Bad news for NGC’s Global Hawk program:
A new version of Northrop Grumman Corp.’s Global Hawk drone is “not operationally effective for conducting near-continuous, persistent” intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) missions that it was designed to conduct, according to the Pentagon’s top weapons tester.
The RQ-4B Global Hawk Block 30 was capable of providing only about 40 percent of requested coverage when flying two or three sorties a week, using three aircraft, during a testing period from October through December, according to the May 27 report signed by J. Michael Gilmore, the Defense Department’s director of operational test and evaluation.
The system “is not operationally suitable,” the report states. “Global Hawk long endurance flights do not routinely provide persistent ISR coverage due to low air vehicle reliability.”
“Mission-critical components fail at high rates, resulting in poor takeoff reliability, high air abort rates, low mission capable rates, an excessive demand for critical spare parts and a high demand for maintenance support,” the report said.
The gold standard for major defense acquisition programs is “operationally effective” and “operationally suitable”, and the Block 30 air vehicle is neither, yet.
These are growing pains, probably. The EA-18 Growler is still not considered operationally suitable, according to DoD’s DOT&E, despite the fact that they sortied for the Libya goatrope mission. Given time and money, the maintainability and reliability issues of the BAMS RQ-4B vehicle could almost certainly be overcome.
The question, in this economic and political environment, is whether either will be available.
…and for what it’s worth, back in the day the E-2C failed its OPEVAL in 74/75, though the subsequent 35+ years of ops doesn’t seem to have been too diminished in the process. OPEVAL for the E-2D begins next year IIRC.
w/r, SJS
see what happens when ya eliminate flight techs? ;^)
FTs were still around for my 1st sqdn tour (79-82)…
apropos of nothing, 69 years ago today dear old dad graduated High School. 7 days later he and 4 buddies were on the train to basic training. He to Great Lakes, blissfully unaware of what had just transpired at Midway. Dad and one other came home.
It helps to have enough spares, too.
Unfortunately, spares get gobbled up by the rest of the fleet – and by the insatiable appetite for ISR assets.
FWIW, BAMS uses a competely different sensor suite.
I’d be curious to know if they are seeing similar reliability with the Global Hawk Maritime Demonstrator (GHMD) that the Navy is flying.
Don’t let this single report fool you. For about the last 7 years approximately 50 percent of all programs going to IOT&E across all Services were found to be not operationally suitable. Almost 50 percent were found to be not operationally effective against all design threats. The number one reason for the not suitable determinations was reliability (or more accurately, lack thereof).
How many of those programs were cancelled due to poor performance? Save your Googling, the answer is none. There have been a few schedule delays while the showstopper problems were fixed, but the inevitable answer is, “it’s better than what we have now, and we need to field it immediately.” (Which I think is often legitimate, as a former warfighter.)
The Navy is the most guilty Service, pushing programs through OPEVAL knowing full well they will not pass. The strategy is to check the box for OT&E, then field the system. Then the ISEA will roll out a new software build a couple years down the line to fix the trouble reports from OPEVAL. Sometimes (if the bean counters spring for the money) they will do a Verification of Correction of Deficiencies (VCD) test.
Does this upset Congress? Heck no, they are keeping the industrial base (i.e., jobs, jobs, jobs) humming along in their districts.
Very true.
Navig8r nails it. There is a strong emphasis placed by Gilmore right now on reliability growth during engineering development, and programs are (grudgingly?) accepting the challenge. The hope is that with improved suitability (mainly reliability), the fleet can buy gas and manpower instead of spares and repairables. It’s a long-term payoff though.
TC
wonder if the original U-2 program would have passed? And what replacement do we have that beats it in reliability and quality of product? So the Global Hawk will fly on.
Speaking of replacements, G-man, there are STILL certain recce msn profiles that can’t be flown since the SR-71 was killed by the bean-counters (and the AF–the Sr-71 came out of the AF budget, the U-2 out of the CIA budget.)
USAF damn near killed the U-2 program too back in the immediate post-DS environment. One of my tasks on my first Joint Penance tour was to advocate for my Agency (part of the IC, but not CIA) on the need for the U-2 (then in the TR-1/U-2R flavor, hoping for the U-2S) which meant many a fora that a lone, khaki-clad individual was making the case for something with USAF on the side before a hostile, AF-blue clad audience. Wasn’t exactly loving Goldwater-Nichols after some of those encounters and I imagine the feeling was mutual…
w/r, SJS
The tendency of certain unions Airdales? Naw.) to game the system and try to blow by OPEVAL/TECHEVAL, rather than fix the problems as they crop up, is not benign.
Redesigning and reprogramming prototype hardware and systems slows the process down and jacks up the price, and the effects tend to be immediate and obvious, hence remembered at fitrep time.
Getting 75% of the capability spec’ed on time is cheaper and easier. In the short run.
In the long run, you never get the rest, because the bean counters cite the cost of changing the AN 4Q2 and backfitting it for the entire production run. Then there is the living nightmare of multiple handwaves in lieu of solution in the same platform. When that happens the USS Greatgreyhope class leader winds up at the pier for months and the prototype money doesn’t get averaged over a very long production production run, leading to rude comments about out of control ship/aircraft prices. Tsk, Tsk.
Of course, the gaming guys in the Program Office rolled out at normal rotation dates, collect their medals and get promoted, while bullheads who insist on fixing things right, and right away, tend to retire at lesser grades with fewer and smaller merit badges.
They might sleep better, too, knowing their service was honorable and effective, if at 500 bucks a month less, when retired…for life.