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Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England has approved a plan to fund sustainment and modernization of three Army and Navy intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance aircraft fleets in fiscal years 2008 though FY-10 by diverting $530 million from defensewide accounts. The move will allow the services to maintain dollars previously earmarked for a new spy-plane fleet.
England's July 5 memorandum with the subject “Joint Programming Guidance VIII,” broadly lays out how the Army's Airborne Reconnaissance Low and Guardrail Common Sensor aircraft and the Navy's EP-3 fleets will remain relevant in the coming years as the services plot the way ahead for the embattled Aerial Common Sensor program -- one that has experienced developmental delays.
In England's memo, two charts are displayed.
The first lays out how $530 million will be taken from “defensewide” research, development, test and evaluation efforts to modernize the ARL, Guardrail and EP-3 fleets. Resource changes, he notes, will be “documented” in a program decision memorandum.
Although the memo does not lay out which efforts will be hit to support modernizing the three fleets, the chart indicates the amount to be cut from defensewide RDT&E budget lines each year and the amount each service will receive.
More specifically, from FY-08 to FY-10, the Army will receive $290 million from defensewide accounts -- $150 million in FY-08, $95 million in FY-09 and $45 million in FY-10, according to England.
As for the Navy, $240 million is earmarked to upgrade the EP-3 from defensewide accounts -- $60 million in FY-08, $76 million in FY-09 and $104 million in FY-10.
The move to free funds to modernize Army and Navy ISR platforms is spawned by a decision earlier this year to terminate Lockheed Martin's $879 million system design and development contract for the ACS program after the service determined that the contractor's Brazilian-built ERJ-145 aircraft would suffer weight, size, power and cooling issues once the payload package was added. The system was expected to replace ARL and Guardrail aircraft and, possibly, the Navy's EP-3.
When the Army terminated the ACS contract, officials from the Army, Navy and Air Force conducted a “Joint ISR Study” examining how currently fielded assets, as well as a future spy-plane, could better cover the ISR spectrum.
Last month, Col. Robert Carpenter, the project manager for Aerial Common Sensors, told ITA the study had been completed, but the findings had not been publicly released because the Defense Department is still vetting them. Results of the study were not supposed to be announced until the fall, he said.
Regardless of a final decision on how to proceed with ACS, England's memo directs the Army and Navy to “maintain” the FY-08 though FY-11 funding dedicated to the ACS program. England says that these funds will be used to develop and procure future “manned/unmanned-ISR systems” following his review of the Joint ISR Study during the FY-08 program and budget review.
England's second chart contained in the July memo lays out how each service will contribute nearly $1.3 billion toward the ACS program from FY-08 though FY-11.
For the Army, the service would use $807 million for ACS -- $27 million in FY-08, $176 million in FY-09, $250 million in FY-10 and $355 million in FY-11.
The Navy is slated to spend $454 million over the four-year period for program development -- $17 million in FY-08, $75 million in FY-09, $104 million in FY-10 and $257 million in FY-11, according to England.
Pentagon spokeswoman Cheryl Irwin told ITA last week the department could not comment on England's memo because it was “pre-decisional and until final decisions are made and forwarded in the president's FY-08 budget it would be inappropriate to speculate.”
Although it is unclear how the services will proceed with ACS development, last month Carpenter laid out four possible options for fleet development including the “Big Bang Theory,” spiral maturation, manned-unmanned teaming and an unmanned fleet.
Couldn't that money be spent to better use?