The European anti-missile shield: a little vague, warns the Court of Auditors
Lack of clear direction, low estimates over the entire cycle and risky planning, the report published this week by the US Court of Auditors (GAO) is not quite an ode to the new look anti-missile shield. The new approach for ballistic missile defense (BMD) in Europe, announced by President Obama in September 2009, has some approximations.
« Effective planning requires clear guidance on the desired end state and key players, including commands ". Those " guidelines are not yet in place for the EPAA (European Phased Adaptive Approach)” explains the report. The Department of Defense (US) has not developed EPAA life cycle cost estimates because he believes that the EPAA has a evolutionary approach that will change over time ". An error according to the GAO. " Cost estimation best practices include the cost of methods for developing valid estimates, even with such uncertainties. ". As for the EPAA schedule, it is not fully integrated with procurement, infrastructure and staff activities which need to be synchronized.
Conclusion: the Ministry of Defense knows a risk of seeing “ expected schedule slippage, reduced efficiency and increased costs in the various phases of EPAA implementation ". A classic of defense investments...
On this week's Air&Cosmos 2278 magazine, we read on page 26 that the test firing of the SM-3 block 1B missile intended to equip the ground batteries in Europe and the AEGIS ships carried out on September 1 was a failure.
These machines would cost between 10 and 15 million $ per unit and the DoD intends to collect a dozen or so from 2012 and order 46 others.