Delays with New Strategic Nuclear Missile Submarine Program Could Damage National Defense, GAO Reports
Nevertheless, the GAO, as mentioned at the beginning of this post, reports that Electric Boat is “facing delays” in constructing the Columbia Class “because of challenges with design, materials, and quality,” and has not conducted a “schedule risk analysis.” Both GAO and DOD “identify schedule risk analysis as afor understanding and managing program risks that could impact the schedule.
“The Arctic remains “of great strategic value to Russia,” Njord Wegge, a professor at the Norwegian Defense University College, said this week as the report was released.
The other hurdle is spending priorities and deferred start dates for replacement systems. Iraq and Afghanistan sucked up a huge amount of money. Even with this $ we didn’t initially field body armor to our troops or mine/IED resistant vehicles for quite a while. Planners knew the need and options existed for both but the 1990’s defense budgets didn’t include funds for them.
All that said, claiming this program’s “too complex” to review is BS. “Too complex to review” is too complex to do. Saying THAT makes what we call a “quick assessment” in the biz. You think it’s too complex to review, shut it down because you don’t stand a chance of actually doing the thing.. You claim it’s too complex to review as positioning, shut it down because crap-weasels don’t get stuff this hard done.
On-point, the Navy has not covered themselves in glory lately with their NewTech program risk management. The Littorals and DDX are both program-level disasters. Both programs contain *both* badly-managed NewTech — similar to the new carrier e-pults, and badly-managed Stuff We Already Know, like Don’t Make Single Points of Failure like wiring all the ‘pults together.Regulated away.