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Only the Pentagon would spend $4.6 billion on new weapon systems and decide, almost as soon as they entered service, that they weren’t needed after all.
Among the thousands of program changes across the Obama administration’s 2013 budget request to Congress, two in particular stand out as wasteful: the proposed cancellations of the Block 30 Global Hawk unmanned reconnaissance aircraft built by Northrop Grumman and the C-27J transport plane, built by L-3 Communications and Alenia North America.
Clearly, the Pentagon had to make tough choices in cutting $487 billion from its planned spending over the coming decade. But retiring brand new, capable aircraft after barely having used them is ridiculous.
After spending $3.4 billion, and receiving 14 of 18 aircraft under contract, the Air Force would rather dump Global Hawks than use them as the valuable intelligence assets they are.
The Block 30 Global Hawk carries optical, radar and signals intelligence sensors and stays aloft at 60,000 feet for up to 30 hours, a remarkable feat. But the venerable U-2, which it was supposed to replace, flies higher and delivers far higher-fidelity reconnaissance.
Air Force leaders said it would cost too much to make the Global Hawk match the U-2. Keeping U-2 alive was the right call, but they missed the point on Global Hawk: The Block 30 should be kept on its own merits as a broad-area, multi-mission, high-endurance surveillance system. Both are critical when operators demand more intelligence. Capping Block 30 at 18 is reasonable. Disposing of the capability isn’t.
And then there’s the C-27J, a program born at the height of the Iraq war when military leaders wanted 145 of the planes to get as many vehicles off IED-laced roads as possible. The Air Force has cut back to just 21 planes, and received 12. Two are performing well in Afghan-istan, operating at a 95 percent dispatch rate to austere airfields other aircraft can’t serve. Now the service wants to bring the unfinished planes through final assembly, so all 21 can be retired. If the need for C-27J was so urgent, what evidence is there it won’t be needed in the future?
Taken together, these programs are just a couple of examples of the incredible waste inflicted on the American taxpayer by the poor judgment and lack of common sense the Pentagon so frequently demonstrates.
Over the past decade alone, a staggering $46 billion has been spent developing systems that never reached procurement, said the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.
Congress and DoD spend years battling over whether to build an extra 10 or 20 or 40 F-22s, but allow waste on a scale that could fund most nations’ entire defense establishments.
The $4.6 billion spent on Global Hawk Block 30 and the C-27J, alone, could have funded two brigade combat teams for a decade, or paid for two new nuclear attack submarines.
Short-sighted decisions abound. The Joint Strike Fighter is costing more than it ought to because of an early decision to do concurrent development and production. With planes being built before the design is final, they have to be modified before entering service, driving up costs. So now, production is being slowed to reduce the number of planes that need rework.
For decades, DoD has compensated for its poor forethought by pushing money at its problems. Those days are over. It’s time DoD thinks through what it really needs, rather than pumping billions into every weapon its leaders can dream of, only to kill them before they reap the benefits of their investment.
