Aquisition
Written By: Major Danny Rumley. Danny is an Air Defense Artillery Officer serving as a Battalion Executive Officer for 2-43 ADA.
It is no secret that the U.S. has the highest military spending in the world. The country prides itself on having the best maintained, trained, and advanced warfighters compared to any other nation. Nonetheless, to stay at the pinnacle of military might, the Defense Department spends a large amount of cash on staying technologically superior. The fiscal year 2022 Defense Department budget request includes the largest-ever research, development, test, and evaluation request — $112 billion, a 5.1% increase over fiscal 2021. It also includes $27.7 billion for nuclear triad modernization. Needless to say, the cost of conducting research to just stay ahead of our adversaries is a massive amount of money, which is well spent protecting American interests. However, some projects received funding much too long before the faucet of funding was finally shut off. It happens in every branch of the military and can easily be seen in Air Defense Artillery.
The Air Defense Artillery Branch has witnessed various weapon systems come and go, along with the promise of specific platforms that never made it to fielding. It is easy to blame developers or the DoD for the essentially wasted money. Still, the truth is that it is challenging to develop surface-to-air missile platforms that are capable of destroying various threats. Regardless, the DoD, Air Defense Artillery specifically have committed to the sunk cost fallacy. In economics, a sunk cost is a cost that has already been incurred and cannot but recovered. The sunk cost fallacy is the continuous investment into a project or endeavors to recover money, time, or effort that has already been lost in the project. Scholars describe this fallacy as the continued behavior as a result of previously invested resources. In other words, people tend to demonstrate a greater tendency to continue an initiative once an investment has been made. For example, people tend to stay in a slow-moving line because they think if they switch lines, their time invested in waiting will have been wasted.
One Air Defense example that can fit into this fallacy is the Medium Extended Air Defense System, or MEADS, initiative.The NATO-managed MEADS project was launched in the mid-1990s to replace the Patriot system in the United States and Germany and the Nike Hercules system in Italy. The Medium Extended Air Defense System began in 2004 as a U.S.-Italian-German partnership that shared costs for a new air and missile defense (AMD) system. As a member of the trilateral alliance, Germany shared expenses for a new Integrated Air and Missile Defense (IAMD) system. The system enables coalition interoperability and regional operation and is developed to incorporate other radars and launchers – both existing and future – as part of a regional air and missile defense system. However, in 2011, the Pentagon acknowledged that the program had failed to meet "schedule and cost targets." It refused to purchase the system for the U.S. Army. Even with the system's continued failure, Lockheed representatives were hopeful that the system would receive the total $400 million funding in Fiscal Y.R. 2013. “Facing a serious fiscal crisis, we cannot afford to spend a single additional dollar on a weapons system such as MEADS that our warfighters will never use,” the senators wrote. One reason that funding stopped was the financial crisis in the U.S. Germany also stated in 2011 that it would not buy MEADS in the foreseeable future, having already invested around 1 billion euros in the project. The most devastating issue that came from wasting tax dollars on MEADS is that it took away funding that preventing the modernization of Patriot.
Next on the list is the Integrated Air and Missile Defense Battle Command System. As an Air Defender with 11 years of service, I have been hearing about the Integrated Air and Missile Defense Battle Command System (IBCS) for most of my career. In fact, my Captain's Career Course class had to write papers on how IBCS would impact mission command. IBCS is still in the testing phase six years later, though it might be showing some promise. IBCS is intended to link sensors and shooters across the battlefield, providing holistic air and missile defense coverage. As of January 2021, IBCS has cost the Army $2.7 billion. The program has seen many delays, failed intercepts, and an expanded role. 2016 to 2020 saw a four-year pause for production. So far, the system has completed a limited user test and is still awaiting the initial operational trial and evaluation. One can only wonder how IBCS will feed into the Joint All-Domain Command and Control (JADC2) framework or will additionally funded be needed for testing?
Several other examples were funded for over a decade and did not make it to the warfighter. The airborne laser is one of them. Initiated by the Air Force in 1996, the ABL was designed to be an integral part of the Missile Defense Agency's architecture for Theater Missile Defense. However, after 15 years and one prototype based on an old Air India 747 airframe, the ABL ran out of runway. Citing a program that has "significant affordability and technology problems" whose "proposed operational role is highly questionable," Secretary Gates canceled the program at the end of 2011, but not before spending $5 billion.
Today the DoD takes steps towards the acquisition and procurement process to not dictate to competitors’ requirements but instead characteristics along with doing the "fly before we buy" method that would have potentially saved countless amounts of money; while no longer being held hostage by dealers who over promise and under deliver.
