Whoever came up with the bright idea to provide defense companies with umbrella authority over a $24 billion modernization plan would be wise to take away a few lessons from the sad, but not terribly surprising fiasco that is the Coast Guard's Deepwater project.
Earlier this week, the Coast Guard canceled a $600 million contract with Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman to build a fleet of so-called fast response cutters, just one element of Deepwater, which covers everything from helicopters to communications equipment. While the cancellation doesn't yet effect the other parts of Deepwater, Congress is losing patience with a modernization plan which, according to the critics, hasn't done a lot of modernizing.
Jumping on the sinking boat is also Sen. John Kerry (D-Zzzzzz) who earlier this week introduced the Coast Guard Accountability Act, which would terminate the defense companies' mega-contract when it runs out this summer. That's all fine and good, but it's not clear if the alternative -- recompeting the individual contracts -- is better at this point. After all, the reason for having the defense companies do the heavy lifting is the strong likelihood that the Coast Guard doesn't really have the ability to run a modernization program of Deepwater's size and complexity.
Since the government no longer has, in many cases, the technical and financial expertise to run these large programs, outsourcing them to defense companies sounds good. But lots of things sound good, but don't work in practice. And providing umbrella authority to defense companies to act as "lead systems integrators" that manage huge acquisitions is one of those ideas that just doesn't seem to be working very well.
When things go south, everyone blames someone else.
If you need any more proof that these huge deals are a nightmare, just check out Noah's post on the Army's Future Combat System, which also is spiraling into a mess.
