A new review of US military acquisitions has found the Pentagon system for developing and delivering new hardware to be inadequate for modern threats facing the country.
An independent report released by the US Government Accountability Office (GAO) on 12 June says it takes the Pentagon and its suppliers an average of 12 years to deliver the first version of a new weapon system.
“That’s not nearly fast enough to keep up with emerging threats or deliver innovative technology,” the GAO concludes.
In addition to lengthy development runways, many programmes are significantly behind their already protracted timetables. The report specifically notes the US Air Force’s new jet trainer – the Boeing T-7A – is already 10 years behind schedule.
The GAO cites a “deeply entrenched” preference within the Pentagon for a liner acquisition structure characterised by “rigid, sequential processes”. Auditors describe that paradigm as “inadequate in adapting to evolving threats”.
“In a linear acquisition, the cost, schedule, and performance baselines are fixed early. Thus, programs develop weapon systems to meet fixed requirements that were set years in advance. This risks delivering a system – sometimes decades later – that is already obsolete,” the GAO says.
For several years, there have been increasingly vocal calls from the US Congress and the defence industry to reform the acquisitions process. Senior combatant commanders such as US Indo-Pacific Command chief Admiral Samuel Paparo have made similar calls.
Reform remains elusive, particularly when programmes that attempted to shorten the development and testing timeline, such as the Lockheed Martin F-35 stealth fighter and Bell-Boeing V-22 tiltrotor, have experienced significant challenges later in their life cycles.
The GAO recommends an iterative cycle approach deployed in many private sector companies. Under such an arrangement, multiple phases of the design and test process can occur simultaneously, resulting in a quicker delivery to market.
While there have been some efforts at improvement, such as an increased emphasis on using commercially available technology and the creation of technology incubation hubs, the GAO says the acquisitions process “remains plagued by escalating costs, prolonged development cycles, and structural inefficiencies”.
Defence companies have adopted some of these best practices internally, investing heavily in technologies like all-digital design engineering and additive manufacturing that enable rapid iteration at lower costs.
While the GAO says the Pentagon itself has agreed with its earlier recommendations for reforming the development of new weapons, the agency says the Department of Defense has largely failed to implement significant changes to its processes.
