The A-12 - "It wasn't an airplane, it was a train wreck"

[Dawes]

Wasn't aware of the amount of underhandedness and outright breaking of laws in this disaster until I read the attached article. Seems even the Navy wasn't 100% confident in the program at the outset.

"In 1987, even though the CF and DemVal work had disclosed the need for further design and prototyping, the two teams were required to submit bids for the full-scale engineering development (FSED) and manufacture of the first eight aircraft.7 Northrop maintained its position that it would not risk a fixed-price contract. It would build six aircraft, not the eight demanded by the Navy; it would not build the aircraft to the Navy's schedule; and it would not even guarantee the design and performance results—the Navy would get only what Northrop was able to produce. At that, Northrop estimated that the work would cost fully $2 billion more then the Navy's available funds.8 Northrop was, in the language of the regulations and contemporaneous documents, "nonresponsive" and "unawardable."

Instead of telling Northrop (and McDonnell Douglas-General Dynamics) that the Northrop bid was nonresponsive and unawardable, and that there would be a sole-source negotiation—something the regulations required—the Navy did just the opposite. It told both teams that there was viable competition for the contract on a fixed-price basis and that both teams had submitted bids "within the competitive range."

And it did not end there. Even the price proposed by the McDonnell Douglas-General Dynamics team was more than the funds available. The Navy therefore conducted a further competition—seeking "best and final offers" —in an effort to get the McDonnell Douglas-General Dynamics team to reduce its price. With Northrop out of the competition, seeking best and final offers (while representing that there was viable competition) plainly was an effort to induce McDonnell Douglas-General Dynamics to bid against itself. The resulting price obtained, however, still was not low enough to fit the Navy's funding profile, so the service sought a second best and final offer. Interestingly, this second effort at price reduction failed, and the Navy, in fact, went into the contract with inadequate funds for its performance—a violation of law.

If all of this were not bad enough, the Navy had learned, in its examination of the McDonnell Douglas-General Dynamics bid, that the proposed aircraft's design weight would exceed that predicted by the companies. The question then was what to tell McDonnell Douglas-General Dynamics. If the Navy told what it knew, the companies would not contain their bids within the funds available, and there would need to be further development of the designs. Either of these circumstances would mean that the Navy would not be able to initiate the contract in the coming year, with the very real risk that funding would be lost and with it the program. For these reasons, it was decided to not tell McDonnell Douglas-General Dynamics that they would be unable to design and build the aircraft within the weight predicted by the contractors and specified as a contract requirement.

There was more bad faith. When the Navy examined the cost and pricing data that had been submitted by the McDonnell Douglas-General Dynamics team, it realized that the companies had underestimated costs by more than half a billion dollars. If the contract were awarded at the proposed prices, the companies would experience losses in the hundreds of millions of dollars (not only the half-billion in costs, but all of the predicted profit as well). Again the decision was made not to tell the contractors. It should be noted that decisions not to reveal what are termed "suspected mistakes" violate the Federal Acquisition Regulations, and such violations would have entitled the companies to void the resulting contract.

At the time of award, knowing that the aircraft would never be built at its specified weight, the Navy faced yet another serious problem. Regulations required that the Navy report to DoD that the aircraft would not meet its weight threshold. DoD, in turn, was then required to disclose these facts to Congress. Because it would have put congressional support for the program at risk, no such disclosure was made. Instead, the Deputy Chief of Naval Operations for Air Warfare told the Naval Air Systems Command to proceed with the program and report the overweight condition only when it became a reality.

https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/1999/february/12-legacy-it-wasnt-airplane-it-was-train-wreck

Edited January 27 by Dawes

[Stuart Galbraith]

Just think, they could have put all the money into Super Tomcat and got a world class strike platform, second only to strike eagle.

[Dawes]

True that. Heck, even the cancelled A-6F would have given them a long range, heavy strike capability. Although decidedly non-stealthy. And much uglier.

[sunday]

Just now, Dawes said:

True that. Heck, even the cancelled A-6F would have given them a long range, heavy strike capability. Although decidedly non-stealthy. And much uglier.

Like the B-52, yes.

I think the A-12 needs of funding also lead to the cancellation of the Super Tomcat.

[Stuart Galbraith]

Ech,echo,echo..

[Yama]

Personally, I would have favoured VFMX 

https://i.imgur.com/qXuCgtn.jpeg

 

[Ol Paint]

A good book on the debacle is "The $5 Billion Misunderstanding" by James Stevenson.

The book lays out the case that the A-12, and the subsequent court cases that eventually went against McDonnell-Douglas/GD was one of the key elements in driving that company under.  It's been several years since I read it, so I no longer recall all the details, but there were also issues that the Navy was well aware that the McD/GD team was lacking critical information on the LO side of the design--information that Northrop knew because of their experience with the B-2 and other advance stealth programs.

The sister tome, "The Pentagon Paradox," tells the sordid story of the F-18 development and the Navy's effective campaign to move the goalposts so that they wouldn't have to buy a USAF fighter.

Edit to add:  The case did not end in 1999.  In fact, it wound up in 2014:

https://www.defensedaily.com/finally-a-12-contract-dispute-ends-with-federal-courts-dismissal/navy-usmc/

Quote

Terms of the settlement, which was reached between the contractors and the Navy last summer, include a $400 million in-kind payment by the companies to the Navy and an agreement by the government not to seek any money from the contractors, which had filed counter claims against the United States seeking to change the termination to one of convenience for the government and obtain payment for unpaid costs incurred on the A-12...

...GD on Wednesday announced that it took a $198 million—$129 million after-tax—charge in its fourth quarter financial results in connection with its portion of the in-kind payment. That payment is being made in the form of a credit against the September 2011 contract to build the Navy’s DDG-1002 destroyer, the third and final ship in the DDG-1000 line.

According to the Justice Department statement, Boeing will provide the Navy with three EA-18G Growler aircraft and a credit for converting the existing multi-year contract for the electronic attack aircraft into a firm-fixed-price contract. The Navy told Defense Daily on Friday that the aircraft will be part of 21 Growlers the Navy plans to purchase with FY ’14 funds for delivery in 2016...

Doug

Edited January 27 by Ol Paint
As noted.