Defense Focus: FCS follies -- Part 4

WASHINGTON, Jan. 31 (UPI) -- Every fundamental mistake that was made in the disastrous Future Intelligence Architecture program is now being repeated in the Future Combat Systems projects -- the main difference being the FCS will cost at least 50 times as much.

The Future Intelligence Architecture program was made to create a new intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, or ISR, fleet of orbiting space satellites which would make the United States secure for decades to come. Conceived by the Democratic Clinton administration and approved by Republican --controlled congresses, it cost $4 billion before the plug on it was finally pulled by the Bush administration.

Yet the same underlying conceptual mistakes that doomed the FIA are have already been replicated in the far more ambitious and sweeping FCS program to try and make the U.S. armed forces supreme, lean, mean fighting machines that will be invincible and unchallengeable for decades to come.

As we noted some weeks ago in our study of the FIA fiasco, the first lesson U.S. policymakers need to learn is to pick horses for courses. The Clinton administration chose the Boeing Co. to build its next generation of surveillance satellites. But previously it had relied on Lockheed Martin for decades to do that kind of work. In that specialized field, therefore, Lockheed Martin had painstakingly gathered the kind of expertise and institutionalized experience that Boeing lacked.

Boeing remains the world's pre-eminent manufacturer of civilian airlines and continues to produce a stunning range of the world's most advanced combat aircraft, high-tech naval and military weapons systems and outstanding anti-ballistic missile work. But it had no experience in producing reconnaissance satellites, whereas Lockheed Martin had specialized in producing the best in the world for more than 30 years.

Other ways of expressing this lesson in terms that even Pentagon policymakers and Capitol Hill legislators can understand is: "Keep backing winners" and "Don't tamper with success." Boeing and Lockheed Martin both continue to produce a remarkable diversity of outstanding high-tech military and space systems.

When they, or any other major U.S. company, has an established record in any field of producing such systems within set timeframes and under budget -- or not too far over budget and schedule, and the systems then work admirably, Washington policymakers should not be seduced by promises of sweeping savings from companies that, however well established they are in other fields, are boldly venturing into new ones where they have little, if any, development and production experience.

However, as the Washington Post reported on Jan. 24, Rumsfeld and his Pentagon policymakers repeated that fundamental error of the FIA fiasco when they approved the key contracts for the FCS programs.

Their prime contractor -- again, Boeing -- and the U.S. Army both refused to use Microsoft's proprietary software and opted to create their own operating system through Boeing -- the System of Systems Common Operating Environment. And according to the Post report, "Boeing said it is using software developed by a hodgepodge of companies including Red Hat and Wind River Systems."

That decision broke a cardinal rule for making weapons systems simultaneously cheaper and more reliable -- always buy mature technology off the shelf whenever you can. Reinventing the wheel from scratch usually results in square or oblong wheels.

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(Next: More software errors)