By Emelie Rutherford
As it prepares for what could be its final order of mine-resistant vehicles next month, the Pentagon is considering spreading out vehicle delivery to allow more time for deciding on the acquisition program’s future, the Pentagon’s top weapons buyer said.
Pentagon acquisition executive John Young also told reporters yesterday that the follow-on Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicle (MRAP) II program–intended to build next- generation vehicles more resistant to explosively formed penetrators (EFPs)–is still alive, though it’s not clear if those developmental vehicles will be ready for next month’s order.
The MRAP program is slated to reach its next Low Rate Initial Production round in July, Young told reporters after a Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) hearing on defense acquisition programs. Sources say plans call for ordering 1,600 vehicles–in order to bring the Army’s MRAP tally to 12,000 vehicles. That move would bring the Army to a target number–within its current requirement range–for MRAPs.
In “July we need to place another order,” Young said.
Because other services have fulfilled their MRAP requirements, Young said “it’s possible” the July order could be the end the multi-contractor MRAP effort to rapidly ship the vehicles to troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.
‘That [order] has the potential to meet the lower end of the Army requirement, and so that could be the end of the program,” Young said.
“It depends on where the theater situation and the Army’s decision about requirements [are],” he said, adding that “if we meet the MRAP requirement, yeah we’ll stop buying MRAPs.”
The Army’s current MRAP requirement–approved by the Joint Requirements Oversight Council (JROC) in March–is a somewhat squishy range of 10,433 to 15,884 vehicles, with a target of 12,000. The overall MRAP requirement for all of the services — most of which have ordered their planned vehicles–is thus also a range, from just over 14,000 vehicles to just under 20,000.
Young said the MRAP Task Force he chairs recently briefed Defense Secretary Robert Gates and is preparing to brief him again on the type and variants of desired mine-resistant vehicles for the July order.
“We continue to seek feedback from the theater about how effective the vehicles are,” Young said “We’ve seen that we want to…make modest changes to the vehicles in terms of additional armor in places. So all those factors are being staged for a brief to the secretary and an order in July.”
He said Pentagon officials have “got to look at how we deliver those vehicles” to be ordered in July. That’s because a request for more Army vehicles beyond 12,000 could emerge later, he said.
“We would seek to have those [July] vehicles deliver on a more measured pace so that another decision–based on theater feedback or requirements–would occur…in the March or April [time frame], so a new administration would have time to get in place,” Young said. “We would need supplemental money–we haven’t asked for it–to buy any more vehicles. But right now we have supplemental money to buy to the lower end of the Army requirement and finish out the program.”
There has been speculation about whether the developmental MRAP II program will yield actual vehicles, or if they are not needed because existing MRAPs have been beefed up with added EFP protection.
Young yesterday said the MRAP II program is alive and “is in the process of testing.”
“There’s a question about whether that testing will be finished and analyzed in time for the July order, but if we can it’ll be a factor in the July order,” he said. “That’ll be fundamentally driven by the theater feedback…Those vehicles are heavier, they’re going to be more costly, and so the theater will have to send the demand signals [and say] ‘I need MRAP II class vehicles.'”
Young said the MRAP program has saved nearly $400 million by nearly ending the airlift of the hulking vehicles to theater, and instead using ships to carry the majority of them to Kuwait. He said the airlift was nearly turned off in February because the industry teams and SPAWAR did a good job delivering and equipping the vehicles.
“In a program where we were going 100 miles an hour, we’re still going 100 miles an hour, we’re meeting the demand, but we’ve found a way to save $400 million, which I think’s huge,” he said.
If the Army decides it wants more than 12,000 MRAPs, that saved money could help buy more vehicles, he said.
“Because we saved the $400 million–we can make a little better than the low end of the Army requirement, if we choose to spend that money that way,” he said.
Asked if the MRAP program has a future if the Army stops at 12,000 vehicles, Young said: “I think we’re going to buy our inventory, and then we’ve looked at the industrial base.”
“Several of the manufacturers say that they can restart on reasonably short notice,” he added. “One of the vehicles is the core of the Army’s integrated vehicle mine detector, another vehicle is basically based on the FMTV chassis, which the Army continues to buy, so I think we have an industrial base to reach back to.”
At yesterday’s SASC hearing the Government Accountability Office (GAO) Director of Acquisition and Sourcing Management Katherine Schinasi testified on shortcomings with the Defense Department’s (DoD) management of major weapons system acquisitions. She presented no new report.
Decrying “unrealistic cost and schedule estimates” for acquisition programs, SASC Chairman Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) said he wants to create a new DoD position called director of independent cost assessment. The person would have “authorities and responsibilities comparable to those of the director of operational test and evaluation, so that we can attempt to ensure that the information on which we base program and budget decisions is objective,” he said. Levin said he will seek to create the position via an amendment to the fiscal year 2009 defense authorization when it comes to the Senate floor–which he said will hopefully happen “in a couple of weeks.”
Asked after the hearing if he supports creating such a position, Young said: “I personally believe the head of the Cost Analysis Improvement Group is kind of that person, so I guess I need to understand the details of what he’s proposing.”
Saying he’d “like to reserve the right to think about it,” Young noted that “the CAIG is a dominant factor in all my acquisition decisions.”