Washington Pulse

August 2005

Future Combat Systems to Hit a Few Bumps

The road ahead for the Army’s Future Combat Systems will be anything but smooth, a senior official said.

“We will always have to fight for the program and demonstrate we can get there. And that’s an everyday fight,” predicted Lt. Gen. Joseph Yakovac Jr., military deputy of the Army for acquisition, logistics and technology. “That is the nature of the beast we live in.” Immediate war-spending priorities make long-term projects harder to sell, Yakovac told an industry conference. The perception that FCS is on the wrong track also has been fueled by media reports quoting retired officers, whom Yakovac chided for speaking about a subject they may know little about. “If you aren’t current, keep your mouth shut,” he advised. “Time has passed you by.”

Pentagon Not Ready to Return Oversight to USAF

It does not appear that the Air Force will regain complete control of its acquisition programs any time soon. Since the tanker scandal last year, the undersecretary of defense for acquisition, technology and logistics was given temporary oversight for all Air Force procurement. According to a Pentagon spokesman, “There is no set timeline for this temporary designation, and the AT&L staff will work closely with Acting Secretary of the Air Force Michael L. Dominguez and the Air Force acquisition workforce until oversight of these programs is returned to the Air Force.”

F/A-22 Supporters Not Giving Up Yet

The Air Force remains hopeful that its top modernization program, the F/A-22 air superiority fighter, will be restored to 381 aircraft, even though the Defense Department downsized the number to 180, or possibly 150.

An ongoing Pentagon study on “joint air dominance,” scheduled to be completed in September, may prove that 381 is the right number, said Air Force Maj. Gen. Ronald J. Bath, head of strategic planning. Like other F/A-22 supporters, Bath challenged the contention that the Air Force would get a bigger bang for the buck by buying more F-15s and F-16s. Spending additional money on “legacy aircraft” would be a mistake, he said. F-16s and F-15s cost much less than the $185 million F/A-22, “but the capability differential is huge.”

‘World-Class Baloney’ Causing Indigestion

The military services need to rethink their strategies for securing political support for major weapon systems. The standard “requirements documents” that typically are used to justify equipment needs may no longer be enough to convince Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld that a weapon system should be funded. “There’s a couple of phrases that I have trouble with: One is ‘requirement’ … I think of it as an appetite,” Rumsfeld said at a Pentagon townhall gathering.

The second phrase he dislikes is “high demand, low density,” a term the services coined to designate weapon systems that are in short supply. The notion that a piece of equipment is “high demand, low density” only means that “we bought the wrong things,” says Rumsfeld. “It’s a world-class baloney phrase … It just means we didn’t do our jobs well.”

When Will Iraq Be ‘Safe and Secure’?

Administration officials and military leaders have iterated in numerous congressional hearing and press conferences that U.S. troops will not leave Iraq until that nation is “safe and secure.” But describing what that exactly means has been problematic. There is no easy way to define “safe and secure,” said Marine Lt. Gen. James T. Conway, director of operations on the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

“I think we’ll know it when we see it,” Conway told reporters.

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