Government owes the responsibility for the cost about that milestone i would be happy to sit down with Committee Staff to walk through what you need to ensure that you do have confidence that all of the statutory requirements in terms of cost estimate doc Acquisition Program and documentations is just like a milestone in be will prepare them for you and walk through it with hugh if we need to establish a milestone. I dont hesitate to do that. Is important to have that very specific items even with the initial testimony that they would cost 200 million and it when you have been asked to justify those changes against it will be good to have the specific items to check off if we go forward. We will work with the staff Going Forward. If i may, i would say all of these are modifications at least 100 million per ship that cost has not been independent validated but if were that close to have everything ready for the milestone the muscats have the milestone. Although there are not legal requirements for you to approve the ship but if you tried you will be told he will jeopardize what prices. I understand. This weekend only go by the numbers that we were given. Who gave us a 220 million per ship and then with the and no bureaucrat to we know who that was quite. It was uniformed leadership at that time. I didnt know the Uniformed Navy was responsible for this kind of acquisition . It thought it was the civilian side for . I want to thank the chair for his very important focus on the issues with the lcs and also to thank mr. Francis for his good insight on how to try to bring back the oversight with the cost overruns. Dr. Gilmore on the different topic want to ask, right now currently pulling block blood negative in comparison to what to think fed chairman with the work we have done together to make sure there is an dave premature retirement because of its capacity to have Close Air Support for our troops on the ground. So mixing signals with what has ben happening with the airforce before this committee that the fact e. F. 35 will not so air support is very important but it was an honor to make scheerer there are positions and we will consider shortly next week to make sure this comparison the test is done before there is any we tire of it. I want to ask where the comparisons comparisons of that process and how that will be conducted in a thorough way . in conjunction for the evaluation force, the three of us detailed plan for all testing and a 35 including in particular a comparison. I may not change that but i is this a good plan but with the testing to conduct Close Air Support and also to control those airborne missions. It is a rigorous test end of conductive will provide. With the message and syndication was with the comparison test canvasback to these requirements prevent specifically. Un. And read a and have to convince them but it is there in plain emission. Now we will find out if the measure it is up. For but my projection is the Operational Test that would included this comparison will not begin in all likelihood until 2018 or 2019 because the testing will not end until july 2018 at that point you can get a release of the capability software that enables the aircraft deal with the environment and the all projections are the meat and the model be available through 2018 we cannot do testing until that time. But it is not ready to engage in combat cracks. Until it has one that is verified and credited it would not have the capability of those threats of what were spending to have the deal. But with isis in syria as iraq spec correct. Are they ready to assume that role . Unit people argue that it could but i wonder about that argument because the capability it has a is airtoair missiles and bombs with limitations that the states clearly some of that is the evaluations that our consistent with that and then there are other problems with availability that is at best 50 percent bottoming out at 20 europe 30 so why with the commander said in an aircraft with no bombs are limited availability to fight isis . And the cost is roughly . I hesitate to give the number it is well over the initial cost between 80 and 100 million. At the inventory due to other components, so this is important getting the timing of the comparison test. If i am correct we wouldnt start training for the Operational Test until 2018 that takes about six months. Then it would be conducted by the time its over and the reporting is done another year has gone by so tha that reports mandated in the bill wouldnt be available. As i listen t listened to this n that the strike me first i start with the premise nobody involved in this process was malicious or meant to do harm and i want to say that you are one of the most capable officials ive met in this business. However, you put in the new class of carrier and put the future combat systems it seems to me there is a deeper issue going on and it strikes me that its the desire to have the greatest technology as soon as possible and at the same time, control costs and to do it on time. We are trying to invent things while we are building them. We spend a lot of time reviewing programs that either failed or have just gone out of bounds in the cost and schedule and almost invariably there are common themes. A lot of it is the developing multiple technologies to integrate them at the same time on a major weapons platform of major system. Theyve written a number of reports. There is an inclination to underestimate the cost. Particularly something thats never been built before. Then when you get into that environment and get started, it is difficult to stop. On the other hand if you say we are going to fully test, build a prototype and test then thats going to lengthen your employment and that conflicts that need to have the weapons to meet the current threats. Yes, sir. So what we are doing is we are cochairing the requirements weve used, production readiness reviews, Program Reviews and we are challenging every specification in terms of do we really have to have that or is there another way to do t this e ultimate capability we have to ask. The decision to revert back was a recognition in the 2001 timeframe that we had overreached in terms of technology versus what we really needed in the war fighting fighg capability so we go back to the tried and true but that decision made it likely that only building the three ships was going to make them more expensive. What it avoided is it recognized the cost and then going back and introducing the capabilities we need to keep pace with the threat the key word is incremental. We have a hearing on the carriers and as i recall we were trying to do more. It was over three ships and collapsed and we are paying the price in terms of that. How do we avoid this in the future . I gave you that 51 example. We threw away the notion of design and took the proven holder form and what we are doing is tailoring the ship to meet the requirements with replacing the yearlong effort with myself and cochairing those to get down to a design that we are confident it is mature enough we are not introducing unnecessary risk. It seems to me though one of the things we need to think about is how to design the Weapons Systems in a way i hate to use the word modular but so they can be upgraded as Technology Improves instead of having to rebuild the whole thing. If you take a look at the vertical launching system, it starts off with th the the ex d it now handles the sm three, the s. , the tomahawk so now we can develop the missiles in the environment and bring them to the ship and then we deal with the upgrade to the landbased system. So the whole system isnt filled from scratch. Thank you for holding this hearing and i look forward to future hearings and i hope we can continue this discussion of why does this keep happening. Can i follow up for a moment . You are right on on the problem and weve done quite a bit of work. I think what we have is an age old acquisition culture where there are strong incentives when the program is Getting Started to overpromise on its ability to perform and underestimate the cost and load requirements on especially if youre only going to have platforms once a generation off to get everything on the platform you can so, we have to look at why those incentives occur. Some is funding in the pentagon. And the pentagon. And if you show any weakness, your program isnt going to go forward, so you have to be a supporter of the programs going through. We have to learn where to take risks and how to take risks and i would say its before that milestone decision thats where we need to make investments and try things out and be willing to put money. You are right if we take the time to do that, thats going to delay the capability of the war fighter and we find it to be unacceptable but when we have improved the program and it runs in we find that acceptable. I think we can get it right, and i empathize with the secretary, he ihes in a very difficult position and i think that hes one of the fastest that ive had the pleasure to work with. But hes charged with executing the programs and defending the programs and that is a tough decision to put somebody in. But the process demands it. I would like to say one thing on the topic based on my experience over 26 years. We have to quit denying the facts. Theres plenty of facts available about what is happening all along. Yet as recently as 2013 the navy testified they can have offtheshelf products and its very low in a very wellmanaged and that turned out not to be the case. Again in 2013 the navy testified the linchpin now has over 850 reliable growth and the guidelines which in the meantime is between Operational Mission failure substantial feeding the requirement. That statement was incorrect. Ive been reporting for several years but those claims were incorrect and the Program Office couldnt bring them to deal with what the facts were. Ultimately they did with the independent review team, but whathatswhat i have seen repean his and an ability, a refusal to deal with the facts are of how well the systems are or are not performing. Its because of these incentives and other things discussed. Thats why some of us express such extreme frustration, because we are only as good as the information we receive in that it would cost 220 million per ship which now the secretary says that is absolutely wrong. Nobody said it was wrong at the time. Everybody said it was right. And yet, i dont want to take the senators tim but there are two stories i could relate to. One we needed very badly in iraq and the secretary of defense had to preside over the weekly meeting to get to the battlefield to save lives. Then we had the other extreme for the pistol thats 200 pages long. Its gone through layer after layer and the reason why i am frustrated and other members are we can only make decisions on the information we get. If it is incorrect or false as the secretary just said, then how can we function effectively for the people we represent . Thats why you sense this frustration among the members of the committee including the chairman because we havent even talked about the Aircraft Carrier and the catapults. I dont want to take more time out of the committee but i hope that the witnesses understand if we have to bring this to a halt. Fooling around on the fringes has proven to be unsuccessful. Thank you mr. Chair. I agree we have to have honest brokers and the people that will be held accountable. I dont know that we have seen that so far. But i do want to thank all of you for coming in today. And as you may be aware, improving the Acquisition Program management is a priority for me. I have passed legislation to pass governmentwide, not just the dod that governmentwide with an emphasis on areas that are designated by the gao and high risk and this especially includes the Acquisition Program management. I know we can all agree its become an example of one of those challenges we mentioned the Aircraft Carrier. We wont go there today but thats another one we need to take a look at. During times of defense spending caps, we difficult it is and we have the entitlement spending that will further squeeze the military budgets. We cannot have repeats of acquisition failures like weve seen with lcs. Acquisition success is bottom line a matter of National Security. And this is a question for all of you if you could briefly respond please. The Program Changed its acquisition approach several times something cited by the gao as a reason for the increasing cause and also created a performance issues. In your opinion, what the program and others throughout benefit from a standardized approach to managing the portfolio based on the best practices not only of the industry but also the government before fully moving forward if you could briefly respond please, starting with you. Let me just describe the experience broke the navy and we have retooled the entire way we do business when it comes to Acquisition Programs. I think we are trying to pull the best practices in. We are reviewing requirements and specifications that need to complete the production. We have Program Managers pretty much under a microscope right now and weve taken things like cost and the cost into the requirements so that you dont get to ignore cost while you are chasing the requirement. So just like speed, range, power if you start to infringe on the cost requirement that we put into the documents and you have to report just like you do if you infringe on one of the other requirements and identify what you are going to do to reverse that if yorevertthat if you arer otherwise we look at canceling or if necessary adding costs to the program. Would that have been good before the process started . The witnesses that informed the congress, i dont think they knew. I dont think they knew or understand what it would cost so the system. Why didnt they tell the congress. Thats why sitting sidebyside holding Program Managers accountable understanding the details of the cost element by element and if we need to make trades we will make trades. Thank you very much. Vice admiral . Trading back to the system from my perspective as the commander of the force is one of the things that we conducted showed that we needed to take a step back and apply and look at the lessons that we have learned to value the Combatant Commanders for the operational availability and i think it is a constant process and i know we will be continuing to look as we apply more of those as we learned them and then feeding them back into the system as it relates to the acquisition system if we can apply them ba back. If you could respond as well, im amazed that we are only just now discovering that we should be discussing these and have a finished product in mind before we start the project. We should use best practices. If you read the documents that describe the acquisition process, they incorporate most of these except they are often waived. What ive watched over 26 years is what i call a constant search for process solutions to what i think are fundamentally leadership problems. When the leadership is presented with a cost estimate that a number of people coming and we were warning that they were probably quite low when leadership doesnt make it so aware, doesnt question the information is being given and lets it go forward, that is a big problem. The process can help get them that information but if they dont do their jobs and question the information they are being given and it is recommended they send to the congress and elsewhere than they are failing and i watch those occur for 26 years and im certainly for process improvement and if you have a bad process to stop information from getting forward that doesnt enable file reviews, then thats all bad but if you have leadership that doesnt do its job, those process solutions will not fix things. That is well put. Thank you. Thank you to each of you for being here today, realizing that this topic is a challenging one for you. Facts are stubborn things and leadership is important. I find your testimony the most damaging document concerning any Government Program i have ever read not just to what happened in the past, and my colleagues have focused on the procurement process but the decision of what should we do Going Forward. Its the ability to accomplish the mission and the testing that has been reduced in effect because the cybersecurity defenses are not amply developed so in this approach mr. Francis has outlined the procurement process rather than a block purchase, what is the case now for Going Forward with this program at all . It is not my purview to say what ships the navy should buy or what capabilities they should have, thats the navys decisi decision. What we have seen is that the ships are not meeting the performance requirements and we are well into the program. I cant predict what the future will hold. And i know it sounds parochial but i will say it again and i said in my opening comments whatever the navy decides to do with regards to Going Forward, the history here in this program as well as many others is clear and that is the only way you are going to discover the problems with performance that are significant that you have to deal with before you send sailors into harms way and combat you dont want to discover these ar for the first time when youre in combat the only way youre going to discover those problems is by giving realistic testing along the way. And i agree completely you want to fly before you buy, which apparently hasnt been done here and obviously what can any of the witnesses gave us that the ship is actually going to be capable of accomplishing its mission and protecting those are going to be onboard . We can give you information along the way with regards to what they expect them to do and what they are going to do is changing along the way as they learn more, which is appropria appropriate. Its lead in the process, that its appropriate. You will never get from me or anyone else, and honest ironclad guarantee that the ships are going to perform people now say they hope they would. Those hopes are sincere but again, i know it sounds parochial. What you have to co