Controlling Quality

Missile Defense Agency Director Lt. Gen. Patrick O'Reilly today outlined some of the things his agency is doing to get contractors to improve their quality control on missile defense contracts. Specifically, according to his prepared testimony at a House Armed Services strategic forces committee hearing:

Until we complete planned competitions, including the greater use of firm fixed price contracts, we will have to motivate greater attention by senior industry management through intensive government inspections, low award fees, the issuance of cure notices, stopping the funding of new contract scope, and documenting inadequate quality control performance to influence future contract awards by DOD.

O'Reilly took contractors to task last month at an MDA conference, Inside Missile Defense reported, saying: "I have gone to a point where I am withholding funding for current contracts because I don't see the level of scrutiny and a level of culture necessary for the precision work that's required -- not in engineers' design capability, but actually in manufacturing."

O'Reilly went further during today's question-and-answer portion of the hearing, responding to a query from subcommittee Chairman James Langevin (D-RI) regarding target failures. O'Reilly cited the case of a failed Terminal High Altitude Area Defense intercept test last December where the air-launched target failed to ignite after separating from a C-130 aircraft. A Failure Review Board found "systemic problems" with the aircraft's launch system, he added.

As a result of the target failure, O'Reilly halted any future use of air-launched targets and said that one option is to expand "the number of contractors which we use so we can induce competition, which I believe is part of the solution to quality control issues."

He continues:

It's not that these are poorly built systems -- the precision required of missile defense systems is very high, and it is achievable, but it requires a specific disciplined experience base and investment in testing . . . that's required. And so to motivate that, I have delayed any new scope to that particular company so that until they satisfy that they have made corrective actions in management structure and in approaches to targets and so forth. And also at the same time I have taken the planned work that I was going to use with that company in 2012 and put that scope on another contract that I have with another company and asked that second company to develop an air-launched capability so that we have true competition to emphasize the fact that it is an absolute requirement in the missile defense business that you have the highest repeatable quality. It is a condition on which our contracts should be set.