Boeing lands $2B in bonuses despite failed missile tests

WASHINGTON — From 2002 through early last year, the Pentagon conducted 11 flight tests of the nation’s homeland missile defense system.

In the carefully scripted exercises, interceptors of the Ground-based Midcourse Defense system, or GMD, were launched from underground silos to pursue mock enemy warheads high above the Pacific.

The interceptors failed to destroy their targets in six of the 11 tests — a record that has prompted independent experts to conclude the system cannot be relied on to foil a nuclear strike by North Korea or Iran.

Yet over that same timespan, Boeing Co., the Pentagon’s prime contractor for GMD, collected nearly $2 billion in performance bonuses for a job well done.

The Pentagon paid Boeing more than $21 billion total for managing the system during that period.

A Times investigation also found that the criteria for the yearly bonuses were changed at some point to de-emphasize the importance of test results that demonstrate the system’s ability to intercept and destroy incoming warheads.

Early on, Boeing’s contract specified that bonuses would be based primarily on “hit to kill success” in flight tests. In later years, the words “hit to kill” were removed in favor of more generally phrased benchmarks, contract documents show.

L. David Montague, cochair of a National Academy of Sciences panel that documented shortcomings with GMD, called the $2 billion in bonuses “mind-boggling,” given the system’s performance.

Montague, a former president of missile systems for Lockheed Corp., said the bonuses suggest that the Missile Defense Agency, the arm of the Pentagon that oversees GMD, is a “rogue organization” in need of strict supervision.

The cumulative total of bonuses paid to Boeing has not been made public before. The Times obtained details about the payments through a lawsuit it filed against the Defense Department under the Freedom of Information Act.

A spokesman for the missile agency, Chris Johnson, said that despite the GMD system’s record in flight tests, Boeing had “earned” its bonuses “based on the criteria specified in the contract.” He said the payments “complied with all appropriate acquisition regulations.”

A spokesman for Boeing, Dexter Q. Henson, referred questions about the bonuses to the missile agency while defending the company’s work on GMD.

Boeing “has met contractual requirements and a variety of incentives across a wide range of program objectives,” Henson said by email.