The head of the House Armed Services Committee (HASC) lamented the Air Force’s “egregious” acquisition failures and said officials must be diligent in stopping flawed programs early in their development processes.
HASC Chairman Howard “Buck” McKeon (R-Calif.) launched the Air Force’s annual budget hearing Friday by quizzing Air Force Secretary Michael Donley about problem weapons programs. Those include the canceled Expeditionary Combat Support System (ECSS) logistics effort, which cost $1 billion without yielding any military benefit.
McKeon said Air Force equipment purchased during the Cold War “is aging out, and it is aging out simultaneously, because many procurement and modernization programs failed, were delayed, or were deferred during the past 15 years.”
“The Air Force needs to simultaneously recapitalize across major categories of capabilities, and there’s great risk that the effort is unsupportable in the current fiscal environment,” he said.
Donley defended the Air Force, saying it has “undertaken a number of acquisition improvements,” including making “great progress” in controlling the costs of space programs over the past several years.
He said the service has “no apologies” for ECSS, a CSC [CSC] program the service worked on for seven years.
“We could have done better up front with having the right technical expertise on that program, more oversight from our logistics and logistics experts on the contractor team,” Donley said. “That program went through multiple restructurings over seven years until we finally got to a point where it was just unacceptable to proceed.”
Air Force officials “have no…hesitation in canceling programs that are not performing,” he told McKeon. The HASC chairman also cited the canceled G222 aircraft acquisition effort, which cost U.S. taxpayers $600 million and spurred a Department of Defense Inspector General investigation. The G222 was a version of the C-27A transport aircraft the United States purchased for the Afghan air force from prime contractor Alenia North America.
“The contractor simply did not perform over several years, and we reached a point where we viewed that performance by that contractor and that airframe to be unrecoverable,” Donley said.
McKeon said he believes “it’s very important to stop programs that aren’t performing.”
“My criticism would be–and this is not just the Air Force, it’s across the whole Pentagon–is sometimes we take too long to make the decision to cancel it,” the HASC chairman said, pointing to the Marine Corps protracted and failed effort to develop and Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle.
“If we could identify the problem earlier (with flawed programs), I think that’s important,” he said.
McKeon further lamented that the Air Force has not had a confirmed senior acquisition executive since 2009.
Donley noted that David Van Buren served as a “very capable” acting Air Force acquisition executive for much of that time, and since his departure last year the service has been looking for a replacement. Donley said he believes the service has a candidate lined up who will be in place within the next month or so. He said the Air Force struggled within its personnel process to fine a new senior acquisition executive, because some candidates were “unable to step up to the requirements of leaving their corporate position to spend time in government.”
McKeon said the HASC will do whatever it can to help the service with the process of filling such empty positions.