FCS takes it on the chin

Yesterday, the Government Accountability Office uncorked its sixth annual "Assessments of Selected Weapons Programs"  (PDF!) report, which rates the progress and cost of various major weapons programs, and it isn’t pretty. The GAO found that of the 72 weapons programs it put under the microscope, “none of them had proceeded through system development meeting the best practices standards for mature technologies, stable design, or mature production processes by critical junctures of the program, each of which are essential for achieving planned cost, schedule, and performance outcomes.”

Ouch. 

In total, 95 weapons systems have exceeded their budgets by a whopping $295 billion, the report found, and are scheduled to be delivered an average of 21 months late, five months longer than in 2000. This comes despite the fact that the Pentagon has doubled the amount of cash it is spending on these new systems, jumping from $790 billion in 2000 to $1.6 trillion last year. What’s more, overall procurement costs came in 26 percent above original estimates.

And what, you ask, of everyone’s favorite “system of systems,” the Future Combat System? The GAO doesn’t pull any punches.

 

Read the rest at the ARES blog.