Billions of Defense Dollars Lost to Incompetency and Failure of Oversight

[unhappycamper]

Billions of Defense Dollars Lost to Incompetency and Failure of Oversight
Barry Rosenberg
Posted August 10, 2007 | 03:27 PM (EST)


Defense contractors failing to deliver on their contracts have routinely victimized every branch of military service. This is certainly not a new phenomenon. It has, however, been allowed to sink to new lows under Pentagon leaders like acquisition chief Kenneth Kreig and Republican leaders like Sen. John Warner and Rep. Duncan Hunter, who until recently chaired their respective chamber's Armed Services Committee, and Sen. Ted Stevens, long-time former chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee.

Under their stewardship, hundreds if not billions of defense dollars were squandered on cost overruns, program delays and/or technical failures. At the same time, the contractors responsible for those failures were recording record profits. This is white-collar crime on the order of Enron, except the losers are our troops and the ultimate security of our nation.

Many of the Defense Department's most important programs read like a laundry list of failure. The first ships produced by Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman for the Coast Guard's $24 billion "Deepwater" modernization program were so poorly built that they were deemed unseaworthy and all were permanently scrapped. A lack of oversight now jeopardizes the entire program.

In other failures for the Pentagon and its congressional overseers, the Navy's most important new vessel -- the Littoral Combat Ship -- is costing twice its budgeted cost. Lockheed Martin is building that one, too.

The Marine Corps' Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle (EFV), a tank-like transport that can "swim" from ships offshore and deliver 17 combat-ready marines onto the beach, now costs double its original estimate. Though the Pentagon claims the program is essential to national security, General Dynamics claims they cannot start delivering the EFV until 2015.

Then there is Lockheed Martin's Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile. Even though it's been in development for more than a decade, all four missiles test fired earlier this year either didn't detonate or missed their target by nearly a football field. So much money has been wasted that the program has twice triggered the Nunn-McCurdy statute, which requires the Pentagon to re-certify any military contract that exceeds its budget by 15 percent or more. The program, now approaching the $6 billion mark, faces cancellation.


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[dkofos]

1. Millions in BRIBES = Billions in COST ++++ contracts. That is their

business model.
It has worked for 50 years and they are not about to stop.