DOD Weapon Systems Acquisition

Since 1990, Highlights of GAO has designated DOD's management of major weapon system acquisitions a high-risk area. Congress and DOD have continually explored ways to improve acquisition outcomes without much to show for their efforts.

Highlights of GAO-09-271 (PDF)

• DOD's major weapon system programs continue to take longer, cost more, and deliver fewer quantities and capabilities than originally planned. The total acquisition cost of DOD's 2007 portfolio of major programs has grown by nearly $300 billion over initial estimates.

  Highlights of GAO-08-467SP (PDF)

• Over the next 5 years, DOD plans to invest about $357 billion on major defense acquisition programs. Every dollar wasted during the development and acquisition of weapon systems is less money available for other priorities.
• At the strategic level, DOD's processes for identifying warfighter needs, allocating resources, and developing and procuring weapon systems—which together define DOD's overall weapon system investment strategy—are fragmented and broken.

  Highlights of GAO-08-1159T (PDF), Highlights of GAO-07-388 (PDF)

• At the program level, weapon system programs are initiated without sufficient knowledge about system requirements, technology, and design maturity. Lacking such knowledge, managers rely on assumptions that are consistently too optimistic, exposing programs to significant and unnecessary risks, and ultimately cost growth and schedule delays.

  Highlights of GAO-08-1159T (PDF), Highlights of GAO-08-467SP (PDF)

Army

• The Army has taken on its largest modernization effort ever. It has made a significant long-term commitment—$3.5 billion to $11.2 billion per year over the next several years—to develop and demonstrate Future Combat System (FCS) capabilities, but those capabilities are still early in development and have not yet been demonstrated. The Army has also faced setbacks in its efforts to implement network-centric capabilities for FCS and current forces and to deal with the needs of its aviation community. These efforts are bring undertaken at the same time the Army must meet the significant and costly day-to-day needs of its forces fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan and refurbish the equipment being used in those conflicts.

  Highlights of GAO-08-408 (PDF), Highlights of GAO-08-409 (PDF), Highlights of GAO-08-877 (PDF)

Navy

• Across its shipbuilding portfolio, the Navy has been unable to execute programs within the resources it has allotted. For instance, the Navy's six most recent lead ships have experienced cumulative cost growth of $2.4 billion above their initial budgets, and initial capability delays totaling 97 months have been incurred across these new classes. These outcomes erode the Navy's buying power and disrupt its long-range construction plans.
• Each year, the Navy prepares a 30-year shipbuilding plan that attempts to balance the competing objectives of maximizing the mission capabilities of each ship and reducing crew size, while providing a sufficient quantity of ships to provide the necessary level of global presence and a stable workload for the shipyards. This year's plan reduced ship quantities in the near term and compensated for current problems by projecting increased construction in out-years based on the hope that significantly higher funding will be available in the future.

  Highlights of GAO-08-1061T (PDF)

Air Force

• The Air Force's total acquisition portfolio will demand unprecedented levels of funding in an increasingly constrained budget environment as officials attempt to simultaneously recapitalize the fighter, bomber, and airlift forces. Over the next 5 years, the Air Force acquisition budget is projected to average more than $67 billion annually.
• Development costs for current Air Force acquisition programs have increased an average of 48 percent above initial estimates. Eight Air Force programs reported Nunn-McCurdy unit cost breaches within the last 3 years.
• The Joint Strike Fighter (JSF)—DOD's largest acquisition program procuring aircraft for the Air Force, Navy, Marines, and U.S. allies—also recently declared a Nunn-McCurdy unit cost breach. This program faces considerable risks stemming from its decision to reduce test assets and the flight-test program to pay for development and manufacturing cost increases.

  Highlights of GAO-08-388 (PDF)

Space Systems

• DOD must make a real commitment to prioritize its space investments. DOD is under pressure to deliver new, transformational capabilities, while older satellite programs continue to cost more than expected, constrain investment dollars, pose risks of capability gaps, and require more time and attention from senior leaders than well-performing efforts.

  Highlights of GAO-08-552T (PDF)

• GAO has reported that space acquisition problems are tied to inadequate contracting strategies, contract and program management weaknesses, the loss of technical expertise, capability gaps in the industrial base, tensions between labs that develop technologies for the future and current acquisition programs, divergent needs in users of space systems, diffuse leadership, and other issues.

  Highlights of GAO-08-552T (PDF), Full Report of GAO-06-776R (PDF, 8 pages)

• To get new tactical space capabilities to the warfighter sooner, DOD must secure inexpensive access to space, which is proving difficult because not enough attention is being paid to acquiring small, low-cost launch vehicles—a linchpin to reducing the cost of fielding new or enhanced satellite capabilities.

  Highlights of GAO-08-516 (PDF), Highlights of GAO-06-449 (PDF)

Missile Defense Agency

• The Missile Defense Agency's (MDA) Ballistic Missile Defense System (BMDS) is the largest research and development program in DOD. There is no firm cost estimate to complete BMDS—plans are to spend $8 billion to $10 billion per year into the foreseeable future, or about $50 billion over the next 5 years.

  Highlights of GAO-08-448 (PDF)

• The open-ended commitment to a high level of funding and the research latitude it provides distinguishes the missile defense program from other acquisition programs. MDA also has the freedom to operate outside of DOD’s acquisition policies and laws, due to a 2002 presidential directive to expedite the fielding of BMDS.
• MDA has expedited fielding, yet over the past 4 years, it has delivered less than originally promised at increasing costs. While increasing costs of the BMDS are evident, the full development cost for the first two increments of the system—Block 2004 and Block 2006—cannot be determined because of how MDA accounted for block costs. Performance remains unverified, as testing to date does not provide enough information to fully assess the BMDS' suitability and effectiveness.

  Highlights of GAO-08-448 (PDF), Highlights of GAO-06-327 (PDF)

^ Back to topWhat Needs to Be Done

Across-the-board improvements in DOD's acquisition outcomes require fundamental changes to its requirements, funding, and acquisition systems. This involves (1) maintaining the right mix of programs to invest in by making better decisions as to which programs should be pursued given existing and expected funding and, more importantly, deciding which programs should not be pursued; (2) ensuring that programs that are started are executable by matching requirements with resources and locking in those requirements; and (3) making it clear that programs will then be executed based on knowledge and holding program managers responsible for that execution.

Highlights of GAO-08-1159T (PDF), Highlights of GAO-08-467SP (PDF), Highlights of GAO-08-619 (PDF), Highlights of GAO-07-388 (PDF), Highlights of GAO-06-110 (PDF)

^ Back to topKey Reports

Defense Acquisitions

Defense Acquisitions

Defense Acquisitions

Defense Acquisitions