During a confirmation hearing for several senior civilian Defense Department officials, including the prospective secretary of the Army, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) attacked that service’s acquisition track record as “unbelievable” and “embarrassing.”
Ryan McCarthy, who comes from Lockheed Martin [LMT] where he was vice president of sustainment for the F-35 fighter program, on July 12 testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee. A former Army Ranger and Afghanistan War veteran, McCarthy was last month nominated by President Donald Trump to serve as undersecretary of the Army.
McCarthy sat before the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) alongside Principal Deputy Undersecretary Of Defense for Policy nominee David Trachtenberg, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Low Intensity Conflict nominee Owen West and Charles Stimson, nominated to become general counsel of the Navy.
With minor dissatisfaction with some of the nominees’ answers on personnel policy questions, SASC Chairman McCain vowed to move their appointments out of committee the same day.
“I hope that we can get you confirmed by this committee immediately and we can get your nominations to the floor to get you to work,” McCain said.
McCain has been on a tear of late regarding Army development programs, in particular the Army’s battlefield internet, called the Warfighter Information Network-Tactical (WIN-T).
“The Army is facing a crisis,” McCain said at the top of the nearly two-hour hearing. “With current operational demands, we can no longer accept that only about one-third of the Army’s brigade combat teams are ready for deployment and the Army is in need of serious modernization, leaving our soldiers increasingly unprepared to do the job we ask of them.”
McCarthy had a front-row seat to the notorious failure of Future Combat Systems, which chewed through nearly $10 billion before the program collapsed under the weight of its own technological ambitions. He diagnosed the systemic problem with Army acquisition as a failure to clearly define program requirements prior to development.
“Clearly the Army has struggled over the last two decades,” McCarthy said. “In large measure that is the challenges of requirements definition, interpretation and then phrasing requirements.”
McCain continued to list Army acquisition dead ends and their price tags. He said the XM2001 Crusader Howitzer ate up $2.2 billion before being scrapped. Likewise the RAH-66 Comanche reconnaissance helicopter sank $5.9 billion before it crashed and burned. He also called out the Joint Tactical Radio System (JTRS) for costing $11 billion. Though that program has suffered cost overruns, the handheld, manpack and small-form fit portion is ongoing, with continued funding and fielding.
“One of the great frustrations for the members of this committee is the Army’s acquisition track record,” McCain said. “It’s unbelievable – up to $40 billion in some estimates … Every one of those that I mentioned never became reality,” McCain said. “It’s embarrassing. I’m embarrassed to go before my constituents and say ‘We need more money’ when we just blew over $7.5 billion for a thing called Warfighter Information Network-Tactical, or WIN-T, which the Army still is trying to hang on to.”
WIN-T has been a focal point for McCain’s ire in recent hearings on the Army’s fiscal 2018, but like JTRS, the program is fielding and meeting published requirements. Another favorite McCain punching bag – the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter – did not escape derision at the hearing, although the Army is the lone service not buying a version of the jet.
“You look at the ones that are so-called ‘successful’ like the F-35 … it is so frustrating,” McCain said. “We are now getting into the business, on this committee, of micromanaging programs over in the Pentagon because we aren’t getting satisfactory answers. That’s not our job. Our job is oversight, not to manage.”
Asked by Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) how he might speed to field a replacement or upgrade for the Army’s M16 and M4 rifles, McCarthy was quick to suggest that existing technologies could fit the bill.
“Look to the commercial sector to see if there are off-the-shelf technologies that are applicable,” McCarthy said.
He brought up the Mine-Resistant, Ambush-Protected (MRAP) vehicle program that was able to field bomb-resistant trucks within nine months. Those vehicles were developed from existing commercial and armored vehicle technologies on a speedy timeline so life-saving bomb-proof trucks could be rushed to Iraq and Afghanistan, he said.
McCain reminded McCarthy that MRAP was successful in part because the secretary of defense took personal interest in it and held weekly meetings on the program’s process.
“The secretary of defense can’t convene a meeting on every weapon system that the Department of Defense considers,” McCain said. “There is something really wrong with the system. I hope you will look at it … It’s almost laughable. No one has ever been fired for all of these failure of billions and billions of dollars.”