By Andrea Shalal
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Senator John McCain on Wednesday urged U.S. military officials to carefully examine what the Pentagon's chief arms tester has called "inflated" estimates of the reliability of a remote minehunting vehicle developed by Lockheed Martin Corp (N:LMT).
McCain, who heads the Senate Armed Services Committee, told Reuters in a statement that he welcomed the Navy's decision to order an independent review of the long-delayed Remote Minehunting System, or RMS, being developed for a new fleet of littoral, or coastal, warships.
The system has been in development for nearly 17 years, with more than $700 million spent to date and $868 million earmarked for production of 54 vehicles in coming years.
McCain and other lawmakers say the system is not reliable enough. They want the Navy to look at alternatives before starting a series of operational tests that would pave the way to production.
McCain said he expected the reviewers to "fully explore" concerns raised by Michael Gilmore, the Pentagon's director of operational test and evaluation. Gilmore said the Navy inflated operating time estimates for the Lockheed system by counting hours of analysis time when it was not in the water.
In an August memorandum, Gilmore said the system was breaking down after every 18.8 to 25 hours of use, far short of the Navy's 75-hour requirement.
Navy officials said they ordered the review of the RMS and its core Remote Multi-Mission Vehicle (RMMV) after its poor performance in a technical evaluation that ended Aug. 30.
"While the RMS has demonstrated the ability to meet operational requirements, reliability performance has not been acceptable during the most recent technical evaluation," said Navy spokeswoman Captain Thurraya Kent. She said the independent review will look at possible alternatives.
Lockheed says the system's mean time between failures is far higher at 117.3 hours, well above the required 75 hours, and it is working with the Navy to improve maintenance procedures.
Company spokesman Keith Little acknowledged challenges encountered during the evaluation, but said the system exceeded or met key performance parameters during a development test in early 2015.
He said each RMMV mission took the place of five to six conducted by other unmanned vehicles, and the vehicle operated in rough weather or high seas that would hamper or prohibit other minehunting methods.
"Alternatives would take up to five years and significant investment to ... achieve the performance demonstrated by RMS using RMMV today," Little said.
Defense Undersecretary Frank Kendall assured McCain in a letter dated Oct. 8 that the department would not allow further production of the Lockheed vehicle until the review was completed in November. A copy of the letter was seen by Reuters.
McCain, a Republican, and Senator Jack Reed, the top Democrat on the committee, raised concerns about the program in a letter to Kendall in August. They said "too much is at stake to accept the status quo and permit systems with long documented cost, schedule, performance, and reliability shortfalls to get a free pass into the fleet and production."