Air university

As of March 31, 2008, Boeing had delivered over 193,106 JDAM kits to the Air Force, Navy, and foreign countries with 119 months of on-time deliveries to the U.S. government.⁹⁰ Mr Dillow said, “The way this program met an AUPP on a PPCC for 11 production lots while always exceeding the KPPs is truly unbelievable and unheard of.”⁹¹ The JPO/Boeing JDAM team received the 2004 William J. Perry Award for outstanding leadership and technical achievements resulting in significant contribution to precision strike systems.⁹² For manufacturing excellence, Boeing received the 2005 Shingo Award for its JDAM factory.

JDAM was so successful because it avoided the seven deadly sins of acquisition and met government expectations that were explained in Chapter 2. First, bad people management skills were avoided with Mr. Little being chosen as the JPO JDAM PM. He drove change management with DAPP being his license. Second, immature technology was avoided by nurturing capabilities through the HIGH GEAR OCD. Third, stable requirements were maintained with only seven total KPPs. Furthermore, competing contractors had the flexibility to trade off TPMs to lower AUPP. Fourth, JDAM released a phenomenal 53 weapons in the six months prior to the LRIP decision of which 22 of them were accomplished during an early Air Force operational assessment. Over a four-week period, operational crews put JDAM through an operationally representative evaluation, including targets shrouded and obscured by weather. All 22 weapons successfully performed up to their operational requirements including overall accuracy of 10.3 meters, significantly better than the 13 meter requirement.⁹³ Fifth, IPTs allowed communication from the Pentagon to the JPO and from the sub-suppliers to the contractor. Sixth, EMD-I pitted MD against LM in a rolling down-select, a very open competition. Seventh, result based incentives were used for the Mk-82 JDAM program to get 80 JDAMs into a B-2 on schedule and within cost. Expectation-wise, the JDAM program met General McPeak’s ceiling price, provided a warranty, exceeded accuracy performance, met the PPCC with leading edge commercial performing parts, and met production surges at a moments notice in time of war. Figure 3.4 shows the relatively flat AUPP curve with minor increases due to tail pin fin fix and IGAS over the history of increasing and decreasing production lots.



Figure 3.4 JDAM Accuracy, PPCC, and Production⁹⁴

There are several acquisition best practices concerning leadership, teaming, strategy, and execution that can be gleamed from the JDAM development and sustainment phases. Table 3.5 summarizes lessons from EMD-I and the first 12 years of production. All the money saved by the JPO and Boeing’s investments laid the ground work for the Small Diameter Bomb program.

— Donald Rumsfeld, former U.S. Secretary of Defense⁹⁶

The Small Diameter Bomb (SDB) system consists of the Guided Bomb Unit (GBU)-39 Small Diameter Bomb Increment I (SDB-I) weapon and the Bomb Rack Unit (BRU)-61 smart pneumatic carriage. The SDB-I is a 7.5 inch wide, 285 pound, precision guided, relatively low collateral damage bomb. The SDB-I is an All-Up-Round (AUR) that consists of a Global Positioning System (GPS) enhanced inertial navigation system (INS) with the latest Selective Availability Anti-Spoofing Module/Anti-Jam (SASSM/AJ) technology giving it a circular error probable of 2 meters.⁹⁷ This weapon has a uniquely designed 206 pound penetrating, blast fragmentation warhead with a special 38 pound high explosive fill allowing it to penetrate one meter of reinforced concrete or three feet of steel-reinforced concrete to destroy missile launchers, aircraft revetments, and bunkers. The SDB-I has a fold-out diamond-back wing to achieve a stand-off range of more than 60 miles from high altitude drops.

The AUR has no regularly scheduled preventive maintenance or testing requirements in the field. The AUR storage container has corrosion control and the SDB-I has a Built-In-Test (BIT) capability either in or out of the container. When four GBU-39s are carried on a single BRU-61, they are intended to replace a single 2,000 bomb like the general purpose Mark (Mk)-84 and the penetrating Bomb Live Unit (BLU)-109, providing combat aircraft the ability to carry four times the amount of bombs. The smart BRU-61 carriage allows pre-mission selectable end-of-stroke velocity/pitch rate pneumatic ejection (the first of its kind) for simplified integration onto aircraft with external carriage capability or internal weapons bays. The carriage also generates weapon launch acceptability regions for the aircrew.⁹⁸ Currently, only the U.S. Air Force uses the SDB-I.

This chapter reveals the relatively untold SDB acquisition story from its birth in the laboratories, to component advanced design (CAD), to system development and demonstration (SDD), to full rate production (FRP) and delivery into the combat environment--all in record time. Much like in the previous chapter on the Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM), Jim Collins’ Good to Great: Why Some Companies Take the Leap ideas on having the right people, in the right seat, on the right bus, headed in the right direction, doing what they are good at, will ultimately frame lessons on leadership, teaming, strategy, and execution.

The Leap from Labs to Industry

The SDB system’s ancestral tree began in 1995 with the Miniaturized Munitions Technology Demonstration (MMTD) to evaluate possible technologies for a new 250 pound class, precision guided, stand-off bomb.

In 1997, Air Combat Command’s (ACC) Miniature Munitions Capability (MMC) Mission Need Statement (MNS) asked for a weapon with the following capabilities: increased kills per pass, carried on a multiple ordnance carriage, precision capability in adverse weather, capability against hardened targets, reduced munitions footprint, increased weapons effectiveness against area targets, minimized potential for collateral damage, and reduced susceptibility of munitions to countermeasures.⁹⁹ The Miniaturized Munitions and Carriage System Operational Requirements Document (ORD) developed two Key Performance Parameters (KPPs). One was weapon loadout and the other was interoperability with GPS. All other requirements, thresholds, and objectives were tradable. Although the threshold requirement for weapons effectiveness (WE) was 17 weapons to kill 14 designated fixed target types with 80% probability of damage, there was trade space between accuracy, WE, reliability and other parameters included to kill 14 targets. Another ORD requirement was affordability. The government customer and warfighter were willing to make tradeoffs between technical performance requirements to gain the benefit of lower average unit procurement price (AUPP) and total life cycle costs.¹⁰⁰ The Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) and civilian industry developed prototype carriage systems in 1997 in the form of smart multiple ejector racks to allow a single military electrical bus equipped aircraft station to carry, communicate with, and eject multiple weapons.¹⁰¹

In February 1998, the Milestone 0 decision initiated the start of a Concept Exploration phase and directed ACC to conduct an Analysis of Alternatives (AoA). By October 2000, the AoA validated the MMC MNS. It validated 22 concepts that captured potential technologies and justified operational requirements to include the need to target relocateable and mobile targets.¹⁰² The conclusion of the AoA was to go forward. The MMTD transitioned into the Small Bomb System in 1998, which later became the Small Smart Bomb (SSB) Extended Range (ER) Advanced Technology Demonstration (ATD).¹⁰³ The Munitions Directorate of the AFRL demonstrated stand-off ranges and weapons effectiveness of miniature munitions with the MMTD and the SSB ER ATD programs.

Catalysts and Programming

Lynda Rutledge was the Program Manager (PM) at Eglin AFB’s Miniature Munitions Program Office (this office is now called the systems program office, SPO) and she was affectionately known as the “Mother of SDB”. By December 2000, she had convinced Ken Lockwood from the AFRL to combine funds with the SPO to make SDB a “program of record” within the government.¹⁰⁴ Congressional FY01/FY02 plus-ups formed the financial basis for subsequent contract awards. At that time, General John Jumper, Chief of Staff for the Air Force (CSAF), wanted the F-22 to become more than a single mission air superiority fighter. He believed the F-22 needed an air-to-ground capability. Since there was not going to be as many F-22s as he originally planned, the aircraft needed small weapons to put into the weapons bay to increase the number of targets it could prosecute.

Raytheon, Lockheed Martin (LM), and The Boeing Company (Boeing) responded to a spring 2001 Request for Proposal (RFP) to compete in a Component Advanced Design (CAD) competitive risk reduction program. Each company was evaluated on past performance, risk, maturity, mission capability, and contract price. The relationship between low risk and high maturity was of a very different nature than traditional acquisition programs. Ms. Rutledge emphasized to the competing contractors that a better grade will be awarded to lesser capability as long as their submittal was mature and working. “Can’t let promises rule,” Ms. Rutledge explained, “In the past, contractors would promise the moon and give us (the SPO) plans on how they would get you there, but we were working against a schedule and did not want to fund new science. We (the SPO) incentivized maturity.”¹⁰⁵

Dan Jaspering was involved with SDB part-time until it became a program of record and he became Boeing’s first official SDB PM in early 2001. James Brooks was his Chief Engineer. During the CAD RFP phase, Mr. Jaspering and Mr. Brooks concluded that they would need to prioritize building and flying prototype hardware in the fixed-price CAD phase.

In August 2001, a Milestone A decision called for a two-phased SDB program and allowed entry into the CAD competition. The SDB-I phase concentrated on an INS/GPS weapon for stationary targets and a multiple ordnance carriage; while SDB-II focused on a terminal seeker to handle moving targets. The CAD phase would have two competitors design, develop, test, and conduct system-level risk reduction. In September 2001, the SPO awarded Boeing and LM two $47 million fixed price CAD contracts.¹⁰⁶ The SDB program is represented in Figure 4.1.



Figure 4.1 Original SDB Program¹⁰⁷

A JDAM Repeat? More of the Same, and Different

The previous chapter attributed JDAM’s success to direct leadership, integrated product teams, commercial practices, waiverable rules, affordability, supplier teaming, and open and helpful source selection strategies. The SDB program had a similar start-up and added other attributes.

The JDAM was designated as a Defense Acquisition Pilot Program in 1994 and was expected to operate more like a commercial than government business to emphasize affordability. Likewise, SDB was designated as one of six Pathfinder programs in 2002 as “a program that could blaze a path for others to follow.”¹⁰⁸ Those working on Pathfinders adopted a “try it and see if it works” mentality with two main objectives. First, foster an active and cooperative dialogue between the warfighter, scientist, acquirer, and tester. Second, make collaborative spiral development a standard operating procedure in the acquisition community. Unfortunately, funding constraints and immature technology forced the Secretary of the Air Force (SECAF), CSAF, and the Commander of ACC (COMACC) to defer SDB-II requirements in May 2002.¹⁰⁹ The program was re-competed in April 2006 and will be explained in Chapter 5. Figure 4.2 shows how the SDB-I program was base lined in 2002. SDD overlapped with the first low rate initial production (LRIP) lot making required assets available (RAA) available at the end of operational testing (OT).¹¹⁰



Figure 4.2 SDB-I Program Baseline¹¹¹

Champions, Mold Breakers, and Stable Requirements

In contrast to General Merrill McPeak, the CSAF during JDAM’s development, who made cost that program’s battle cry; General John Jumper, who eventually became the CSAF during SDB’s development, placed emphasis on schedule—a different leg of the three-legged stool of acquisition. “You will deliver SDB Spiral 1 to the Warfighter in FY06,” General Jumper first championed the SDB as COMACC making his intent clear in 2001, “Schedule is paramount. Although your initial delivery schedule will be on the F-15E, make no mistake; your chief customer is F/A-22.”¹¹² Judy Stokley, Deputy for Acquisition, Air Armament Center recorded in a Memo for Record:

I can’t overstate the positive impact of the CSAF establishing a clear priority among the competing demands of cost, schedule, and technical performance. This fostered a “don’t accept no” attitude, forced hard decisions by the warfighters to live with a spiral/incremental approach – the “80% solution”, and gave the program team leverage to focus stakeholders on meeting commitments.¹¹³

Judy Stokley previously served as the Air Force Program Executive Officer for Weapons (AFPEO/WP) at the Air Armament Center. At the start of CAD she appointed Colonel James McClendon Program Manager (PM). Colonel McClendon operated like Terry Little; the original, successful, cut-to-the-chase Joint Program Office PM for JDAM. Although Ms. Stokley and Colonel McClendon both had over 15 years of acquisition experience in developing, testing, and running Acquisition Category 1D programs, they were not of the traditional, and often criticized, defense acquisition mold. Ms. Stokley commented that, “We practiced rabid aversion to accepting viewgraph promises, marketing, and under-bidding.”¹¹⁴ Colonel McClendon’s view on acquisition reform was that “there is no cookie cutter approach, but it gives you the permission to think!”¹¹⁵

These champions and mold breakers (General Jumper, Ms. Stokley, Colonel McClendon, and Air Combat Command) kept SDB requirements stable. The warfighters came to understand and accept the original ORD KPPs which remained the same throughout CAD—loadout and interoperability, the second of which DoD required a GPS anti-jam and selective availability anti-spoof module. These leaders also convinced warfighters not to lock down any threshold requirements until near the end of CAD in order to proceed with an evolutionary acquisition strategy that provided an initial capability based on mature technologies. This strategy allowed flexibility and enabled the competing contractors to trade technical performance for schedule and lower risk, consistent with the CSAF’s demand of “RAA in 4QFY06.”¹¹⁶

The “Go-Fast” Plan and Picking IPT Members

In order to build and fly hardware the way Mr. Jaspering and Mr. Brooks envisioned within a fixed budget, they essentially traded man-hours for hardware and flight assets. If Mr. Jaspering’s staff was to be lean, whoever was going to be assigned to SDB had to be the best. Boeing wanted to win this contract and Mr. Jaspering’s boss (Vice-President and General Manager of Advanced Aircraft and Missiles) allowed him to choose among the company’s best to build an A-team of Integrated Product Team (IPT) leads and engineers.¹¹⁷ Jim Brooks, the Chief SDB Engineer at the time, recalled, “The competitive advantage was using a hand-picked team whose experience enabled them to independently drive multiple fronts while staying connected to the program level strategies.”¹¹⁸

Building the team was a balancing process between keeping discipline and still going fast. Essentially, they decided to lay down a “go-fast plan”. They held a series of meetings to recruit motivated and skilled people and set improbable goals to see who was interested and who was not. Those who were interested, and willing to innovate, were asked to join the IPTs, as well as, a few naysayers because it is good to have a few “grounding” people.¹¹⁹

Also included in the IPTs was Bill Wise, the SPO designated Boeing “helper” who once worked directly for Ms. Rutledge. Just like in JDAM, the SDB helper was to act as a liaison between the contractor and the SPO. This involved assisting to resolve discrepancies and interpretation issues regarding user requirements and the RFP, monitor the integrated master plan and schedule (IMP/IMS), develop oral presentations, and most importantly, to help the company win the contract! Mr. Wise remembered his Boeing “helper” time as “the best training in 26 years of my military acquisition life.”¹²⁰ He was impressed at how Boeing’s SDB IPT teams grew as an integrator, allocated cost and technical performance requirements, and emphasized testing to reduce risk. This approach sharply differed from the usual business development “promises”. Mr. Wise was also impressed by Mr. Jaspering’s battle rhythm (the disciplined meeting schedule) and communication routine that required a dominant person to institute. Mr. Jaspering’s “Weekly 5-15” (5 main bullets of accomplishments/issues that take 15 minutes to type, a Boeing standard) that was sent to all IPTs kept the team focused on the “Go Fast” plan.¹²¹

Colonel McClendon coined the term “alien autopsy” because experience showed if the configuration of any weapon changes through development, any testing done before changes were made become invalidated. The objective of “alien autopsy” was to document a baseline configuration and freeze it. Colonel McClendon wanted the same configuration in production as in developmental and operational testing. This is a challenge when prime contractors are trying to produce a cost effective weapon but need to test prototypes early, avoid part obsolescence, and keep reliability.

There were two levels of configuration maturity. Although processes and some suppliers were leveraged off of JDAM, there were some new companies with critical components that needed to be qualified. For example, General Dynamics Ordnance and Tactical Systems (GD OTS) bought out IMCO Tool and Die that made the warhead case, Aerojet made the warhead fill, KDI Precision Products made the fuze and height of burst sensor, MBDA made the diamondback wings, and Sargent Fletcher made the BRU-61. The “Alien Autopsy” in Figure 4.3 depicts the part and company changes between CAD and SDD.



Figure 4.3 SDB Part Changes from CAD to SDD/Production¹²²

Buy, Make, or Sell “Build to Print”

The diamondback wing is designed and built by MBDA, a European consortium that specializes in guided missiles and missile systems.¹²³ In order to get the SDB-I AUR AUPP

down to $30,000 during full rate production, Boeing conducted a “virtual” competition between MBDA and an internal and parallel Boeing diamondback wing development based on Boeing’s Stand-off Land Attack Missile-Extended Range production design. At the beginning of CAD, MBDA’s wing cost approximately $15,000; the goal was to get the diamondback wing cost down by a factor greater than two. Coming out of CAD, Boeing chose MBDA for the wing.

Boeing engineers designed the smart, pneumatic, multiple ejection BRU-61. Building bomb racks was not a core capability of Boeing weapons, so Boeing sold the design rights to Sargent Fletcher (SFI) who had a history in bomb rack development. SFI evolved from a builder to an integrator and final assembler. This California company learned about globalization and sub-supplier quality through managing Ultra (a British company that builds compressors), and Artus (a French company that builds compressor motors and controls).¹²⁴

In the end, all suppliers were assessed and challenged. “Not all the companies were treated the same,” Dan Jaspering recalled, “But they were all treated fairly.” Once a company made the final cut, it had the opportunity to become a partner for life. If they continued to meet technical specifications, on-time deliveries, 20 year warranty (JDAM and SDB were first programs to offer this), and quality, they would receive ever increasing degrees of preferential status.”¹²⁵