The Army's shady approach to its $200 billion makeover has been such a disaster, Congress has ordered the entire military to stop using the arrangement, forever.
The Army's mammoth Future Combat Systems push is "arguably the most complex"
modernization project the Defense Department has ever pursued, according to the Government Accountability Office's Paul Francis.
So complex, in fact, that the Army figured it couldn't pull off FCS by itself. The service just didn't have the know-how to manage something as big, as ambitious as remaking just about everything in its inventory -- tanks, artillery, drones, you name it -- and then building a brand new, absolutel y titanic operating system and set of wireless networks, to tie it all together. Forget a traditional defense contract;
the Army needed an industrial partner, instead -- some company that could watch over the zillions of moving parts needed to make FCS work.
Eventually, the service settled on Boeing as that partner, or "Lead
Systems Integrator," in Pentagonese.
At first, it sounded like a good idea. But the result was that the contractor basically wound up policing itself, and the military wound up spending lots of its time playing nice with its new partner - rather than cracking the whip.
The outcome has been less than impressive. In 2003, when the LSI
contract officially kicked off, Future Combat was meant to be a $92
billion effort; today, that figures stands at $200 billion, minimum -- and maybe more than $230. An operating system that was supposed to require 33.7 million lines of code is now estimated to be 63.8 million lines big. "They're getting to the point they should've been in 2003," Francis noted.
After years of watching in horror, Congress has finally had enough, Inside Defense notes.
Future Combat Systems wasn't only high-profile failure of the fox-guarding-the-henhouse approach. The Coast Guard's troubled Deepwater retrofitting project was also an LSI deal, as is the Air Force's long-delayed, budget-busting Transformational Satellite Communications effort.
“We gave them a try and they failed,” Rep. Gene Taylor, D-Miss., said back in May. From cost overruns to schedule delays to excessive price markups to defective products, “their record is bad,” Taylor said.
ALSO:
* Future Combat Systems: Point, Click, Shoot
* Army "Future" vs. Insurgent Superbombs
* New Name for Army "Future"
* Old-School Army "Future"
* Army "Future": Invade Azerbaijan
* Guess Which Country We Invade in Army's "Future"
* Boeing Defends Big Price Tag for Army "Future"
* More Bucks for Army "Future"
* Army "Future" Flickering Out
* Army's Future Combat System Going, Going, But Not Quite Gone
* Shady Contract for Army "Future"
* Army "Future" Pricier, Lamer by the Second
* Son of Crusader
* How to Salvage Army's "Future"
* Robo-Wingmen for Chopper Pilots
