eleven year gap in procurement (Franklin Spinney)

[[ eleven year gap in ... ]]
 •─ the CIA knowingly served as a conduit for KGB disinformation that may have inflated Soviet strengths in order to dupe U.S. decision makers into spending money on unneeded, high-cost weapons.

 •─ with the active assistance of the bureaucrats in the Pentagon and the threat inflators at the CIA.


p.10
First, it is clear from Figure 1 that the immediate source of the modernization crisis is the eleven year gap in procurement between 1992 and 2002, during which almost no new aircraft enter the inventory. Consequently, the distribution of the ages of the individual aircraft making up the inventory will become progressively distorted over time, and a disproportionately large number of fighters will reach retirement age at the same time.

Two criteria are needed to answer this question--an age goal and a size goal. First, I will argue that the Air Force should set a goal of 10 years to be reached by 2002 for the average age of its inventory of fighter aircraft. While an average age of ten years would be very old by historical standards (see Figure 3), it is the same rule of thumb adopted by planners in the Air Force between the late 1970s and early 1990s. This rule of thumb was not pulled out of thin air. It was adopted by the Air Force after a long agonizing debate. Under this assumption, fighters would be retired at about twenty-two years of age, once the need to replace crashed aircraft is accounted for.

to begin two lower-cost, fast-paced, fly-before-you-buy, competitive prototype programs. Before describing these programs, let me explain why a fly-before-you-buy strategy is so important.

Competitive prototyping is a sequential, decision-making strategy for reducing technical and economic risks while preserving the decision maker's freedom of action. Its goal is to work the bugs out of a design before committing substantial resources to its factors of production (manufacturing engineering, specialized machine tools, unique factory facilities, a network of supplier relationships, and the hiring of production workers). Although prototypes are handmade by design engineers and skilled technicians using general purpose machine tools, production engineers should be deeply involved in a prototype's design to insure the ultimate product can be produced at a reasonable cost.
    Moreover, as more detailed information flows out of the design and testing activities, they should prepare for an orderly transition to efficient production by continuously refining their plans for factory layouts, machine tools, worker skills, subcontractors, etc.
    But under a competitive prototyping strategy, the decision to commit resources to production would be deferred until rigorous testing demonstrated which product best met the specifications.
    Prototyping also reduces risk by reducing up-front costs. This gives decision makers the flexibility to simultaneously explore multiple design options, even during periods of declining budgets. (During the post-Viet Nam contraction in the early 1970s, for example, the Air Force successfully designed and flight tested six new designs in three competitive prototype programs--the YF-16/17, YA-9/10, and YC-14/15 aircraft).

In reality, the cost of fixing major design flaws on airplanes moving down an assembly line can escalate rapidly to prohibitive levels, particularly if assembly line tooling or factory layouts must be changed.
   Nevertheless, cancellation is usually impossible, because the early commitment to low rate production permits the contractor to build a powerful political base by hiring a large number of production workers and establishing a nation-wide network of subcontractors.
   A second deterrent to cancellation stems from the high up-front cost of the EMD strategy--it forces decision makers to put all their eggs in one basket, and in contrast to a competitive prototyping strategy, they can not afford to explore other options. So, when a new weapon fails to meet its performance specifications or cost goals, the economic and political pressures of the real world force decision makers to reduce specifications, accept large cost increases as being inevitable, stretch out production schedules, and cut back total production quantities.
   The routine practice of waiving specifications and goals is known among defense contractors as managing to a rubber baseline.

Competitive prototyping reduces the risk of being boxed in by rubber baselines. Risk reduction is particularly important when budgets are tight. To maximize risk reduction, each prototype should be as close to being a fully combat-capable replica of the eventual production item as possible.

Each airplane would be designed to operate as part of a truly integrated, air-ground, combined-arms team in expeditionary warfare against the likely threats in the post-cold war era.  Each must be easy to deploy from the continental United States to overseas operating locations and would be able to operate for extended periods of time from relatively primitive forward locations.

While a vigorous prototype competition would increase the business risk to the contractors, the simulation of capitalistic market forces would also stimulate their creativity, efficiency, and enthusiasm, as it clearly did during the Lightweight Fighter competition in the early 1970s.

This explanation is particularly needed to counter the revelations that the CIA knowingly served as a conduit for KGB disinformation that may have inflated Soviet strengths in order to dupe U.S. decision makers into spending money on unneeded, high-cost weapons.

 •─ the CIA knowingly served as a conduit for KGB disinformation that may have inflated Soviet strengths in order to dupe U.S. decision makers into spending money on unneeded, high-cost weapons.

Fifth, the overwhelming majority of deep targets are fixed targets at known locations. If one accepts the promises of our technologists, these targets are particularly appropriate for unmanned, long-range, stand-off, precision-guided weapons, like cruise missiles.

Out-of-control political selection pressures, like those evident in the porkfest on Capital Hill last summer, evolving within a real world of cost overruns and budget cutbacks, could easily wreck our military forces in order to prop up the contractors who created the problem, with the active assistance of the bureaucrats in the Pentagon and the threat inflators at the CIA.

 •─ with the active assistance of the bureaucrats in the Pentagon and the threat inflators at the CIA.

source:
        Defense time bomb :
        background : F-22/JSF case study :
        hypothestical escape option
        by Franklin C. Spinney
         March 6, 1996
        The views expressed in this paper do not represent the official position of the Department of defense
        16 page count  
   ____________________________________

The praetorian guard : the u.s. role in the new world order, essays based on earlier lectures., by John Stockwell, 1991

pp.18─19
ex-CIA director, president George Bush
He used his position as CIA director to bring into the agency a team of right-wing economists who would cook the statistical books and publish a bloated assessment of alleged military spending by the Soviet Union.  Their report was the basis of Bush's run for the presidency in 1980, and for the dramatic and successful bid by the military establishment for the huge arms buildup of the 1980s.

   (Stockwell, John, 1937-
The praetorian guard : the u.s. role in the new world order / by John Stockwell.
essays based on earlier lectures.
1. united states -- politics and government -- 1945-
2. united states -- military relations -- foreign countries.

320.973
E839.5.S78   1991
322'.5'0973--dc20

1991
    )
   ____________________________________

  John Schutte, ‘Andrew W. Marshall and the Epistemic Community of the Cold War’, 2015,

p.72
creation of a net assessment group (NAG)

p.73
“diagnosis of problems and opportunities, rather than recommended actions”.
For Marshall, the focus on diagnosis rather than solutions was especially significant.149
basis for diagnosis.
  do we have problems?
  if so, how big is it?
  is it getting worse or better?
  what are the underlying causes?

p.83
Pedagogically, Marshall believes that allowing others to work out how to do a net assessment is preferrable to him trying to explain it to them.  
that of a shepherd guiding others' intellectual growth to help them arrive at their own conclusions through an intensive process.6
It must be learned experientially.

p.38
intellectual comfort zones rather than address harder questions.
pp.38-39
Observing this approach reinforced an enduring lesson for Marshall:  mediocre answers to good questions were more important and useful than splendid answers to poor questions.114

p.37
Kelly AFB in San Antonio, where the Air Force conducted most of its COMINT analysis.109

p.38
Loftus and Marshall's rare access to COMINT helped them understand this disconnect, though they could not share this information to shatter their colleagues' illusions.  


source:
        John Schutte, ‘Andrew W. Marshall and the Epistemic Community of the Cold War’, 2015, http://www.au.af.mil/au/aupress/digital/pdf/paper/dp_0016_schutte_casting_net_assessment.pdf

dp_0016_schutte_casting_net_assessment.pdf

Schutte, John M., 1976
  Casting net assessment : Andrew W. Marshall and the epistemic community of the cold war / John M. Schutte, Lieutenant Colonel, USAF.
1. Marshall, Andrew W., 1921─ 2. United States. department of defense. director of net assessment ── biography. 3. united states. department of defense ── officials and employees ── biography. 4. rand corporation ── biography. 5. united states ── forecasting. 6. military planning ── united states ── history ── 20th century. 7. military planning ── united states ── history ── 21st century. 8. united states ── military policy. 9. strategy. 10. cold war.
title: Andrew W. Marshall and the epistemic community of the cold war.

UA23.6.S43 2014
355.0092 -- dc23

local filename:  casting net assessment.txt
alternative short-cut:  Andrew W. Marshall and the epistemic community of the cold war (2)

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