It is by now old news that last week, Under Secretary of Defense John Young cancelled the Armed Reconnaissance Helicopter (ARH) program, ending an embarrassing episode in aircraft development for both the US Army and Bell Helicopter. It's even older news that last month, the US Air Force delivered to Iraq the 10,000th article in the Mine-Resistant, Ambush-Protected (MRAP) vehicle program, in that case a Cougar from Force Protection Industries. Now that I've had the time to think about both, a comparison of the fates of these two programs seems important to make. Both the ARH and the MRAP have been hailed as exemplars of a new off-the-shelf (OTS) way of doing business in the defense industry. It's instructive to inquire as to why one has so wildly succeeded while the other one failed.
My research over time tells me that innovative solutions to military problems are most likely to succeed with even conservative customers when four factors are present. Each of these was markedly more observable in the MRAP program than in that of the ARH:
Urgency of the requirement. Roadside bombs are the closest thing that Iraqi insurgents have to a strategic weapon, in that they once threatened to drive coalition forces from the country through public fatigue with attrition. By greatly attenuating that problem, the MRAP has proven a virtually war-winning vehicle. The ARH, while important to rotorcraft recapitalization, was never going to debut in Iraq until 2009. First arrival later since slipped to 2014, at which point the war would basically be over. By then, the Kiowa Warriors which the ARH would have replaced would have served out the duration with incremental upgrades and a lot of maintenance attention.
Lack of alternatives. Ordering over ten thousand blast-protected vehicles was eventually an easy decision because all the other armored vehicles in the US inventory were optimized for ballistic protection, and as such, were statistically much more dangerous rides. The ARH was designed specifically for the demands of urban counterinsurgency, and would have offered meaningful improvements over the performance of the Kiowa Warrior. However, as Aviation PEO Paul Bogosian noted at last year's AUSA symposium, Hunter and Predator UAVs are increasingly supplementing manned helicopters in their traditional reconnaissance and strike roles. Besides, the Army already has a large fleet of Apache attack helicopters with much of the same functionality.
Controlled requirements creep. Here it mattered greatly just which shelf the platforms were coming from. MRAPs were not expected to do much more than ferry troops and equipment through bomb blasts to the departure points for their missions. The concept, though, was for a military off-the-shelf (MOTS) product: the blast-protection technologies were not found on existing off-road trucks, and these are what has mattered. With the ARH, after awarding a contract for a commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) aircraft, the Army decided to expand the requirements, and continually reinterpreted important clauses relating to contractor responsibilities, thus upending the nature of the program. The Army denies having altered the requirements at all, but if this really was to be a COTS aircraft with requirements set in stone, why did the service not solicit fixed-price bids? It would have gotten more than one.
Manageable technical risk. Decades before those thousands of orders were placed, the MRAP concept was proven through actual combat experience with blast-protected vehicles in South Africa and Rhodesia. In Iraq, the first vehicles obtained under pre-MRAP contracts—Cougars and Buffalos from Force Protection, and RG31s from BAE Systems—were essentially the same ones that would be ordered in quantity later. Subsequent integration of mast-mounted sensors, remote weapons stations, and electronic jammers did not prove too difficult on what are essentially trucks. The ARH was conceived as a bit of a flying truck, but developmental problems integrating Honeywell's new engine and FLIR's new mission package caused significant delays. Qualifying the airframe to the Army's standards and opening a separate production line to meet its security expectations also drew out the schedule and increased the cost more than the Army cared to admit upfront. That said, Bell's aggressive price estimate later hurt its credibility with the buyer.
It is worth asking what this portends for that sea-going OTS program, the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS). The first three factors here score in between those of the MRAP and the ARH. The requirement is not quite urgent: as Defense Secretary Gates recently said, pirates can be chased with billion-dollar warships; it's just not efficient. The ships are already being delivered behind schedule and seriously over-budget, so the risks have already been realized. For alternatives, there are plenty of excellent designs for corvettes designed for shallow waters, such as Kockums' Visby-class, though most don't have the manned helicopter facilities of either LCS type. As for larger options, there are also intriguing global constabulary frigate designs available, most notably Odense's Absalon-class flexible support ships.
What proved most damaging to the program, however, was the US Navy’s unrealistic expectations for COTS designs. Lockheed Martin's LCS was based on that of a superyacht, and General Dynamics' on that of a car ferry. Neither was designed from the keel up to take damage and continue fighting. When the Navy belatedly acknowledged the issue, it retroactively applied the Naval Vessel Rules (a new set of military vessel construction standards) to ships already under construction, with predictable impacts to schedule and price.
Against the success of the MRAP program, then, the ARH saga has been difficult to watch, but it holds two lessons for the industry.
First, fewer systems are sacred today than were so just a few years ago. Advances in information systems mean that firepower is fungible, and political developments are so changing military needs that even platforms that recently seemed essential are now economically vulnerable. For established companies with established programs, this is not good news, at least where good alternatives can meet the urgent requirements.
Second, this reinforces the standing need to manage one's customers, particularly in the United States. The US military services have demonstrated that they systematically undervalue the requirements of existing conflicts, at least until instructed to do so by the Secretary of Defense. They lack the business skills needed to manage complicated programs. They have held at times unrealistic expectations of what can be achieved with COTS versus MOTS technologies, at least in demanding environments under combat conditions. Keeping your program on track, therefore, means keeping your customer on track as well. Resisting "constructive" changes may seem unthinkable, but the allowing requirements creep to overwhelm technical capabilities may be a surer way to sink your program.
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