Thank goodness for the
Pentagon’s DOT&E (Director, Operational Testing & Evaluation)
group! The Navy is pushing ahead, hard,
with the AGM-88E Advanced Anti-Radiation Guided Missile (AARGM) which is a
replacement for the AGM-88B/C High Speed Anti-Radiation Missile (HARM). However, in their zeal to field the missile
they are glossing over or ignoring serious performance issues although you
wouldn’t know it from the speed with which they’re moving ahead with the
program.
DOT&E, on the other
hand, has found the AARGM Block 1 to be “not operationally suitable”. Here’s some specifics, quoted from the
DOT&E 2017 Annual Report.
· The Navy evaluated the current version of Block 1
software for only 24.0 hours of the 234.09 hour test.
· AARGM Block 1 software demonstrated improved capabilities
over the previous Block 0 software version but also demonstrated effectiveness
shortfalls in key capabilities of reliability and accuracy.
· Of the eight live fire events, six were successful engagements
and two were unsuccessful because the missiles did not impact anything of
tactical significance. The analysis of the two unsuccessful events revealed
classified deficiencies. … - The
Program Office made adjustments to correct the problems but did not verify the
effectiveness of the corrections with additional live fire events before
fielding Block 1.
· AARGM Block 1 demonstrated a slight decline in
reliability compared to Block 0, which failed to satisfy reliability
requirements during IOT&E
· The Navy attempted to streamline the AARGM Block 1 FOT&E
test design by conducting developmental and operational testing simultaneously
… - This is the same concurrency that has plagued every other Navy/Military
program. Why won’t they learn? How stupid are they?
· Cybersecurity testing was inadequate to assess AARGM survivability
against cyber-attacks.
There’s more but you get the
picture.
 |
| Advanced Anti-Radiation Guided Missile |
Now, here’s the damning
statement (as if what you just read wasn’t damning enough!).
“The Navy released Block 1 software in July 2017
without completing operational testing and without adequately addressing
performance and software stability problems discovered during Block 1 testing.”
There you have it. The Navy has put untested software out in the
field with known problems. They just
don’t care. People are going to die
using this weapon and the Navy just doesn’t care.
