A Raytheon Co. mini-missile system at the core of a U.S. weapons-buying storm is technically immature and Army estimates for testing the vehicle protection system appear optimistic, congressional auditors said Monday.
Army officials opted last year to forgo a rival Israeli system even though it was the most technically mature of the systems evaluated, said the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office.
In March 2006, Raytheon won a contract worth as much as $70 million to develop an "active protection system," or APS, to protect future U.S. combat vehicles from rocket-propelled grenades and other incoming fire. Cued by radar, it fires a tiny interceptor missile from the target vehicle.
The APS story created headlines in September and sparked congressional hearings after NBC News quoted unidentified Pentagon sources as saying the Army had "cooked the books" to justify its choice of Raytheon's technology over the Israeli offering.
Report endorses selection process
But GAO found the Army and industry team managing its overall modernization program, led by Boeing Co., followed "a consistent and disciplined process in selecting Raytheon to develop the APS" and in conducting a controversial follow-up study of competing designs.
It said only one of the seven alternatives evaluated was less technologically mature than Raytheon's "vertical launch" concept at the time the study was conducted.
Decision makers accepted the higher risk because they concluded the vertical launch approach had great technical merit, GAO said.
Still, Raytheon's system was "technically immature and the Army's estimates for testing it appear optimistic," the investigative arm of Congress said.
It said the Army had calculated it would need five years to integrate Israel's comparatively mature "Trophy" system on U.S. Strykers, an eight-wheeled armored vehicle.
This appeared inconsistent with the Army estimate that the less mature Raytheon system could be ready for prototype delivery on Strykers in two years and on yet-to-be developed Future Combat System prototypes in three years, GAO said.
System may be ready for demo by late summer
Raytheon anticipates the effectiveness of its APS solution will be fully demonstrated in a relevant environment by late this summer or fall, said a Raytheon official, who asked not to be named.
The threat the system is designed to thwart differs from the powerful roadside bombs being used by Iraqi insurgents. About 85 percent of attacks on U.S. ground vehicles involve roadside bombs, not rocket-propelled grenades, Maj. Gen. Jeffrey Sorenson, deputy assistant army secretary for acquisition, told Congress in September.
Decisions on how to proceed with the Trophy system involved "considerable disagreement" between the Army and the Defense Department's Office of Force Transformation, which was seeking a solution for potential quick use in Iraq, GAO said.
Trophy is built by Israel's state-owned Rafael Armament Development Authority, which teamed with General Dynamics Corp., to present it as an ACS candidate.
Raytheon was chosen to develop the APS system by Boeing and Science Applications International Corp., co-managers of the Army's Future Combat Systems program, with extensive Army involvement and concurrence, GAO said.
The Israeli system is to deployed on Merkava Mark IV main battle tanks within "a matter of weeks," Amit Zimmer, a spokesman for Rafael Armament Development Authority, said in a telephone interview from Tel Aviv.
The Defense Department, in a reaction included in the GAO report, rejected GAO's suggestion that it resume testing APS systems that could respond to near-term needs in Iraq. Army officials have argued that integrating Trophy now would delay fielding more pressing capabilities.
