

[Free DUMB ! Dumb to believe you are free.]

http://thinkprogress.org/2006/04/18/iran-cnn-line/
Is Covert Military Action in Iran ‘Under the CNN Line’?
Retired Air Force Col. Sam Gardiner stirred interest last week by stating that “the decision has been made and military operations are under way” in Iran. In an interview yesterday, Gardiner discussed a similar series of covert military operations that occured in Iraq in 2002 — months before either the full-scale invasion in March 2003 or even the passage of the Congressional Iraq resolution in October 2002.

Then, in mid-2002, U.S. and British forces “doubled the rate at which they were dropping bombs on Iraq…in an attempt to provoke Saddam Hussein into giving the allies an excuse for war.” The bombings received scant attention from the traditional media at the time, but that was by design. According to Gardiner, Rumsfeld had told the military, “you can begin to bomb Iraq, but don’t let it appear on CNN“:

COL. SAM GARDINER: Well, the evidence is beginning to accumulate that a decision has already been made to use military force in Iran. Now, let me do a historical thing, and then I’ll tell you what the current evidence is. We now know that the decision and the actual actions to bomb Iraq occurred in July of 2002, before we ever had a U.N. resolution or before the Congress ever authorized it. It was an operation called Southern Focus, and the only guidance that the military — or the guidance that the military had from Rumsfeld was keep it below the CNN line. His specific words. The evidence that we’ve already –

AMY GOODMAN: Keep it below what?

COL. SAM GARDINER: The CNN line. In other words, I don’t want this to appear on CNN, okay? That was his guidance to the military, you can begin to bomb Iraq, but don’t let it appear on CNN.

Reports by Seymour Hersh and others indicate that U.S. forces are already working in Iran: marking targets, “working with minority groups” and exiles, and “encourag[ing] ethnic tensions.” Will traditional media outlets avert their eyes again?

Read the full interview HERE.

What's wrong with this blog? Why can't you leave comments on some of the articles? Is this a technical problem or is POGO afraid of what people have to say about some issues?

That table forces me to exclaim...I am duly impressed with the POGO blogging team!

[R Street Buddy]

Yes, that table is powerful. It is truly a gift from God. Via con cheso

That table is powerful.

[L Street Buddy]

This performance should hearn the wastrel-in-chief, Donald Rumsfeld, more kudos. They also go to the many admirals and generals who are still in the military and those who have left for the contractors.