The Pentagon’s inspector general has issued a report criticizing the Missile Defense Agency and its contractors for quality control problems on the kill vehicle for the long-range ballistic missile defense program.
Boeing [BA] is the prime contractor for the Ground-based Midcourse Defense (GMD) program, while Raytheon [RTN] is the subcontractor that provides the exo-atmospheric kill vehicle, or EKV, that was the subject of the IG report released Monday.
The report found 48 instances of compliance violations, mainly in the areas of software, supply chain and configuration management practices that raise questions about the reliability of the EKV.
“These nonconformances could result in the production of nonconforming hardware and software which could effect mission success,” the IG report said.
The GMD program carried out a successful intercept test in June, the first after years of failures that had brought heavy scrutiny on the program. The report said many of the problems date to the program’s development as an urgent need and reliance on an overly complicated, prototypical design.
The Missile Defense Agency requested about $100 million in its fiscal 2015 budget proposal to redesign the EKV to make it easier to produce. The head of the agency, Vice Adm. James Syring, said earlier this summer that he would move ahead with the redesign regardless of the outcome the test in June.
“The new EKVs will be more producible, testable, reliable and cost-effective, and eventually replace the kill vehicle used in our current GBI inventory,” Syring said during congressional testimony June 11. Ground Based Interceptor, or GBI, is used synonymously with GMD.
The report said constant change plaguing the program because of the test failures has left in “a state of change.” The EKVs have 1,800 unique parts, 10,000 pages of work instructions, and requires 130,000 steps in the manufacturing process, the report said.
MDA spokesman Rick Lehner said Tuesday the agency agreed with the report, adding that “improving the reliability and performance of the EKV is one of our highest priorities,”
Of the 48 instances of non-compliance, the report attributed 40 to Raytheon, seven to Boeing and one to MDA. The report said 44 of them had been corrected as of July, and Raytheon said Tuesday that three of the four remaining ones have since been addressed.
Vic Wagoner, Raytheon’s director for advanced kill vehicles, said in an August interview before the report was published that the company is working through a design that would reduce the manufacturing steps from the current 130,000 to 37,000, and reduce the current six-month timeframe required to build a single EKV.
The current design is based on the Bush administration’s desire to rapidly field a ground-based long range system 10 years ago, resulting in the Pentagon relying on the prototype design to field the EKVs, rather than transitioning to a design that would be better for larger scale manufacturing.
“What failed to happen then, over the ensuing decades, is we never had the opportunity to go back in and make that system producible,” Wagoner said. He said changes were made to eliminate obsolescence but “without changing the fundamental design.”
Raytheon spokesman John Patterson said the company has resolved all but one issue outlined in the report and noted the recent successful test showed progress was being made.
“We welcome the opportunity to redesign the EKV and look forward to working
closely with the Missile Defense Agency and our industry partners to make the kill vehicle more producible and reliable,” he said.
Boeing and Lockheed Martin [LMT] are other companies that could offer new designs. The MDA has yet to say whether it will hold a competition.