MX Rail Plan Too Ambitious, GAO Tells Lawmakers

In a report certain to fuel criticism of the Reagan Administration’s latest basing scheme for the MX missile, the General Accounting Office has warned lawmakers that the Pentagon’s plan to begin placing the 10-warhead missile on rail cars by 1992 is too ambitious.

The Air Force’s efforts to stay on its “optimistic schedule” could increase the costs of the program, already estimated at $7.4 billion, and produce a faulty or unreliable missile system, the investigators concluded.

The GAO study, dated Jan. 12 but not yet received on Capitol Hill, is expected to provide ammunition to congressional proponents of the Midgetman mobile missile, a single-warhead alternative to the rail-mobile MX. The incoming Bush Administration must choose by Feb. 15 how it will spend about $350 million set aside for development of one of the two missiles.

May Rally Support

Among the options under consideration by the Bush team is a delay in the deployment of about 50 MX missiles aboard rail cars. On Capitol Hill, where there are already powerful backers for such a move, the GAO’s conclusion may rally further support, said a key Democratic congressional aide.

Last May, when Secretary of Defense Frank C. Carlucci ordered work to begin on the new MX basing scheme, he forwarded a timetable that called for deployment to begin by December, 1991. That date, dictated by President Reagan, “is the primary driver of the overall Rail Garrison program schedule,” the GAO said.

In an effort to meet the demanding deployment deadline, the Air Force has devised a schedule that overlaps development, testing and production of the missile and its rail cars. This Pentagon buying strategy is called “concurrency.”

“Our past reviews . . . have regularly identified concurrency as one cause of cost, schedule and performance problems in weapon system acquisition programs,” the congressional auditors warned. As a result, the development and production of the rail-based MX “will warrant continued management attention,” the report blandly noted.

The GAO noted that the Pentagon is expected to begin producing the missile and its rail cars well before tests and design studies have proved that the entire complex of hardware and software will work together.

For instance, the Pentagon would give the go-ahead to produce the missiles and their rail cars by March, 1990, two years before several key development contracts would have been completed. A series of five essential flight tests, designed to demonstrate the ability of the missile to launch from its rail car, would not even begin until 15 months after the Pentagon’s production go-ahead, according to the GAO.

“This report indicates that the Air Force hasn’t learned any lessons,” said an aide to one congressional critic of the latest MX-basing scheme. “We had these problems (of concurrency) with the B-1 bomber and with the MX itself,” when the MX missile was being produced for deployment in Minuteman silos, he added. “If they’re still doing it with the rail-mobile MX, they’re going to be watched very carefully.”

The Reagan Administration has called for the eventual deployment of 100 MX missiles on rail cars that would shuttle between 11 U.S. bases on the public rail system in times of crisis. Under Carlucci, the Pentagon has identified the rail-mobile MX as one its top priorities, and rejected the smaller Midgetman missile as too expensive.

But Congress has withheld final approval of the railroad basing scheme until more research has been done. Led by House Armed Services Committee Chairman Les Aspin (D-Wis.), many lawmakers favor development of the Midgetman as an alternative to the MX, arguing that it is a weapon better-suited to arms control proposals now under negotiation between the United States and the Soviet Union.

Aspin has also criticized concurrency in the acquisition of weapon systems. He has said, for example, that in the development and production of the B-1B bomber, the Air Force’s rigid adherence to a set schedule, even when technical problems arose, resulted in a procurement fiasco that could take billions to fix.