Test early, test often

The Pentagon outfit entrusted with finding out whether weapons work before they go to the troops is so short of money, people, and facilities that bad military hardware is getting through its early-warning system. This alarm is sounded in the Bush Administration's first full report on the testing of the planes, ships, and gadgetry that not only costs taxpayers billions of dollars but can save, or risk, the lives of the people who man them.

The inch-thick report, issued this month with no fanfare, documents how weapons often fall too easily through the Pentagon's early-testing nets and are sent to the field with flaws, only to need fixing later at great expense. This report also supports the belief that Congress often forces pet projects on the armed services without thinking through the consequences. The Lockheed C-130J transport plane and Navy LPD-17 amphibious ship are dramatic cases in point.

In a refreshing and surprising departure from the typical government report watered down by a committee or a timid administrator, the new director of the Pentagon's Operational Test and Evaluation Office, Thomas P. Christie, acknowledges flat out that his testing enterprise is in a mess. He blames lack of money, an exodus of talent, and creaking testing facilities that are not up to evaluating modern weapons.

"Space-test capabilities are not sufficient," he says. "Shallow-water ranges for undersea warfare testing are inadequate. Chemical and biological simulators are not representative of the threat." If the testing apparatus is not fixed, he warns, the Pentagon-and the taxpayers-will have to depend more and more on contractors to test their own products.

Christie was Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's surprise choice for the top testing job. Christie is no slouch at navigating the labyrinthine politics of the Pentagon, where he had worked for 17 years before joining the nonprofit Institute for Defense Analyses in 1989. IDA does testing and research for the Pentagon.

Yet Christie is no party or political operative. He returned to the Pentagon last year, at age 67, vowing it would be his last government job and that he would not pull any punches as testing czar. He recently ruffled feathers at the top of the Pentagon bureaucracy by issuing a report describing how Predator-the unmanned killer drone that has been hailed as a hero of the Afghan war-had to be babied in the field to do its job.

Christie demonstrates his sense of mission on the very first page of his report on testing activities in fiscal 2001: "Events since Sept. 11 have once again confirmed the importance of fielding effective and suitable weapons systems. There simply may not be enough time to `get it right' after a weapon system is provided to our soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines. I am, quite frankly, raising the bar on what will be considered adequate test and evaluation."

He contends that the Pentagon's practice of charging the cost of testing a weapon to the office that is developing it "has proven to be a disincentive to testing." He is pressing to change that system, arguing that the fewer tests a weapon undergoes early in its life, the greater the chance its flaws will go undetected and have to be corrected later at greater cost and risk. Since 1996, for example, "approximately 80 percent" of the Army's weapons projects turned out to have major flaws when they left the development stage and entered operational tests, Christie writes.

Most of the report is a case-by-case rundown of how a wide array of weapons stood up to testing. The testers question, for example, whether the C-130J transport plane, which Congress has forced the Air Force to buy year after year, can be kept flying after being deployed to a global hot spot. It has a history of software problems and currently lacks trained people and equipment to maintain it.

The Navy's LPD-17 assault ship has been another congressional favorite, especially with Senate Minority Leader Trent Lott of Mississippi whose home-state shipyard, Litton Avondale Industries Inc., is one of its builders. The testing report warns that the ship, now under construction, "is not expected to have any capability" against air attacks. Also, "there are concerns" about the ship's vulnerability to cruise missiles, torpedoes, and mines.

The B-2 bomber won praise for its bombing performance in Afghanistan and Kosovo, but its future looks cloudy to the testers. In their unblinking eyes, the B-2 has not been able to conduct sustained operations, "primarily because of unreliability and difficulty in maintaining" the plane's complex systems that make it difficult to detect by enemy radar. The bomber, testers say, was able to perform sustained operations less than one-third of the time-31 percent overall.

And the testers' rundown on the new Advanced Amphibious Assault Vehicle that transports Marines from ship to shore summons up a picture of the troopers inside it choking on the carbon monoxide fumes of the gun, passing out from the heat, and going deaf from the engine and gun noise.

Although it is true that no pancake is so flat that it doesn't have two sides, the side of weapons seen by Pentagon testers is alarming at worst and mandatory reading for decision makers at best. The clear message in this new report is that Congress and the Pentagon can do better in choosing and perfecting weapons, and they damn well should.