BMD Focus: O'Reilly moves up -- Part 2

WASHINGTON, Oct. 5 (UPI) -- Like Gens. Bernard Schriever and Otto J. Glasser before them, the driving forces behind the highly successful Atlas and Minuteman ICBM programs in the 1950s, Lt. Gen. Henry "Trey" Obering III, the head of the U.S. Missile Defense Agency, and his deputy, Maj. Gen. Patrick J. O'Reilly, have focused the ballistic-missile defense program on those old-fashioned and far from sexy but indispensable priorities: engineering reliability and quality control.

Obering has already reaped the rewards of this solid "nuts and bolts" approach to the BMD program. The Patriot test program has chalked up a remarkable record of successes. This is good news for U.S. allies like Japan, Israel and Taiwan that need the Patriot to protect them from the threat of intermediate-range ballistic missiles.

A year ago we suggested in these columns that with the announcement of O'Reilly's selection for the No. 2 position at MDA, it appeared "that Gen. Obering has found his chosen heir -- a hands-on, hard-charging engineering general who, like Obering, focuses on getting the nuts and bolts right."

Unlike senior Pentagon civilian officials earlier in the Bush administration, Obering and O'Reilly do not waste their time dreaming so much about nebulous, science-fiction weapons visions that they despise the basic principles of engineering required to get vital weapons to work reliably when they need to.

Others have recognized the importance of these common-sense qualities. Pat Shanahan, the vice president and general manager of Boeing Missile Defense Systems, told MarketWatch a year ago, "Gen. O'Reilly is an energetic, results-oriented leader who displays an eagle eye for detail."

In many respects, bringing technologically cutting-edge strategic missile programs to reliable operational readiness is far harder today than it was in Schriever's and Glasser's time.

Today's senior engineering and military officers are more cautious about rocking the boat when they deal with private industry corporations than their predecessors of half a century ago were, or had to be.

It was one thing to give a provider company like Grumman or North American a hard run when you were working with them to get some crucial ordnance developed and built when you knew that when you retired six or a dozen other contractors would be pleased to have you on their boards or in senior executive positions. It is another story entirely when the shrinkage of the U.S. general industrial sector, and of the consolidation of high-tech corporations in particular, means that if you are a senior figure in developing tanks, warships aircraft or ABM radars, you know there are only three or four players in the game in the entire United States, and most of them perforce have to work in harmony and cooperation rather than fierce competition.

Over the past quarter century, the shrinkage of the old U.S. heavy industrial base and its replacement by a high-tech oriented, information technology-centered economy has put the emphasis and the prestige for senior officers as well as civilian sector specialists on software and electronics, not the unfashionable old nuts-and-bolts of hardware engineering and rocket fuels.

This may suggest in part why two unsuccessful tests of the Air Force's ABM interceptors before O'Reilly took over never even gave the high-tech electronic guidance wonders in their warheads the chance to do their stuff because on both occasions the "low-tech" rocket engines failed to even fire in the first place.

Obering and O'Reilly recognized those problems. Lawmakers on Capitol Hill recognize the achievements of both men. But they also need to remember the focus on old-fashioned engineering values that made those achievements possible.