Subcommittee raps space program costs, delays

Lawmakers Tuesday criticized growing price tags and lengthy schedule delays for major space programs, quizzing Pentagon officials about how to keep costs down and deliver weapons systems on time.

Members of the House Armed Services Strategic Forces Subcommittee said they were concerned that repeated issues with key space programs were indicative of larger problems with the Pentagon's weapons-buying practices, which both the House and Senate have targeted for overhaul in recent months.

"Can the current acquisition system accommodate the risks associated with the current business model and actually produce what it promises?" Subcommittee Chairman Terry Everett, R-Ala., said in his opening statement. "Acquisition and management practices, as well as industry standards and quality control must be vastly improved."

Earlier this year, the House and Senate Armed Services committees and the House Appropriations Committee slashed funding on two key space programs -- Space-Based Radar and Transformational Communications Satellite -- because of creeping costs and repeated program schedule changes that failed to get the systems on track.

Part of the problem, officials and lawmakers have said, is that requirements for space and other defense programs grow and change as technologies and new strategic needs emerge over the course of program development, which in some cases can take two decades or more.

"We get started using a Volkswagen frame and then all the add-ons ... just completely overwhelm what we started with," Subcommittee ranking member Silvestre Reyes, D-Texas, said during the hearing.

Pedro Rustan, director of advanced systems and technology in the National Reconnaissance Office, said burgeoning requirements are one of the major problems with space-systems acquisition, and cautioned that any moves to increase a program's capabilities late in development should be resisted.

However, he stressed that it is "critical" for the Defense Department to move away from "strict, requirements-driven procedures" that allow little flexibility to change a program as it develops.

In his written testimony, Rustan outlined nine other problems with space acquisition programs, among them too many separate budget accounts for linked or similar programs. Rigid budgets also do not provide any "margin for reserve" dollars, Rustan added.

It is a "widely held view" of program managers that Congress and the Pentagon do not provide room for a reserve, which would be used to meet only existing requirements, said Thomas Young, former Lockheed Martin chief executive and a former member of the Defense Science Board.

The reserve would not be a "slush fund" to expand the program or unnecessarily exceed costs, but rather would provide adequate funds to cover any new development costs or problems with the program, Young said.

But suggestions to limit congressional oversight are not likely to get broad support on the Armed Services committees, which have asserted their watchdog role in the wake of a procurement scandal surrounding a now-defunct Air Force deal to lease more than 100 aerial refueling tankers from Boeing Co.

In recent months, lawmakers also have targeted two other deals -- one for the Army's massive Future Combat Systems and another for the Air Force's C-130 program -- that used commercial-type contracts that would relax congressional reporting requirements.

Meanwhile, members of the House and Senate Armed Services committees have included pages on acquisition-reform language into their reports on the defense reauthorization bill to deal with such issues as so-called requirements creep.

Defense officials also discussed high turnover in the program management shops of space systems as a key problem hindering program development.

Gen. Lance Lord, commander of Air Force Space Command, said the command is attempting to keep program managers in positions for at least four years by improving their own career development process.

The command has experienced high turnover and oversight problems that are considered at least partially responsible for more than $11 billion spent on space-launch failures during the 1990s.