"Cheating" for acquisition cost savings? Or: Contested procurement -- An allegory

Dumb, tl;dr allegory here. Skip ahead for the actual news.

Because composing idiotic, overly drawn-out metaphors at 0100 is a way better idea than going to sleep, I want to share a story with you today. (Seriously, fight through it, and at least fake a chuckle.) Once upon a time, there was a family with two sons. The older one -- let's just call him "Army" -- has gotten a lot of good gifts in the last few years, as his folks have been making good money and wanted to spoil him. The younger one -- I know it's weird, but his name is "Air Force" -- gets plenty of good loot, too. But he's the younger kid, and we all know what happens with younger kids: sometimes you have to settle for hand-me-downs.

Seriously, though: Army and Air Force have pretty generous parents. The kids get all kinds of toys and clothes and balls and bats and whatnot, but on top of that, they even get an allowance! "Do whatever you want with it," their folks say, with the usual warnings about spending it all in one place. But what happens when you spoil your kids? Well, you know how this goes: the kids spend their money like damn fools. They buy crap that's too expensive. They buy crap that doesn't work. They buy crap that never shows up in the mail. Basically, they buy a whole bunch of crap, but Mr. and Mrs. Congress -- that's the parents, weirdly enough -- they just keep on bumping up that allowance.

Then one day, completely out of the blue, disaster strikes: Mr. Congress loses his job. Worse yet, summer's coming, and  Army and Air Force are wee little ballplayers. Army's been at it for a couple years, so he's got all the gear, but you know kids -- he's looking for the flashy new model. And Air Force is growing up quick, so he can't even get his little tyke's paw into last year's glove, and he definitely needs a new one. Rough timing, though, with dad getting sacked and all. But those crazy kids managed to stash some cash away in their piggybanks, so they're off to the sporting goods store.

Momma didn't raise no fools, and you just wouldn't even believe the price tag on a Mike Young Hot Corner Synthetic Leather Web Gem Special these days. But Army's got an awesome idea: "hey little bro, I've got this perfectly awesome glove that I don't even really want anymore, and I'm getting a new mitt anyway. And look, this glove is WAY TOO BADASS for some little joke t-ball league, and it's probably a little bit too big for you, and man, Air Force, you little t-ball kids don't even catch the ball with your gloves anyway! But I've got a deal for you: gimme your allowance, and I'll give you my big boy glove. It's a hell of a deal."

This sounds pretty good to Air Force. Sure, Army's right: the glove is way too big, and it's way too fancy for a t-baller. But he'll grow into it, and it saves him spending all day in the mall trying to find a glove he can afford with his meager savings. (No, obviously, he didn't use the word "meager." He's a kid, FFS.) Plus, mom and dad are gonna love this, right? Two allowances, two gloves, no old, unwanted gloves get thrown in the trash.

But then you're never going to guess what happened: DAVID AXE CAME ALONG AND CALLED THIS INNOCENT LITTLE T-BALL KID A "CHEATER" FOR BUYING HIS BROTHER'S OLD GLOVE AND SAVING IT FROM THE TRASH HEAP WHEN ARMY WAS GONNA GET A NEW ONE ANYWAY. And he puts pressure on Mr. and Mrs. Congress to continue needlessly enriching the sporting goods store, because after all, they haven't bought and replaced enough expensive crap from that joint already, and good god, can you even imagine how much more cash they're going to drop in there when these kids get old enough for football? But the parents relent in the face of media criticism, Air Force gets spanked for "cheating," he learns the lesson that it's a bad idea to try to keep your cash in the family instead of pouring it into the sporting goods racket, and the natural order of things is restored when Mr. Congress gets a new job and spends a silly sum on 83 sets of Callaway X-24s for Air Force to play China Golf and Country Club when let's be serious, the damn kid doesn't even like golf in the first place.

Semi-serious, reasonably legitimate content below this point.

Acquisition folks can't win for losing these days. Programs must adapt to unstable, shifting requirements. They fall behind schedule, run over cost, and don't perform up to expectations. Some buys get slashed or cancelled altogether. (Some get shitcanned even without cost/schedule/performance problems when Capability Portfolio Reviews [pdf] decide that the capability on offer isn't affordable in present circumstances.) In light of expected budget stasis, the SECDEF tasks the services with figuring out ways to squeeze out a few extra bucks, pledging that those savings will be applied to the modernization accounts that are likely to get short shrift as a result of reduced topline budget growth. You get criticized for spending time and effort on systems that aren't tailored to the specific challenges of ongoing conflicts. You get criticized for wasting money on crap that doesn't work. You get criticized by industry for not spending enough time, effort, and money on crap that's useless for today's fight, but might come in handy when the balloon goes up with China. Put it this way: It's a hard-knock life if you're in the business of developing or acquiring new weapon systems.

So if you're a senior Air Force acquisition official, it must be particularly galling to click around the interwebz today and find that your efforts to satisfy mission requirements in the most effective legal manner are being described like this: "U.S. Military Cheats Gets Creative for Cost Savings." Defense News covered this in a more charitable manner a couple of weeks ago, but here's the basic story: the Air Force needs to replace some old helos that it uses to monitor its own ICBM sites from the air. Typically, when the military makes a major acquisition, the law mandates that requirements be specified and bids solicited from a number of competitors so as to ensure that the best system is procured for the lowest price -- that is, that the government is getting the best value for the taxpayers' dollar. (There are exceptions to this, but that's the general idea.) In this instance, it seems the USAF is going to take advantage of a 1932 law that allows government agencies to do a sole-source -- that is, noncompetitive -- acquisition if it's filling its need with goods from another government organization. Makes perfect sense, right? One agency gets rid of unwanted gear, another satisfies a requirement, there's a minimum of fuss and delay, and everybody's happy (except the industry guys who feel entitled to pitch their system any time a new buy is made), right? Seems like it to me, but David Axe feels differently.

FEAR THE GRIPEN (Updated)

The Air Force Association is hosting its annual conference down at National Harbor, just outside DC, this week. According to Gordon Lubold and Jen DiMascio's daily "Morning Defense" column from POLITICO, Deputy Chief of Staff of the Air Force for ISR LTG David Deptula showed a video during his talk entitled "2010 Threats to Air Supremacy." The main threat identified by the "ominous-voiced narrator" was surface-to-air missiles, but:

THE PUSH FOR FIFTH-GEN FIGHTERS –

Deptula’s video also showed fighters being developed overseas, such as the Gripen, Rafale and Typhoon. “These fighters are being marketed worldwide and could be sold to a future adversary,” the video warned.

And that's exactly right, and an extremely compelling argument for... Well, I'm not sure what it's an argument for. And it's only compelling if you're Bill Gertz. But still.

You know what the world's most capable fifth-gen fighter [pdf] (defined as "state of the art") is? The F-22. You know where it's been developed and built? Hint: not overseas. That's right, it's right here in the good ol' U.S. of A. But what's the world's second-most capable fifth-gen fighter? you might be wondering. That's the F-35 Lightning Joint Strike Fighter. Which is, uh, also a U.S. system (co-developed with NATO allies and Australia). There are suggestions that the Chinese and Russians are also developing fifth-gen fighters (the latter potentially in concert with India), but that's pretty much it.

I'm not sure if this is Lubold and DiMascio's error or Deptula's -- though I would assume the former (it's a pretty good bet that the DCS/AF for ISR knows more about fighter aircraft generations and designations than I do) -- but the three aircraft listed in the article are known as "fourth-plus" or "4.5-gen" fighters. (Other 4.5-gen fighters in service for countries relevant to this discussion? How about the F-15E (U.S.), the F-16 Block 60 (U.S.), and the F/A-18E/F (U.S.)?) Which is to say that they're less capable than at least one U.S. system currently in the air, flying missions, and than another one that's soon to enter service, and that they're similarly capable to the three aircraft that make up the bulk of the U.S. fleet.

Other than that, what else do the Gripen (Sweden), the Rafale (France), and the Typhoon (UK/Germany/Italy/Spain) have in common? Well, there's the fact that they're developed and operated by SOME OF THE UNITED STATES' CLOSEST FUCKING ALLIES ON EARTH. The Rafale is French and is only operated by the French. The Typhoon is a European co-production and is currently flown only by the countries of its manufacture, plus Saudi Arabia and Austria. The Swedes, meanwhile, are the really dangerous proliferators of this lot: the Gripen has been sold to the Czech Republic, Hungary, and South Africa, and they're lining up the Thais next! Now I suppose it's possible that one or all of these countries could become a "future adversary," but it doesn't seem likely.

This picking of nits is all sort of silly, though. The U.S. is developing and fielding fifth-gen fighters, and whether or not our close European allies end up selling their less-capable planes to undesirables, there are states out there that will probably seek to close the fighter gap (in both number and technology) with us. Which is really why the video is appropriately titled, leaving aside the poor examples it uses: there will, no doubt, be future threats to U.S. air supremacy. Let's take a look at the Defense Department definition of that term.

air supremacy (DOD) -- That degree of air superiority wherein the opposing air force is incapable of effective interference.

We're unlikely to face threats to U.S. air superiority, though.

air superiority (DOD) -- That degree of dominance in the air battle of one force over another that permits the conduct of operations by the former and its related land, maritime, and air forces at a given time and place without prohibitive interference by the opposing force.

See the difference? Air superiority means the ability to create an environment that's permissive to operations. Air supremacy means the ability to create an environment where operations are completely unchallenged from the air. This is a circumstance that's reasonably unique in history, and one that we shouldn't reasonably expect to continue (though one can obviously understand why the Air Force would strive to maintain its warfighters' edge).

And so we're back where we've been all along: talking about what's reasonable, not just what's possible; that is, what's a requirement versus a desired capability. (The DoD loves to use the term "requirement" for everything it wants, and here's an example of why it's pernicious.) Whether we should expect to spend exorbitant sums on ensuring global air supremacy rather than just air superiority, or whether that money could be more effectively spent on other requirements.

Furthermore, airplanes require bases. That means that if you want to use them in an expeditionary capacity, and you're not talking about launching them off of carriers (which face their own challenges from the development of anti-access weapons), you need partners to give you runways and hanger space. And you need to be able to protect those airfields, too.

What does all of this mean? Well, simple: maybe we need to be having a serious national conversation (ok, that's a bridge too far -- how about just a serious conversation in the security community?) about how much capability is required, how much is desirable, and how much is optimal, then stacking that up against the fiscal realities we're operating under (and here I'm talking about the entire range of military roles and missions, not just air dominance/supremacy/superiority). That purpose isn't served by service rivalry, parochialism, and scare tactics on the part of the unholy alliance between military professional communities/associations and the defense industry.

UPDATE: The incomparable GrEaT SaTaN'S gIrLfRiEnD has some thoughts on the subject (accessible only if you speak Courtney's language).

Man, the Air Force loves them some Boyd!

Here's a hilarious photo of a street sign taken by Nick Dubaz, an Army officer who I follow on Twitter (I'm @InkSptsGulliver), during a visit to Air University at Maxwell Air Force Base.

If this doesn't make sense to you, read this and this.

Serious question on a totally different subject:

Do all these jokers like Todd Akin and Mackenzie Eaglen know about the historical baggage associated with their use of the term "fighter gap"?

Now, to be fair, a lot of people are doing it. Defense News, for one. (Or two. Or three.) Colin Clark at DoD Buzz, too. Then there's Navy Times and Air Force Times and National Defense magazine. But this is all pretty much just reportage and not advocacy or rhetoric, right? So that's not such a big deal.

It's a little more pernicious when the term starts getting tossed around as a mechanism to advocate policy changes. Like, for example, in this op-ed by Akin, who is the ranking member on the HASC Seapower and Expeditionary Forces subcommittee. The good Congressman argues that the Defense Department can "mitigate the impending fighter gap" by entering into a multi-year contract with Boeing to procure additional F/A-18E/F Super Hornets and EA-18G Growlers (the latter of which is an electronic attack aircraft, which is not exactly a "strike fighter"). Congressman Akin, in what is surely one of history's great coincidences, represents the St. Louis area, home to Boeing Integrated Defense Systems.

Heritage Foundation defense expert Mackenzie Eaglen apparently enjoyed Rep. Akin's piece, tweeting this yesterday: "Quantity has a quality all its own. The US military has a fighter gap. RT@ToddAkin: It's simple - carriers need planes http://bit.ly/ca0ApL]"

There it is again: "fighter gap." Just rolls off the tongue (and the keyboard), doesn't it? Why so familiar? Well, we've had other gaps before, you know. There was that missile gap back in the late 50s, when then-Senator John Kennedy warned that the US was "losing the [ballistic]-missile race with the Soviet Union because of... complacent miscalculations, penny-pinching, budget cutbacks, incredibly confused mismanagement, and wasteful rivalries and jealousies." And before that, in the mid-50s, there was that pesky bomber gap, when some analysts convinced themselves that the Soviets were dramatically out-producing the U.S. in the long-range, intercontinental bomber race. And now there's about to be a fighter gap, we're told, as Super Hornets exceed their allowable flight hours and are retired from service before sufficient numbers of Joint Strike Fighters have rolled off the production line to take their place.

So what's the problem with all of this? Well, the bomber gap and the missile gap were COMPLETELY MADE UP, that's the problem. Not only that, but some folks - led by an academic named Albert Wohlstetter - COMPLETELY MADE UP the missile gap all over again in 1974!

Am I saying that there's no such thing as a fighter gap? No, I'm not saying that, because I have no idea. Todd Akin may be exactly right, and a long-term, multi-year contract for additional Super Hornet procurement may be the absolute best thing for national security. I'm not an aviation expert, and even those folks can't seem to agree on whether there will be a strike shortfall or how significant it might be. So it's not about whether the fighter gap is as made up as the bomber gap or the missile gap, really.

What this is about is messaging, and the meaning of words. Shouldn't Akin and Eaglen be aware enough of history to know that they're using a tainted phrase? That they're directly ripping off an expression that was used more than once to identify an entirely fabricated national security scare, a military bludgeon created expressly for one candidate to smash another during a campaign?

Aren't they embarrassed to echo Wohlstetter, whose claims about a missile gap extended to accusations that the CIA was falsifying intelligence, deliberately underestimating the number of Soviet missiles in order to shape policy in a less confrontational direction? The same Wohlstetter whose anti-intel aspersions would drive the formation of the ludicrously politicized waste of time called "Team B," the CIA red team whose final report (pdf) "turns out to have been wrong on nearly every point"?

Basically, from a rhetorical perspective, couldn't they have come up with something better?

Airpower in Afghanistan

Wired has this post summarizing thoughts from USAF Col. Gary Crowder about how we don't make the best use of air assets and air power in Afghanistan. He begins by discussing his views on this, explaining that we have failed to deploy the right things, do not do a good job using what we do deploy and have bad rules for how to use such assets. He also argues that we've failed to develop the Afghan Air Corps quickly enough and that doing so would have legitimized our use of air power.

On the Afghan Air Corps development my first reaction was to question the necessity of making that a priority, particularly given how difficult it is to recruit, train, and field the ANA. On the rest, I wanted to ask what all of you thought since I'm not sure that developing an Afghan Air Corps would have the kind of legitimizing effect he argues it will.

The post concludes with:

Finally, it is my fervent belief that we simply have a flawed model of counterinsurgency. This should not be seen as a critique of operations in Afghanistan or in Iraq, but of our current national approach to the counterinsurgency problem. Our counterinsurgency strategies focus far too much on U.S. forces doing the fighting. This is a lose-lose proposition. We may be able to gut through the current fights — an increasingly likely proposition with the quality of leadership now in place. But, at present, we are in the worst of all possible situations (just as we were in Iraq in 2006 and Vietnam in 1965): we ousted the government; failed in the occupation to impose capacity and sufficient power and authority in local government; and allowed an insurgency to develop.

We now are in a position where the large-scale introduction of conventional forces is essential to stabilize the situation. Yet the mere presences of those forces simultaneously undermines the credibility of Afghanistan’s indigenous forces and government. Again, this is not to discount the success of the surge in Iraq or what I see as the likely success of the surge in Afghanistan. The Army and Marine Corps’ counterinsurgency field manual was specifically written to deal with this kind of fight. However, as Ralph Peters has stated clearly, our failure in both Iraq and Afghanistan was directly attributable to a lack of “occupation” doctrine, not a lack of counterinsurgency doctrine. The broader question we seem to have never asked is: Why is it that we are fighting counterinsurgency (”COIN”) this way and if we must support another nation facing an insurgency in the future, is this the way to do it? A far more appropriate and likely more effective model for the U.S. in counterinsurgency operations is Air Force Lt. Col. Edward Lansdale and the Huk rebellion in the Philippines (1946-1952), compared to the current COIN hero, French Army Lt. Col. David Galula in Algeria (1954-1962).

So what do you all think?