The Cost of the Endless Development Cycle

Back in 1990 the Department of Defense under Dick Cheney made a decision.  It greatly cut back Procurement (the purchasing of equipment) and started poring that money into R&D.  This wasn't the first time it had happened.  The DoD (and Army in particular) started poring money into development programs as the War in Vietnam was winding down in the early 70s.  And by the early-80s that money was then diverted into purchasing en masse the equipment developed in that time period (F-14/15/16/18, M1/M2/M3, MLRS, AH-64, etc).  The difference between the R&D boost in the early-70s and that ni the early-90s is that for the last 20 years the DoD has pored Hundreds of billions of dollars into R&D programs and has gotten very little out of it. 

You can try to blame the Clinton-Era defense spending cuts, but the DoD purposely targeted Personnel and Procurement to keep R&D spending high.  Kind of strange how most Programs were cancelled right when they would transition from development to production, isn't it?  That wasn't by chance.  The Defense Industry found out that the 'endless development cycle' was much more profitable and carried far less liability then having to actually produce anything.  Now the US military is suffering the consequences.  It has older, heavily used equipment and the now-cancelled programs meant to replace them were nothing more the BS and Hype.

Over at National Defense Magazine they touch on the problem...

That tech-happy zeitgeist is from an era that now seems long gone. Ten years of grinding counterinsurgency wars, big-ticket research programs that failed to deliver combat-ready products and a rapidly rising national debt have transformed the mindset of what it means to design cutting-edge weapons.

It’s not as if the military doesn’t need innovation. Commanders for years have been asking for new and improved technology to combat roadside bombs and to find wily enemies who hide in bunkers. They also are seeking smarter munitions that hit targets precisely without killing innocent bystanders.

The Army, Marine Corps, Air Force and Navy also are saddled with aging fleets of ground vehicles, aircraft and ships that have been kept in service far longer than planned and ought to be replaced sooner, rather than later, officials say.

The defense budget has doubled since 9/11, and yet much of the military’s hardware has not been modernized in decades. Many of the next-generation programs that the Pentagon has funded in its nearly $80 billion a year research-and-development budget have failed to produce new hardware, at least in large enough quantities to rebuild the fleet. By most accounts, the problem has not been lack of money, but the failure of the Pentagon’s bureaucracies to turn promising concepts into equipment that troops find useful.

Symbols of an era of vibrant spending but stagnant modernization include the Army’s Future Combat Systems, the Navy’s DDG-1000 destroyer and the Marine Corps’ Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle. All three programs were technologically ambitious but ill suited to a time when there is decreasing tolerance for decades-long development cycles and spiraling costs.

For two decades the US Military has wasted considerable amounts of money on weapon systems that were based on extravagant claims but will never see the light of day.  Some of them, like the RAH-66, Future Cavalry Scout, M8 Ridgeway AGS, EFOG-M and EFV might be useful dispite the "Cold War Dinosaur" label.  Others, like the F-35, Crusader Gun System, DD-1000 and Excalibur PGM would (or will) have some utility, but would have been or will be extremely costly.  Others, like the True-Legacy-Thinking Cold War Dinosaur Future Combat System, defective and underachieving Osprey, the LOSAT Kinetic Energy Missile and 'Land Warrior' will never by anything but useless, pointless money pits.  Will the GCV be any different?  Ask me again in 15 years when the first one actually makes it to a combat unit.