By Emelie Rutherford
The Marine Corps’ sole program executive officer (PEO) said the weapon-system programs in his portfolio have all stabilized and he now is focusing sharply on cost-savings measures with the defense industry.
William Taylor, the program executive officer for Land Systems, oversees eight high-profile programs, including the Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle (EFV), Joint Light Tactical Vehicle (JLTV), Medium Tactical Vehicle Replacement (MTVR), and Ground/Air Task Oriented Radar (G/ATOR). Taylor started his current stint as the service’s first-ever PEO in 2007 as a colonel, before retiring two years ago.
“I am at the point now where everything that we’ve tried to focus on and invest our time and energy in, in terms of the infrastructure around which programs can flourish, has apparently paid off,” Taylor told Defense Daily in September. “I can very confidently tell you that we’ve finally reached a point in time where across the entire PEO Land Systems portfolio all our programs are stable from a technical standpoint, they’re adequately resourced, and they’re executing superbly well. So that’s something that I probably couldn’t have said several years ago when we had various programs struggle.”
However, the U.S. economic crunch and Pentagon’s multi-part efficiency initiative now are having major impacts PEO Land Systems, Taylor said in a wide-ranging interview.
He said biggest acquisition challenges these days are “driven primarily by fiscal constraints.”
Ashton Carter, the under secretary of defense for acquisition, technology, and logistics, outlined 23 significant changes to how the Pentagon contracts for goods and services in a Sept. 14 memo to the Defense Department’s acquisition professionals and the defense industry (Defense Daily, Sept. 15). Going forward, affordability will be a firm requirement for each new weapon system and programs will be required to have cost estimates based on the way they are currently being managed and what they should cost if managed effectively, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said when unveiling the new guidance.
Taylor said industry must realized “we’re all in this together.”
“It can’t be business as usual and the government is always making the sacrifices,” he said. “Industry has to look at themselves in the mirror, and I believe they have to make contributions to tightening the belt as well.”
For example, Taylor said he has begun reviewing contracts with prime contractors and looking for efficiencies in terms of overhead associated with those business deals, as he was directed to do by Carter.
Taylor said while the EFV program–perhaps the most closely watched effort under his purview–is proceeding well, its “affordability in the context of the Marine Corps’ overall budgetary authority and commitments is under review.”
EFV program manager Col. Keith Moore is continuing with development of the vehicles, and plans to start reliability-growth testing on new prototypes in late October to early November. General Dynamics [GD] is almost done turning over to the government seven new EFVs that are do-overs of versions that missed reliability goals during a 2006 operational assessment. The amphibious tracked vehicles are intended to quickly carry troops to land from ships far offshore. Gates has questioned if the EFVs are needed.
If the new prototypes succeed during the upcoming testing they will pass beyond a “knowledge point 2” in early 2011.
“Hopefully the department can find its way to let us get to knowledge point 2 in the January to February timeframe, upon which we can judge the program based on its merits,” Taylor said.
He also is helping steer the Army-led Joint Light Tactical Vehicle (JLTV) program, the Army-Marine Corps effort to build a replacement Humvee. The services now are focused on laying out a strategy for the JLTV’s engineering and manufacturing development phase that is slated to begin next year.
Outgoing Marine Commandant Gen. James Conway has expressed concern about the weight of the JLTVs developed thus far by industry.
Taylor said the JLTV program currently is meeting threshold requirements for weight, but added there is no harm in pressuring industry to lighten the vehicles for the expeditionary Marine Corps.
“The Army is highly focused on survivability, whereas the Marine Corps is more inclined to want to focus on (its) No. 1 priority, being its expeditionary nature,” he said. “You can’t fault the services for those priorities. So that’s the dichotomy of trying to manage a joint program where you’re trying to manage and balance diverse service-unique requirements.” The Army, which is leading the JLTV effort, has done well balancing those divergent needs, he said.
Three contractor teams built prototypes for the JLTV’s current technology-development phase: the General Tactical Vehicles (GTV) team of General Dynamics [GD] and AM General; BAE Systems-Navistar Defense LLC, an affiliate of Navistar International Corp. [NAV]; and Lockheed Martin [LMT]-BAE.
The development of a Marine Personnel Carrier (MPC), a nascent medium-weight-armored vehicle in Taylor’s portfolio, has been delayed in past years for financial reasons.
“I’m very confident that the program is adequately resourced at this point in time,” he said, declining to elaborate further on MPC funding in the forthcoming fiscal year 2012 Pentagon budget proposal. He said, though, that he is “still waiting for a program launch decision on MPC.”
“But again (that is) certainly impacted by budgetary constraints, so we’ll wait and see on that one,” he said.
The wrecker and tractor variants of the Logistics Vehicle System Replacement vehicle (LVSR), which is in under Taylor’s purview, are in the midst of initial operational testing and evaluation. If they succeed, a full-rate production decision could be made on the two variants next April, he said.
One of PEO Land System’s command-and-control programs, the Common Aviation Command and Control System (CAC2S) is slated to undergo a Milestone C decision, determining if it will enter into low-rate-initial production, in November or December, he said. The Ground-Air Task Oriented Radar (G/ATOR) is progressing as well. (See related story.)
Next January will mark the four-year anniversary of PEO Land Systems.
Taylor said feedback he has received from Marine Corps brass indicates the PEO has succeeded in its goal of adding “value to the way in which the Marine Corps manages and oversees its major ground programs.”