CIAO DATE: 09/04

Missile Defense is Spiraling Out of Congress’ Control

Victoria Samson

Center for Defense Information

December 2003

Introduction

The first interceptors intended to protect the United States from long–range missile attacks are to be put in the ground by October 2004. With crucial parts of the Ground–based Midcourse Defense (GMD) network still being built (the radar, the booster rockets) and a less than stellar track record during highly–scripted flight tests, Bush administration claims that this system will work as promised are simply misleading.

The American public, and the U.S. Congress holding the public’s purse strings, has repeatedly been told that this first system is a rudimentary one — intended to provide an initial defense against a limited missile attack. Therefore, deploying it before testing it operationally is okay, say system supporters, since GMD and other missile defense programs are showcasing the Pentagon’s new policy of evolutionary weapons acquisition and spiral development. The problem? While missile defense efforts have been exempted from the Defense Department’s normal rules for buying weapon systems, these programs have not been yet officially swept into the spiral development system (such as it is). Thus, the entire missile defense program — expected to cost tens, if not hundreds, of billions — is essentially being managed by Missile Defense Agency whim, and is spiraling beyond Congress’s financial control.

Rules waived

In May 2003, the Department of Defense put forward a new weapons acquisition policy, one that has been described by the non–partisan General Accounting Office (GAO) as one that “seeks to foster great efficiency while building flexibility in the acquisition process. The policy embraces a knowledge–based, evolutionary framework that emphasizes shorter development times.”Ê This new acquisition policy is to ensure that the funding planned for developing and purchasing weapon systems from FY 2003 through FY 2009 — more than $1 trillion — puts programs out in the field as quickly as possible. The GAO calls the newest version of the Pentagon’s acquisition policy (known as the 5000 series) “a significant step forward.”

The 5000 series establishes a development schedule and lays out milestones that a weapon program must meet. These specifications include: cost, schedule, and performance goals for the total program; exit criteria for the first technology spiral demonstration; a test plan; and a limitation on the number of prototypes that can be made during development.

It would seem that a complex, multi–faceted set of programs as politically sensitive and schedule–challenged as missile defense would, of course, have all these steps clarified in the hopes of easing its way to deployment. That assumption would be incorrect.

As part of the new May 2003 weapons acquisition policy, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld indicated that all missile defense projects would be exempted from the 5000 series, and instead gave the authority to determine development to the Missile Defense Agency (MDA). Only when the individual missile defense projects reach the production commitment step in their development cycle (known in Pentagon jargon as “Milestone C”, and a step that is far, far away for nearly all the missile defense programs) would they be obliged to fulfill the 5000 series’ requirements.

Meanwhile, missile defense took up 15 percent of the $43.1 billion allotted to weapons development funds in FY 2003. That funding was free from any official outside examination, beyond the now–perfunctory annual report by the Pentagon’s Office of the Director of Operational Test and Evaluation. The upcoming deployment of the interceptors in Alaska and California has forced the program into skip entire portions of the acquisition process chain, and move into its production phase — without the Pentagon having to officially declare it at Milestone C. GMD managers simply have ducked their oversight obligations, and most likely will continue to claim the program is still in its development phase in order to put off compliance as long as possible.

What spiral?

DoD officials routinely refer to MDA’s basket of programs as poster–children for the new acquisition process of spiral development. The FY 2003 Defense Authorization’s Section 803 spells out the parameters of and criteria for spiral developments. Section 803 explains further that only the secretary of defense or his designee can determine that a program qualifies as subject to spiral development. Once he does, that program then has to show its development strategy, test plans, performance parameters, exit criteria, and operational assessment. Furthermore, from 2003 to 2008, the secretary must give a report to Congress by Sept. 30 on the status of each program undergoing spiral development.

This required report would supposedly provide an opportunity for members of Congress to determine if their funding allocations for missile defense programs have been well spent. After all, spiral development is practically synonymous with missile defense. In Rumsfeld’s written testimony to the Senate appropriations subcommittee on defense, submitted on May 14, 2003, he explained,

“Take, for example, the approach to ballistic missile defense. Instead of taking a decade or more to develop someone’s vision of a ‘perfect’ shield, we have instead decided to develop and put in place a rudimentary system by 2004 — one which should make us somewhat safer than we are now — and then build on that foundation with increasingly effective capabilities as the technologies mature. We intend to apply this ‘spiral development’ approach to a number of systems.”

The head of the Missile Defense Agency, Lt. Gen. Ronald Kadish, in front of the same committee on April 9, 2003, stated that the missile defense system being deployed in 2004 has a complex set of tests which, “combined with analysis of simulations and exercises, give us confidence that the system can take the first steps toward initial defensive operations while performing as a test bed for further realistic testing and continued spiral development.”Ê He used the phrase “spiral development” five more times in his testimony that day. Pete Aldridge, the undersecretary of defense for acquisition, asserted to the House Armed Services Committee on March 20, 2003, that “we will do spiral development as we are applying to missile defense so that when the initial block of capability gets ready to be deployed, we can do it in a short period of time, but we do it with mature technology.”Ê And J.D. Crouch, assistant secretary of defense for international security, defended President George W. Bush’s initial deployment decision during a Dec. 17, 2002, press conference: “We are using what we call a spiral development approach, in terms of the missile defense program, and an evolutionary approach to the acquisition of missile defense capabilities.”

Surprisingly, according to the GAO, the Pentagon draft report on the status of each program applying spiral development (incomplete as of Oct. 23, 2003) “states that there are no research and development programs that have been approved as spiral development programs as of Sept. 30, 2003. . .DoD anticipates that there will be approved spiral development programs to report in 2004.”Ê How can missile defense, which has been repeatedly used by the highest–ranking Pentagon officials as a shining example of spiral development, not be designated as such and be included in the report to Congress?

Put simply, the Pentagon wants to have its cake and eat it too. It wants the flexibility in what missile defense can deliver by qualifying it as a program undergoing “spiral development,” yet it doesn’t want to have to follow through with any of the reports or responsibilities that such programs require. Under the current situation, Congress has little ability to exercise its right of oversight and power of the purse. Missile defense truly has become a program beholden to no one and a law unto itself.