Part 24 was focused on somewhat of the continuation of summarizing the comments of Vice CJCS Gen James “Hoss” Cartwright and Director of National Intelligence Acquisition Executive Alden “Al” Munson regarding issues and lessons learned with space and the FIA Program, in particular.
I’m somewhat guilty of jumping back and forth in my story as I touch upon how obvious and easy it became to talk about government malfeasance in the FIA Program once Boeing was basically fired and Lockheed Martin Corporation (LMC)-aka, the ”mean girls”-were awarded the completion (optical) contract. In defense of my jumping, there was a lot going on in the background, these were very expensive programs and context is important to understanding what “in tarnation” was going on here.
The irony meter was certainly pegged when former NRO Director Jeffrey Harris became the beneficiary-now in his capacity as an LMC Space product line President-of the firing of Boeing: which is why we have an Army saying that you just “can’t make this schtuff up.” It had been nearly ten years since Jeff was fired from the NRO, but there was likely huge satisfaction in being the recipient of the decision, particularly in light of my speculative premise-if true-that he did not intend to continue the recompete for all three phases and would never have awarded the contract to Boeing under any circumstance based on the lack of prior experience. It would make for a great interview at this point, given the 20th anniversary of GAP and the passage of time.
I don’t want to detour away from our storyline too much at this point-which is the prelude to a major detour (tennis apology dear reader-) but Jeff was not exactly sitting idle, twiddling his thumbs waiting for action on the FIA front, as LMC was the lead contractor for the NIMA/NGA GEOSCOUT contract (aka, GEOSKUNK (my nickname.)) Additionally, Jeff’s business unit was also the lead for the program I mentioned earlier that was cut by PDDNI Kerr, and also for one of the programs that went bye-bye to fund FIA (so two somewhat ground enterprise architecture programs and one build to space program-in addition to FIA optical)
I don’t know if I have made this clear enough or not, but as all the drama on FIA optical was playing out, NIMA/NGA-as an outcome of the Peter Marino led NIMA Commission-had received the Tasking, Processing, Exploitation and Dissemination (TPED) Analysis Plan (TAP) 1.5B or so from congress to execute a Modernization Plan (TAP Mod Plan) to “catch-up” on the engineering side of the interface required for FIA: in recognition of being way behind in this regard.
Charitably-or not so much-GEOSKUNK was the 3-legged dog struggling companion to Boeing’s FIA optical debacle. To put a finer point on my premise about this being the poster child decade for bad programs, our business unit had ~monthly status meetings with Jeff to brief progress, strategy, issues or whatever. At a point in time where things were not going too well with the GEOSKUNK effort-and that’s somewhat tongue in cheek, as you could have plumbed such a point anytime from the pre-acquisition that started in 2000-2001 right up through 2012 or so-as it was running neck and neck for worst program of the year/FYDP/decade.
I’m somewhat of a bad source witness on all things GEOSKUNK-which was pretty much an unmitigated disaster from day one but was not helped with the somewhat extraordinary step taken with the USDI disapproval of moving forward to Block 2 in 2004, which prevented NGA from expending a huge chunk of funds-that were committed-on contract-to LMC and partners. The disapproval was signed out by Ms. Leticia Long-soon to be NGA Director in a few years (the first female to lead an IC Agency) on behalf of USDI Cambone and might have been the final straw in the relationship between he and Clapper.
Having been involved somewhat up to the neckline in some of these programs and politics, the enmity between the two was genuine, organic, and in fairness to Cambone-who was pretty much the lone senior who was not on board with the part of the GAP Mitigation recommendations vis a vis more funding for Boeing-the disapproval or more properly the “non-concur” with the request on GEOSKUNK had little to nothing to do with personal relationships and everything to do with the fact that it was a poorly run program, executing terribly, that was briefed as a bunch of gobbledy-gook architecture boxes in DAWIA speak that told a remarkably shallow and underwhelming story on what was to come in Block 2: or where we were at with Block 1.
For instance, the Space Base Radar (SBR) program-that was of high interest to USDI-recall he provided in December 2002 1.274B to NIMA to engineer SBR TPED-featured prominently in the GEOSKUNK engineering detail briefed to create and show evidence or the veneer of ongoing progress. The problem being that our agency SBR program briefing was based on concept development efforts through at least 2006 or so to complete the conceptual, requirements definition and source selection prep work that was essential to defining the things we needed to accomplish, as a radar vendor was down selected, and we produced the documentation to contract for the ground engineering.
So how could our GEOSKUNK team and LMC be touting the engineering of a solution end point for an SBR program that our own agency SBR team was briefing (to USDI, a very interested party-and congress) that was in the concept definition and development phase that would run through at least 2006?
This would truly become a “man behind the curtain” episode as congress took the measure of how dysfunctional the engineering execution was becoming on-and between-some of these big IC muscle movements. The lead horse-or muscle movement was the NRO Boeing executed FIA optical-which was on the verge of scaring folks to death, the NIMA/NGA ground part of the FIA interface being engineered through the GEOSKUNK effort-which was a total mess-as evidenced by the non-concur with Block 2, the USAF SBR Joint Program Office briefings-where they were undermining not only essential mission partners (in the minds of congress) NRO and NIMA, but themselves by acting as if this would be the first Moving Target Indicator platform in history, while also insisting on touting the tracking capability of the platform when even program supporters (e.g., DARPA, MIT Lincoln Lab, MITRE, Aerospace) acknowledged that it would take a minimum of 25% more satellites than were programmed at a cost that was as much as several 100% more than what was funded-at a time when FIA optical was eating every bit of spare change available on the hill.
You also had the NRO New Imaging System program that was about to go to the Mission Requirements Board with a briefing that would slip the schedule by some 20%, reduce capability by ~14% and require more money: I’ve written elsewhere that this briefing might as well have given a bottom-line up front that the “purpose of this briefing was to kill the NIS Program.”
So it was quite the furry eyeball response from USDI when our GEOSKUNK engineers came in touting what they were doing and how critical it was for SBR-in 2004-while the launch date was slipping out to ~2010.
There was also a Block 3 behind it (Block 2) that was little more than a dream state, circular file, overflow of reasonable stuff that no longer fit in Block 2 that was now filling out like a dead animal in the sun because of the non-concur. A vision-hallucination (not funded,) paper machete model that had a listing of candidate programs enumerated (from DARPA and NGA InnoVision) as somewhat of an analogy-like vision.) Think of it as a hand puppet presentation in a dimly lit room with little to no explanation-smoke, mirrors, some humma-and more humma, and some ding dong: thanks for listening!
In response to the USDI disapproval of Block 2, NGA repackaged things under the banner of “Convergence”-which sounds gitchy and nice-but when you moved beyond the bumper stickers into the programmatics, you found Convergence to be a classic engineering “catchphrase” for the conundrum an organization faces that has to carry the dead forward-legacy, heritage information technology systems-in this case many that served the COCOMS-beyond the point where they can be managed or it makes sense to update them, but they haven’t taken the time or done the engineering and architecture homework and analysis of alternatives to migrate to some new implementation.
If that sounds vague, confusing or squirrely, my bank in my little town in Virginia-First Union-was bought by a national bank and I had an issue with a legacy contractor provided 401K that had now come under Wachovia. I don’t remember what the hiccup was, but one of the bank managers who had been there for 15 years walked me back to her office-and used what she referred to as “the beast,” an older terminal that came up with the classic Disk Operating System command prompt and screen (this was like 2005,) that she had to use to interact with and transition my account: a huge system vulnerability-when you think about it- and evidence that the new bank had not bothered to fully transition the accounts, but was doing one squeaky wheel at a time. Pretty unusual, huh? Not so much-I just went through the same experience six weeks ago with a Credit Union here in Colorado-had to use the “old system.”
We had several dozen systems like this-for instance, the B-1 bomber route and target planning software-one terminal in one spot that did one function-that NIMA received some small amount of funding to maintain-that would have cost big bucks to have LMC write code (Software Lines of Code) to enable it to work in the enterprise-when it was literally for one customer at one US AFB.
The detour continues-I mentioned the NIMA Commission above which provided in the report-somewhat between the lines-a warning or notice of sorts on the “spotty performance” (their terms) of NIMA acquisition, attributable to or largely a legacy or holdover from the Defense Mapping Agency (DMA.) The Commission made a pitch for the consolidation of the Intelligence and Mapping functions via an architecture strategy that used TPED as an organizing construct that was ripe for the doing with the influx of funds from congress.
It was in truth a frank and stark reminder that many DMA’ers still considered NIMA to stand for “Not In Mapping Anymore,” with the hysterical (funny) and pithy remark by the commission that mapping and intel in NIMA were “two separate disciplines with an agency in common:” unbelievable and savvy truth!
The cautionary note to the Commission’s optimism was a companion report called “Getting Started,” written by former Central Imagery Tasking Office (CITO) chief Dr. Annette Kriegel (obligatory Blazing Saddles whinny) and well-respected Rand systems and process analysis expert Rita Lewis. The report documented and addressed shortfalls in acquisition processes within NIMA as a result of adopting many of the dysfunctional DMA processes, while not opting to implement best practices from the other organizations that were folded in, including the Defense Airborne Reconnaissance Office, the Defense Special Programs Office, The Defense Dissemination Program Office, and some small residue of CIA National Photographic Interpretation Center engineering cadre, among others.
Kriegel recommended a total revamp in leadership, training, processes and certification in order for NIMA to comply with best practice DoD acquisition processes that were sorely lacking in an organization that was comfortable doing five-year acquisition processes that somewhat worked in the mapping business at a different pace and operational tempo but proved to be totally ill-and un-suited for the quick turn and pace of the IC. The two cultures were not unlike merging a fast-food vendor approach (Schnell-Imbiss) and a five-course gourmet restaurant. Managed by the shoving together of at least 3 totally different and independent personnel systems and as many budget shops.
The DMA/NIMA/NGA acquisition migration strategy for many of these systems was just like Wachovia’s-but especially for those transferred from NRO as a result of “them” being in NGA’s lane, doing “our job.” Typically consisting of a Power Point level of engineering analysis showing how the system largely duplicated a capability that was already done in some system-which was always astounding to see how Gumby-like these efforts were to come up with a faux sense of engineering rigor, with the ruse to re-host it, see how many people noticed and complained when it didn’t work or perform as needed, rinse and repeat and move onto the next theft.
That sounds very shocking, terrible and “conspiracy-like,” doesn’t it? That a government agency would have people working for it that were such low life’s-touting customer and “Warfighter” support-yet continuously killing off what amounts to innovative programs done to help marginalized users, doing faux transitions, stealing the program money for “our big programs.” And I think I know what you’re thinking, it is easy to write such an accusation, but how ‘bout a little proof?
Stay tuned-a future article is going to focus on one of the incidents I’m referring to that I worked from soup-the NIMA complaint to NRO-to nuts-when emails were sent by our DAWIA friends to do exactly what I am touting above. What do you do about something like that? I don’t know, I brought it to my boss and eventually Dir Clapper and explained how my gut “Spidey Sense” had been tingling over these rat basswiches for several months on this issue-and here was the proof of what bad faith these folks were trafficking in: on a project I worked from late 1998 for what turned out to be ~17 years to fend off these idjiots-who then shut it off and removed it from our architecture in 2016.
But it lives today providing a service to 12K or so Warfighters on the distant end of the support line because a heroic NRO Lt Col (USAF, Ret) Chris Quaid (RIP) and good friend-funded a backup system in the event NGA was dumb enough to kill the system (we were.) I worked the USAF Green Door process to get Chris assigned to our team at Westfields-he was one of the most upbeat, energetic, take on any task person I worked with over the years-I always told him he was in the wrong service. He was the contracting officer representative for a small satellite study I did from 2012-2015.
Chris is a tragic story, as during his retirement physical they discovered a brain tumor that turned out to be Glioblastoma (6 years ago-yesterday-article by his wife Michele-call sign Warrior Princess) he never enjoyed a day of retirement and died just short of a year after he retired (and I’m getting weepy writing about him-always happens.)
5 January 2023
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