The words "TFX" and "TPP" still raise chills in defense board rooms nearly 50 years after they were invented. And, for better or worse, both terms -- landmark policy failures of military acquisition -- will be associated with Robert McNamara, who died earlier this morning.
The failures of Tactical Fighter Experimental, or TFX, set back the cause of joint acquisition of military aircraft until the mid-1990s, when the Pentagon launched the program that became the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter.
It is difficult to fault McNamara's logic in hindsight. The air force needed a new air superiority fighter and the navy required a fleet defense fighter. Combining the two programs would save taxpayers $1 billion and might even promote inter-service cooperation, right? Well, the insistence upon a common airframe -- as opposed to a family of aircraft sharing common production and a majority of components -- doomed the project from the start. The navy canceled its version in 1968, leaving the US Air Force with the F-111, a compromised, over-weight fighter that eventually found a valuable niche as a regional bomber and radar jammer.
Total Package Procurement, or TPP, was the other disaster of McNamara's tenure. After being duped and disappointed by defence contractors throughout the 1950s, McNamara's Pentagon unleashed TPP starting with the C-5A contract award to Lockheed. It was another failure. Lockheed was required to commit up-front to the C-5A's development and production costs, plus guarantee performance and delivery dates. (Airbus agreed to supply the A400M under similar terms nearly 40 years later, with similar results.) Lockheed won the C-5A contract with a $1.9 billion bid, compared to Boeing's $2.3 billion offer. But the C-5A's costs eventually grew to $5.2 billion, threatening to bankrupt Lockheed and diverting air force funds from other needs.
The failures of Tactical Fighter Experimental, or TFX, set back the cause of joint acquisition of military aircraft until the mid-1990s, when the Pentagon launched the program that became the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter.
It is difficult to fault McNamara's logic in hindsight. The air force needed a new air superiority fighter and the navy required a fleet defense fighter. Combining the two programs would save taxpayers $1 billion and might even promote inter-service cooperation, right? Well, the insistence upon a common airframe -- as opposed to a family of aircraft sharing common production and a majority of components -- doomed the project from the start. The navy canceled its version in 1968, leaving the US Air Force with the F-111, a compromised, over-weight fighter that eventually found a valuable niche as a regional bomber and radar jammer.
Total Package Procurement, or TPP, was the other disaster of McNamara's tenure. After being duped and disappointed by defence contractors throughout the 1950s, McNamara's Pentagon unleashed TPP starting with the C-5A contract award to Lockheed. It was another failure. Lockheed was required to commit up-front to the C-5A's development and production costs, plus guarantee performance and delivery dates. (Airbus agreed to supply the A400M under similar terms nearly 40 years later, with similar results.) Lockheed won the C-5A contract with a $1.9 billion bid, compared to Boeing's $2.3 billion offer. But the C-5A's costs eventually grew to $5.2 billion, threatening to bankrupt Lockheed and diverting air force funds from other needs.
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