January 2020
We used the term “accidents” (as opposed to mistakes or errors) because it was the term a government ofcial in OUSD(AT&L) applied to reporting anomalies for programs like Chinook. We identifed three in the December 2015 SARs: Chinook helicopters, the Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle, and the Intercontinental Ballistic Missile Fuze modernization programs. Quite possibly, there are more. We only present the Chinook situation in detail, as the others were about how dollars were assigned within the program. As described earlier, the CH-47F Chinook Improved Cargo Helicopter programmade a number of changes to its defnition of “unit” over the course of the program. In the December 2015 SAR, however, planners and cost analysts apparently lost track of how they had been defning a unit, and subsequently submitted quantity and cost forecasts that did not include all of the units identifed in the simultaneous PB submission. Figure 4 shows the discrepancy between predicted future quantities in the December 2015 SAR and the corresponding 2017 PB. Through FY 2017, the total quantities match perfectly. Beginning in 2018, units described as SLEP units in the PB are missing from the SAR forecast. As a result, the projected cost of these units is not included in the SAR calculations of APUC, PAUC, APUC growth, or PAUC growth.
FIGURE 4. SAR VERSUS PB PRODUCTION QUANTITIES FOR CH 47F
45
PB SLEP
40
PB NEW
35
SAR
30
25
20
15
10
5
0
2015
2016
2017
2018
2019
2020
2021
41
Defense ARJ, January 2020, Vol. 27No. 1 : 28-59
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