On January 2, 2002, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld issued a "Program Direction" memorandum ordering a new, far-reaching new effort to hasten development of the nation's multi-billion-dollar missile defense program. Proclaiming missile defense a national priority, Rumsfeld reorganized and renamed the military organization overseeing the program. Now, a new department called the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) will be responsible for the multi-tiered program, coordinating all aspects of missile defense, ranging from shorter-range advanced Patriot missiles and airborne lasers to intercontinental ballistic missiles intended to knock enemy missiles out of the sky.
While all the implications of the memo are not yet fully clear, the directive appears to give the Missile Defense Agency unprecedented unilateral power. It also exempts the agency director and defense contractors from longstanding acquisition statutes and regulations which ensure honest and cost-effective acquisition practices as well as objective research, development, and testing of Pentagon weapons systems.
Contrary to current weapons systems procurement practices and standards, the latest prevailing Department of Defense attitude toward missile defense is that any missile defense system, no matter what how limited its capabilities, is better than no missile defense system at all.
These program changes raise serious questions about whether the normal checks and balances that ensure financial oversight and sound weapons testing practices will be discarded. Here are a few aspects of the Rumsfeld directive that are troublesome:

• Under the new guidelines, the Missile Defense Agency will be exempt from regulations that require military commanders to set technical requirements for a new weapons system that must be met before it can be operationally tested and purchased by the Pentagon. These requirements, called Operations Requirements Documents, or ORDS, have been eliminated in favor of a less structured "capabilities-based" acquisition strategy.
  
  
• The Pentagon's chief independent tester, the Director of Operational Test and Evaluation, has not been given complete access to the Missile Defense Agency testing documents while the weapons system is being developed. Since the Rumsfeld memo was issued, DOT&E has been forced to negotiate for missile defense developmental testing data on a piecemeal basis, rather than being given customary access to any and all testing data. This new way of doing business - coupled with the Bush Administration's rush to deploy a missile system by 2004 - will greatly increase the chances of deploying a flawed system before DOT&E completes rigorous operational testing.
  
  
• The Rumsfeld memo authorizes the director of the Missile Defense Agency to negotiate so-called "other transactions" contracts. The Department of Defense Inspector General has noted that "other transactions" agreements exempt defense contractors from complying with many current acquisition statutes or regulations that ensure financial transparency, including the Federal Acquisition Regulation and its Supplements and Cost Accounting Standards.¹
  

If Congress allows the sweeping changes ordered unilaterally by the Rumsfeld memo, the Missile Defense Agency will walk away with a blank check without going through normal channels that ensure the taxpayers buy the best possible weapons at the lowest possible price.

THE CRITICAL NEED FOR INDEPENDENT OPERATIONAL TESTING

The typical weapons system is exposed to two types of testing as it winds its way through the Pentagon's acquisition system. The first type, called developmental testing, is performed by the defense contractor and military service branch that will use the weapon.
The aim of developmental testing is to ensure that a weapon system is technologically sound. Developmental testing is conducted to assist in the engineering design and development of a system and to verify that developmental performance specifications have been met.
The other form of testing, called operational testing, is undertaken first by the services, but then handed off to the Director of Operational Test and Evaluation for an independent test, conducted under the most realistic battle conditions possible. DOT&E then determines if the weapon system is "suitable" and "effective" - that is, ready for full-rate production, and deployment by the military. By law, DOT&E is required to operationally test a weapon system before it can progress beyond low-rate production.
The DOT&E director's job is not only to conduct operational testing and an annual assessment of major weapons systems, but also to review the military services' test and evaluation master plans to ensure that operational test concerns are incorporated early in the life of a weapons system.
The Rumsfeld memo threatens to erode the power and independence of DOT&E which is the eyes and ears of the Secretary of Defense and Congress. So far, it is not yet fully clear just how much involvement DOT&E will have in the restructured Missile Defense Agency's testing blueprint, but the memo does depart from tradition, specifically granting all pre-production testing authority to the agency's director. Current DOT&E current chief, Thomas Christie, has admitted in Congressional testimony that he is not being given unfettered access to missile defense testing documents and data. Although Christie has a legal right to all testing records and data in the Department of Defense, he is said to be negotiating with the Missile Defense Agency to obtain the data he needs to evaluate the program.²
Christie recently told Congress he believed that he would ultimately be able to carry out his oversight responsibilities, but that his missile defense testing role was still "evolving" after a period during which his office "backed away" from some of its involvement while missile programs were being restructured late last year.³
At the March 13, 2002, hearing before the Senate Strategic Forces Subcommittee, Christie stated, "That is certainly different than the large programs such as F-22 or the other standard major defense acquisition programs, where we have statutory responsibility for deciding or evaluating the effectiveness and suitability of a system and the adequacy of the operational testing that took place before the system is, in fact, produced and deployed. So it is different. And we're evolving. We have evolved in this process. We haven't been there before." ⁴
Although the Bush Administration says it hopes to deploy a rudimentary missile defense system in Alaska by 2004, Christie said that portions of the system are not sophisticated enough for his office to even plan for operational testing yet.
Since the mid-1980s, the DOT&E has been tenaciously fighting to ensure that the best weapons systems end up in the hands of U.S. fighting men and women. Along the way, there have been countless efforts by weapons program managers to cut back testing on their programs, but DOT&E has persisted in its drive to ensure that the weapons produced are useful in combat. In many cases, these efforts have yielded very visible successes, including improvements in the C-17 cargo jet, the M-1 tank, and the Javelin Missile.⁵
Early on, DOT&E intervention proved very helpful to the C-17A, the first major acquisition program that relied on early operational assessment as a decision-making tool. Although in 1988 the Air Force supported the low-rate initial production of 40 C-17s, the Secretary of Defense lowered the number to 10 because operational testing had not begun. The subsequent operational testing provided timely insight into potential problems with the aircraft that may have been missed during developmental testing.⁶
In later testing of the C-17, DOT&E pressed for further evaluation of one of the more valuable uses of the cargo aircraft, the transportation and deployment of large numbers of paratroopers into a combat zone. The Air Force approved full-rate production of the C-17 without even testing the aircraft for this function. DOT&E demanded operational testing and discovered that the air turbulence created in the wake of the aircraft, flying in close formation, caused the parachutes on soldiers dropping from the aircraft to oscillate, partially deflate, or collapse. DOT&E testing continues to determine if the Army standards of dropping a brigade and its equipment in 30 minutes or less can be achieved.
In operational testing DOT&E discovered that the upgraded M-1A2 tank was unreliable and unsafe due to unprompted main gun and turret movements, hot surfaces that caused contact burns, and unintended firing of the .50 caliber machine gun. After a series of follow-up tests, DOT&E demanded that the Army make design changes. Subsequent testing showed that the safety issues were corrected and that the tank is now operationally suitable.
The reliability of another weapons system, the Javelin Missile, also was greatly aided by DOT&E intervention. DOT&E insisted that the system undergo additional operational testing prior to a full-rate production decision in 1997 because over 50 design changes had been made to the system since initial operational test and evaluation in 1993. This subsequent operational testing ultimately led to a missile assembly design change that eliminated missile launch failure problems that had occurred when tested under realistic combat conditions testing.
Despite such successes, the recent events at the Missile Defense Agency are the latest threat to the office's authority. When Congress first authorized the DOT&E in 1983, the goal was to provide an impartial and independent review of the adequacy of testing performed by the military services and interpret the success or failures of weapons systems before they enter the production stage.
In the case of missile defense, rigorous independent performance testing is perhaps even more critical because the program has experienced numerous problems and faces tremendous technological obstacles.
Although DOT&E is not responsible for development or operational testing by the services, it does routinely monitor the military's testing. The hope is that with DOT&E involvement in the early development and testing of a weapons system, the weapon will be better prepared for the final exam administered by DOT&E when it is nearing full blown production and subsequent deployment in the field.
Despite more than 17 years of hard work by DOT&E, and its successful record, there is mounting evidence that the military branches routinely ignore its recommendations or do what they can to circumvent early testing oversight of weapons systems, according to a December 2000 study by the Defense Department's Defense Science Board (DSB).⁷
The DSB's report stated that "there is growing evidence that the acquisition system is not meeting expectations as far as delivering high quality, reliable and effective equipment to our military forces. In those cases where the testing is adequate, we fail to take the corrective actions needed based on the results of that testing. In many cases, we allow our acquisition programs to proceed to their next phases...when the test results we have gathered clearly indicate the systems are not ready."⁸
The report went on to conclude, "The DSB Task Force has come to the same conclusion as have many of the congressional responses in the past. The value of testing and evaluation is finding flaws or weaknesses as early as possible during development at the lowest reasonable cost."⁹

DEFENSE PROCUREMENT BEFORE DOT&E

Cutting DOT&E out of the early testing picture would turn the clock back to a weapons procurement era that produced many overpriced and under-tested systems. The following are reminders of some of the weapons failures before the Pentagon's DOT&E became a force inside the acquisition system.

THE SERGEANT YORK GUN: THE LITTLE GUN THAT COULDN'T SHOOT STRAIGHT

The Sergeant York Gun is illustrative as a historical case of what can happen when a weapon is not subjected to close development oversight and rigorous independent operational, or battle condition, testing. Named after World War I hero, Sergeant Alvin York, the Army's division air defense gun - or DIVAD - began development in 1978, years before Congress ever envisioned an independent Pentagon testing office. Yet, the DIVAD procurement bears a striking resemblance to today's Missile Defense Agency's fast-track procurement blueprint. In the late 1970s the Army also was racing to deploy the DIVAD very quickly and had adopted a "hands-off" acquisition strategy with minimum oversight.
The result instead was a rush to failure.
The Sergeant York Gun was conceived to fill an air defense void on the battlefront. It was intended to locate and shoot down armed helicopters and fixed-winged low-flying aircraft, as well as engage lightly armored vehicles, trucks, and personnel. Unfortunately, by 1982, it was becoming clear that the Sergeant York's computerized gun and radar system had at least two fundamental problems: It could not consistently locate, or hit, its targets.
It was then, during a preliminary demonstration of the prototype, that the Army learned that the radar fire control system failed to operate reliably, the graphic display unit failed intermittently, the hydraulics system leaked, and the armament feed system's performance was unsatisfactory. Yet, the Army continued to defend the merits of the DIVAD, permitting the contractor to perform reliability tests with virtually no Army oversight.¹⁰
In February 1982, the General Accounting Office told Congress, "It is not possible now to make a reliable assessment of the Division Air Defense gun's potential in combat. Little is known about how well DIVAD meets the Army's requirements for maintainability, logistics supportability, and ease of operation by the troops."¹¹
But like a snowball rolling down a hill, even the discouraging performance of the Sergeant York Gun couldn't stop the Army from exercising two of three production options in 1982 and 1983 for orders totaling 146 units. It wasn't until February 1984 that the Army procurement contract office notified the contractor, Ford Aerospace & Communications Corp., that the performance on DIVAD was "totally unacceptable." The following year, the problems had grown too serious to ignore. In the summer of 1985, the Sgt. York Gun was officially declared ineffective and cancelled by then Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger.¹²
The General Accounting Office partly faults the Army's "hands-off" acquisition strategy for the failure of the DIVAD. It also believes the system was not subjected to adequate operational testing which in turn prevented accurate and complete information from getting to decision-makers.
"An example of the adverse effect of a long-standing concern with OT&E is illustrated by the Army's Sergeant York weapon program, namely that OT&E results were not available before the decision to begin limited production," the GAO concluded in a 1986 report. "The recent cancellation of the program emphasizes the adverse effect of a long-standing concern with OT&E - over a billion dollars was spent on an unproven system that ultimately had to be terminated."¹³

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