It Looked Good on Paper

by Bill Fawcett

  Development led to testing.

  During testing the DIVAD became a ping-pong ball batted between the Army and Ford Aerospace. Between 1980 and 1983, the Army kept finding problems with the gun that the contractor had to fix. In the meantime, the Army kept begging the Pentagon for one more chance to get the program right. It was an engineering problem that could have been fixed with enough time or money, as the Army kept finding the same problems with the gun.

  By January 1983, the Pentagon’s Office of Program Analysis and Evaluation rated the DIVAD unready for combat. The Pentagon’s inspector general started taking an interest in the DIVAD program. The GAO also questioned the Army’s assessment of DIVAD.

  By January 1984, the Army began testing the first production model of DIVAD, now named after famed sharpshooter Sergeant Alvin York, a World War I Medal of Honor winner. The Army said that the tests were inconclusive, but sent a letter to Ford the next month complaining that work on the DIVAD did not measure up. Undersecretary of Defense for research and engineering Richard DeLauer then told the Army to do more realistic testing before any more DIVADs were purchased. That July, the Army tested three production-model Sergeant Yorks, again claiming the tests were inconclusive.

  Still more testing was done in the fall of 1984 at Fort Ord by the Army’s Test and Evaluation Agency. The agency noted that the Sergeant York’s radar system had problems tracking target aircraft, but that these problems could be fixed. Still, a 100-page report by the same agency noted that the Sergeant York did not deliver much improvement over the Vulcan and Chaparral systems it was supposed to replace. “In terms of its ability to acquire targets, track them, and engage a mix of targets and survive in the field, the DIVAD comes up a loser in almost every scenario,” the report said.

  Bad news about the Sergeant York was becoming commonplace in the newspapers. Major General C.D. Bussey, chief public affairs officer for the Department of the Army, took the New York Times to task for what he described as a negative and unfair editorial criticizing the DIVAD program. The Sergeant York had to be radar-aimed to hit high-performance aircraft, and didn’t have to hit aircraft maneuvering at greater than two Gs since nothing can do a bomb run at that level of evasion, he explained. The thin-skinned helicopters of the Vietnam War could be shot down with ease, but the Soviets were fielding armored gunships that could only be shot down by the DIVAD, he added.

  “We have not done a good enough job of explaining the DIVAD program,” Bussey admitted. “[W]e would welcome the opportunity to do that…. As a minimum, perhaps we can stop recycling myths and misconceptions. Your editorial is a case in point.”

  Then in April 1985, things went from bad to worse.

  The Sergeant York program landed on the desk of Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger.

  Weinberger was nicknamed “Cap the Knife” back when he was Secretary for Health, Education and Welfare in the Nixon Administration. While he used to cut budgets at HEW, he rarely touched the budget scalpel, much less the budget ax or budget chainsaw, while squiring weapons programs at Defense.

  It seemed that Weinberger never met a weapons system he didn’t like, as the Pentagon budget shot up from $200 billion to $300 billion on his watch. In the rush to rearm, many weapons systems were being purchased with ongoing problems and vexing flaws. Production models of the F-18 Hornet were plagued by tail cracks. The B-1 bomber never seemed to work as advertised. The stuff that made it to production was much pricier than predecessor systems. Critics began to question the value of defense purchases as higher spending without tax increases resulted in higher deficits. Tales of $600 toilet seats and $1,200 coffee pots plagued the debate on defense spending.

  Sergeant York was caught in the spotlight, becoming the cheap poster child for much that went wrong during the $1 trillion, five-year Reagan defense program. In the midst of this debate, the mess ascended to Weinberger’s desk, where it received scrutiny with a magnifying glass rather than a rubber-stamp approval. Weinberger now had a cheap opportunity to get tough on wasteful defense spending, and Sergeant York was going to be the whipping boy.

  Another round of more realistic testing was slated for the summer of 1985.

  If the DIVAD performed as advertised, it would be kept.

  If it failed, it would be cut.

  The Army had one more chance to get it right.

  So the gun got its final test and the Pentagon’s Office of Operational Testing and Evaluation got to watch. “As tested, the Sergeant York was not operationally effective in adequately protecting the friendly force during simulated combat.” The self-propelled AA gun kept breaking down. The Army considered whether to supplement the twin Bofors guns with Stinger missiles to help it shoot down enemy aircraft, which would have made moot the reason of having the guns in the first place.

  Failure on the test range was compounded by obsolescence.

  When the DIVAD was conceived in the late 1970s, it was expected to engage enemy aircraft at ranges up to 2.5 miles, better than the 750 yards or so that the Vulcan could deliver. By the early 1980s, the Pentagon was getting field reports about the Soviet Mi-24’s debut in Afghanistan, where this armored helicopter gunship was firing its missiles at Afghan mujahedeen at ranges up to 4.6 miles. When the Mi-24 was simulated during DIVAD’s final test, there was no way a gun with a 2.5-mile range was going to hit a helicopter sniping at it from three miles away.

  In August 1985, Weinberger took the knife to the Sergeant York, killing the program with one stroke.

  The Sergeant York failed after consuming over $1.5 billion in development money. More than sixty DIVADs were built at $8 million each by the time Weinberger terminated the program. The Army needed to find a replacement for its replacement. So it planned to spend $8 billion on a collection of mobile Stinger missile launchers, a new radio/computer targeting integration system, a fiber-optic guided missile that could hit airborne targets six miles away, and a retrofit of existing vehicles to possess some anti-aircraft capability.

  Meanwhile, the Soviet Mi-24 gunship, which eliminated the need for the Sergeant York, was in turn defeated by the high-tech Stinger shoulder-fired heat-seeking missile, handled by often illiterate Afghan tribesman fighting the Russian invaders.

  Who killed Sergeant York?

  Weinberger was only guilty of mercy killing when he put the DIVAD out of its misery. Blame first the Pentagon for thinking it could get a new weapons system on the cheap. Blame second the contractors who promised more than they could deliver—at a fixed price.

  The DIVAD contract drew five competitive offers. The program was supposed to use off-the-shelf components of proven reliability, delivering an AA gun with warranties, a fixed price, no razzle-dazzle, no cost overruns, and no delays. This technique had worked before, which is how the Army got its enormously successful Multiple Launched Rocket System (MLRS).

  The Army’s “hands off” approach complemented the joint failure of Ford Aerospace and General Dynamics to “get it right.” Had the Army been closer to the program, problems could have been picked up earlier and fixed. Even so, the Army always asked the Pentagon for another chance to fix DIVAD’s problems, again and again and again.

  Representative Dennis Smith (R-Ore.), a persistent critic of the Sergeant York, blamed the Pentagon. No complex weapons system should be purchased unless it could be realistically tested first, he said.

  James R. Ambrose, undersecretary of the Army, disagreed. Technology is America’s strong suit in weapons development, and testing should be continuous to allow for a new weapon to be developed as it is being deployed. Experience in the field would beget more improvement, he explained. “Most of the investment in the military goes without such testing,” as was done with DIVAD, Ambrose said. “You do it with some use of analytic models, play computer games, and a lot of it is military judgment.”

  Even the Department of Justice got to place some blame on General Dynamics, indicting four of its executives involved with overseeing the DIVAD program in December 19
85. One of those tagged was James Beggs, who was heading NASA when the indictment was served.

  The substance of the case was small potatoes. General Dynamics was accused of shifting a $3.3 million cost overrun on a $40 million fixed cost DIVAD contract to two research accounts that the government reimbursed. (This at a time when the U.S. government was accused of wasting tens of billions of dollars on shoddy weapons.) The case so lacked substance that U.S. district court judge Ferdinand Fernandez dismissed it in June 1987 on the recommendation of U.S. attorney Stephen Czuleger, the prosecutor handling the case.

  “I’m going to ask for an apology,” said Beggs, who had to resign from NASA to prepare for his defense. “I certainly have no objection to the defense industry being put under a magnifying glass. What I do object to is this rush to justice in bringing what appeared to be very bad cases.”

  But the last word in the blame game went to William Weld, then assistant attorney general heading the Justice Department’s criminal division. In June 1987, his unit found that defense contractors were allowed by the Pentagon to understate their development costs at the taxpayer’s expense. This undercut the ability of federal prosecutors to go after defense contractors who abused contract terms. “The military officers may overlook or ignore the inactions by defense contractors, not because of evil intent, but because of a belief that the importance of the project or new technology has to national security,” Weld said.

  The contractors cheated to maintain contract goals and turn a profit.

  The military wanted to accomplish the weapons development mission.

  Everybody does it.

  No one is guilty.

  And the taxpayer picks up the tab.

  “If you believe the doctors, nothing is wholesome; if you believe the theologians, nothing is innocent; if you believe the military, nothing is safe.”

  —Lord Salisbury

  The Expensive Pipe Dream of Missile Defense

  Douglas Niles and Donald Niles, Sr.

  If the Enemy Puts Tracking Beacons in Their Rockets It Might Work…

  “Star Wars”: The very name evokes high-tech glamour, scientific accomplishment bordering on the magical, and a certain triumph of the forces of light over darkness. The term has become—even without the permission of George Lucas—descriptive of the United States Missile Defense program, more formally known as the Strategic Defense Initiative. Originally brought to the public’s attention by President Reagan during the 1980s, there is some possibility that the idea of the program (the system itself was decades away from implementation) contributed to the downfall of the Soviet Union simply because it symbolized American capability and ambitions in a way that highlighted the decaying dream of the U.S.S.R.

  Of course, strategic nuclear weapons represent the single greatest threat to human life with which humankind has ever menaced itself. During the decades of the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union virtually bristled with lethal, long range, unstoppable missiles—weapons with which, as has been well documented, each power could have completely obliterated the other, probably several times over. The reason they didn’t was a policy that, in theory, sounds mad, and in actuality was called MAD: Mutually Assured Destruction.

  The theory assumed that neither side in this incredibly high-stakes gamble would dare to take the first shot, because they could not destroy the other side’s ability to retaliate in such force that the nation who started the war would also be completely destroyed. Thus, though in reality each side could obliterate the other, neither side was willing to initiate a nuclear war.

  Those days are gone now, of course. The United States, for the moment, is the only global superpower. And even though America has removed some of its missiles from service, others remain ready to be launched at a moment’s notice. Furthermore, during the first decade of the twenty-first century, the government has pressed forward with a new generation of highly expensive, terribly lethal nuclear weapons.

  At the same time, the country has spent tens of billions of dollars—more money than on any other weapons system—for a vast and complicated array of equipment that might not even work, and is not designed to face any threat that could conceivably be directed our way.

  Over the early years of the twenty-first century, the MD system was tested multiple times, and yielded an uninterrupted string of failures. Intercepting missiles failed to launch, or to separate from booster rockets. Those that did fly successfully failed to intercept the incoming missiles. After most of these flops, the Pentagon labeled the test a “limited success” because even an utter and complete failure potentially offers an opportunity to gain some useful data. On other occasions, such as an abject failure in May 2007, when the target missile actually failed to get high enough to activate the system, the Pentagon alters the terminology to describe the failure as a “non-test.”

  Even to attain the level of failure that has been a persistent feature of this program, the government has gone to ridiculous and unrealistic lengths to make it easier for the intercepting missile to find the target rocket. One way that the tests were modified was to enhance the target missiles with tracking beacons to make them easier to locate and intercept—and even then, the intercepting missile could not hit the incoming rocket. Nevertheless, perhaps diplomatic efforts will be next, in an effort to persuade potential enemies to put those tracking beacons in their own missiles.

  Of course, that would only be possible if there was an enemy out there that might, possibly, make this system worthwhile. Right now, however, that doesn’t seem to be the case.

  It is indicative of the tremendous waste of money and resources invested in the MD system that the threat we are hoping to defend against does not actually exist. This is no longer Reagan’s “Star Wars” idea. There is no practical thought that, in the event of a catastrophic nuclear war, the MD system would be able to take out every one of the hundreds of warheads that might conceivably be sent our way by another superpower. Instead, the missile defense system has been pushed through Congress with the argument that it might potentially protect the country from a single missile launched by a rogue state—North Korea being the most commonly mentioned potential adversary.

  While no one would argue that the North Korean government is peaceful, stable, or even moderately rational, this argument overlooks a key fact: if they, or some other country, wished to deliver a nuclear bomb against an American target, they wouldn’t do it with a ballistic missile. For one thing, the launching point of such a missile would be immediately and accurately placed by satellite and other reconnaissance technology. Any country launching a single nuclear missile against the United States can be virtually assured of its immediate and complete annihilation by an overwhelming response.

  It is far more likely that such a bomb would be delivered by secretive means, smuggled in by ship, for example, or flown aboard a small plane, or even brought across the border by truck or van. The MD system would protect the country against none of these possibilities, though it must be admitted that these are very real, and terrifying, threats.

  Instead, the government has publicly declared—in a pointed message to North Korea—that the untested, non-functioning missile defense system has actually been “deployed,” with the stationing of some potential interceptors in Alaska and elsewhere. Still, there is virtually no chance it would work if actually challenged. Assuming the interceptor could be launched on time, it would take a lucky shot, akin to using a gun to shoot another gun’s bullet out of the air, for an incoming missile to be destroyed.

  Among the many tenets of warfare being ignored, at tens of billions of dollars’ cost, is that an enemy that knows about a defensive system is almost certain to take steps to defeat that system. If, by some miracle of technology and spending, the United States eventually comes up with a means of detecting an enemy missile launch, launching an intercepting missile in the few minutes available, and blowing the incoming missile out of the sky, the planners and backers of the MD progra
m seem to think that an enemy will not change his tactics to suit the defense.

  However, there are lots of ways—all of them much simpler than creating an intercepting missile system—for another country to make it impossible for the defense to work. Missiles could be disguised or masked with stealth technology, or equipped with electronic interference devices that could negate the MD tracking system. The most basic, and inexpensive, idea would be for an attacker to launch a whole host of decoy missiles, with only one or two rockets actually armed with nuclear warheads. The intercepting missile system would have no way of distinguishing the real targets from the decoys, and could simply be overwhelmed by a number of fakes. If the United States then goes ahead and builds enough—very, very expensive—MD batteries to take out a lot of decoys, the attacker can simply build more cheap decoys. And still, the missile defense system wouldn’t know which missiles to intercept and which to let through.

  So, do you feel lucky?

  About the Editor

  BILL FAWCETT is the author and editor of more than a dozen books, including You Did What? and How to Lose a Battle. He is also the author and editor of three historical mystery series and two oral histories of the U.S. Navy SEALS. He lives in Illinois.

  Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.

  ALSO BY BILL FAWCETT

  Oval Office Oddities

  Hunters and Shooters

  You Said What?

  How to Lose a Battle

  You Did What?

  It Seemed Like a Good Idea

  The Teams

  Credits

  Cover design by Greg Grabowy

  Cover photographs: Hubble telescope © James Benet/iStockphoto; Spruce Goose © Bettmann/CORBIS