Wartime Contractors, Profit and Pork

BAGRAM AIR FIELD, Afghanistan -- President Obama's attack on "indefensible'' waste in the defense industry is no wild-eyed liberal rant – at least judging by the hard-eyed views of war-fighters out here.

Folks who work in combat conditions have an understandably focused view of the stuff they're given to operate with. For the most part, the equipment works well, and they are grateful for it. But there's also a strong undercurrent of frustration at how long it takes to get innovative solutions into the field. One example is the big armored trucks called MRAP (Mine Resistant Ambush Protected) vehicles. They've been around for years, but weren't made in sufficient numbers to protect troops in Iraq until four years after the war was launched.

Now those Iraq MRAPs are being flown to Afghanistan where, because of the mountainous terrain, the top-heavy trucks have a nasty habit of toppling over. Newly designed, lower-profile MRAPs are said to be on the way. Meanwhile, commanders here say the insurgents have learned to successfully attack the current MRAPs with bombs and rockets. Ask a grunt in an MRAP turret his opinion of the starched-shirt-and-cufflink crowd of defense lobbyists who throng Washington, and you're likely to get an unprintable reply.

This issue came up again here as the president spoke Monday to the VFW convention in Phoenix. I was having a long conversation with Steve Kwast, an F-15E pilot who flies combat missions over Afghanistan. He's also a brigadier general and commander of the 455^th Air Expeditionary Wing based here at Bagram Air Field.

Kwast is the real deal. He grew up in rural Africa, where his parents were missionaries. He is fighter-pilot lean and intense with chiseled features and a quick laugh. He's the recipient of a rare Distinguished Flying Cross for heroism and holds a master's degree from Harvard's Kennedy School of Government.

As we talked in the old control tower at Bagram, with jet fighters screeching off on the runway below, President Obama was lambasting "the indefensible no-bid contracts that cost taxpayers billions and make contractors rich."

He continued: "The special interests and their exotic projects that are years behind schedule and billions over budget. The entrenched lobbyists pushing weapons that even our military says it doesn't want. The impulse in Washington to protect jobs back home building things we don't need at a cost we can't afford. This waste would be unacceptable at any time. But at a time when we're fighting two wars and facing a serious deficit, it's inexcusable. It's unconscionable. It's an affront to the American people and to our troops. And it's time for it to stop."

I had asked Kwast about the unseen high-tech side of the war here, the mostly airborne sensors that enable American commanders to intercept insurgents' communications and track their movements. The unforgiving topography of Afghanistan, its tortured mountains and deep, plunging valleys, make such intercepts difficult, he replied. Current collection systems were built for Iraq's flat terrain. The war here puts a heavy new requirement on American scientists and engineers to come up with Afghan-specific solutions.

What gets in the way of such speedy innovation, Kwast said, is the defense industry itself. "It's too slow and cumbersome," he told me. "We have a different war in Afghanistan and we want to field [sensors] that are different, that really fit the problem set here.'' The problem, he said, is that "it takes 20 years to deliver it.''

Why?

"We have a military-industrial base that is slow and lethargic and filled with fat cats, if you will, and it is to their advantage that it's slow and cumbersome because that means [they earn] more money," he said.

And don't even get him started on Congress and its insatiable appetite for using long-term defense industry jobs essentially as public works projects -- not to mention incumbent-protection projects -- in their districts, regardless of whether the weapons systems being manufactured on those pork-barrel-inspired factory lines are weapons that the men and women actually fighting America's wars either need or want.

I've heard this refrain dozens of times, from senior military officers and enlisted guys who work far outside Washington. As Defense Secretary Gates and his colleagues struggle to streamline the defense industry, they've got a strong rooting section out here.