Origins of a Four Decade Success Story NATO SeaSparrow's founders got it right
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Programs
Origins of a Four Decade Success Story
NATO SeaSparrow’s founders got it right
By Francis M. Cevasco
The NATO SeaSparrow project, at 41-years, warrants examination Among the 15 NATO members at the time, leaders from four—
because it is the longest-lived cooperative development, Denmark, Italy, Norway and the US—viewed the ASM threat
production, and in-service support program in which the US as sufficiently troubling to warrant immediate action. They
Defense Department is a partner. Its longevity strongly suggests approached NATO Armaments Directors with a proposal to form a
the project embodies elements which could benefit other ongoing NATO project and break with past practice by physically locating
and future cooperative programs. the project office away from Brussels (i.e., in the Washington,
D.C. area where it stands today). Approval was granted allowing
Those elements will be examined in a three part series of which the four to proceed.
this piece is the first. Part one focuses exclusively on the project’s
first two decades starting with its origins in the 1960s, during its The early days
ground-breaking period, and carrying through into the first half
of the 1980s; part two will focus on the second two decades of The four participating countries moved quickly; they negotiated
the program starting in the latter half of the 1980s and bring the and signed a Cooperative Development and Production
reader to the present; and, part three will peer into the future of Memorandum of Understanding in 1968. Completing a multi-
cooperative development and production programs by distilling national agreement in so short a time would be difficult to
lessons learned by the NATO SeaSparrow community and explore accomplish in today’s bureaucratic environment, but even more
whether those lessons retain their currency in the 21st century. so in the 1960s. Progress was aided by the presence of several
intellectual giants each who understood and valued the benefits
The 1960s environment of collective action within the NATO alliance.
The 1960s were a time when US Department of Defense executives Paul Nitze and Harold Brown were the key players on the US
were very conscious of Europe’s importance as a NATO ally but side at the beginning. Nitze was Deputy Secretary of Defense
concerned about the marginal state of NATO European forces and and previously held the post of Navy Secretary. Brown was the
the European defense industrial base. Despite the broad array DoD’s first Director of Defense Research & Engineering (a position
of European security shortcomings, US efforts at the time were that evolved into Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition
largely directed at what was easy to do and non-controversial—one Technology & Logistics).
initiative promoted bilateral Master Data Exchange Agreements
(MDEA) intended to infuse US defense science and technology Brown understood the need to field a capable defense against
into European defense establishments and their re-emergent ASMs and encouraged his NATO Armaments Director counterparts
defense industrial bases. The MDEA initiative focused on the to take action. Nitze also recognized the need to counter the
fundamentals, engaging other capitals while minimizing the risk ASM threat and, as did Brown, understood collective action on
of compromising sensitive US defense technology. a well managed major system development program (though
without precedent in the US) would be beneficial to the US, to its
During that same period prescient leaders in several NATO capitals three partners, and to NATO. The two men and their European
directed their attention to the maturing Anti-surface Ship Missile counterparts had the vision and perseverance needed to advance
threat. More importantly, several ultimately joined together to from talk to action.
craft a defense which came to be known as the NATO SeaSparrow
Surface Missile System. The project advanced beyond paper in 1969 when a contract
was awarded competitively calling for development of the Mk
NATO SeaSparrow became a mainstay of ship self-defense for 57 NATO SeaSparrow Surface Missile System. In the interests of
the US Navy and numerous allied navies. Its longevity suggests fielding a capability quickly with a minimum of resources the
its initial sponsors, and those who followed, did far more things four participants decided to adapt the existing US AIM-7 Sparrow
right than they did wrong—a substantial accomplishment given missile (an air-to-air missile) for ship launch and combine it with
the lack of precedents for multinational development programs European fire control digital computers, radar pedestals, radar
at the time. The project’s longevity also suggests the project’s microwave receiver, and firing officer’s display equipment.
structure and manning were sufficiently resilient to weather the
inevitable crises, some large and some small.
Raytheon
The beginning
National representatives of NATO’s Naval Armaments Group
Project Group 2 launched a 1966 study exploring how to proceed
with a cooperative Anti-surface Ship Missile defense development
program. Project Group 2 consisted of Italy, France, Norway and
the US; Germany, Denmark and The Netherlands participated as
observers. The importance of an ASM defense program was ratified
forcefully in 1967 when Egyptian patrol boats, armed with STYX
anti-ship missiles, sunk an Israeli destroyer. At that point the ASM
threat was no longer theoretical. Galvanized by the Egypt-Israel
incident, Naval Armaments Group members accelerated their
efforts by first identifying and evaluating several alternatives
and then quickly selecting a solution amenable to near-term
Signing of the $23 million NATO Seasparrow development contract.
deployment.
Common Defense Quarterly 18
Programs
The four participants knew what their forces required. They The NATO SeaSparrow Project
formed a competent and motivated project management team to
develop and produce a capable system, as evidenced by the first The NATO SeaSparrow missiles used by all the participants are
engineering development model being produced within budget in of two types—one for trainable launchers, the other for vertical
1972. launch. However, as ships of different navies differ in how they
are designed and constructed, participants found it necessary to
The production decision and a production annex followed in develop a family of vertical launchers. Today there is one model
1972 signed by Rear Admiral Mark Woods; and, the first NATO of trainable launcher and five distinct vertical launch systems in
SeaSparrow system became operational in 1975—seven years use: Canada, the Netherlands, Greece, Denmark, and the five
after the MOU was signed. Secretary of Defense Brown signed the country group consisting of Australia, Germany, Norway, Spain and
Cooperative Support MOU in 1977; Bill Perry was Brown’s Under the US (Australia and Spain joined after the period addressed in
Secretary of Defense for Research & Engineering at the time. this piece).
Brown and Perry, as had many of their predecessors, committed Industrial participation/work sharing was another cornerstone
themselves to institutionalizing NATO cooperative development of the original project. Companies from all participants were
and cooperative production. But despite the existence of the allocated work increments whose magnitude correlated to their
NATO SeaSparrow and at least one other major cooperative financial contributions which varied substantially from one
development program (i.e., the German-US Rolling Airframe participant to another. Financial contributions, in turn, correlated
Missile) they encountered substantial resistance, causing them with the number of systems each participant expected to acquire.
to commission a Defense Science Board study to examine how
DoD could engage in cooperative development of major military Organizational structure
systems. Despite their travails, the NATO SeaSparrow project
proceeded without major incident; perhaps because the project The NATO SeaSparrow project is headed by a Project Manager
was well managed, keeping it off the desks of senior DoD officials in the rank of CAPTAIN, appointed by the US Navy. He leads a
hostile to (or skeptical of) cooperation. multinational Project Office manned by representatives from all
the participants and supplemented by US military and civilian
NATO SeaSparrow’s early success attracted the attention of other experts. The Project Manager receives guidance from the NATO
NATO member countries. During the period covered by this piece SeaSparrow Project Steering Committee, a body headed by a US
Belgium and The Netherlands joined in 1970; Germany joined in Navy Rear Admiral and consisting of senior officers from each
1977; and, Canada and Greece joined in 1982. Thus, between other participating country. The Steering Committee established
1968 [MOU signing] and 1982, membership grew from four to nine policy, provided strategic direction, and provided management
countries. The project’s continued success, as it membership oversight to the Project Office.
rolls swelled, challenged the conventional wisdom that program
management complexity, and problems, increase non-linearly as The Project Office serves as a collecting point for information
the number of partner countries increase. In the case of NATO about the performance of the NATO SeaSparrow System and a
SeaSparrow skilled leaders and several other factors overcame forum within which participants can advocate engineering change
the burdens normally associated with programs consisting of proposals to correct shortcomings and exploit technology advances
relatively large numbers of participants, each with competing to increase system performance. It serves as a forum to discuss
national interests. and communicate tactics. The Project Office also provides an
infrastructure to execute emerging project requirements on
behalf of the participants.
Richard Frigge
S
SEEA PMAR
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SeaSparrow Missile Launch
19 Common Defense Quarterly
Programs
CAPTAIN Stanley Counts (US) was the first Project Manager; • Agreed operational requirement—based on an operational
the first Steering Committee consisted of RADM Rodholm (DK), requirement agreed by all the participants.
CAPTAIN Legnaioli (IT), GEN Hamre (NO), and RADM Woods (US).
Counts was later promoted to RADM and replaced Woods as the • Support of senior defense decision makers—personal
Steering Committee’s Chairman. Counts provided continuity of engagement by well-known and well-respected officials
leadership and vision during the initial turbulent years of the from the US and its partners.
project’s operation, laying a solid foundation for those who • Leadership at the Project level—project office and steering
followed. committee officials functioned as “product champions” who
directed and sustained the program.
• Operating practices—participants agreed to a set
of practices that contributed to a positive working
environment and which countered and neutralized the
inevitable challenges to cooperation. Among the practices
are: each participant can cast one vote, all votes are equal,
benefits correlate with financial contributions, participants
are partners not customers, the project is managed from
a multinational office with all participants represented,
and the US procures supplies and services on behalf of all
participants.
• Underlying principles—participants subscribed to three
very simple to articulate, but difficult to sustain, principles:
unanimity in decision making, atmosphere of trust, and a
strong international military-industrial support network.
Summary
The NATO SeaSparrow program, from its very beginning, was much
like the salmon swimming upstream. It was formed at a time
when there were little-to-no precedents within DoD for joining
or managing a major multi-national development and production
program. And lack of precedent could have been sufficient to doom
a cooperative program of any size in the 1960s. It survived its first
decade despite entrenched institutional resistance to cooperation
as evidenced by the difficulties encountered by Secretary Brown
and Under Secretary Perry when they and their congressional
supporters declared DoD should promote cooperation on a much
grander scale than before with its NATO allies. Brown and Perry
eventually prevailed, but only after reinventing the [cooperation]
Industry team wheel. Fortunately for NATO SeaSparrow, and other cooperative
programs that followed, Brown and Perry left behind a body of
Development and production contracts were awarded to Raytheon policy and precedent that guided cooperation during subsequent
with the understanding it would recruit competent industrial administrations.
partners from the three participating countries. Raytheon’s team
initially included: Kongsberg (NO), Terma (DK), and Selenia (IT). Frank Cevasco is President of Cevasco International, LLC. His
The industrial team grew as the project grew and at a later point firm provides advice to domestic and international aerospace
included: MBLE (BE), DISA (DK), Terma (DK), NEA Lindberg (DK), and defense corporations about strategic positioning, defense
Selenia (IT), Fokker (NL), Bronswerk (NL), and Kongsberg (NO). acquisition programs, and strategic partnering. His firm has
also prepared studies for DoD and Washington think tanks re-
garding transatlantic security, cooperative RD&A programs,
Elements contributing to success export control reform, and export sales reform. Prior to en-
tering the private sector he served as Assistant Deputy Under
The participants adopted organization structures, principles and Secretary of Defense for International Development and Pro-
practices that guided the project well over a long period. The duction Programs where he was principal resident advisor to
combination of elements they formulated and implemented have several Under Secretaries of Defense (AT&L) regarding inter-
stood the test of time. national program cooperation and international agreements.
Common Defense Quarterly 20
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