AMRAAM : Advanced Medium Range Air-To-Air Missile : A controversial missile takes its best shots and seems destined to prevail over its adversaries.

By RALPH VARTABEDIAN

May 31, 1987 12 AM PT

Times Staff Writer

An armada of Air Force and Navy jets rendezvous over the Gulf of Mexico every few weeks in a coordinated military operation that has all the markings of a war effort.

When a dozen aircraft are in just the right position and a network of complex technology is working perfectly, a lone pilot pulls a trigger and ejects a missile that races away at twice the speed of sound to an unseen target.

Whether the missile hits the target carries enormous implications, more political than technological, for the results are watched ever so closely by often-suspicious members of Congress, anxious defense contractors and a hopeful military.

These are tests of the Advanced Medium Range Air-to-Air Missile (AMRAAM)--the largest-scale and most expensive tests of its type ever conducted. The Pentagon is spending more than $300 million just to make sure AMRAAM works before it commits to spending $7 billion to buy 24,000 of the missiles. By 1988, the Air Force will have fired 90 AMRAAMs at three ranges across the country and will have conducted thousands of other air and ground tests of the missile’s complex electronic guidance system.

The tests conducted so far will play a big part in a judgment that Pentagon officials are scheduled to make this Thursday, when they decide whether to put the AMRAAM into initial production after nearly a decade of difficult development at Hughes Aircraft.

AMRAAM remains among a handful of the most controversial weapons programs in the Pentagon, owing to a painful history of technical problems, schedule delays and cost growth. The program had to be stretched out in 1985 after development went slower than expected, saddling Hughes with enormous costs not covered by its contract. Meanwhile, the estimated future price of the missile soared above early projections, which were based on the Air Force’s unbridled optimism.

AMRAAM is the epitome of the Pentagon’s strategy to invest in the most advanced technology weapons--which typically come at premium prices. Even today, the affordability of the missile is disputed, though the Air Force considers it critical if U.S. fighters are to combat a numerically superior Soviet force. Air Force officials are depending on AMRAAM to cut projected aircraft losses in half in real battles.

Despite AMRAAM’s past problems, Hughes and the Air Force say the program is on track as it comes up for approval before the Defense Acquisition Board, a group of top civilian defense officials who will hear an oral presentation by Air Force officers seeking approval to start AMRAAM production.

“I am confident,” said Brig. Gen. Thomas R. Ferguson, the Air Force’s program manager for AMRAAM, who will argue the missile’s merits before the board. “I believe the program is in good shape.”

Hughes officials, meanwhile, point with satisfaction to the test program, which has scored 29 successes out of 34 firings, a record that Hughes says is unequaled in prior missile development programs. In one recent week, the Hughes missiles went five for five in a series of difficult shots.

“I have been in this business for over 45 years and I have seen a lot of test programs. Considering the complexity of this weapon, this has been the best managed and best run test program we have had,” said Jack L. Winkle, Hughes senior vice president-marketing and chief of the firm’s Washington office.

The missile has survived repeated attacks in Congress to kill it. The Air Force was forced to stretch out its schedule. And Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger was forced by Congress to certify that the missile would meet its requirements and not exceed a specified cost.

Unrealistic Forecasts

A decision to abandon the program now is almost inconceivable to both supporters and critics. “AMRAAM is a freight train running down the track,” said a congressional critic of the program.

A production go-ahead will give Hughes at least a limited opportunity to recover from a 6-year-old financial nightmare with the AMRAAM.

When Hughes was awarded a $421.2-million, fixed-price contract in December, 1981, to develop the AMRAAM, the company appeared to have scored a resounding triumph over competitor Raytheon. But AMRAAM would become a hole into which it would throw more than $255 million of its own money to complete development.

A General Accounting Office report, issued in March, traced the history of the AMRAAM program and found that the Air Force had been grossly unrealistic in forecasting the technical risks in developing the missile. Air Force officials compressed the development schedule from 90 months to 70 months, even though an in-house Air Force study at the time projected only a 60% to 70% chance of success in meeting the schedule and budget.

Nonetheless, the Air Force signed an ambitious fixed-price contract with Hughes, even though Hughes raised concerns about the “reasonableness” of the schedule, the GAO said. The company began full-scale development in August, 1981, and was behind schedule almost from the start, the GAO said. It eventually had to extend development by 25 months.

As if the risks weren’t high enough, Hughes was also required to teach Raytheon how to build the missile so that after development was completed, Raytheon could compete for future production contracts. Raytheon escaped the risks associated with the development process and gained a near-equal shot at winning production contracts.

Hughes is now conducting a “school” in Massachusetts for Raytheon officials, providing its competitor with everything it needs to know about the missile’s design.

“What I come away with is that you are better off to be a follower than a leader,” observed Hughes’ Winkle. “I doubt very seriously that this company would enter into another program like this with a known up-front investment.”

Hughes has little choice now but to turn its back on its AMRAAM past and look forward to earning a profit on production contracts. It is undoubtedly a bitter pill to swallow. Winkle acknowledged that contract profits are unlikely ever to allow the company to recoup its $255-million investment.

“I don’t know how you are going to get back into the black when you are splitting production (with Raytheon) and you put in those investments,” he said.

Further Competition

If the Defense Department approves production this week, the Air Force will award Hughes a fiscal 1987 contract to produce 105 missiles and Raytheon 75 missiles. By fiscal 1989, Hughes and Raytheon will compete to build 1,800 missiles. If Hughes wins, it will build the missile at its Tucson plant. Raytheon would build the missile at its Boston area facilities.

In addition to the Pentagon business, Hughes and Raytheon are likely to compete for foreign business. Defense officials are scheduled to decide this summer whether to grant foreign countries a license to produce the AMRAAM or offer them only completed missiles.

The question remains whether Hughes can compete effectively for production contracts against Raytheon.

“I think Hughes has donated all the money to this program we are going to donate,” Winkle said. “We are going to bid this to cover our (future production) costs and earn a reasonable profit.

“If we can’t design and develop this missile and win a fair share of production, we deserve to lose it,” Winkle said.

Hughes officials don’t like to discuss the old, painful story of the AMRAAM cost growth and schedule delays. The new story, in their mind, is the stunning success of the AMRAAM from a technological standpoint.

The elaborate AMRAAM tests have quieted a lot of criticism that AMRAAM could not meet the difficult specifications for performance, weight and reliability.

John E. Krings, the Pentagon’s director of operational test and evaluation, said in a recent interview that the scope of the AMRAAM tests is “mind-boggling,” noting that each live firing provides 3,000 technical measurements of the missile’s flight characteristics. That’s three times as many as some full-sized aircraft tests.

The 34 live tests have produced nine direct hits, according to Frank H. Beckett, Hughes manager for advanced product development. The other successes were based on judgments that the missile passed close enough to the target to kill it with its explosive charge.

Still, the tests are running a few months behind schedule because of a shortage of test facilities. While Krings says he is “not happy” with the delays, he believes that the tests are the most rigorous possible examination of whether the missile meets its specifications.

But the GAO is expected to contest the validity of some AMRAAM tests. An analyst said one particular test mandated by Congress was conducted in a less realistic jamming environment than anticipated. Air Force officials say all the requirements of the congressional test were met.

AMRAAM is full of technical features that only a missile designer could fully appreciate. It is seven inches in diameter and 12 feet long, packed with eight circuit boards, a radar system, a radio, four miniaturized electric motors, six electric batteries, a solid rocket and a 50-pound explosive warhead. The engineering feat of putting that into such a small airframe is widely admired.

It is said to be the first all-electric missile, meaning that it doesn’t have a hydraulic plumbing system that can leak fluids and result in costly maintenance. Instead, it uses four electric motors the size of a beer can that put out an impressive one horsepower each.

It differs from most other missiles in that it has a so-called active radar seeker. That means that the missile acts on its own radar in the final 10 miles or so of flight and is free of the launching aircraft for guidance. The radar is considered as capable as the radar on a full-sized F-18 jet fighter.

Technological Achievement

“AMRAAM is brilliant, an absolutely brilliant technological achievement,” said Thomas Amlie, a longstanding AMRAAM critic who was formerly technical director of the China Lake Naval Weapons Center. “I didn’t think they could do it, but by God, they made it work. It has superb anti-jam modes. There are things on AMRAAM that nobody has ever done before.”

So does that make Amlie an AMRAAM supporter? “Heavens no,” he said, arguing that AMRAAM’s mission could be fulfilled much more cheaply with alternative designs.

“It’s like trying to stand up in a hammock. It’s theoretically possible to do, but so what?” he quipped.

A continuing issue in the AMRAAM program is whether its design is complete. Weinberger was required in 1985 to certify that the design of the missile was completed, but the GAO said Hughes and the Air Force continue to make dozens of changes.

Ferguson said the ongoing modifications to the design are all part of the 1985 plan to restructure the program and that the Weinberger certification took all of the current modification work into account.

Another central question in the AMRAAM program is its affordability. Air Force and Hughes officials say the AMRAAM will cost an average of $300,000 (in 1984 dollars) if all 24,000 missiles for the Air Force and Navy are produced, but critics have said that is unrealistic. The first production missiles, which will include tooling and test equipment, will cost about $1 million each.

The total program cost, including development and production, has increased from $3.4 billion to $8.2 billion (in 1984 dollars).

“I have always stuck by my guns that AMRAAM is going to cost more than $750,000 a piece,” said Anthony Battista, professional staff member on the House Armed Services Committee. “How in God’s name are we going to afford that when we can’t afford to fully meet our procurement needs for a $200,000 missile?

“The missile started out at $68,800, and it is up now to $300,000,” Battista said. “We are a hell of a lot closer to my figure than to theirs. We are halfway to my figure and more than three times theirs.”

Battista said that the cost of the missile’s components alone, without assembly and test, was more than $300,000 as of a year ago.

Asked about the Weinberger certification to Congress that the missile would cost $300,000, Battista remarked: “There isn’t a certification that is tall enough or wide enough that a secretary of defense could not leap over it in a single bound.”

Disagrees With View

Ferguson, the program manager, said: “AMRAAM will cost less in the aggregate than what the secretary has certified to Congress. We have attempted not to be optimistic.

“We have had swarms of people look at the AMRAAM budget. Nobody has found errors in it,” Ferguson added.

Still, AMRAAM is an expensive missile. Until now, air-to-air radar missiles have had a poor reputation for accuracy, even within the aerospace industry. If AMRAAM can significantly improve the probability of a successful hit in actual combat, it may well be viewed as affordable in the long run.

“Can we afford to lose pilots?” asks Hughes Vice President Lee Pitt. THE AMRAAM DEBATE

What Hughes and What the the Air Force Say Critics Say Cost $300,000 $750,000 per missile. per missile. Test Results Most successful Tests are behind test program schedule, but of its type results appear in history. good so far. Military Need Critical for U.S. Could be met more fighters to shoot cheaply with down numerically modifications to superior Soviet existing missiles. aircraft.