AF Panel Gives Northrop’s MX Program a Mixed Review

A scientific advisory board appointed by the Air Force to examine the reliability and accuracy of the MX missile guidance system issued a qualified endorsement Wednesday of Northrop’s performance in the program.

The board was not empowered to examine allegations that Northrop, based in Los Angeles, overcharged the Air Force, falsified test results or created fictitious organizations to buy missile parts. These issues are the focus of seven separate criminal investigations.

But on technical issues, the board appeared to refute some recent criticism of Northrop’s performance. “Based on flight data, the Peacekeeper (MX) guidance system appears to be remarkably accurate,” the report said. “Furthermore, the committee regards it as important that there have been no in-flight failures of the system.”

The Air Force appointed the board, composed of six scientists and engineers from government, academia and industry, to resolve questions raised by Congress and a number of Northrop engineers about whether the guidance system could perform its difficult mission of accurately dropping each MX missile’s 10 nuclear warheads on their targets.

Although the overall findings supported the MX system, the board also raised some serious doubts about specific parts of the system, including so-called hybrid electronic circuits that have been one focal point of controversy in the program.

“No direct evidence was found that defective hybrids are in the field,” the report said. “On the other hand, the committee was unable to assure itself that all parts in the field meet all specifications.”

The report went on to offer some severe criticism of the Northrop electronics division in Hawthorne, where the MX guidance device, the inertial measurement unit or IMU, is being produced.

“Although the Northrop engineers participating in this review appeared to be competent, the level of engineering discipline in the hybrid engineering and production area at NED was not adequate,” the report said. The report confirmed that Northrop employees engaged in “test station shopping,” in which hybrids that failed on one test machine would be retested on a different machine and accepted if they passed the second time.

“These conditions understandably led to concerns about the possibility of passing defective parts,” the report said.

In addition, while the report said the accuracy of the guidance system is better than required and even praised it as “indicative of excellent engineering discipline among several contractors involved,” it also called for more flight testing to increase “statistical confidence” in the system. In recent congressional hearings, MX critics have questioned why the MX has become less accurate in recent test flights. So far, the Air Force has conducted 17 test flights of the missile, launching them from Vandenberg Air Force Base north of Los Angeles toward an atoll in the South Pacific.

Evidence introduced in Congress last week showed that the three most recent MX test flights have failed to meet their requirements. The report noted that there has been degradation in the accuracy but said it is within acceptable statistical deviation. The board recommended more test flights, which have been suspended by the Air Force, reportedly because of concerns about the IMU.

In reaction to the report, a Northrop spokesman said, “We have started or are in the process of making the changes recommended by the scientific advisory board.” He also noted that the board said it was “impressed” with Northrop’s responses to the committee’s findings.

Eugene Pentecost, a Vanderbilt University professor of electrical engineering who chaired the board, said in a telephone interview that the report was carefully written, realizing “the difficult position everybody is in” and that the board “spent a lot of time getting its message across.” He declined, however, to discuss his personal feelings about the IMU.