美国智库透露:五角大楼高技术武器装备研发受阻

The Pentagon’s new industrial policy director, Brett Lambert, intends to recast the relationship between the Defense Dept. and industry to gain a better understanding of contractors and suppliers at all levels.

Meanwhile, defense officials are complaining about the quality of work from contractors just as the Pentagon is trying to revive a dormant dialogue with top CEOs over how to sustain the U.S. industrial base.

This leaves contractors in the position of receiving public blows from their defense customer (sometimes affecting their stock price) while at the same time asking the Pentagon for more support for their specialized skilled workers and facilities.

Senior government officials, including Defense Secretary Robert Gates, say they are concerned about industry’s performance (see p. 26). This includes poor quality of parts delivered, problems in hardware or software discovered during testing, and meeting projected schedules and costs.

It is unclear whether this performance problem is a symptom of a larger deficiency in the industrial base, which has atrophied in some areas since the Cold War. “I don’t know if you can demonstrate a connection,” says David Berteau, senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). But to repair these problems, there will have to be a close linkage between acquisition reform and industrial-base policy initiatives, he notes.

However, some of the problems in major weapon programs, including the Ground-based Interceptor (GBI) and several space programs, occurred because of deficiencies in parts delivered to prime contractors. This puts the entire supply chain squarely in Lambert’s focus.

Lambert says he wants more “insight, not oversight,” of the entire supply chain, including visibility into second- and third-tier suppliers. Oftentimes, they have only a six-month backlog, making them more volatile than the primes, which typically have about 2-3 years’ worth of work.

Lambert provided an example of a prime contractor, which he declined to name, that typically receives about $5 billion in defense contracts annually. At least $2 billion of that goes directly to subcontractors. But, Lambert says he lacks knowledge of the inner workings of these companies, including their quality control and financial stability.

Air Force Lt. Gen. (ret.) Henry (Trey) Obering, former Missile Defense Agency (MDA) director, says the second- and third-tier suppliers were a major focus area for him while in office from 2004-08. “The biggest area [of concern] wasn’t the prime. It was suppliers being managed by the primes.” When he began his work at the agency, Obering says he met with prime contractor CEOs once a quarter, and with each individually once a year. But he later expanded this to include second- and third-tier supplier CEOs. “You have to understand what is going on in your own backyard,” he notes.

As for Lambert, he is puzzled about why top Pentagon officials had stopped regular meetings with industry CEOs. However, this dialogue is being revived. Defense Secretary Robert Gates met with 15 industry CEOs last month.
Although some of the quality problems for the Pentagon occur at the subcontractor level, the primes are ultimately responsible under many contracts for the performance of those suppliers. Obering says he would use incentives and award fees to indicate clearly when a prime and its suppliers were not up to snuff.

Through acquisition reform, the Pentagon can address how to motivate industry to perform well on specific programs. And the Defense Dept. could also consider how to reform the Pentagon’s behavior on matters such as requirements discipline and fitful funding. Sometimes, the government is quick to point out problems with contractor performance, but often these issues are the product of a “mutual complicity” by both the government and industry regarding overly ambitious goals and “anemic funding” when embarking on a program, says Berteau.

However, sometimes there is no mutual acceptance of the blame when shifts in a program are requested by the Defense Dept., triggering delays or cost overruns. During a study last year, CSIS found that the government made major changes to the Littoral Combat Ship and the Marine One presidential helicopter replacement programs that were instrumental in industry’s inability to execute them as desired, says Berteau.

A close link is also needed between acquisition reform initiatives and industrial strategy and policy, says Jeff Bialos, a partner at Sutherland Asbill & Brennan and a former deputy undersecretary of Defense for industrial affairs.

The Pentagon is legally required to consider the ability of the industrial base to accomplish specific tasks in a program at each of its milestones, says Berteau. But there is no requirement to explore whether the industrial base is able to support the breadth of work planned by the Pentagon in the long term. So the net result is a seemingly fitful policy that is not tied to overall defense and economic goals.

“For every dollar we spend on programs and platforms we no longer require to address the threat, those are resources we are taking away from innovation and technology,” says Lambert. “What we need to do as a department is to better communicate to both industry and Capitol Hill where it is we are headed and what types of investment we need to make in manufacturing and in technologies.”

Yet, Lambert’s team is low on resources. As the Pentagon gutted its acquisition workforce in the 1990s, the industrial policy office also lost skilled analysts.

Although the office is often overwhelmed with “day-to-day” tasks, Lambert is trying to transform its focus to take on a long-range, strategic view of the industrial base. “The office of industrial policy should be thinking ahead,” he says. ‘We should not be thinking about solving yesterday’s mistakes, but trying to address tomorrow’s problems.”

A set of criteria is needed to outline when “intervention” is needed by the Pentagon for a particular industrial sector, says Bill Greenwalt, former deputy undersecretary of Defense for industrial policy. After cutting off funding for the bomber industry last year, contractors argued that money was needed to keep highly skilled design teams in place. In the Fiscal 2011 spending request, $200 million was set aside for those teams at Boeing/Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman, signaling that the Pentagon is willing to listen.

Another area needing immediate attention is the rocket-motor industrial base, which was dealt a blow by the cutback of GBIs and slashing of NASA’s Constellation human spaceflight program. Lambert’s office is preparing a report, to be delivered to Congress in June, on how to sustain this part of industry. This includes specialized facilities and workers who are familiar with the dangerous tasks of building solid-rocket motors and crafting the liquid-fueled engines (mainly the RS-68 for use by the Delta IV launch vehicle).

While orders for large Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicles (EELVs) from the Air Force have been reduced owing to delayed satellite programs, the Constellation termination cuts even further the demand for specialized work for the RS-68 . The NASA move “changes everything. This is a game changer,” Lambert says. “We [the Pentagon] share an industrial base with NASA—on solids, liquids, range infrastructure and a workforce,” he notes. “So, with the cancellation of the Constellation program . . . we have got a lot of work to do with NASA to figure out how to maintain a minimum industrial base on liquid rocket engines and solid rocket motors.”

Gary Payton, deputy undersecretary of the Air Force for space, says that even before the Constellation termination, the per-unit price of Atlas V and Delta IV EELVs had been creeping upward—largely due to the rising cost of “piece parts” such as nozzles and avionics provided by second-and third-tier suppliers. Even with the savings produced by the United Launch Alliance joint venture (formed by Lockheed Martin and Boeing in 2006) to reduce overhead and manage two vehicle families, the overall pricing trend is going up. “The cost savings of combining the two companies into one are there, but it is being swamped by an increase in the cost of the piece-parts,” Payton says.

This trend is not unique to space systems; keeping a steady supply chain is essential in program stability across aerospace.

Payton says the industrial base supporting his satellite programs—which have been troubled by fitful funding, poor quality of parts and mismanagement by the government and contractors—is improving. But, the pace is slow.

原文地址:http://www.aviationweek.com/aw/generic/story_channel.jsp?channel=defense&id=news/awst/2010/02/22/AW_02_22_2010_p24-205159.xml&headline=Pentagon%20Explores%20Supplier%20Problems

为避免译文造成误解,请尽量阅读原文