WASHINGTON _ House and Senate negotiators writing a final defense authorization bill quietly deleted or diluted tough provisions affecting the Air Force's B-21 Raider bomber program at the behest of the main contractor, the chairman of Senate Armed Services Committee said.
The conferees stripped the bill of requirements that passed both chambers to disclose the bomber program's price tag, at least in a classified form. More importantly, they removed Senate-passed provisions spelling out consequences if the program fails to meet cost goals.
As a result, one of the most expensive and important U.S. government programs in the coming decade will continue to be overseen mostly outside of public view and without the usual statutory consequences for overruns, experts said.
The Senate last week cleared the defense authorization measure for the president's signature. The changes to the B-21 provisions made by conferees were vocally endorsed by the aircraft's manufacturer, Northrop Grumman Corp., a top campaign contributor to members of Congress who oversee the Pentagon, according to Armed Services Chairman John McCain.
"It's a testimony again to the clout of the industry in the Congress," the Arizona Republican said in a brief interview. Northrop Grumman was "a big influence," he said. "It's absolutely unconscionable."
Randy Belote, a Northrop Grumman spokesman, declined to comment other than to say that the Air Force secretary has said the program is proceeding according to plan.
Leading defense experts believe that developing and procuring 100 B-21s, the minimum amount now planned, will cost more than $100 billion.
But no one knows for sure how much the government thinks the program will cost, because the Air Force has succeeded in staving off calls from some lawmakers to make public either the cost of the initial contract with Northrop Grumman or the total projected cost of the program.
The B-21 is a secretive Special Access Program, but its existence is acknowledged.
The Air Force, backed by many members of Congress, argues that disclosing the full B-21 program cost or the value of the first contract will enable U.S. adversaries to deduce facts about the plane's attributes.
"The Air Force must balance accountability to the taxpayer with our nation's security," said Ann Stefanek, an Air Force spokeswoman, in a statement. "Information like contract value can provide a window into the development being undertaken by the contractor."
Despite that argument, the Air Force has surprised some defense experts by revealing other arguably sensitive information about the otherwise secretive program, including the identities of the top subcontractors.
Air Force officials also have made public subsets of the total cost picture.
They have disclosed the procurement cost per plane (leaving out research and development costs). Sometimes their estimates include inflation's effects, sometimes not.
They have disclosed the amount of money devoted in the open budget to development of the jet over the next five years. But that is only a fragment of the picture. Even that fragment is probably lacking, experts say, because there may be other programs in the Pentagon's regular budget for subsystems that are not included in that figure, and probably additional programs in the classified budget.
Other acknowledged Special Access Programs, including the Air Force's new nuclear cruise missile, publicly state their total costs, experts say. And closely guarded, top-dollar initiatives that are not technically Special Access Programs _ such as the F-35 fighter jet and Columbia class nuclear missile submarine programs _ must likewise publicly disclose their costs.
By contrast, the Air Force has designated the B-21 a special kind of acquisition program, executed by a super-secret Rapid Capability Office. The Pentagon has exempted the program from the usual rules governing major acquisitions. These include mandates to report costs openly and regularly and, if overruns are sufficiently high, to start a process that can lead to program termination.
"This is an experiment, a test case," Jeremiah Gertler, an analyst with the Congressional Research Service, said. "It's the first time rapid acquisition has been applied to a major defense acquisition program."
Some critics suspect the Air Force's secrecy is driven by motives it is not stating.
Steven Ellis, vice president of Taxpayers for Common Sense, which monitors government spending, said the Air Force is trying to avoid accountability for the kind of cost overruns that have plagued the F-35 and F-22 fighter jet programs and the B-2 bomber.
"They're playing hide the ball from the taxpayers," Ellis said. "This is more about embarrassment than any national security issue."
McCain holds a similar view. He said the Air Force's justifications are "specious."
"Disclosing the contract award value would not reveal anything about the B-21's capabilities," McCain said. "But it would reveal a lot to taxpayers about the cost, schedule and performance of this aircraft, about whether the vendor is living up to its promises, and about whether the Air Force is properly managing this program. That is why next year I will press again to force public disclosure of the B-21 contract award value."
