Missile Defense's Money 'Spiral'

When Donald Rumsfeld took over the Pentagon in 2001, he turned to a new way of thinking about the development of weapons systems -- especially missile defense. The interceptors program would no longer be "a product to be finished, but rather as something that is routinely and infinitely updated, like a computer's operating software," Jack Hitt noted in Rolling Stone. "The name for this concept is 'spiral development.' This means that you build a weapons system not with a fixed design and completion date in mind, but with a more flexible idea of what you are shooting for, one that is subject to endless change and revision."

So how has that approach turned out for missile defense? Well, the Government Accountability Office says spiral development has "deliver[ed less at a higher cost." Which, of course, means that it has become the template for how the Defense Department is developing all sorts of big-ticket items. The Army's massive Future Combat Systems reboot is using spiral development. So is the Joint Strike Fighter -- the biggest program in the Pentagon's history.

"But before spiral becomes the new norm, some serious examination of how well it has worked (or not) would be well advised," write Victoria Samson and Nick Schwellenbach in the new issue of *Defense & Security Analysis. "*Indeed, a RAND Corporation study conducted for the Air Force noted "little documented objective experience and evidence exist to assess the [spiral acquisition] policy and very little systemic analysis of what does exist has yet to be published."

So far, the track record ain't exactly sparkling, Samson and Schwellenbach note. Take the Ground-based Midcourse Defense (GMD) -- the largest part of the Missile Defense Agency's system. It's also the one with the largest budgetary breaches; 72 percent of the $478 million overrun in 2006, for instance.

*A look at one easily measurable aspect of GMD
– the number of interceptors installed in ground-based silos –
illustrates the schedule problems of spiral development. In February
2003, MDA [Missile Defense Agency] planned on delivering 20
interceptors by the end of 2005. Progressively that quantity goal winded down to 18 as of February 2005, to 14 in mid-2005, and finally to the reality of only 10 interceptors installed by the end of December
2005. *

As of December 2007, there were 24 interceptors emplaced in Alaska and California, with the optimistic goal of getting a total of 44 interceptors fielded in those sites around 2011.

*But MDA will not be penalized for deferring the number of interceptors installed to later blocks, observes the Government
Accountability Office: “MDA also has the flexibility to defer other work activities from a current to a future block. This creates a rolling scope, making it difficult to keep track of what an individual block is responsible for delivering.” *

[Photo: MDA]