[Infowarrior] - POGO: Army Missile Program Dependent on Flawed Contractor Plan

[Richard Forno]

Army Missile Program Dependent on Flawed Contractor Plan

February 12, 2008

Army Missile Program Dependent on Flawed Contractor Plan

Requirements Shortfalls Could Result in Weapon "Of Little Value"

 For Immediate Release
 Contact: Nick Schwellenbach, (202) 347-1122

For several years, the Army ceded its oversight to a contractor resulting
in a situation where the Army lacked any means of ensuring that taxpayer
money is well-spent and that weapons met requirements. By relying on the
contractor's plan instead of developing its own, the Army lacked ways to
gauge the performance of the Raytheon Company which led to a missile
program that is not cost-effective, according to a recent Department of
Defense Inspector General (DoD IG) December 2007 "For Official Use Only"
audit obtained by POGO through the Freedom of Information Act.

 The Army's $623 million Surface-Launched Advanced Medium Range Air-to-Air
Missile (SLAMRAAM) is a weapons system meant to protect U.S. ground
forces from attacks from the air from unmanned aerial vehicles, cruise
missiles, helicopters and planes.

 The DoD IG found that the Army needs to "rebaseline"—in other
words, change the goals—of the contract due to "contractor
technical difficulties" and "increased contract costs," stemming in large
part from the Army's mismanagement of the program and its dependence on
the contractor's inadequate plan.

 Raytheon's systems engineering management plan lacked criteria for the
Army to review and manage progress on technical, cost and schedule goals,
making it difficult to define success in meeting program
requirements—a violation of DoD policy dated February 2004. In July
2007, the Army presented its own new draft plan in response the DoD IG's
probe. However, that draft also contains many of the same deficiencies as
Raytheon's, according to the audit.

 The Army defended its delayed action since a key acquisition decision on
SLAMRAAM preceded the February 2004 DoD policy by several months. The DoD
IG held that the DoD policy "clearly explained the benefits" of
developing an adequate plan early on which would have helped the Army
"more effectively manage the systems engineering process."

 The audit also states that even if "SLAMRAAM could fully meet all key
performance parameters" that are currently spelled out, it could "still
be of little value, if it cannot meet system effectiveness requirements."
Further details of the point were redacted.

 Furthermore, an additional DoD oversight agency, the Defense Contract
Management Agency, failed to hew to its own instructions and guidelines.

 "As is often the case, the problem is not with the rules, but that so few
people follow them. The all-too-predictable result is contractor
failure," said Nick Schwellenbach, national security investigator at the
Project On Government Oversight.

 For example, Boeing-Huntsville's subcontractor work on the SLAMRAAM
control system increased by 67% from an original $18.9 million estimate
to $31.5 million. Formal reporting from the DCMA office with oversight
over Boeing-Huntsville to the DCMA office with responsibility for
SLAMRAAM was non-existent and the informal reporting was missing critical
information—such as cost and schedule analysis. The DoD IG
suggested that this had a role in the cost increase of Boeing's work,
stating that it believes that "formalized reporting…would have
given the project manager more meaningful information on the
subcontractors' progress towards satisfying SLAMRAAM cost, schedule, and
performance requirements."

 The final problem with the SLAMRAAM detailed by the DoD IG was inadequate
guidance for assuring the security of information technology systems.
Numerous problems "places the information contained in the SLAMRAAM
system at greater risk of loss, misuse, or unauthorized access to or
modification of the information contained in the system," the audit
states.

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Founded in 1981, the Project On Government Oversight is an independent
nonprofit which investigates and exposes corruption and other misconduct n
order to achieve a more accountable federal government.