Congress, Pentagon and the Spending Fight.

A perennial Pentagon passion for new weapons systems and a Congressional love for the spending such projects bring home to constituencies have always made the procurement process one of high-stakes contention -- a tension that only seems to get worse. Take the Navy's new destroyer, the DD(X), with state-of-the-art systems and weaponry that require a crew of as few as 125, a third the size of those in today's destroyers, and stealth technology that makes it appear no larger than a fishing boat on radar. But the DD(X) is becoming so expensive that it may end up destroying itself, the New York Times reports, with the Navy now thinking it can afford five at most, down from the 24 it once wanted. The first two are now expected to cost a total of $6.3 billion, $1.5 billion more than originally planned, the Times says. And the DD(X) is not alone. Among other systems with escalating costs, the new CVN-21 aircraft carrier is now estimated to cost $13.7 billion, up $2 billion. These increases materialized in the past six months.

While the Navy says it can make do with fewer but faster big ships and aircraft patrolling the oceans, "Congress, seeking to sustain America's shipyards, wants as many big ships as possible," the Times says. The Navy had wanted a winner-take-all competition to build the destroyers, but Congress wants to give one to Northrop Grumman's shipyard in Mississippi and the next to General Dynamics' yard in Maine -- an approach the Navy says will add $300 million or more to the cost of each DD(X). Such concerns aren't limited to the Navy. The Air Force plans to spend more than $6 billion on its most-advanced rockets through the end of the decade, roughly doubling average payments for launches of government satellites as it covers overhead and other contractor costs in order to maintain both Boeing and Lockheed Martin as suppliers, The Wall Street Journal reports. The plan is expected to generate tensions in Congress, already under pressure to cut the defense budget, the Journal says. And the scrutiny will be especially acute because the plan doesn't mandate savings through cooperation by the two companies.

The Air Force is also on the spend-more side of another debate, over the F/A-22 Raptor fighter jet, a pilots' dream plane that outclasses most of the competition in terms of speed, maneuverability and radar awareness, the Washington Post reports. The problem is, the U.S. has few enemies these days that can offer a real dog fight. And as the Pentagon tries to decide where the Raptor fits into its vision of future warfare, both the Defense Department and Congress are asking whether its superior abilities and the affection of pilots is enough to justify an investment of more than $70 billion.

(4-19-05, The Wall Street Journal online.)