The U.S. Air Force is entering phase two of its effort to buy 100 small, probably propeller-driven, "light fighters," and procurement experts are wondering whether the service can avoid the pitfalls that have doomed other recent attempts by the U.S. military to buy off-the-shelf weapons.
Eleven companies have submitted proposals to deliver a fleet of light fighter planes over the next three years. The planes are intended for light-attack and armed reconnaissance missions in wars such as the one in Afghanistan.
The Air Force Aeronautical Systems Center's Capability Planning Division is reviewing the proposals, which were submitted in August, a spokesman said. But it will be up to the Air Combat Command to decide whether to proceed with a purchase.
Buying off-the-shelf equipment - gear that is produced for commercial purposes or has been developed for other militaries - sounds easy, in theory. But the procurement landscape is littered with the wreckage of failed off-the-shelf programs: the Army's Armed Reconnaissance Helicopter (ARH), the Navy's VH-71 presidential helicopter and the joint Aerial Common Sensor (ACS) among them.
"There's no law of nature" that prevents the U.S. military from successfully buying and using off-the-shelf technology, said Jacques Gansler, who was the Pentagon's chief weapons buyer from 1997 to 2001.
Indeed, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have promoted the concept. "Increasingly, there is this idea that we can get things more rapidly and cheaper if we take advantage of stuff off the shelf," Gansler said.
The problem is that while the idea of off-the-shelf technology is appealing, the military's procurement system is ill-equipped to accommodate it, according to a study published this year by the Defense Science Board.
Too often, as a program progresses, requirements are added that off-the-shelf technology cannot meet. Military certification is demanded for equipment not designed to military specifications. And service officials insist on a 100 percent solution when an 80 percent solution would suffice, said Gansler, who headed a task force that conducted the study.
The ARH and the presidential helicopter should serve as lessons on how not to buy off-the-shelf technology, Gansler said.
The ARH was intended to be a military version of a civilian Bell 407 helicopter that is widely used in law enforcement, medical evacuation and corporate transportation.
At first it seemed simple enough to arm the 407 with rockets, Hellfire missiles, a Gatling gun, infrared sensors, a target acquisition system, a laser designator and other military gear and turn it over to the Army.
But the program quickly went awry as the Army tinkered with requirements.
"The ill-starred Armed Reconnaissance Helicopter was supposed to be a light modification of a commercial helicopter, but by the time the government was done with it, the modification was no longer right," said Ashton Carter, the Pentagon's current acquisition chief, in an interview.
A major, and perhaps fatal, requirements change ordered by the Army was that the ARH had to meet military certification requirements. When the ARH contract was awarded, it specified that the helicopter would meet commercial certification standards - as the Bell 407 did, the Gansler task force said.
"If a system is subject to rigid levels of military certification, so many changes, both minor and major, may be required as to make the original system unrecognizable - in cost as well as configuration," the task force said.
The changes needed to make the ARH meet military certification drove the cost of each helicopter from $8.5 million to $14.5 million. Ultimately, citing cost increases, the Pentagon killed the program.
"The trick is to know what we're getting into early on," Carter said. "Is there truly an off-the-shelf solution to your military need, or are you kidding yourself?" The mistake to avoid, he said, is starting with an off-the-shelf item and modifying it so much that "by the time you've fiddled with it so much and militarized it so much that it doesn't resemble the commercial item."
"What it means is you need to know, at the beginning, whether a COTS [commercial off-the-shelf] solution is really close to what you're looking for," Carter said.
That is what the Air Force says it is trying to determine with the light fighter.
The presidential helicopter suffered the same fate as the ARH as additional requirements were piled on and changes were ordered after the contract was awarded to Lockheed Martin in 2005.
By early 2009, the $6.1 billion program to build 28 helicopters had ballooned to $13 billion and had become a political target.
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., complained that each helicopter would cost as much as Air Force One. And President Barack Obama joked that the helicopter was so over-engineered that it "would let me cook a meal while under nuclear attack."
Defense Secretary Robert Gates pulled the plug on the program in June.
"The central problem in most services' procurement is that they don't realize that the worst enemy of the good-enough is the best," said Richard Aboulafia, an aerospace analyst for the Virginia-based Teal Group.
"Between mission creep and overdone specificity, costs can double" and production schedules inevitably stretch out, he said.
Based on the Air Force notice to aircraft makers, "it looks as though they have a preference for something that was quick and cheap," Aboulafia said. "But they're not good at doing something quick and cheap."
It isn't just the services' fault, Aboulafia said.
The U.S. Congress, which pays for weapons, often imposes local content and buy-American requirements that restrict the military's choices of products and suppliers.
Gansler said the Berry Amendment, Naval Vessel Rules and other regulations that require domestic content hobble military procurement in "a changing industrial world" that is "increasingly global."
The Air Force might run afoul of such rules should it decide it wants to buy a Brazilian-made Super Tucano turboprop plane specifically designed for light-attack and counterinsurgency warfare, Aboulafia said.
Earlier this year, the U.S. Navy leased a Super Tucano for testing in irregular warfare roles, but stressed that it was only leasing - not buying - the plane.
The Kansas-made T-6 may be a more likely candidate for the Air Force's light fighter. The Air Force and the Navy already fly more than 435 of them as training planes.
In its notice to vendors, the Air Force says that the light fighter must be "USAF military certified." It also must be able to carry at least two 500-pound bombs and accommodate machine guns, 2.75-inch rockets, rail-launched munitions and laser-guided weapons.
Other requirements include armored cockpits and engine compartments, as well as self-sealing fuel tanks.
The light fighter also must have the ability to communicate over voice, video and data links to operate with ground forces "to create synergies and minimize fratricide," the Air Force said.
The plane will have to cruise at 180 knots, have a 900-nautical-mile range and be able to operate from austere bases "without any ground support other than fuel being available." After flying for five hours, it must still have 30 minutes of fuel left.
The Air Force wants 100 of these planes to be delivered starting in 2012 and to be operational in 2013.
If it hopes to achieve that, the Air Force should heed the lessons of the two helicopter programs, Gansler said.
"The requirement is the need, not the design details," he said. Buy planes that meet the need, keep modifications to a minimum, and fly them, Gansler said:
"Don't try to redesign the whole thing."
In the long run, though, the Defense Department needs to develop an alternative acquisition process for buying off-the-shelf equipment, the Gansler task force concluded. ■
E-mail: bmathews@defensenews.com.
The Army's Future Combat Systems (FCS) program is ready to test a few components that soldiers may have in their hands by 2010.
Help
