In a front-page story, the New York Times (4/25, A1, Taubman) reported that a Lockheed Martin combat ship program for the Navy has been "temporarily suspended" for soaring costs, among other issues. The program's tribulations illustrate "what military experts say are profound shortcomings in the Pentagon's acquisitions system." The Times noted that "being over budget and behind schedule have become the norm: a recent Government Accountability Office audit found that 95 projects -- warships, helicopters and satellites -- were delayed 21 months on average and cost 26 percent more than initially projected, a bill of $295 billion." For that experts blame "a dynamic of mutually re-enforcing deficiencies: ever-changing Pentagon design requirements; unrealistic cost estimates and production schedules abetted by companies eager to win contracts, and a fondness for commercial technologies that often, as with the ferry concept, prove unsuitable for specialized military projects."

Lack of competition hurts defense industry, consultants argue. In an opinion column in the Washington Post (4/28, A15), Dov S. Zakheim and Ronald T. Kadish, both vice presidents of Booz Allen Hamilton, write that a recent report from the Government Accountability Office "lays bare a festering problem in our nation's military procurement system: Competition barely exists in the defense industry and is growing weaker by the day." Zakheim and Kadish note that, "in the 1980s, 20 or more prime contractors competed for most defense contracts." Now, "the Pentagon relies primarily on six main contractors, " and uses "a system that largely forgoes competition...and replaces it with a kind of 'design bureau' competition, similar to what the Soviet Union used." The two conclude that, if the U.S. cannot foster "a larger, more diversified base of prime contractors and suppliers, " it may eventually be forced "to nationalize the military industrial base or to 'outsource' production of our weapons systems, with excessive portions of that work going overseas."