GAO Agrees--Criticism of Air Force warranted

by: hannah

Sat Jun 21, 2008 at 06:54:36 AM EDT

Over the last several months, I've made an effort to pay some attention to the United States Air Force as an institution that's very much involved in the continuing aggression on Iraq but whose activities are rarely covered on the evening news.

What I discovered was an organization that seems to have significant internal problems--a conclusion I reached on the basis of the fact that only a disfunctional organization would challenge budgetary allocations in public with the assertion that it would get the planes it wanted, regardless of what the civilian leadership considers prudent.

Subsequently, when the location of a new program, the cyber command, was first announced for Louisiana, then put out to bid by eight states, which grew to fourteen before our representative in Congress thought to put in a plug for the abandoned Navy prison in Portsmouth, I suggested that we contain our enthusiasm since the Air Force doesn't seem to know what it's doing.

Since some readers seemed concerned that I was picking on the Air Force unfairly, I feel justified in reporting that the Government Accountability Office has come to a similar conclusion in its review of the contract for the purchase of a fleet of new refueling tankers.

Air Force tanker mishap highlights wider problems
Procurement process criticized after GAO backs Boeing's protest
By Christopher Hinton, MarketWatch
Last update: 3:03 p.m. EDT June 20, 2008
NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- The Government Accountability Office's ruling that the Air Force made significant errors when it awarded a $35 billion contract to Northrop Grumman over Boeing Co. highlights larger problems within the military-procurement process, experts say.
[...]
"I've never seen it this bad," said Laurence Korb, senior adviser the Center of Defense Information. "The Air Force system is basically broken, and you don't get the impression that the people there are up to the task."
[...]
According to the May 2007 report by department's office of inspector general, the KC-X program office wasn't able to provide consistent requirements for that tanker's capability or acquisition strategy. The report also placed blame for the shoddy procedures on the chief information officer for the Defense Department, which failed to coordinate with the DOD director of administration and management.
[...]

How did it get this bad? How did it happen that the Air Force had to report just last week that up to a thousand nuclear parts had gone missing? Poor Congressional oversight is part of the problem and that's not one that's going to be fixed in a couple of years.

I think we can feel certain that the Democratically directed House Armed Services Committee has made a start and Representative Shea-Porter will not, as her predecessor on the Committee apparently did, shrug it all off as par for the course whenever government doesn't do its job.

The Republican penchant for doling out contracts like lollipops almost guarantees that the taxpayers won't get their money's worth.

Recalculating the numbers placed Northrop's plane about $34 million above Boeing's $108 billion cost for a 25-year life cycle.
The Air Force has said that cost requirements ranked below its capability and utility requirements.

Never mind that the increased weight of the larger Airbus would keep it from using the runways it was intended to utilize.

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